Session Fifty-Five (Graveyard of Empires Summary)

Having killed the rampaging bull elephant and negotiated the selling of it’s body parts, the Starchy Boys decide to spend the next day with the Rickus’ caravan so they can rest and resupply at the landing. We buy a large amount of arrows and bolts to ensure our crossbowmen and archers don’t run dry.

Belroar takes the time to investigate the elephant’s carcass to try and determine the cause of it’s rampage, believing it too possibly be a mating season. Chuq inspects the body of his dead compatriot, but doesn’t find anything of note. He enacts a small burial ceremony, returning the body to the ocean and retaining the skull for internment in the catacombs of the tower.

After a breakfast of Surprise Stew, the party mostly mills around the camp, reading, resting up injuries and talking. Chuq initially planned on doing some fishing, but decides to accompany Belroar in following the elephants tracks to see where it came from.

It appears to have made a direct beeline for the campsite, cutting straight through the jungle to get there, trampling things in it path. They manage to find blood splatter part way down the trail, at a point where the elephant’s path changes direction. Belroar tastes it to confirm, and they deduce that it may be the blood of some other creature, as neither of them remember seeing any prior wounds before we fought the elephant.

They continue down the path, looking for more blood. They find several more splashes as they go along. Just over a hundred yards down the path, they find a larger area of destruction, evidently caused by a fracas of some kind. Lots of blood, broken branches and crushed underbrush, likely caused by two large creatures battling. They find the elephant’s entrance to the clearing, much less destroyed from a calmer pace, and it’s easy to deduce that this is where the elephant’s rampage began.

Checking for prints, Belroar notices the signs of a large gorilla, easily a match in size for even the elephant. Perhaps even multiple gorillas. Mystery solved, they decide to return to the camp. On the walk, Chuq fills in Belroar on the story of Virgil’s Golden Jaguar, since jaguar’s seem to be a creature of importance to the ranger in proving himself to his tribe.

On the walk, they hear a crack of a branch to the north, and quickly take cover. Sometime later, another sound is heard to the south, so they head towards it. Unfortunately, they run into a huge, orange-furred, four-armed gorilla. Belroar instantly tries to look non-threatening to keep it calm, and it watches him. He tries to keep it supplicated by offering food from his pack, along with some of his mushrooms and narcotics to hopefully drug it. As it sniffs the food, the gorilla calls out, and receives several answering calls, before dropping out of the tree. Belroar backs away as it approaches aggressively, but it stops at the meat and eventually concentrates on the food.

Belroar begins doing what he can to indenture himself with the gorilla, and potentially befriend it, but it ignores him. So he backs away a little more, and whispers to get Chuq to sneak away and return to the party for help. More gorillas arrive, and they quickly finish off the meat, and watch Belroar very closely. He offers more food, which they eat, watching him.

Chuq quickly runs back to the party and approaches Axel and Thorfus to explain the situation, so we decide to mount a rescue, most of the party and hirelings heading out. Chuq takes the lead, and suggests we merely investigate the situation rather than rush in.

When we get to the area, Axel leads off the hirelings to the south to prepare some long-ranged fire, whilst the others prepare to potentially charge in.

We wait whilst Belroar continues to prostrate himself to the gorillas, but it eventually becomes clear that they aren’t interested in the man, and go to attack. Though huge and clearly dangerous, they prove to be clumsy combatants, and the party dispatches them with only a few scratches and a broken shield, although one manages to escape heavily injured.

As with the elephant, we decide we can make some money from the carcasses, and drag them back to the camp. Once back, Belroar once more barters with the caravan for the corpses, retaining several parts.

After that, we spend the rest of the day skinning the animals, fishing and generally resting, with Brice taking the time to further heal some of our injured. The night is uneventful, but for another merchant caravan passing through from Xen’Khel, and they join the camp. They barter for use of one of our barges to get back to Vargan, but eventually takes Rickus’.

The next day, after further healing, we head up the road towards Xen’Khel. It’s drizzling and misty, be we wind our along the old dwarven road, Rickus’ caravan not far behind us. Nothing much happens but the distant sounds of more elephants in the jungle. By afternoon, we break out above the mists, cross a bridge over the river, and enter the more narrow mountain roads. At the bridge, we can look up and see not only a waterfall, but also huge bridges being held up by dwarven statues, hundreds of feet above between the peaks. Our first sight of Xen’Khel.

By nightfall, we’ve finally made it all the way there and cross the bridge into the ruins around the entrance to Xen’Khel. The ruins have been fixed up over time, and are occupied, evidently a small city is in place around Xen’Khel, homing many adventurer types.

Several tipsy men-at-arms approach us almost immediatly, looking for work. Owen, Lorent, Alec De la Porte, and Xelena, three men and a woman. They sound pretty desperate, having been there several months, and only been down into the ruins once. We decide at best to offer them payment and food in exchange for what information they can provide. It seems there is some segregation between the dwarves and human adventurers in the area, especially those dwarves from a Xenilum’Khel archaeological group. We also learn about the temples down below, and the sisters, three naga that guard the entrance to prevent evil from gaining access. Supposedly there are other routes in though, as their are bandits sometimes prowling the deeps.

Rather than pay the cost for an inn, which are quite over-priced, we decide to hole up in one of the abandoned buildings, risking being prey to clockwork monkeys prowling the area. We set watch for the night.

During Thorfus’ watch, an old dwarf passes by with a cart full of wares he is trying to sell. Unfortunately, most the stuff is merely broken artifacts or components of larger things. He has a limp, an old adventuring wound. Thorfus asks to see his best piece, to which he his handed a mask carved like a dwarf, which he believes is an old battlemask.

The old dwarf tries it on, and falls over suddenly. He suddenly realises it’s magical, and offers Thorfus to try, saying he saw the mountain from above. Thorfus also tries it on, and his vision is thrown up into the clouds, looking down on Xen’Khel from a bird’s eye view. When he focuses, he seems to zoom through the clouds until he is hovering above his own head. Trying to focus on Xen’Tellar’s temple within the mountain however only shows the sister’s temple at the top of the peak. He takes the time to learn the layout of the city.

Thorfus likes the idea of the mask, but the old dwarf is asking at least 4000 gold for it. Thorfus starts bartering, even offering the elephant tusks in exchange, though that only drops the cost to 2800 gold. In the end, I think we decided it was simply out of our reach to pay for, though the old dwarf is obviously feeling richer with the discovery.