"Hello, Kitterix! I'm Maxilla! It's not often that truebloods go exploring or adventuring without a lot of other truebloods with them! And it's also not often that truebloods have purple scales, either! It's almost as rare as metallic scales! Do you need fresh water or food?" the cleric of Apsu comments then inquires.
Kitterix blinks several times before breathing a sigh of what sounds like relief. "Oh, thank goodness... only two years."
"Surviving here, it felt a lot longer..."
"Hello, Kitterix! I'm Maxilla! It's not often that truebloods go exploring or adventuring without a lot of other truebloods with them! And it's also not often that truebloods have purple scales, either! It's almost as rare as metallic scales! Do you need fresh water or food?"
Kitterix approaches Maxilla with a very happy smile. "Well, if you've got them, I won't say no to having some."
Max will pull out some rations and their waterskin for Kit.
"It's not a lot because we're on the trail, but I can't imagine that the local water and food was any good for you." they comment idly. "And being here all that time -- how did you survive?"
Kitterix takes the offered rations and starts to greedily scarf them down.
He pauses just long enough to swallow before responding to Maxilla. "You have no idea... don't drink the water here. It's terrible--turns you sick and puke-y."
"Been living off of rainwater and whatever I could scrape out of the mud. Food was a bit easier to come by, but you'd have to cook it to practically charcoal to not get sick from it."
"That does not sound appetizing," Khalaban agreed. "Since you've been here some time, what can you tell us about this place? Anything in regard to the cult's most recent activites would be especially helpful."
"Know you're hungry, Kitterix, but... slow down a little. If you eat too fast when your body isn't ready for it you could get sick just the same. We're not going anywhere and we're not going to take away the food we're giving you. Slow down. Relax. It's going to be okay." Max offers to try and keep the kobold from a'gob'lin up things...
Adriana will keep a eye on the surrounding area...This could be a trap... she thinks
Shyla was not unused to wilderness, but the island's borderline hostile environment is something new for her. She keeps Vixie closeby-- although it seems that with Shyla around, the kitling has an easier time sticking close to the group than normal.
So when she returns from a quick trip to one of the less-pointy bushes, it is of course with Vixie in tow that she returns... and locks eyes on a kobold.
Well, another kobold, anyway-- Maxilla aside.
She looks over him fairly quickly to check for wounds. It's just a glance, nothing too invasive.
"I have some seasoning in my bag if you want to spice it up," she says with a decidedly feline grin.
Kitterix eventually slows down enough to finish eating the offered rations without choking or having them all come racing back up. "Whew... dunno how long it's been since I had something actually tasty!"
"Now, this cult you're looking for..." Kitterix wipes some crumbs from his snout. "...the masked ones kept going on about some place called 'the City of Golden Death'. Didn't have a clue what they were talking about--I mean, where they were going, there was all manner of nasty beasties and poison water that'd make sure they'd never get far."
"So, I followed them a way. The trail they blazed led to a pair of golden gates... a pair of golden gates set before a massive cave entrance. I dared not follow them inside--it's hard enough surviving out in the open, Apsu only knows how deadly this Isle's caves are."
"If you're going after them, you'll definitely want my help avoiding the baddies around here."
Khalaban considered. It was unlikely that the little kobold was a danger to them, and even if they were keeping an eye out should be sufficient to keep them safe. Looking around, Khalaban considered. "That would seem wise, yes. Perhaps you can show us what you survived on as we go, to help us supplement what we've brought. It might be less delicious, but it'll extend our supplies."
Adriana will give the mobile a stern gaze and says,"We can trust you? Right?"
Maxilla perks up as they hear something in Kitterix's words.
"Oh, wow, you follow Dad too? NEAT! This is important and let's keep you safe and alive because Dad's watching out for both of us!" the diminutive cleric offers eagerly. "And you can show us where we need to go safely!"
The half-pint samurai scritches her ears and ponders beneath the mask.
"I-is there an easy w-way to tell which w-water is the, uhm... th-the poison kind?" asks Vixie.
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Adriana will sigh to herself has companions interrupt her getting all Inquisitory.
"Poison water is always pitch black--like someone dropped a whole buncha coal dust in." Kitterix nods.
"I don't suppose that means the clear water is safe, then?" The divine casters could provide plenty of water, Khalaban considered, but if there was ever a reason they couldn't it would be useful to know.
"Yep, clear water's okay--if you can find it." Kitterix nods.
His eyes widen when he looks behind the party. A harsh, chilly wind starts blowing past them, carrying with it the scent of death and pain. "We gotta go--negative energy storm's coming!"
With that, Kitterix starts moving towards the nearby woods...
"O-oh!" squeaks Vixie. She isn't sure what that means... but imagines it isn't a good thing. She follows as quickly as she can on her little legs in her heavy armor.
Shyla hoists her pack and follows along with the group, careful to hold Vixie's hand-- and half-drag her if she's too slow!
"That sounds...unpleasant." Adjusting his pack Khalaban followed, eying the sky warily. He had no idea what a negative energy storm would entail, but it did not conjour up images of a pleasant day on the beach.
Max is more than willing to follow the lead of the trueblood that was on the island long enough to learn how to survive on it. The concept of death and pain blowing on the wind also helps move their feet a bit more quickly!
"Okay, okay!"
Adriana will follow along the idea of a negative energy storm does not sound like her idea of a good time.
Mere moments after the party makes it to the relative safety of the treeline, arcs of pitch-black energy erupt from the clouds overhead and lance down towards the earth. Several of them catch a particularly stout-looking oak tree and ravage it to blackened, rotted splinters in the span of a few breaths.
Kitterix winces. "Yep, that's what I was afraid would happen. Follow me!"
------------------
Over the course of the next couple of hours, Kitterix guides the party onward, sticking to trails with the thickest canopy of branches while the negative energy storm rages overhead. A couple of times, stray bolts of necrotic power strike the top half of a tree and cause it to topple over. But the party presses on, and eventually the storm subsides with a final gust of wind reminiscent of a death rattle.
Soon, the party's destination comes into view--and it's built into the side of a tall cliff.
The entrance to Xin-Grafar stands ahead—two enormous stone doors, each thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide, covered in carved, vertical wavy lines. The left-hand door stands open, a complex internal mechanism of worked stone and metal clockwork gears visible along the door’s side about halfway up. The doors are recessed about ten feet into the side of a large, grass-covered hill and tilt slightly inward. A firepit smolders beside the right-hand door, tiny tendrils of smoke still curling skyward from its coals.
Well, the smoke suggested that the cult was not far ahead, but Khalaban moved the examine the campsite for any additional clues as to what they might want here.
Khalaban sees that a couple of shallow graves have been dug a scant twenty feet from the campsite. Otherwise, there's little else to be gleaned here.
"This is the place." Kitterix points at the doors.
"It would seem that not all of them made it," Khalaban noted of the graves. Hopefully that meant that the ones inside were also in poor condition, but more likely they'd simply hoarded the available healing from there weaker members.
Kitterix runs up to the doors and beckons the party to follow. "Well, no sense standing around here! Let's go!"
---------------------
The little kobold leads the group down into the tunnels beyond the gates, his pace visibly picking up the further they get from the surface. The interior cave walls are surprisingly dry at first--years upon years of peripheral exposure to the negative energy storms outside is likely responsible for that--but as the party descends further, the earth around them grows more and more moist.
Kitterix leads the group down a series of several dozen switchbacks, and soon the only light the party has is that which they bring with them. "I feel sooooo much better right now, you have no idea." The violet-scaled kobold sighs. "Sometimes, you just gotta get away from the angry sky and underneath a nice, stable rock roof, y'know what I mean?"
Eventually, the gleam of something golden emerges from the gloom of the underground passage. Rounding another corner in the rock, the party emerges out into a small cliff overlooking an impressively vast cavern--and in its centre, shining like a dragon's hoard, are the many gilded spires of what can only be the City of Xin-Grafar itself.
At a distance, the lost city appears to be divided into three, evenly-spaced rings lined with the ruins of a nation long dead. Crumbling masonry and faded frescoes co-exist with the many different forms of moss and fungi clinging to their ancient frames, though the attempted reclamation by the subterranean wildlife has done little to dull the city's lustre. The buildings closer to the centre of the city are still mostly intact.
Kitterix pauses briefly to take in the view before leading the party down the cliffside and towards a gatehouse at the southern end of the walled city.
The floor here is sand and shows signs of recent foot traffic. The walls are all painted in enormous murals that depict a city in its prime. The south wall shows hundreds of men and women in a marketplace, trading everything from fruit and livestock to construction materials such as brick and wood. The north wall depicts row upon row of unarmed, uniformed men standing large in the foreground and growing smaller as their ranks disappear over the horizon toward the far right of the painting—a horizon over which an enormous golden sun rises. The east wall is a huge map that portrays the city--and it indicates that the city's rings are divided by canals of pure, crystal-clear water that flows from the innermost ring. Below this map someone has scrawled numerous notes and mathematical calculations in charcoal. Finally, the west wall depicts a leader of some sort, crowned by a golden sun and speaking before a huge crowd of people wearing white shawls and golden togas.
"Remarkable," Khalaban breathed as he looked over the evidence of the ruined city. He had to wonder exactly what had happened here, to lead to this, to this tainted land and poisoned sky. "Alas, I lack the skills to pull the tale from this past. Or more importantly the knowledge of why the Cult may have come to this place. Do any of you think you might?"
Shyla follows the little kobold and keeps an eye on each of the group's members as she travels; she's clearly used to moving in a pack herself, and whenever climbing is necessary, she pats her back for Vixie to latch on-- although the samurai armor is a bit of an unwelcome addition to that.
When they come upon the gates, she grins a remarkably catlike grin for her human face, her tail twitching in anticipation.
"Of course they've gone into a burrow; the best prey always do."
She taps a claw on her heavy belly as she says it.
------------------
As they walk through the tunnel, the feline seems relieved to be done hustling away from the storm. "I saw so many alchemical ingredients back there, but there was simply no time to stop..." she groans. "I've been working on one that might help grow back limbs, and I thought I saw some jarrin root back there that might be just what I need for it."
------------------
Shyla's eyebrows rise as she looks out over the ruins, and she follows along here as well. "I wonder if this place could be reclaimed..."
Vixie trundles along behind her; despite the horrible energy storm destroying things nearby, her tail is as a-swish as ever as she follows her wife around like an obedient puppy.
--The volume of gold necessary to flood the entire city;
--The amount of time said flood of gold needs to occur;
--How often said floods occur.
If your interpretation is correct (and it usually is), then in approximately three days molten gold will fill the city to a height of 40 feet within the first two rings of Xin-Grafar. This flood then takes an entire day to drain so the cycle may begin anew.
A further note scrawled underneath the map mentions that the flood cannot be stopped once it has begun.
Khalaban glanced down at the footprints in the dust, nodding. It was no surprise to see them. "At least we know our prey moved this way too," he said, pointing them out to the others.
Shyla nods at Khalaban. "Good eyes!" She slowly walks along the map, taking note of the scribbles. Her face furrows, and she raises a hand.
"Wait. If I'm right, this might be important."
She spends a little more time piecing it together, then glances back.
"I figured it out. This city, if I'm reading it correctly, floods with gold. Forty feet of gold!"
She ponders a bit. "What's today?"
Kitterix ponders. "Um..."
He starts to count on his fingers. "...carry the two... add on one for the leap year..."
"...I think today's the 17th?" The kobold answers.
Shyla nods. "I think you're right." She starts another sentence before stopping abruptly and looks back at Kitterix with a bewildered expression.
"Yes, you're right. Anyway, the next flood should be on the 20th, so... three days from now."
"It'll take about one day to drain, so we'll need to either finish up here before then or figure out a plan for when it happens."
Vixie counts it out on her fingers. "S-seventeenth, e-eighteenth, n-nineteenth... w-wouldn't it be the n-nineteenth?"
Kitterix nods. "Okay. So, uh... where're you planning to look first? There seems to be quite a few points of interest on this map."
Shyla looks uneasily over the group.
"I'm a bit new here. How do you all usually decide things like this? I don't want to step on any toes."
"Whatever we choose, we can't trust the math that the cultists used -- they've been wrong about the crypt, Tamran, and here." Maxilla begins, then glances to Shyla.
"We don't really have a lot of organization, but we should move quickly from the outside in -- anyone using molten gold as a defensive mechanism doesn't hold much value for it. So unless we encounter something magical and useful made of it, we shouldn't let ourselves get weighed down carrying it."
Adriana is uncharacteristically quiet. Deep in thought.
Shyla squints at Adriana.
"Oh." Her face slowly breaks into a grin, but she doesn't say what she suspects.
"Hmmm?" Khalaban looked over at Shyla, then over at Adriana. "Hm." Smiling a little, he looked over at Max. "Indeed, I can't imagine the cult's mathematics is any more sound than anything else its done. The centre is typically an important location, so heading directly for it seems like a plan." Whether it was a good one or not...
Adriana doesn't seem to notice.
"Well, sounds like we know where to go. Let's get a move on!" Kitterix puffs his chest out and takes a few steps towards the other end of the gatehouse...
...only to pause and sheepishly turn to Khalaban. "Er... maybe one of you should take point? I've never been down here before."
It takes Vixie a moment to remember that she's usually the one that goes in front-- between her billhook and her heavy armor, it only makes sense! She waddles to the front, sets her polearm under her arm, and nods at the rest before moving onward.
...She asks for directions a lot, though.
Taking up his own usual position in the order, Khalaban scanned the enviroment to avoid ambushes. Or more likely traps. A place that flooded its streets with gold likely had a lot of traps, and hot metal was...less that enjoyable.
Adriana will fall in the back of the marching order.
Khalaban takes the lead and looks around as the party begins to make their way into Xin-Grafar.
A large doorway passes from the room of murals into the city proper. A lightly glowing green fluorescence emanates from the cavern roof above, illuminating a once-great city now reduced to ash and rubble—but whose ruins are coated entirely in gold. A large, covered bridge across a canal glows white-hot and emits a searing, golden light. In the center of the bridge stands a man-shaped statue covered in fine gold plating, its carved face eerily human-like.
As the group approaches, the statue's head starts to turn to look at them.