The night is painfully cold, but quiet and uneventful for the most part... During the third watch shift, a lot of dust falls from the ceiling as if something really heavy had hit one of the floors above your room... But nothing else happens.
After hours of rest, you faintly hear the croaking of frogs and few other animal sounds, revealing that the morning has finally come. As you push the heavy stone door barring this room, you feel the slightly warmer air on your skin and see a little bit of sunlight coming from upstairs.
You carefully investigate the area and notice that a few drips of blood on the floor of the main hall upstairs... Other than that, nothing else seems any different from the day before.
Brother Cyrus yawns and stretches in the morning light. He then throws some clean water in his face to help wake himself up.
"Now...to finish what we started." The Priest says with conviction.
"I don't know about finish, since this is a big swamp, but let's continue!" Frederick shows a last bit of enthusiasm before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he opens them again, his expression is blank, and eyes alert.
After one last inspection of the dusty rooms and art, you leave the tilted temple behind and follow the tracks that brought you here in the first place...
At first, Frederick loses sight of the tracks and ends up wasting some time, but he comes full round and not only find them again, but actually manages to find you a shortcut, recovering most of the wasted time. Still, the many vines, rocks, patches of moss and insects it rather difficult to move.
You soon reach a battlefield amidst the woods... A number of humanoid corpses, some of which have the Pillowstone crest on their armor and shield, lie around, a few of them have long stings on their chests, shoulder and limbs, others just display vicious cuts. There are also a great number of giant wasps fallen on the ground, most of them with arrows, swords and spears piercing their bodies.
You can't help but think that something is not right about this...
But the swamp is not all horrors and death... On a nearby tree, a horse-sized horned chameleon remains completely indifferent to your presence. Itremains as still as a living creature can possibly be... Except for its the munching of one of the dead wasps, that is.
Frederick takes a close look at everything.
As does Jaazkara, glancing occasionally at the huge chameleon. She wonders to herself how hard it might to tame and ride the thing, but then dismisses this as impractical.
Upon closer inspection, you notice that despite the number of giant wasps covered in arrows and spears, very few of the humanoid bodies contain stings or signs of wasp venom. The vast majority of them was slain by some sort of oversized slashing weapon.
While admiring the chameleon, Jaazkara notices there's a rather large blood stain on its torso. She worries for a second, but then realizes the blood doesn't belong to the creature and was just sprayed on it, maybe during whatever battle took place here. The creature doesn't seem fazed, agitated or worried in any way... It slowly munches one of the dead wasps... When that meal is done, it swallows and with a lightning-fast move, quickly extends its tongue and use sit to bring another dead wasp to its mouth... Then its slow, silent chewing begins anew...
The signs of battles are pretty clear... At least part of the humanoids you've been tracking were attacked by these wasps. They killed many of the insects, but apparently quite a few of them fell in combat as well. Many others survived, escaped or didn't participate in the battle in the first place, as the tracks continue their path, though is lesser concentration.
Frederick notices the path gets considerably darker and foggier ahead of you... But the ground at least is as firm as you could hope for (in a swamp). You must be somewhat close to a rock formation.
Brother Cyrus looks around the bodies of the dead soldiers for personal effects that may identify them to their families.
A good portion of the dead men do indeed have one identification or another. They are usually tags with their names and the symbol of the company they worked for.
Brother Cyrus immediately recognizes two crest... That of the Pillowstone family and the crest of the Red Eagles, the mercenary company whose one of its members is Brenda, the older sister of the young waitress Liz, who witnessed the death of Fred-Left-Stab and his lover). Brother Cyrus also finds a few other crests, most notable a black manticore and a grey dog.
There are a number of ordinary swords and spears lying around... About of each .
Jaazkara entreats Brother Cyrus to use the wand of Beastspeech on her, gesturing towards the oversized chameleon and nodding adamantly.
"Er. I would love to...but hmmm. How do I say this? I am not good with wands of spells I am not familiar with."
Brother Cyrus looks at Eitylen with an expression that says Help me out here.
"That's too bad. It really is a fascinating creature."
"I wonder what killed these men?"
Jaazkara looks towards Eitylen as he approaches Brother Cyrus with the wand in hand, then waits for him to continue. The elf then tries the wand on him, pointing it at him and waving it slightly, mumbling incoherent nonsense phrases that he tries to make sound magical.
"Brodder Cyrus, dis creature could tell us more about what happened here, and perhaps prove useful in da future if we could convince it to leave and meet us somewhere...else."
Brother Cyrus speaks to the chameleon on behalf of Jaazkara.
"My friend would love to get to know you better. Would you mind staying here or meeting us here later? Of course, with all this food laying around I can't imagine you needing to leave...do you have a name?" The priest awkwardly attempts to talk to the Chameleon.
The beast "speaks" slowly and without emotion...
"No name. I'm just myself. I stay where food is."
"Well it seems like it'll stay here for now on account of all the food. That's the best I can do." Brother Cyrus shrugs.
Brother Cyrus finishes his business on the battlefield by collecting as many of the tags as possible.
"We can talk more with it later."
Brother Cyrus nods his consent to Frederick and waves good bye to the Chameleon.
The chameleon blinks... Slowly.
- - -
You travel forward, following Frederick's lead. It takes about an hour of stepping on mud, vines, moss and gods know what else... But you finally arrive at a... lake?!
A large body of still water stands before you. It's more red and less black than the rest of the swamp's water, and has a distinct smell of rust. At its center there's a large rock protruding from the water like a mountain peak above clouds. It has a number of small cracks and fissures, most of which seem to constantly release steam.
Near the edge of the "lake", you see the signs of a fierce battle... You see the corpses of a humans, dwarfs and orcs amid those of trolls and frogmen.
The battle took place near the margin of the lake, and some of the bodies float aimlessly in the shallow water... Others float near the rock at the center of the "lake".
Both trolls and frogmen display signs of the corruption that infected the trolls you faced yesterday. No frogman has any wound matching the trolls' claws and fangs. They must have fought on the same side.
Not all, but some warriors from both sides have wide slashing wounds across their chests and shoulders, as well as quite a few missing limbs.
"Well, the shaman said the Moon Rose can be found in a flooded cave where the scent of rust was strongest. I think we may have found where the cave might be."
"Seems that way. I wonder if it's also the source of the undead and that weird rot?"
Frederick cautiously approaches and tries to judge the depth of the water.
The water is pretty shallow near the margin, as you'd expect... B ut it does get deeper somewhat abruptly. The slope of the "lake" is pretty steep. The center of the lake is almost certainly deeper than it looks.
Frederick is under the impression it must be between 10 to 12 meters deep . He sees glimpses of a variety of aquatic animals, including the grey-scaled fish you saw back in Strom's baskets. Nothing unnatural or mystical, though. Only mundane animals...
The half-orc sensate also notices a few odd-shaped objects and glittering spots in the mud underwater.
"I am not keen to go swimming in this."
Seeing the fish Strom had requested, she takes a moment to steel herself and slinks into the brackish waters, trying to catch some white ironfin.
Jaazkara moves about the stagnant waters, looking for her prize.
The taste of rust fills Jaazkara's mouth as she dives in. Unused to her presence, the aquatic fauna simply swims away from her as fast as possible, unaware that she's just as fast as most of them. The reptilian warrior notices the same sort of metal objects she found in the swamp water where she swam yesterday morning, but in much greater numbers. She finds it curious how the animals seem to have adapted to this situation, with many of them using chains, cogs, tools and other pieces of metal as lairs and camouflage. There is even some coral forming amidst the sunken metal.
That's not the only difference that Jaazkara notices. The water is considerably warmer here than anywhere else you visited in this swamp. Underwater, she sees streams of bubbles leaving underwater fissures and cracks in the central rock. More importantly, she sees a a large tunnel about in said rock, about 15 ft from the surface.
A couple minutes after diving into the "lake", Jaazkara emerges with a white-colored ironfin fish in her grasp. The animal flips and struggles furiously, but its strength is no match to Jaazkara's.
Brother Cyrus claps for the lizardwoman's feat of hunting expertise.
"Excellent fishing."
Jaazkara grins at her companions and tells them of the tunnel entrance she noticed underwater. She then prepares for another fishing foray.
"I tink I saw dee tunnel leading deeper into dee swamp. I will check once more beneathe dee murk."
Jaazkara doesn't notice anything different during her second submersion but she does catch another white Ironfin, alerting the local fauna of her continued presence.
Jaazkara plunges once more below the warmed dark waters in search of the elusive white ironfin.
This time Jaazkara fails to find a suitable fish... And it starts raining acid so that everyone has to move on!
Jaazkara seems disappointed by her failure, but still satisfied with her previous catches. She describes to the others the approximate position of the submerged cavern entrance, and suggests they get ready for a swim...