Sadiki uses more focus to keep herself alive, praying that her sister can rescue her!
***
The monster grabs Issi in its jaws, but she fights hard to avoid being swallowed!
The powerful spellstrike causes the frog-thing to spasm and shake. Badly wounded, the monster puffs up its chest and regurgitates Sadiki! The sorcerer sprawls on the ground beside her sister, covered in slimy digestive juices. "Ew, ew, ew, ew," she groans.
The frog-thing speaks in a booming voice! "Apologies! You are very strong for humans! I have no wish to further incite your wrath! Spare my life, and I will leave this place and not return!"
The frog thing quickly hops away. Sadiki shudders and winces in pain as she gets to her feet. "I do not want to go through that again. No, thank you. My dress is ruined..." the sorceress whines.
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Issi thrusts her blade into the wall, carving huge dark scorch marks into the wood as she swings again and again until her fury is exhausted. Only then does she turn to Sadiki and throw her arms around her.
"You're alive! That's what matters!" She says, careless of the spittle and other fluids covering her sister. "I thought I'd lost you!"
"You can't get rid of me that easily," Sadiki quips. But despite her brave words, she melts in her sister's embrace and begins to sob quietly as the full terror of nearly being devoured alive starts to sink in...
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The sisters spend quite a while in the barn, simply holding each other and drawing reassurance from each other's presence.
Once Sadiki has finally recovered and Issi is able to think straight again the magus gets up and offers her sister a hand.
"We should check the other buildings." She says. "If they're empty we can rest here tonight."
The two of you approach the small shed, but as you draw near, a marsh giant steps out to confront you, gaff raised to strike!
The giant responds with a gurgling cry! It charges Issi, ripping open a terrible wound with its hook!
With a critical strike from Issi and a critical failure against Sadiki's cone of cold, the giant quickly falls! Sadiki lays healing hands on her sister.
After removing the barricade from the shed's door, you find five prisoners trapped inside. The prisoners are from Kiutu--two married couples and a traveling tinsmith with the poor luck to get caught up in the Knights’ raid. The Knights of Abendego grew inattentive with their prisoners, and these five villagers seized the opportunity to escape. They discovered the orchard, which seemed an ideal place to hide out before heading back to Kiutu. But a group of boggards happened along and imprisoned them as they prepared a ritual to sacrifice them to their frog-god.
The villagers thank you for rescuing them. They are confident of reaching Kiutu on their own, but encourage you to keep up their pursuit and rescue the others from their village as soon as possible.
You swiftly deal with the boggards inside the main building, then after resting, you continue on your way. You cross the Terwa River at one of its shallower fords, following the obvious tracks of the Knights of Abendego. Once you cross over the Terwa River, you enter the region known as the Sodden Lands. Here, the wind blows strong and it rains for at least part of each day—and often for many days in a row. The land has a drab, muddy look, and vegetation tends to be shorter and stunted to avoid being blown over by the wind. The terrain gradually becomes more uneven, with hills and mountains closer to the coast. Evidence of past mudslides and flooded rivers is common. Much of the travel is through mud, making the Knights’ tracks plain to follow.
As you traverse these lands, you reflect on recent experiences, feeling stronger and better prepared for the challenges ahead.
The storm intensifies as you approach an imposing edifice. A craggy mass of rocks rises from the rain-soaked ground. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that the rocks form the shape of an immense cyclops skull, with a large cave providing a broad single eye above a triangular alcove of a nose. Torchlight glows feebly in the eye socket, and towering standing stones serve as the rocky skull’s jagged bottom teeth. The swampy ground around the teeth yields to water, forming something of a moat. It is here that the Knights' trail ends...
"Look, there are stairs," Sadiki says. "We need not fly. But there may be other ways inside, too..."
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"Neither of us are going to wriggle our way past that." Issi says, pointing to the boulders just visible inside the 'mouth' of the rock face. "Let's take the stairs, nice and careful."
Before they proceed any further she holds her sister's hand for a moment and binds the two of them together with magic.
"There. Now we don't need to say anything aloud."
"Oh! Nice! What am I thinking about?" Sadiki asks slyly. She concentrates on something particularly lewd.
***
This curious elliptical cave forms the “eye” of the cyclops skull when seen from afar. It consists of an cave ledge carved into the side of the mountain. In the cave, torches burns on either side of an enormous stone door. The door is deeply carved with ancient diagrams of comets, constellations, and one large symbol that depicts the moon. Close examination of this moon symbol shows that it was once a depiction of the sun, but was altered long ago.
Three Knights of Abendego are stationed here, but they aren't paying particular attention to the stairs. The brutish men wear scale armor and wield fighter's forks. They look up in surprise when you crest the stairs. "Hey! Who are you two?" one of them asks, raising his weapon warily.
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"It's a bond, not actual telepathy. I can speak to you, not read your mind." Issi replies. "Although I know that look well enough to guess."
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"We're from the Magaambya." Issi says flatly. "We're here to take back the people you kidnapped. You can resist, which means we kill you. Or you can leave, for good, and we won't. Your choice."
"You don't belong here. You ain't getting past us!" the brute retorts!
The man cries out in pain as the fire burns him. The three brutes converge on Issi, stabbing her!
Sadiki fires off a lackluster cone of cold. Issi's attacks miss, and the Knights retaliate!
"Head in the game, Issi!" Sadiki shouts as she fires a more powerful cone of cold. One of the knights falls, while the other two are badly hurt. They stab Issi again.
Sadiki shocks one of the remaining foes, and Issi finally lands a few hits to finish them off!
Sadiki suggests a rest as she tends to Issi's wounds.
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Issi just nods, and then proceeds to strip the knights of anything useful. The rest of their weapons and so forth are simply hurled out of the rock, in the hope that it will make life a little more difficult for anyone who may come looking for them.
Once the sisters have rested and are recovered Issi considers the remaining exits from the room.
Only one door leads into the complex beyond the eye. The center of this hall is filled with two enormous stone tables and benches. The ceiling rises forty feet to two large stalactites, one looming over each table. Large stone doors pierce the north and south walls, while the western and eastern walls sport two doors each. Ten-foot-wide passages face out from the hall’s northeast and northwest corners.
Both stalactites are carved with swirling designs of stars, planets, comets, and other celestial phenomena, along with runes written in an unfamiliar language. The passage of millennia have worn down these sprawling carvings, which are now uneven and difficult to decipher.
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Issi glances at the carvings long enough to decide that they'd be very interesting if she didn't have to worry about a cult trying to kill her, Sadiki and a lot of innocent villagers. With that thought firmly at the front of her mind she heads for the nearest door, examines it closely and then (assuming that its safe) opens it.
A large door leads into a mostly square room that the Knights of Abendego use as a kitchen. The ceiling slopes steeply to the west and south, following the natural curve of the cavern. The kitchen is haphazard at best. A stone table contains a variety of knives, forks, skewers, and other implements. Sacks containing foodstuffs rest against the walls and don’t seem to have been sorted well. A metal-lined firepit in the southwest corner serves as the only stove, with some large pots and pans jumbled next to it. Two crates of cheap, potent liquor are stacked against the north wall.
The next rectangular room is somewhat larger than the kitchen. The walls are covered in carvings similar to those on the stalactites in the mess hall except along the southern wall, where a large sunburst carving covered in runes dominates. One of the Knights has used soot to make the sunburst into a scowling catfolk’s face. Four bedrolls lay perpendicular to the north wall, and four large burlap sacks filled with clothing and personal effects stand against the south wall.
As you head down the northwest corridor, an armored Knight wielding a mancatcher steps forward to challenge you. "Halt! Surrender, or I won't hesitate to end you!"
"Not if we end you first!" Sadiki counters, firing a chromatic ray.
The ray comes up short, though. Scowling, the woman moves to attack Issi.
Issi delivers a critical strike that leaves the woman reeling, then Sadiki blasts her with an electric yellow ray to take her down!
The hall to the northwest of the mess ends in a wide stone door next to a set of stairs that leads down to the prison’s lower level. Beyond the door is a cell entrance. The cell door is held closed by an ancient locking mechanism that requires adjusting metal tabs along the side. Once the tabs are in the proper configuration, the bars swing open.
With enough trial and error, you figure out how to open the door. About a dozen people huddle inside this room. The smell of human waste is overpowering. The prisoners instinctively back away from the barred door, silently attempting to meld into the shadows.
A few minutes of patient and calm discussion calms the prisoners. Some are from Kiutu, but others are travelers in the Sodden Lands captured by the Knights. They can offer the following information.
• A priest of Norgorber here pulls one of them out every few days. She asks them about their secrets, and what they’d do to the other prisoners if they had a knife or some poison. No one here likes or trusts the priest; there was one prisoner who seemed to be getting along with her, but that prisoner was taken away a few days ago and hasn’t been back. The prisoners think he was probably killed, but a few grumble that maybe he gave the priest the “right answers” and was freed.
• They aren’t fed very often and are starting to suffer from malnutrition and disease. They have very little idea of the passage of time here, being kept in the dark. None have any idea what day it is.
• The prisoner who’s been here the longest, a scarred and wasted man named Lyhadi, used to be in a different cell on a lower level. He claims there are cyclops bullies down there who spend a lot of time moving rocks around, but the other prisoners wonder whether Lyhadi was just hallucinating.
• There are several Knights around—at least six or eight. They don’t talk to the prisoners at all when they bring food and water, but they talk to each other. Their leader is someone named Warden Yonsuu. The Knights talk about the town of Jula and how getting from here to there somehow involves frogs.
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"Thank you." Issi says, once the prisoners have passed on all the information they can. "Now, we must move on and defeat the knights once and for all. You are all free to go now if you wish or remain here and we will return to you afterwards. It is your own choice, and the best of luck to you all either way."
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Keep being methodical. She sends to Sadiki once they've escorted those who wish to flee back to the exit. And when we find that priest... no mercy.
This small, tidy room boasts a cot and a trunk. Carvings of astronomical phenomena cover the ceiling and walls. An elaborated sunburst annotated in strange, carved script adorns the otherwise-empty western wall.
A catfolk is present here, finishing up strapping on his armor and grabbing his trident. He looks at you with narrowed eyes, his tail lashing in agitation. "You two should not be here. I will ensure that you do not leave this place!"
Sadiki's orange ray burns the catfolk with acid, but he dodges Issi's spell. He moves in to attack, but Issi is able to parry his trident's thrusts!
Issi delivers a powerful spellstrike, and Sadiki hits the catfolk with her last chromatic ray, a green one laced with poison. The catfolk avoids being weakened though as he lashes out at Issi. She avoids his attacks!
Though Issi misses, Sadiki scores a critical hit with a blast of water that leaves the catfolk soaked and battered! He yowls and falls to his knees, dropping his weapon. "Alright, I've had enough! Please, accept my surrender!" He has +1 resilient studded leather, a +2 striking trident, and 3 sets of good manacles.
The trunk in the room contains a meticulous record of the Knights under Yonsuu’s command as well as the many prisoners kept here. It’s clear from the notes that the Knights are selecting specific prisoners and sending them to somebody named Ajbal Kimon in the town of Jula. The prisoners they’re sending are of two types: those who demonstrate excessive piety or divine ability—particularly toward good-aligned deities—and those who “meet Bashantu’s criteria.”
Also in the trunk are four volumes of rare poetry (mostly pirate-themed) and two novels (also pirate-themed) worth reading. There is also some silver jewelry and a portrait of a young amurrun girl.
"Ajbal Kimon is the leader of the Knights of Abendego," the catfolk, Yonsuu, explains. "He rules the city of Jula. He's ordered me and the priest Bashantu to send him prisoners to sacrifice to the Reaper of Reputation, Norgorber. Aside from those who are pious in their beliefs in other deities, Bashantu is looking for those whose souls may be of special use to Norgorber. Usually, Bashantu selects those who are willing to betray the other prisoners for a chance at freedom or who bully and hurt the other prisoners."
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"Get out." Issi says sharply as she detects no sign of untruth from the catfolk. "If I see you in here again you die. It's very simple. And don't even think about taking anyone else with you."
Once he's gone she glances at Sadiki to see if her sister is as disgusted as she is.
What I said earlier... no mercy for any of them.
Sadiki nods grimly as the catfolk scurries away!
The next room encapsulates the eerie feeling the jail gives off, as it’s simultaneously the most cave-like and the most ornately decorated in the entire complex. Immense stalactites—larger than in any of the other rooms—hang from the domed ceiling, and stubby stalagmites rise from the floor near the eastern and western walls. Every inch of these protrusions bear carvings upon carvings of celestial bodies in minute detail, accompanied by runic explanations and diagrams. But painted over and among these educational carvings are sigils and symbols in reds and yellow that remain bright despite the passage of millennia. The painted symbols seem to enhance the carvings in some places but efface them in others.
A portable wooden altar stained with blood and bearing the religious symbol of Norgorber sits in the middle of the room. A bloody shortsword rests atop the altar. There are no prisoners here now, but there’s no ambiguity about the altar being used for murder. A brazier burns in the west alcove with a branding iron thrust into it. The brand is the shape of Norgorber’s religious symbol.
A woman in expensive robes stands by the altar. She matches the description of Bashantu, and she gives you a creepy smile as you enter. "Hello there. Have you come to give yourselves to the Reaper?" she inquires as magic dances on her fingertips.
Bashantu quickly casts a spell, trying to scare Issi to death!
"No mercy!" Sadiki shouts, her eyes blazing with fury. She calls upon her wish magic as she rips open a rift in reality, and a flame drake emerges to flank the priest with Issi!