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You manage to find some wild muskmelon growing in thick, heady vines under a beam of sunlight filtering down through the canopy. As you and Kelpie continue forward, the terrain continues to ascend until you come to a steep rock face barring further passage. The rock face ascends a good 60 feet, pitted here and there by crevices that could serve as handholds. There doesn't seem to be another way around, at least within view.
You search the body, finding nothing of any value. The jungle floor is littered with four of the "javelins" - little more than crude sharpened sticks. You tuck them into your belt anyway. Looking around, the tock-tock and chittering sounds seem to have ended along with the vegepygmies, which scattered into the jungle. The only sounds are the ambient caws of tropical birds and the occasional buzzing of a few botflies. You can't see the peak you were heading to thanks to the thick canopy, but the rays of sunlight that pierce through the foliage and the low rumbling sensation in your belly indicate it's probably sometime late morning. Jack rolls: You estimate you should reach the peak sometime around midday, assuming no more run-ins with hostile natives.
The short green figure shrieks in pain as you and Kelpie savage him, vine-like tendrils spraying a viscous green ichor as they are separated from his body. As you step forward to deliver the a finishing head blow, there is a low whoomph as the soggy rust-colored ground sends up a cloud of spores.
Though the cloud causes tears to well up in your eyes and a moment of violent coughing, you are able to shield your face. The spores seem to writhe, seeking purchase on skin, before falling back to the ground. You send the pommel of your knife into the creature's face, and it crumples to the ground, convulsing once then falling still.
The remaining creatures, seeing their champion so quickly dispatched, turn and flee into the undergrowth, their shrill cries echoing through the clearing before they too fade away into the jungle. Once again, you and Kelpie find yourselves alone in the thick jungle, though who knows for how long. Before you, the terrain continues to climb toward a peak somewhere out of sight.
Following the hail of miniature javelins, a short green humanoid creature covered in leaves, moss, and fungus hops down from the trees above. His fists grasp claws of sharpened bone, and despite his size he chitters at you menacingly. In the trees above, you can see five others of his kind, climbing about the canopy and throwing another volley of arrows. miss
You have nothing to fear from me! Might we parlay? The comprehension magic at first seems to fail; the sounds around you do not turn to intelligible speech. But after a moment or two, you notice a threatening tone to the sounds that was not there before. Your call seems to do nothing more than increase the chittering and clicking momentarily. You continue forward, and just as you approach a small shaded clearing, the tock-tock-tock'ing stops...
You catch a glimpse of a large brownish-orange hue to the undergrowth ahead, but are distracted from further study as a hail of small sharpened sticks fly down from the canopy. misses Kelpie!
Greetings! I am Captain Jack Escalara! I'm not looking for trouble- I've been stranded on this island. Your call is met with only the continual tock-tock'ing, with a mixture of chittering clicks and drumming.
You see no sign of the source of these strange noises, as they seem to diminish as you approach them, sometimes picking up in an altogether different direction. The only one that seems constant is the steady tock-tock-tock from somewhere up ahead.
As you awaken, your head is still swimming with the dream. You vaguely remember something about cities disappearing beneath the sea involving a pirate tale you once heard in a tavern, many years ago. But you were too sloshed to remember any details, and history was never your strong suit anyway.
But that statuette, that triggers some memories...
"Tis a sight to behold, lad," he'd say in his gravelly voice, "One of the holy relics that Queen Bes left to us, kept safe in her sacred temple on Besmara's Throne. A pearl, pure and true, as large as a man's skull and solid throughout, fashioned into a little figure in Her own image, shaped by Her very hand after'n uncoverin' it from its watery rest. It has powerful magics, even more so for us who follow true the Code. Magics perhaps one day I'll teach ya." He scowls and adjusts his eye patch. Now then, story time's over. Show me your cantrips again, boy!" You are brought back to the present once more, your gaze cast down to your shackles. You utter a short prayer to the Black Lady, and power surges through you. The manacles fall away into the dirt, and the soreness about your wrists begins to diminish. After a brief celebration, you scavenge again for more sustenance. This time, you are able to find a stumpy coconut tree with two green coconuts, as well as another sand crab; certainly enough to feed yourself and Kelpie, at least for now. With your knife at your side and a few supplies in hand, and the temperature rising with every passing minute to a swelter, you set forth into the jungle... The going is especially slow, both for the rugged terrain overgrown with vegetation, as well as the swarming biting insects that seem to gather in greater and greater numbers to bite and sting you. You run across very old boar tracks in the damp soil at one point, but they quickly and suddenly disappear. After more than an hour travel, you have only begun to reach the foothills of the craggy rock around which you heard the sound. Overhead, the thick foliage blots out the sun, casting the undergrowth into shadow.
Somewhere up ahead, out of sight, you hear a low tock-tock-tock sound. You perk your ears, and on the edge of hearing you can make out an unsettling combination of clicking, tapping, and drumming coming from the jungle all around you. It doesn't sound like anything you've heard before, but it makes you uneasy all the same.
You drag the bleached driftwood timbers together into a crude, makeshift fort as the sun dips below the horizon, then lug some scattered rocks up the beach. You drag some vines down from a nearby tree and loop it around the camp. Finally, after surveying your work and deeming it acceptable, you settle into your crude nest and try to fall asleep. Your dreams are fraught. You dream about a beautiful seaside city, sinking into the sea. Inside the city is a chamber with a lustrous pearl the size of your head, being enchanted by strange-looking learned men with purple eyes. The men and the chamber fade away into mist but the pearl remains, and you see it drift about along an oceanic floor before falling into the maw of a large mollusk. When it reopens its mouth, the pearl has changed shape, now appearing as a figurine of a dashing female pirate, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Black Lady herself. You awaken the following morning in a cold sweat despite the damp heat, though whether its the work of the dream or the residual of uncooked crab is unclear. The morning sun pierces down through the jungle in spots, and your stomach feels a bit more settled.
The shade of the treeline is a welcome respite from the blistering humidity, and you quickly set to work carving up the crabs, giving one to your companion and hungrily slurping at the soft wet meat of the crab's innards from its carapace. Kelpie happily munches on her crab, then circles and digs herself a spot in the sand to curl down in as you set to work against your bonds.
Jack rolls a skill check: You're just pondering whether to make camp a bit more inland or finding somewhere along the beach when in the distance, from the direction of the interior, you hear a distinctive low booming sound, as if from something mechanical. It is followed by several long moments of silence and you begin to wonder if it was in your head, when you hear it again, a very faint rumbling followed by a boom. Maybe a siege engine of some sort, though it's hard to tell from such a distance. Kelpie raises her head from the sand to regard you, sensing your change in body language, and trills at you inquisitively. As you stand up, a queasy feeling in your stomach greets you.
It appears raw crab didn't agree with you... you begin violently retching into the sand for several minutes before you finally feel your nausea subside to a dull discomfort. Your mouth is equal parts parched and putrid, and you idly ponder how many fingers you'd give in this moment for a proper cup of drink.
"Give me freedom or give me the rope. For I shall not take the shackles that subjugate the poor to uphold the rich." Days dragged into nights, lost in a hazy twilight fever and the dark nausea of the rolling waves. Outside, the winds howled from an unearthly squall that had seized the Vindicator, a Chelaxian brigantine, spraying the face your face to half-delirious consciousness. For half a moment, you thought you spied sails and the outline of a fearsome ship amidst the driving rain and crashing waves, but it vanished in the storm-lashed sea just as a huge wave violently rocked the hull, sending you flying into a nearby beam and the release of unconsciousness once more. You awoke to the sounds of rushing water, only to see that you were still shackled and the hull was filling with seawater. Around you, you could barely make out the thrashing sounds of drowning men. A few tugs at your metal locks did nothing but send dull pain through your wrists. The water continued to rise, finally covering your face, and there were several long moments of rising panic, gasping for air and feeling the oxygen bleed from your lungs. Your thrashing grew weaker, and with a final prayer to the Pirate Queen, you drifted into oblivion. You felt your body, like a fish on a distant fishing line far away in the deeps, pulled further away, and wondered if this must be what the afterlife was like. You awaken to the feeling of being hauled bodily face-down over wet sand. You weakly gaze upward, to see a familiar long-necked creature with long spines and serrated teeth, gently pulling you up a beach. You cough and sputter, vomiting out a good amount of briny sea water, and your loyal companion Kelpie releases you. It takes a few moments to sort yourself proper, but you finally manage to rise to your knees and survey your situation. You find yourself on a long, deserted beach, which continues less than a hundred feet before disappearing into thick jungle overgrowth. The jungle gradually rises to a large peak of rock, maybe another quarter-mile away. The sun is high in the sky, with no sign of the sudden storm or the wreckage of your ship. You have no idea how long you've been out, but judging by the dull feeling in your stomach, it's been a while since your last meal. Your hands are still locked together in iron manacles about your wrists, but the chain holding the manacles to the beam appears to have been rent asunder. On the upside, you can still feel the small dagger you had hidden in your boot...
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