Chult's Got a Death Curse!

We began with a level-10 party already deep in the Tomb of the Nine Gods where they reached Acererak, the atropal, and the Soulmonger. They fought valiantly but quickly learned how deadly the chamber was. The atropal’s wail tore through them, radiant power worked better than anything else, teleportation would not get them out, and the bond between the atropal and the Soulmonger could be disrupted.

They pressed the attack on the machine and managed to damage the Soulmonger badly enough to shake loose trapped soul-orbs. Acererak answered with Time Stop, Wall of Force, Power Word Kill, and a Sphere of Annihilation. The atropal fed on the dead around it and shaped one trapped soul into a wraith while the chamber closed in around the party.

They were completely wiped out, but not before freeing two souls from the Soulmonger. Then their own souls were pulled into the machine as well, joining the others still trapped there.

If they were to be freed from their fate within the soulmonger, it would be due to the actions of others…

At Syndra Silvane’s mansion, Syndra explained the Death Curse and told a new party of inexperienced adventurers why she had called them together. She had sent a previous group into Chult, and that party had reached the Soulmonger before dying there. Because they had come closest, Syndra sought out their descendants and loved ones and asked this new group to end the curse and free the souls trapped in the Soulmonger.

The party started settling into practical roles right away. Betty handled most of the talking, Pizza took on scribing, Vogun leaned into management, Philomena watched the equipment, and the rest filled in the usual expedition work of money, supplies, and food.

After staying the night at Syndra’s house, they boarded ship for Chult. A violent storm hit during the voyage. Philomena’s tinkering tools were broken in the crossing, and Syndra’s condition kept worsening. She aged visibly, grew weaker, struggled to remember things, and made it clear she would not be going past the city with them.

Syndra also entrusted them with her monkey. They tried a string of names before realizing they were guessing the name he already knew: Caesar. The ship was still on its way to Chult when the day ended.

Before the ship reached shore, pirates attacked. The party handled the fight quickly, killed some of the attackers, and threw others overboard before the battle could drag out.

After that, Aremag the dragon turtle surfaced and demanded payment to let the ship enter the bay. The party paid a painful amount of gold rather than be sunk before reaching port.

Once they reached Port Nyanzaru, they started getting oriented to the city. They learned more about the merchant princes, the way power worked in town, and a few names and rumors that might matter later, including Artus Cimber and the Star Goddess.

In Port Nyanzaru, people quickly treated the party like Syndra Silvane’s latest group of expendable problem-solvers. Townsfolk pushed small disputes, errands, and odd jobs at them almost immediately.

At the Thundering Lizard, they met guides, got a better sense of the local personalities, and saw how routine this all seemed to the city. Their arrival did not surprise anyone. It just meant there was a new group with swords in town.

Things turned serious when chaos broke out around a dinosaur and Makao was put in danger. The party had to act in public and did enough to be noticed. Afterward they kept moving through the city, dealt with the attention, and spent some time gambling as the night went on.

The party stayed in Port Nyanzaru and split up to handle research, rumors, and errands. Pizza went to the Temple of Savras for local lore, while Philomena and the others worked through the markets, animal pens, and city gossip.

That work led them to the refuse pit, where they found an otyugh and a magical ring hidden inside it. The situation pointed to children being lured to their deaths around the creature.

They also met Beggar Prince Po, Taye, and other local figures while they worked their way around the city. Through Father Teron, they learned more about Omu, its ties to mining and constructs, its history of slavery, and its old conflict with Mezro.

The party went to the Temple of Sune first and put themselves through beauty, posture, and presentation lessons to try to become more charming. They left cleaner, better dressed, and somewhat more persuasive than before.

From there they went to a bathhouse where guests’ belongings had been disappearing. Pizza was absent for that part, but the rest of the party tracked the thefts to a cursed water elemental. They chose not to destroy it, recovered the stolen items, and arranged for it to be fed so it would stop stealing.

At the Temple of Savras, they met Grandfather Zitembe and learned more about Mezro, Omu, and Port Nyanzaru. When Zhentarim pressure around Zitembe threatened to turn violent, the party stepped in and protected him.

They later went to the courthouse and helped Herleef argue for an end to the practice of dumping corpses into the refuse pit. The argument succeeded, and city policy changed. After that, Bart, Betty, Philomena, and Vogun entered a pie-eating contest. Betty won and took home a Box of Colding.

The party woke in Herleef’s villa and learned that people in Port Nyanzaru were starting to talk about them. “Wonas” was beginning to carry some local weight.

Herleef brought them new correspondence and a longer list of problems. Smuggling tied to dangerous magic, trouble in Malar’s Throat, and Derio’s disappearance all demanded attention at once.

They spent the rest of the day sorting through those leads and deciding where to go next. During that stretch, the party reached second level.

At Tiryki Anchorage, the party chose to infiltrate the smugglers instead of attacking head-on. Betty created the distraction, Vogun handled the grate, and the group moved in through the smugglers’ route while working around traps and improvised obstacles.

When the fighting finally started, the smugglers were already off balance. Sanuya was overwhelmed, the operation started collapsing, and Philomena helped turn the breach into a fight the party could control.

Afterward they questioned the smugglers and learned more about Nahu and the larger network behind the operation. They came away with better information about the criminal trade moving under Port Nyanzaru and also left with a raptor egg.

The investigation into the old disappearances in the city led the party into a feeding pit. Once they were inside, they had to fight through zombies, kill Viplo, and rescue the prisoners they could reach. Not everyone survived long enough to be brought out.

After the fight, they recovered a black gem that appeared to be a fragment of the Amulet of Death. That tied the pit and the disappearances to something larger than a local murder site.

Alastar Bol and Soggy Wren helped fill in more of the context afterward. The party learned more about Chultan undead, how Viplo had been using the fragment, and how interested other factions already were in relics like this. The Ytepka Society, in particular, wanted the matter contained.

The party spent part of the day in a rap battle against Killa-T Rex of Killah-T Rex and the Veloci-rappers. They did well enough that the Thundering Lizard cleared out and gave them a comfortable night afterward.

Then they turned to a blight spreading through nearby plant life. Following that problem took them through hazardous ground, into a fight with needle and twig blights, and then farther in to a group of grungs gathered around a black stone.

The stone turned out to be another fragment of the Amulet of Death. Afterward the party learned that fragments like this had been moving through smuggling channels toward Ras Nsi, who hoped the relic could keep him alive long enough to pursue something even worse.

That trail led to open conflict with yuan-ti inside Port Nyanzaru. The party fought serpent agents and got a clearer picture of the link between the amulet fragments, Ras Nsi, and Dendar the Night Serpent.

After the fight with the yuan-ti spies, the party spent time sorting out who held power in Port Nyanzaru. The Harpers, Ytepka Society, Zhentarim, Emerald Enclave, Order of the Gauntlet, Lord’s Alliance, and the yuan-ti all came into clearer focus as separate factions with their own interests.

Betty went to the Temple of Tymora and came away with an old Omuan coin. The party then returned to Soggy Wren and Nerissa and pressed them harder about the amulet stones. They learned the stone itself seemed to be Chultan, but the power source and techniques needed to repair it likely came from somewhere else.

The group followed that with more practical work at the harbor. Talks with Zindar and the lighthouse keeper gave them a much sharper picture of the pirate captains, their ships, and what a fight at sea would look like. Vogun helped work through the logistics and the party approached the whole problem more carefully than before.

They also turned Lekhet over to the authorities and later watched his death at Executioner’s Run. Betty had a run of good luck at the casino, the party pocketed the winnings, and the group reached third level before moving on.

The party took part in a fishing contest, with Philomena throwing herself into it as hard as anything else. Along the way they got a blunt warning about Chult’s freshwater and the diseases waiting for anyone careless enough to drink from the wrong source.

Most of the day went to preparation before leaving port. They counted food stores, set aside tribute, assigned jobs, and worked through the basic problems of keeping a ship and crew functioning once they were out on the coast. Vogun was especially comfortable handling that side of things.

No major fight broke out, but the group left Port Nyanzaru better supplied and more organized for the voyage ahead.

The party boarded the Ocean Curse while another ship burned nearby. On deck they found beaten prisoners being held at knifepoint as living shields, so they had to pick their way through the fight carefully instead of just rushing the pirates.

The survivors tied the ship to another failed expedition: adventurers and camp followers who had come to Chult chasing treasure. Their account made it clear that more groups were converging on the peninsula for the same reason. When one of their dead still could not be raised even after diamonds were spent, the Death Curse became immediate again.

Philomena’s egg finally hatched and added a new raptor companion to the party. The group then had to decide what to do with the former pirates they had taken alive and how much trouble it would cause to keep them around.

From there they moved on Jahaka Bay under false colors, tricked the Dragonfang, damaged it in ship-to-ship combat, and boarded it. Rescue work, infiltration, and naval fighting all ran together as the pirate war widened.

The party reached Jahaka Anchorage prepared for the wereboar threat, with silver bullets ready and a few enemies already turned to their side. They entered the hidden cove with patience instead of trying to charge the whole camp at once.

They moved through the anchorage quietly, sabotaged the alarm bell, and removed guards before the pirates understood they were under attack. That let them break the place apart section by section.

Once the fires started, the fight turned open. The party trapped pirates inside the bar and burned the building, cut down others trying to rally, and brought Captain Zaroum down in the confusion. They also found and freed Killa-T Rex’s imprisoned bandmates.

After that they looted the anchorage room by room and survived a final bomb trap protecting the pirates’ cache. They left the cove wrecked, the prisoners free, and the raid complete.

After Jahaka Anchorage, the party had pirate captains in chains, captured ships, and freed prisoners, with Laskilar left as the last obvious threat. Their own crew was worn down, so they had to decide whether pushing straight at the last pirate ship was worth the risk.

They spent much of their time planning the end of the pirate fight. They weighed a parley with Laskilar, decided what to do with the captives they had taken, and worked through how much trust to place in the mix of pirates, converts, Zhents, and allies now around them.

Back in Port Nyanzaru, their growing reputation was hard to miss. Even ordinary downtime drew attention.

As the pirate war wound down, Mezro, Artus Cimber, the Star Goddess, and the route toward Omu all came into view as the next major leads.

Back in Port Nyanzaru, the party threw itself into the dinosaur races. Vogun put serious money on Philomena and Psnappy, the group stacked every buff and advantage they could manage, and Philomena won cleanly.

After the race, dinner with Zhanthi pulled them deeper into merchant-prince politics. They also learned that their predecessors had once sat at the same table and had left letters and items behind.

Zhanthi then laid out her offer. If the party helped her move against Ifan Talro’a, she would sign their Charter of Exploration. The group came away with a race victory, new gear, and a direct path toward both legal freedom in Chult and open conflict with Ifan.

The party robbed Cassandra and her aristocratic companions, took their identities, and used those disguises to enter the Dragon’s Hoard as honored guests. Betty helped carry the deception, Philomena borrowed another form, and the group worked through passwords and high-roller scrutiny until they were inside.

Their first trip into the hidden fighting levels went badly. While scouting the underground dinosaur ring, they tried to befriend the dragon-like tyrannosaur guarding the hoard and failed badly enough that both Vogun and Philomena went down before the group could pull back. They rested and came back with a different plan.

On the second attempt, they broke through the floor of their room into the cashier’s space below, moved through the ducts, and learned Ifan was scrambling to pay off a dangerous debt by morning. When they made their move, Bart grabbed cursed gold and took a lasting supernatural penalty, Vogun stole key records and an elixir, and the rest of the group turned the dragon-tyrannosaur loose on the casino.

Betty released the remaining dinosaurs, the lower levels flooded, and the hidden machinery of the place came apart. In the chaos, the party secured the green artifact and the hoard and escaped before the Dragon’s Hoard could recover.

The party dealt with the flood and collapse in the casino’s lower levels first. Betty held back the rushing water long enough for a rescue, and the group escaped by riding an invisible, flying half-dragon tyrannosaur out of the wreckage.

Afterward, they untied the captured aristocrats, posed as Zhentarim while taking statements, and sorted through a huge haul of treasure that included the completed Amulet of Resolve. Zhanthi was satisfied with the blow against Ifan and signed the paperwork for their Charter of Exploration.

Ifan’s fall came quickly. Grandmother Sibonessi moved against him for failing to cover his debts, his assets were seized, and his income was garnished. The party also gave Father O’Flannigan a large sum to support Malar’s Throat after years of abuse by the casino.

They placed orders with Taye, restocked supplies, and were reminded again that not everyone feared the Death Curse equally. Then Executioner’s Run turned ugly when the remaining pirates were fed to dinosaurs and Heel cut his way free before pointing at the party and promising they would meet again.

Ifan Talro’a was stripped of status and driven out of Port Nyanzaru. Before leaving the city, the party returned to the crypt beneath the Temple of Tymora, where the statue and Father O’Flannigan’s evasiveness still pointed to something hidden below.

The group then traveled overland to Fort Beluarian and finally received their Charter of Exploration from Liara. Along the way they ran into the Asskicker Mofos again, who had somehow replaced their dead leonin companion with his nearly identical brother, and they met Shago, Zhanthi’s son, serving with the Flaming Fist.

When Ombala the dyemaster attacked Shago on Kwayothe’s behalf, the party intervened and stopped the hit. That gave them a much clearer look at how far merchant-prince retaliation could go once it turned into hired murder.

After that they agreed to help Snodshall Wobbie investigate a nearby mine. With caution, quick thinking, and a little magical cheating, they worked through traps and historical puzzles tied to Ubtao’s struggle against Dendar the Night Serpent and reached the slaad’s chamber.

The party finished the fight in the mine and survived the slaad. After that, a gynosphinx vanished and left behind a ring of spell storing holding Time Stop.

When they returned to Fort Beluarian, they learned a massive undead force was on the move. At first they thought the fort was the target, so they laid traps, spread holy water, and prepared for a siege. At the last moment they realized the horde was marching on Port Nyanzaru instead. Liara would not act, and Shago begged them to go protect his mother.

They left their dinosaurs behind, took Lerek’s boat, and raced for the city. Panic was already spreading through Tiryki Anchorage by the time they arrived. From there they pushed into Malar’s Throat, where zombies were tearing through one of the city’s poorest districts. The party fought a running defense through mud, rain, and confusion and tried to save as many civilians as they could, especially the children running for the Temple of Tymora.

Philomena helped Screaming Wind get those children to safety, but Screaming Wind died in the effort. When the party reached the temple and descended into the crypts, they could already hear the undead breaking into the building above.

The party led survivors through the tunnels beneath the Temple of Tymora while zombies pressed in behind them. Father O’Flannigan showed them a hidden exit, but the passage had to be sealed from the outside. When he tried to stay behind, Betty stopped him and took his place so the others could escape with the survivors.

The retreat through the undercity was rough. The party fought giant centipedes, ran into tortles caught up in the smuggling routes, and kept moving through the dark with as many people as they could save. Father O’Flannigan stayed with the group because of Betty’s choice, and later turned undead and summoned a water elemental when the horde nearly caught them.

They also had to put down Taban after he turned, with his son there to see it. Obasi survived, but only barely. When the group finally reached open air outside Fort Nyanzaru, a captured yuan-ti told them the whole fight underground had been a distraction.

The party rushed to the great statue of Ubtao and found months of tracks around the island, gas fire elixir leaking inside the hollow idol, hidden bomb panels at the base, and an anti-magic field that shut down many of their best tools. Philomena worked out the devices, Bart found that his bag of holding was useless inside the field, and everyone threw themselves into a four-minute attempt to stop the blast.

They failed by seconds. The party dove into the harbor as the statue exploded and tore through the harbor ward. The royal docks were smashed apart, the harbor master’s office vanished into the water, the bathhouse was blackened, the fish market burned down, the lighthouse went dark, and Fort Nyanzaru collapsed with defenders still inside. Their ship was gone, Grandfather Zitembe was dead, and Wakanga brought them into his villa and left them alone with the damage.

The party left Port Nyanzaru and headed back into Chult. Jewel, a young eladrin sorcerer who also wanted Ras Nsi stopped and the Death Curse ended, joined them early in the trip. They hired Azaka Stormfang as a guide, adjusted their route, and set out overland.

On the way to Mezro they stopped at Fort Beluarian to reclaim their dinosaurs, dealt with a troop of many-armed monkeys, passed the remains of Port Castigliar, and kept Nerissa with them on the road. Azaka kept the expedition moving and kept them out of the worst mistakes.

In the Mezroan crypt, the party treated the place as a haunted burial ground instead of a place to strip for treasure. They dealt with the restless spirits of Mezro’s original barae, including Oyai, and worked to calm them. They also laid Tazu to rest.

That time in the crypt gave them a clearer picture of Ras Nsi. They learned more about his time as a Bara of Mezro, the Eshowe war, and the anger and banishment that turned him into the enemy they were now hunting.

The party spent more time in the Mezroan crypt library and got a better handle on Mezro’s history. They also recovered the Eye of Zaltek, which looked like another stone tied to the larger amulet problem. Instead of turning over the real artifact, they gave Dralma and Rin a fake Eye and got the location of Orolunga in return.

With that lead, they turned toward Orolunga to seek out Saja N’baza. Nerissa went on ahead with a sending stone so the group could keep in contact. While crossing more of Mezro’s southwestern ruins, they came across an ongoing fight between a Red Wizard calling himself Fred and a yuan-ti mage slayer.

The party also dug up buried pirate loot and hauled away a valuable cache. Several of the books in it could permanently improve anyone who read them, so the detour paid off.

Azaka then asked the group to help recover a family heirloom stolen by the pterafolk at Firefinger. Vogun suggested spending some time studying in the crypt library before the next push, and the party had enough safety and useful books to do it.

While the current party studied in the Mezroan crypts, the focus shifted to the legacy company: Scix, Harold Pipper, Dr. Phyrne Fisher, Vogon, Leafinwind, and Syndra Silvane. They made for Mbala and ran into trouble on the way, saving an almiraj from pteradons and killing a kamadan before it could ambush them.

Mbala itself was full of pterafolk. The legacy party fought through raiders, elders, juveniles, and sky tyrants until the plateau was secure. Afterward they looted the tomb of Mbala’s fallen king and took the Rain Stick of Mbala, which Syndra kept.

At the center of the ruin they met Nanny Pu’pu. She posed as a witch doctor, but she turned out to be a former Sewn Sister who had refused to help Acererak build the Soulmonger and had made Mbala into her own feeding ground after her exile. She gave them a rough location for Omu, then tried to keep their blood and hair for cloning magic.

Pu’pu attacked as soon as she had what she wanted. She sent her flesh golem and flying servants at the group, but the legacy company killed her before she could carry her plans any further. During the fight, Syndra tamed a flying monkey and named him Caesar, and Phyrne picked up a Gift of Heroism potion.

The party attacked Firefinger at night. Instead of using the front entrance, they climbed the outside of the tower while a distraction pulled some of the pterafolk away. That got them into the upper levels with surprise on their side and turned the fight into a series of brutal drops and close-quarters scraps.

Vogun blasted pterafolk out of the sky before they could gather themselves. Bart filled the space around the party with Spirit Guardians. Jewel used hypnotic magic to send several enemies falling to their deaths. Pizza kept breaking up grapple attempts, and Philomena fought through the defenders and helped finish Nrak after he called for help.

Once the tower was clear, the party spoke with the aarakocra Nephyr and got a lead toward Kir Sabal and Asharra. They also heard the first solid mention of the Dance of Seven Winds. The group collected several rewards, including a strange tiger mask, and Azaka recovered the family heirloom she had asked them to help reclaim.

After Firefinger, the party kept moving. Azaka guided them across Ataaz Muahahaha without waking what slept there, and they continued on toward Needle’s Bones.

At Needle’s Bones, the party found Red Wizards in the middle of raising the dead. The meeting did not turn into an immediate fight. Even after Zukir died in the confusion, the group handled the Thayans carefully, and when Needle’s skeleton began to rise they chose not to destroy it. Instead, they kept the surviving wizard alive long enough for him to bring the undead dragon under control.

That stopped the dragon from rampaging, but it also let Vaylek climb into the dragon’s ribcage and fly off with it. The party had prevented one disaster and let a dangerous weapon leave in dangerous hands.

Travel went more smoothly after that. The party found a wounded triceratops, healed it, and the animal decided to stay with them.

When they reached Kir Sabal, they met the aarakocra monks, Asharra, Prince Na, and Princess Mwaxanare. The princess made a bad impression almost immediately, and the group ended the day with more prophecy, more Omuan history, and a clearer sense that Omu’s old politics were still going to matter.

At Kir Sabal, the current party rested, meditated, and shared another dream of the legacy company: Scix, Harold Pipper, Dr. Phyrne Fisher, Vogon, Leafinwind, and Syndra Silvane. In the vision, the earlier group stood before Saja N’baza and heard a long account of Chult’s history, including Mezro, the Bara rings, the Eshowe war, Ras Nsi’s fall, Omu’s corruption, and Acererak’s arrival.

The vision also put several names and places into focus. Diurna Varun became a real Omuan site instead of a rumor. Gorra emerged as an old engineer tied to it. Queen Zalkore’s past also came into clearer view, along with the old damage between Chult’s kingdoms.

The dream then moved to the legacy party’s meeting with Drufi and her frost giants, who were hunting Artus Cimber and Dragonbait hard enough to show how dangerous the Ring of Winter had made that trail. The company survived the encounter and kept going.

Before the vision ended, the legacy heroes rescued the survivors of the Wrath of the Star Goddess. The fight was chaotic, and at one point a tornado of snakes got thrown into it. The current party woke with a better map of the people and places ahead of them.

The party left Kir Sabal after breakfast, left their dinosaurs with the aarakocra, and headed for Nangalore. The ruined garden was full of overgrowth, broken statues, and petrified bodies. On the way in, the group fought a giant spider and its brood, killed a lurking crocodile, cleared a tower full of eblis, and gathered useful plants where they could.

At the center of the garden they found Queen Zalkore, hidden behind feathers, unstable, and heavily medicated. She offered them the Black Orchid if they would stop the blight spreading through Nangalore. Pizza used magic to look deeper into her mind and saw Thiru-Taya, an old betrayal, and a tense exchange with a man carrying an urn and a red book.

After that, the expedition pushed into the Nsi Wastes and found Ras Nsi’s fortress, a floating stronghold carried by enormous turtles. The party slipped past the undead guards and got inside without setting off a full alarm.

Inside, Fenthaza, Ras Nsi’s second-in-command, approached them and offered a deal. She said Ras Nsi had grown weak because he was consumed by his own death curse, and she wanted the party to find the Black Opal hidden somewhere in the fortress so she could move against him.

Inside Nsi Fortress, the party found that the throne room had become a feeding pit. Charmed vegepygmies were dragging dead and dying Flaming Fist mercenaries to a giant Corpse Creeper, which turned out to be the source of the blight. The plant had also enthralled a druid named Reistal, who was using vegepygmies and yellow musk victims to reach a hidden chamber containing the Black Opal.

The party killed the Creeper, broke its hold over the room, and saved six Flaming Fist mercenaries, though not everyone made it out alive. As soon as the plant died, the blight began to ease. Reistal then tried to take the artifact for himself, and the party killed him too.

After that, they faced Ras Nsi’s imitation of a Bara test instead of another straight fight. They solved the maze and claimed the Black Opal. It was another amulet stone, but its power gem was missing.

Rather than press their luck with Fenthaza, the party slipped out through a hidden rear route and headed back toward Nangalore. There they overheard another piece of Queen Zalkore’s past as she raged at Gorra, and they finally got a better look at the broken statue in her garden. Zalkore’s face matched Syndra Silvane exactly.

The legacy company went south of Nangalore to a sealed Omuan site called Diurna Varun. Syndra refused to enter and sent only her monkey along, while Scix, Harold, Phyrne, Vogon, and Leafinwind went inside. They worked their way through lava channels, machinery, and damaged systems, posing as maintenance workers to fool an iron golem, slipping past frost drakes, and solving a series of pressure and temperature problems.

As they brought the site back online, they learned that Diurna Varun was not a mine but a buried Omuan war machine built to draw power from lava and held in reserve for a war against Dendar. Once the waste systems, power routing, and central generator were working again, they reached the cockpit and saw the full scale of it: a colossal mech built to fight Dendar herself. They managed to wake it, but they did not gain control of it.

When they came back outside, Ras Nsi was waiting with Syndra in his coils. He mocked them, cut Syndra’s throat in front of them, and started a fight they could not win. Even when the company managed to bring him down, the ring he carried answered the gem they had found and restored him. One by one, the legacy heroes died outside the awakened machine.

As they faded, Ras Nsi raised Syndra and told her to try again. The level-ten heroes who later reached Acererak’s tomb were clones grown from stolen blood and hair by the Sewn Sisters. The real company woke in the hags’ chamber surrounded by butchered copies of themselves, was questioned about Saja N’baza, Nanny Pu’pu, and the people they loved, and was kept as bait for the next group of heroes.

After Nangalore, the party tried to rest and got dragged into nightmares. They saw the Sewn Sisters, Dendar, torn bodies, and people they cared about being devoured. The dream ended with a black serpent swallowing the sun, and everyone woke convinced that Ras Nsi, the hags, the Death Curse, and Dendar were tied together.

When morning came, Queen Zalkore met them in one of her clearer moments. She thanked them for saving her flooded garden and for dealing with her gently instead of robbing or killing her. She spoke about her grief, her decline, and the ways she had tried to bury both.

Zalkore then offered them a blessing as the rightful queen of Omu. She lifted her veil and showed again how much she resembled Syndra Silvane. She ordered them to meet her eyes like loyal subjects, and those who accepted the risk of petrification received her favor.

The party met Artus Cimber and Dragonbait. Artus confirmed that the Ring of Winter gave him power over cold and kept him from aging, but he would not say how he got it. Dragonbait spoke through scent, and after some time the party got the hang of understanding him. Artus and Dragonbait shared what they knew about Chult and the Barae rings, but decided the group was too morally mixed to travel with safely, so they only shared camp for one night.

Frost giants found Artus before morning. A frost drake and her young joined the fight. The party killed the giants, brought down the drake, and took a useful magic staff from the field.

The Ring of Winter nearly caused another fight when it drew Azaka in. She shifted into her weretiger form and lunged for Artus, but Jewel shut that down with Calm Emotions before it got worse.

Afterward, Artus and Dragonbait parted from the party on decent terms and said they might meet again in Omu. The group returned to Kir Sabal, where Asharra performed the Dance of the Seven Winds and gave up her own power of flight to do it. Jewel and Pizza made the leap of faith and received the Feathers of Asharra, while Vogun, Philomena, and Bart chose not to.

The push to Omu went slowly. Rain, fog, bad footing, and the jungle kept draining the party even when they stayed on course. Along the way they stopped at Diurna Varun, tested the hidden control panel, worked out that the center console mattered, and got closer to understanding the power gems.

They also put together a trap with razor wire and a portable hole in case something came after them. Ifan Talro’a found them anyway, with Heel at his side and dinosaurs behind him. He explained that he wanted to gather the amulets, control resurrection during the Death Curse, and become the one man in Chult who could sell life back to the grieving.

The party killed Ifan, killed Heel, and fought through the dinosaurs. After that they reached Omu, hit seventh level, and were greeted by an old construct still repeating civic instructions to a city that had been dead for a long time.

The party reached Omu after thirty-six days on the road and found that a lot of their potions had spoiled. Pizza and Philomena salvaged what they could before the group moved deeper into the city.

They spent their first hours scouting and scavenging. They met a chwinga, copied a translation tablet instead of carrying it off, followed vegepygmies, and rescued a grung from sacrifice. After regrouping with Orvex, they started working through the shrines.

At Wongo’s shrine they solved the viewing puzzle, fought su-monsters, and took their first cube in Omu. At the ruined bazaar they found kobolds maintaining Acererak’s traps, killed the leader, looted the hideout, and used Speak with Dead to learn more.

They finished with a better picture of the shrines, Acererak, and the location of the Tomb of the Nine Gods. Somewhere in the middle of all that, they also found time to dress Princess Mwaxanare in finer clothes.

The party escorted the rescued grung to Nangnang’s shrine. They worked out that greed was the answer, offered a single Omuan coin, and took the cube.

Papazotl’s shrine was rougher. The crocodiles fought hard, and the giant mother caught Vogun in her jaws before Jewel teleported him free. Bart solved the shadow puzzle, Caesar helped scout the hidden route, and the party claimed another cube.

At Unkh’s shrine they tried to brute-force the key problem, tripped the trap, and had to kill a pack of ghasts. After that they slowed down, set the keys correctly, and earned the cube. At Obo’laka’s shrine, Phlappy paid for an early mistake, Caesar found a secret door, and Vogun solved the real puzzle before anyone else got petrified.

They ended the day with several more cubes in hand. Then the yuan-ti ambushed them and made it clear they had been watched the whole time in Omu.

The yuan-ti ambush opened with enchantment instead of blades. They wanted Princess Mwaxanare to go to the palace “willingly.” The fight went badly for stretches. Vogun could not buy a hit, Jewel got taken out of the action for a time, and the rest of the party had to hold without her.

Pizza locked down the yuan-ti templar at the right moment, and that gave the others enough room to kill the malisons and break the attack. The party questioned the survivors and got useful answers: a secret entrance south of the palace, details about Ras Nsi’s throne room, and the purpose of the ambush.

Ras Nsi meant to turn Mwaxanare into a yuan-ti and marry her, using her bloodline to present himself as Omu’s first king. The party pulled back to the kobold lair to rest.

During the night they saw a vision of Omu’s old generals, the violence that ruined the city, and the atrocities hidden beneath its monuments. Only Bart and Philomena got a true long rest. Pizza, Jewel, and Vogun woke drained, and while Philomena rebuilt Phlappy she noticed a strange power still lingering in her hands from the dream.

Philomena spent the morning making forged puzzle cubes that could survive close inspection. The party hid the real cubes in the Box of Colding under their supplies and carried the fakes in the bag of holding.

At I’jin’s shrine, Vogun used spider climb to ignore the floor puzzle and take the cube directly. At Shagambi’s shrine, kamadans mauled Jewel before Bart hauled her back from the edge, and then the party handled the duel of honor correctly and claimed that cube. At Kubazan’s shrine, Pizza’s psychic magic kept the froghemoth from tearing Philomena apart, and Vogun used a forged cube to beat the trap on the way out.

After crossing the river, they met Bag of Nails. He offered stew, stories, and poison. The party caught the trick in time and kept Princess Mwaxanare from eating. Once the act dropped, they killed him and slept in his basement.

The next morning they reached Koa’s shrine and found that the yuan-ti had already taken that cube. They hid Mwaxanare and Orvex behind the waterfall, handed them sending stones, turned toward the palace, and reached eighth level.

The party handled their loose ends before moving on the palace. They left Mwaxanare and Orvex with a week of supplies, paid Orvex to keep watch, hid the real puzzle cubes high among the stalactites, and carried only Philomena’s forgeries into danger.

On the way, Xandala ran into them while the King of Feathers was hunting her. The party killed the teleporting tyrant, had a short argument with Bag of Nails’s siblings over the trophy, and then dealt with Xandala herself. She claimed to be Artus Cimber’s daughter, Pizza saw through the lie, and the party sent her toward Valindra at the Heart of Ubtao.

They slipped past the zombies at the secret entrance and committed to a disguise. Jewel posed as a high-ranking yuan-ti, Bart played the prisoner, Philomena played the princess, Pizza stayed invisible, and Vogun stayed to the shadows. The bluff got them through several dangerous rooms inside the palace.

They found a ritual in progress that was turning captives into yuan-ti slaves. Before moving on, they quietly killed the guard outside Ras Nsi’s throne room and took position above the chamber so they could drop in from the ceiling.

The party attacked Ras Nsi’s throne room from the ceiling. Vogun had trouble with the opening shot while hanging upside down, but he still baited Ras Nsi into answering with Power Word Kill. Vogun absorbed the spell into his rod instead of dying, and the fight went hard right away.

Ras Nsi, his broodguards, Sekelok, and the malisons hit them all at once. In the middle of the fight the party noticed that Ras Nsi was not bleeding. Pizza counterspelled a dangerous Chain Lightning, Jewel finished the figure on the throne with a fire bolt, and the truth came out: it was a simulacrum wearing a fake Ring of Death.

Sekelok made for the teleportation disk to warn the rest of the Fane. Vogun turned the stored spell into Spike Growth, Pizza wrecked Sekelok’s mind, and Jewel used telekinesis to shove him back through the thorns until he died there.

Behind a secret door, the party found the real Ras Nsi, wasted by the Death Curse and too weak to keep the lie going. He offered a bargain. If they spared him, he would tell them where Acererak’s phylactery was, hand over the last cube, and return the belongings of their predecessors after the phylactery was destroyed.

The party found out that a good portion of their spell scroll stock was fake and sorted through that first. Then they spoke with Ras Nsi again, pushed him about the princess and the hermit’s journal, and learned the limits of his help. He would make private deals, but he would not stand in front of his yuan-ti and tear the whole system down himself.

The rescue fell to the party. They teleported to the prisoner room and found only Dragonbait still there. Jewel disguised herself as Ras Nsi, walked into the sacrificial chamber, and ordered everyone out. The bluff held long enough for the party to free Cassandra and Azaka and start moving toward the underground river.

The escape stayed dangerous. They fought a hydra, searched the fungi caverns, killed the guards at the venom distillery, and secured the antidote supply. Philomena covered the last part of the breakout with improvised fog, and the party got the remaining prisoners out before the palace fully locked back down.

Afterward, Azaka told them the Sewn Sisters had taken Artus. Dragonbait left to look for a way to save him. Dew on the Grass left to search for his uncles. The party hid Mwaxanare and the puzzle cubes inside a concealed portable hole in Omu with enough food to wait, then went to Diurna Varun for rest and got nightmares instead.

A nightmare showed more of Omu’s history. Slaves were driven through Diurna Varun and on to Wyrmheart Mine, where dwarves, kobolds, and Ormalagos were slaughtered. Three Bara rings changed hands during the vision, and Bart woke with an uneasy connection to the man he had watched.

Following Ras Nsi’s directions, the party spent seven days reaching the cavern that held Acererak’s phylactery. They crossed corrosive mist, bile pools, lava hazards, and stretches of ground that slowly made the truth clear. Vogun realized they were moving through the buried corpse of Dendar, where some magic would not work at all.

The last approach was as punishing as the trip. Nidhogg could only be harmed once the party understood how not to fight it, and the final climb left Vogun drained while the others worked together to get everyone across.

The phylactery chamber held Acererak’s gem wrapped in chain and linked to a dagger blade. Bart realized blood was needed to expose it. As soon as the gem was revealed, the Sewn Sisters arrived to take it, and the party had to fight for it.

The Sewn Sisters came for the phylactery, and the fight became a scramble to keep the gem out of their hands. Vogun held on to it, Pizza killed Baggy Nanna, and the other hags were driven back before they could escape with it. Vogun even passed the gem to Caesar for a moment so he could strike it, and the party finally destroyed the phylactery by refusing to let it leave their control.

Acererak’s scream rolled across Chult as soon as the gem broke. The party used Wind Walk to race back toward Omu over the Peaks of Flame, fought off an Inferno Sovereign on the way, and reached the kobold lair badly in need of rest.

After sleeping, they recovered Mwaxanaré and the puzzle cubes from the hidden portable hole. The princess was sent ahead toward Diurna Varun, and the party returned to Ras Nsi. Jewel considered killing him, but the group kept the bargain, took the ninth cube and their predecessors’ belongings, and left him alive.

Valindra Shadowmantle and the Red Wizards were waiting at the tomb entrance and demanded the cubes. The party handed over eight fakes instead. Three wizards died for trusting them, Orvex was killed in the clash, and the fight for the tomb started in earnest.

The fight with the Red Wizards broke open at the tomb entrance. Cloudkill forced Pizza, Philomena, and Bart out of cover almost at once, and Pizza had to grab Bart and Dimension Door them clear before the party lost its position. From there the battle turned into counterspells, movement, and constant attempts to keep hold of the cubes long enough to open the tomb first.

The party got several big swings in their favor. Pizza counterspelled Fred’s fireball and killed him. Philomena broke the paralysis on Vogun before the cubes could be taken. Bart used the Talisman of Pure Good to open a fissure under Needle’s Bones and drop the undead dragon out of the fight.

Once the wizard line started to break, the rest followed quickly. Vogun and Philomena killed Valindra, Pizza stopped Vaylek from bringing her back, and Jewel killed Arkanis after getting back into the fight. Pizza then burned away the brush around the obelisk with a fireball and exposed the true hidden entrance to the Tomb of the Nine Gods.

The party still had to solve the entrance. Using what they had learned from the obelisk and from Syndra’s earlier help, they set the cubes in the right places, survived the first trap, and worked the mechanism until the way opened. Bart attuned to the Amulet of Souls, the Red Wizards were finished behind them, and the party went into the tomb.

The party spent its first full trip through the tomb mapping the top floor and learning how little could be trusted. Philomena built a device that made convincing baby noises, and even simple rooms turned out to hide skulls, masked corpses, and traps waiting for a wrong move.

One room dragged hard on every piece of metal in it, so Vogun had to strip down and search in his underwear until he found the hidden doors. That led the party into Obo’laka’s tomb. They solved the mask trick, claimed a ring of protection, and Pizza took on Obo’laka’s spirit.

A tomb guardian pushing up from below kept them moving into Wongo’s tomb. Caesar was tied off to help jam the spinning blade trap, the party got into the right coffins, and Philomena fought Wongo for his mace while refusing the spirit. From there they entered Moa’s tomb, where Jewel talked past Princess Nepartak and came away with Moa’s staff and spirit.

They also found the triangle skeleton key, worked through the tomb’s false routes, and used reflected light to hold back skeletons in a wine-scented chamber long enough to open the next heavy door. By then they had a better sense of how the tomb wanted people to die.

The party pushed into another layer of the tomb and found a chamber full of cauldrons and fake ceremony. They bowed where it seemed safest, still woke skeletons when they stripped treasure from the sarcophagus, and came away with a strange milky liquid and an Amulet of Health. Vogun and Philomena both resisted Papazotl instead of taking on the spirit.

In another side room they found a trapped dao, and Pizza chose to release her. Bart cleared out the undead around the chamber while the cauldrons kept producing more trouble behind them.

The false wine tomb took more work. The party blocked the light with a tent, found only a plaque in the sarcophagus, and checked with Syndra to sort out what they were missing. That sent them back to hidden doors, a gargoyle secret, and a concealed staircase that led down to the construct workshop.

There they killed the tomb dwarves, recovered Seward’s ghost lantern, and met Withers, the masked keeper of the tomb’s traps and machinery. He traded threats with them and escaped behind a wall of heat. The party took over his office, spotted two night hags at the edge of the Ethereal, and got a badly needed rest.

A nightmare took the party to Hrakhamar and showed Omu’s generals taking the place by force. Albino dwarves and firenewts were slaughtered, more rings were claimed, and the mine nearly destroyed itself before Jalithra brought down the Eye of Flame with lightning. In the treasury the generals found a monstrous infant creature whose cry exhausted everyone near it, and three night hags arrived to claim it.

When the party woke, Withers was already acting. He dispelled their Tiny Hut, left four Tomb Guardians to kill them, and slipped away. During the fight the party learned that lightning empowered the guardians and fire frightened them, and once they understood that, they turned the ambush around.

After destroying the constructs, they pushed deeper into the third floor. They found purple growths full of eyes and spores, chained warnings marking old routes, and more passages leading back toward I’jin’s section of the tomb.

The party crossed the wine by climbing into Philomena’s portable hole while she swam against the current. That brought them to Nangnang’s tomb, where they found an invisible gray slaad trapped inside a salt pentagram. Pizza used the control gem from Withers’s office to command it and named it Gary, and Vogun took an egg from the sarcophagus and accepted Nangnang’s spirit.

They then went down the spiral stairs outside Withers’s office and found a Tomb Guardian running another trap. Philomena jammed the mechanism while Pizza set an Alarm to watch the area. In Kubazan’s tomb the party wore frog masks and copied the ritual shown on the walls. Philomena claimed Kubazan’s bracers and took on his spirit.

After that they kept sweeping through the floor. They worked through flooded rooms, narrow crawlways, a rotating tunnel trap, and several hidden crystal eyes tucked into alcoves and other hazard chambers. They had gathered more of the eyes needed for the next puzzle when Pizza’s alarm went off.

Pizza’s alarm led the party back into another set of linked traps. They had to steal a key from around a clay golem’s neck to open a chest sunk in a pit, and they recovered more crystal eyes there. In the Chamber of Opposition, Philomena used her own shadow to drink from a green font and claim another eye.

The group then entered I’jin’s tomb. Pizza fed Bart the right symbols telepathically while Bart and Vogun worked the floor puzzle, and they came away with more eyes even though the skeleton key was not there. Once all ten eyes were gathered, the party set them around the mirror in the southwest wall and opened the Vault of the Beholder, where Belchorz guarded the next key.

Taking the key set Belchorz on them at once. The party ran through the Winds of Pandemonium while eye rays fired at them through the purple growths, and Withers made the escape worse by using telekinesis on the wind lever and blasting people off their platforms. Syndra was petrified in the retreat, but Bart restored her after the group reached the Chamber of Respite and took another rest.

A nightmare showed more of Omu’s history. Gorra explained how to activate the Diurna Varun, the generals crushed an uprising, killed Thiru-Taya, and took the hermit’s notebook. When the party woke, Jewel had aged five and a half years from the dream and felt the loss immediately.

The party used Dust of Disappearance to reach the fourth level more safely and found another royal chamber. Napaka’s sarcophagus held a scepter and a cursed necklace of fireballs. Soon after that, Vogun sat in Acererak’s throne and paid for it by summoning a zombie tyrannosaurus.

After dealing with that, they moved into Unkh’s tomb. Philomena ran the maze while Vogun and Jewel guided her, and Bart held off minotaur skeletons long enough for the puzzle to be finished. When the sarcophagus shifted blue, Philomena opened it quickly and Bart took the Robe of Scintillating Colors under Unkh’s influence.

They also found that the grandfather clock would not stop tolling. The Mirror of Life Trapping briefly caught Vogun before the party got him back, and it released both Lukanu and the merchant A’tan into the tomb.

The party entered the Maze of Death, found the Black Opal Crown, and swapped it out with a weighted bag. Getting back out cost them more. Philomena lost an arm to a sphere of annihilation and used the stump to trigger the next door so the rest of the party could keep moving.

The path beyond ran through another chain of tomb logic. A hidden candle, an airless chamber, and the trapped breath inside dead aarakocra bones led them into a tomb full of clay statues. There, with help from the rest of the group, Jewel forced a quiet Silence through her apparatus, and Vogun claimed the next skeleton key and Shagambi’s mandolin and took on her spirit.

After teleporting back out, they found the grandfather clock still tolling. On the main floor four gargoyles demanded tribute. Philomena’s blue key effect made her hard to touch in that fight, and Jewel’s Wall of Fire helped finish it quickly.

With Lukanu traveling with them, the party took the spiral staircase down to the fifth floor and managed a rest in a hidden hallway.

The nightmare showed the fall of Omu and finally explained the atropal. Eshowdow betrayed Ubtao, drew him into loving a shadow of himself, and inhabited Dendar’s dormant body so they could conceive a child. Ubtao cast that fetus into the lava pits of Hrakhamar. It survived by finding the Ring of Winter, remained a giant stunted fetus, and was later raised by the Sewn Sisters into the evil thing that drew Acererak to Chult in the first place.

The vision also showed the rest of Omu’s ruin. Acererak finished destroying the city. The generals were thrown into lava to die again and again. Ubtao later turned them into the amulet-stones the party had been collecting.

When everyone woke, Caesar realized Syndra was not stirring and brought her letter to Jewel. At nearly the same time, Pizza discovered Gary’s control gem was gone. The gray slaad turned on the group at once and fireballed the hallway, killing A’tan and confirming that Syndra was truly dead. The party had no choice but to kill Gary, and proceeded.

The party kept going through the tomb. They found Laskilar and Shago alive in the fifth-floor machinery, learned more of the control-panel and iron-pipe system, clogged ooze conduits, and returned to Napaka’s chamber long enough for Philomena to salvage the Eye of Zaltec and for Pizza to destroy the rolling construct with one of the scepters.

Vogun was trapped on the wrong side of the hungry door and got through it by feeding the door glowing crabs. Those same crabs pointed out secret passages leading toward the control room. Caesar flew out over the pool and got another look at the waterfall and the surrounding exits.

Laskilar and Shago filled in more of the situation outside the tomb. The zombies had turned south, the Royal Palace was under pressure, and Fenthaza wanted the Black Opal Crown badly enough to pay for it. Laskilar also warned the party that the Cape of the Mountebank behaved strangely when used to bypass walls in the tomb.

Most of the crawl focused on the gear rooms. The party strung ropes across the ceiling while Pizza rotated the mechanism. Bad alignments brought shambling mounds up out of the chambers, and the group was split several times before they could get everybody back together.

They pushed on into the next rooms and had to pull monsters out of wardrobes and kill them to keep going. The Hall of Decay forced everyone to stash anything nonmagical or watch it rot away. Jewel chose not to turn invisible even when the room destroyed her clothes.

After that they reached the shaft and chain that seemed to power the tomb. They fought modrons there, then let Philomena interact with the model of Toril. That released a nycaloth, and its first major act was to decapitate Lukanu.

The nycaloth nearly threw Jewel into the vortex below, but Philomena caught her with Feather Fall before she could fall to her death. Jewel answered by Vortex Warping the fiend underneath her and then Fey Stepping back to safety. The party brought the nycaloth down and moved on.

Laskilar and Shago stayed behind to manage the gears while the rest of the group went to the Hall of the Golden Mastodon. Pizza provided the broken handle the room needed, Philomena activated the mechanism, and the final skeleton key dropped out while the chamber turned into another rotating trap full of fire.

Bart was trapped outside for part of the sequence. Caesar helped keep people standing, Jewel used her amulet to protect Pizza instead of herself, and Vogun’s rifle fire helped keep Philomena from being crushed by the room.

With the key secured, Pizza used the Rod of Security and took everyone to a tropical island for a night of rest. They sat around the fire, talked about what they wanted if they survived, slept properly, and came back at level 10 for the last stretch of the tomb.

The party entered the Sewn Sisters’ lair and found dolls that held children’s souls. They made toys for the children and carried the dolls carefully instead of treating them like loot. From there they worked through the keyhole trials, pulling levers from glass cylinders, tracing ghostly outlines, and solving nursery-rhyme puzzles.

They dealt with Mister Threadneedle’s feast, the cracked mirror puzzle, and the wereboars that appeared when they got the candle-and-words sequence wrong. Then the room turned personal. Nerissa, the contact from Port Nyanzaru who had helped them earlier, was revealed to be one of the hags in disguise.

After the last keyholes were opened, the hags stopped pretending and fought to protect the atropal. The party killed the coven and cleared the lair.

When Baggy Nanna saw the fight was lost, she bargained for her escape and gave up what the party needed to know about leaving later. The Ebon Pool was the way out, and a black marble from Mister Threadneedle would open it.

The party went into the nursery chamber with resistance potions, Death Ward, a plan that left Pizza deafened, and Philomena boosted by cloud giant strength. Inside they found the Soulmonger, the malformed atropal hanging beside it on its cord, lava below, and screaming souls trapped in crystal. Acererak was still nowhere in sight.

Then the bodies around the room rose. The first enemies in the chamber were the party’s own predecessors, brought back as zombies and still dangerous. Bart, Philomena, Vogun, and Jewel rushed the Soulmonger to destroy it before it could eat more souls, while Pizza tried to keep the room from being overrun by the dead.

When Caesar saw Syndra among those bodies, he threw himself at the Soulmonger and started hammering at the crystal with his tiny fists. The atropal grabbed him in a tentacle and tore him in half over the lava.

The Soulmonger finally broke. Blue souls blasted upward and returned to the world, except for six that turned and entered the bodies of Harold, Syndra, Scix, Leafinwind, Phyrne, and Vogon. Flesh knit back together, breath returned, and the dead stood up alive in the chamber where they had fallen.

With the Soulmonger gone, the trickster gods gave their chosen bearers another surge of strength. The atropal wailed as its food source disappeared, and Acererak stepped through the mist in open fury.

The fight with Acererak quickly turned into a fight for control of the room. At the start of each round the hungry atropal wailed and threatened to exhaust everyone in the chamber. Vogon and Vogun answered with overlapping Silence spells that cut down both the atropal’s scream and much of Acererak’s spellcasting.

Acererak still hit hard. He used Time Stop, pulled people onto the phylactery platforms, and kept forcing explosions, movement, and bad choices. Bart and Scix kept people standing and protected the concentration checks and reactions that mattered most. Pizza, Harold, and Syndra fought a running counterspell battle with the lich and shut down several of his biggest moves.

Philomena and Phyrne stayed on Acererak at close range, grappling him, battering him, and refusing to let him cast in comfort. When the atropal started taking over the fight again, Syndra trapped it inside a Wall of Force so the party could stay focused on Acererak.

Once Acererak was driven down to half strength, the tomb itself started to fail. Stone crashed from above, water came through fresh cracks, and the nursery chamber began to collapse around him. Acererak answered by going all in, including a failed attempt to turn the fight back with Psychic Scream.

Jewel finished him with a barrage of magic missiles. The starving atropal threw itself onto the fallen lich and devoured his soul. The party survived, but had to quickly find away out of the collapsing tomb before they were trapped within.

The party escaped through the Ebon Pool, pulled Artus out of a sewn sack, and learned from Withers and Orvex that Fenthaza had completed the ritual to raise Dendar. They rode the dragon tyrannosaurus to Diurna Varun and found Mwaxanaré had sealed the mine while Ras Nsi waited outside with Prince Na and a bomb.

The fight outside the mine moved fast. Pizza returned the Ring of Winter to Artus. Harold knocked Ras Nsi into the lava before he could settle in, and Syndra blasted the ring from his hand so he could not use his usual resurrection trick. Salida nearly undid that by trying to force the ring onto another finger.

At the same time, the party had to deal with the zombie tyrannosaurus and the bomb. Scix turned Sekelok away from the fight. Phyrne, Jewel, Philomena, and Leafinwind worked together to defuse the explosive before it could collapse the entrance and kill Prince Na along with their last chance to reach the mech.

When the bomb was disabled, Mwaxanaré moved the stones and let the party into Diurna Varun. Jewel talked Artus into surrendering the Ring of Winter and convinced Syndra to give blood to complete the activation. The mech came online.

Once the final gem was set, Diurna Varun came alive. Ancient conduits lit up, gears woke, and the buried machine forced its way out of the earth. From the cockpit the party got its first clear view of Dendar rising over the Peaks of Flame and beginning the ritual that would draw the sun close enough to devour.

The party had to arm the mech while learning how to run it. Diurna Varun bounded to Omu and tore the amphitheater out of the ruins to use as a shield. It also ripped the black monolith from the tomb entrance and revealed it as a lava-dripping blade. By the time it turned back toward the mountain, the party had stations to manage and a weaponized war engine under them.

The climb toward Dendar was contested at once. Trickster god spirits that had escaped the tomb had taken over colossal creatures across Chult, and those possessed kaiju gathered on the mountain to stop the mech before it reached the summit. Aremag stood in the way first, followed by the immense flying beast Doran.

The rest of the session was the party learning how to move, arm, and preserve Diurna Varun while fighting uphill through monsters big enough to shake the mountain.

The climb up the Peaks of Flame continued under constant pressure from possessed kaiju. One enormous creature after another rose to block Diurna Varun, each carrying a trickster god spirit that had escaped the tomb. The party was still learning the mech in live combat and trying to keep charging the laser whenever they had room to do it.

Nogarab was one of the worst opponents on the climb, a legendary goat monster from the Land of Ash and Smoke that fought with magic and constant taunting. Higher up, Emperor Gonk appeared near the summit, a four-armed white gorilla so large it made the mountain feel crowded.

The party pushed through that final defensive line and reached the ridge. There they finally saw Dendar up close, towering above the Peaks of Flame with black scales blotting out the light and constellations scattered across her body.

Diurna Varun had made it through the climb, the kaiju had failed to stop it, and the party was finally face to face with the Night Serpent.

The party still had to deal with the Atropal before they could hurt Dendar. After devouring Acererak’s soul, it had ascended and floated above the crater, wrapping the Night Serpent in a necrotic shroud. Diurna Varun was already under strain, and Dendar kept battering it with venom, nightmare, telekinetic force, and brute strength while the crew fought to keep the mech working.

They brought the Atropal down again, and the fight narrowed to one job: charge the chest laser before Dendar tore the mech apart. The crew bled off strain where they could, restored whatever systems they could still save, and kept feeding charge into the weapon while the mech was pushed to the edge.

The shot came at the last possible moment. Diurna Varun was nearly destroyed and still taking damage when the final roll reached 101, just enough to fire. The laser went off, Dendar fell, and Toril survived.

After the battle, Artus saw a beam of light strike the place where Mezro had once stood, and the party followed it there. He was reunited with Alisanda. Ubtao thanked the party for ending Dendar’s scourge and offered any who wished the chance to become bara in Mezro. The rings were restored, the amulets were destroyed, and the Omuan relics and divine leftovers started to leave mortal hands.

Chult began to recover. Zalkore regained enough of herself to rebuild Omu and took Mwaxanaré under her wing. Other settlements started rising again, Port Nyanzaru was no longer the island’s only major center of civilization, and the end of the pirate threat and the Death Curse made trade and travel possible again. Syndra survived, stayed a major political force, and eventually rose into the merchant-prince class while practices like Executioner’s Run and legal assassination began to disappear.

Back in Port Nyanzaru, the city celebrated. Betty was alive again, Father O’Flannigan was there with her, and the two of them danced and kissed. Jessamine had also returned. The merchant princes thanked the party, the airship went to the Fisher family, Vogun took the ordinary ship, and the surviving heroes were finally able to think about ordinary life.

Syndra then brought out the monkey’s paw. Philomena wished for friendship with all dinosaurs. Bart wished away his crippling indecisiveness. Jewel wished for lives of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Vogun wished that Soggy Wren could drink forever. Pizza wished for a Tim Hortons.