Ruins of Azlant Gameplay I

Amissa quickly steps in, hands up. "Hold on," she says in Azlanti. "We're also fighting the faceless stalkers! They've captured a lot of people from our town, and we're looking to save them!"

"Or you could just be ugothols, trying to trick and kill us," the archer says, still with its hand on the bow.

"Is there a way we can prove our sincerity?" Amissa asked. "We really don't want to fight. If there's a way we could cooperate, that'd work best for both parties, right?"

"Bring us the head of an ugothol, and we'll believe you aren't one," the wyrwood says flatly.

"We... don't have the bodies of any ugothol with us," Amissa says. "If it helps, I can talk to you about the places we came from though, since we aren't native to these islands." She then proceeds to talk about the university that she came from in great detail.

"Hrmph. No creatures like you live around here," the wyrwood says, lowering the bow to its side. "Where's your ship?"

With Amissa translating, Aisha retrieves the spyglass. "The small boat we used to get to this island is on the west side, but on the island over there," she gestures in the vague direction of the colony, "We used a larger ship to travel from Avistan. Needed this to help navigate," she adds, holding up the spyglass.

"Hrmph. Do you have anything that's worth something to us?" the wyrwood asks.

"We have ioun stones!" Amissa says. "Ioun stones are one of my main focuses of study, so I have a decent collection now."

The guard nods approvingly, but another wyrwood stands to talk. "Why shouldn't we just kill you to be sure you're not enemies?" it challenges harshly.

"Because we can help each other," Aisha offers. "Kill us, you're in the same situation you were before. Ally with us, we can work together to deal with the faceless together, our common enemy. And we can probably learn from each other too."

The wyrwood who had been speaking  before shoots the one who spoke up a  sharp look, before turning back to the party with a nod "I will take you to speak with the village elder." he says, descending from his perch. The party follows him into the wyrwood village, up to a particularly weathered looking one. After a short discussion in soft tones, the weathered wyrwood turns to the party. "I am Locwudu. What brings you to Hullhold?"

"Is Hullhold the island?" Kaimana wonders aloud. "Uh, can you tell him some of our people were taken? So we want to hunt down their kidnappers and hopefully find the kidnapped," he then relays to Amissa.

Locwudu nods solemnly. "Unfortunately, we have not seen other humans on the island in some time. I can tell you about the other groups that live on the island if you believe that would help?" With a nod from Kaimana, the wyrwood elder continues, “We’ve seen many ugothols here in the north, but the ugly creatures are usually smart enough to stay out of our territory. Ulat-kini are common in the southeast, but we don’t know where their lair is. Ghost lanterns inhabit the southern marshes. Many kinds of beasts also live in the woods and marshes.”

"The ugothol were the ones responsible for the kidnappings," Amissa says, "but we've had issues with the ulat-kini in the past as well. It wouldn't surprise me to find that they were working together either. Have you heard anything about cooperation between those two forces?"

"We have not seen ulat-kini and ugothol working together directly, though the ugothol did not always live on this island," Locwudu says. "If they were working together, it would make sense that they would want to live closer to one another."

Jax nods along to Amissa's translation, considering that information. "When did the ugothol come to this island? Do you know where they came from?"

"I see." Jax pauses, contemplating what they know. "We crossed a small river southeast of here on our way; the ugothol used the river to hide their tracks, and we couldn't pick up their trail from there. Do the Skum live near this river?"

The wyrwood shakes his head. "I do not know. If it is information you seek, perhaps you should try to find the ghost lanterns. They are intelligent, flying balls of light—that’s why we call them ghost lanterns. It is said they know everything that happens on this island, but I should warn you, they’re not very welcoming to visitors. The stories say you should carry a lantern or other light source when you approach them or they’ll think you’re an enemy. There is an ancient place built from stone where they gather at dusk."

Jax listens, then nods respectfully. "Thank you. We'll likely try to speak with them tonight."

The party soon says their farewells to the wyrwood, continuing onwards first towards the Wheels of Heaven. A 20-foot-tall building has been built into the slope near the
summit of the island’s tallest hill. The interior of the building is a machine consisting of thousands upon thousands of gears. A giant tube similar to a spyglass rises from the center of the contraption.

As Amissa begins to look at the machine, Jax finds a good vantage point and survey's the area using their spyglass. He notes a tall pillar to the southwest on their path to the wisps' garden. As he returns to the party to report, a loud screaming pierces the air as the sky darkens and the ground rumbles. "Is this another haunt?!" he shouts, darting to Aisha as the closest person and weaving a protective spell to guard her from the fire he feared was coming.

The roof of the observatory is blown away, revealing two meteors in the sky approaching at a high speed. At the same time, a ghostly image of an Azlanti woman wearing a priest’s vestment appears hovering in the air, screaming a drawn out “No!”

Everyone rushes out of the observatory. The meteors hit the ground and explode, but when the smoke clears, the woman has disappeared, and the observatory looks mostly intact again, just as it did before they fell.

Moving back inside, Amissa tinkers with the device but is unable to get the same phenomena to happen again. Looking through the data, she says to everyone, "I think I've found the exact location of the pillar Jax noted. Apparently there's some kind of site there, according to the data here. We should be able to make it over there." She then proceeds to remove the data node, only zapping herself twice in the process.

Jax looks around nervously, ready for a meteor that never comes. "Alright, let's get out of here before whatever that was tries again."
With no further fanfare, the party moves on towards the pillar in the distance.

Seven pillars of stone, each taller and thicker than the previous one, stand in a spiral-shaped formation. The pillars bear many intricately carved symbols inlaid with a silvery metal and lines of a crystalline material, and each pillar is fitted with a ring-shaped, metal dial with similar symbols carved onto it. The entire area seems unnaturally chilly and dim, as if a great shadow lay over the land.

Jax walks around the pillars slowly, eyes scanning over the archaic symbols. "Wait, are those..." he mutters, halting to get a closer look at several symbols on one pillar. He jogs to another pillar and examines the symbols in the same area on it. "These are runes representing other planets!" he exclaims, as much startled that he recognized something as he is at the discovery itself.