Ruins of Azlant Gameplay I

"Is something coming to mind?" Kaimana asks, noticing the tone.

"No, I'm just worried you'll be the one hunting down whatever this is," Eamon says with a light chuckle and a squeeze of Kaimana's hand.

The pair arrive at the scene, and with Jax's help, Eamon manages to find where the goats were drained of their blood. He points out the strange, circular bite marks, like those of a lamprey, in multiple places on each of the goats. "I don't know what creature could've caused this, I'm afraid," he says.

"Well, that's no worse than the rest of us," Kaimana points out with a laugh. "Sorry to have brought you out here for nothing, though."

"It's no trouble. At least you'll know what to look for if you see it again," Eamon says.

While Kaimana goes to retrieve Eamon, Jax begins to scour the surrounding area for any further clues. Shortly after Eamon's analysis, Jax spots something in the grass. "I have tracks over here!" he announces to the group.

The group quickly goes to check it out, and discover they go to the ocean and the path ends there. Puzzled, they return to the colony.

Kaimana heads off to breakfast, where he spots Eamon chatting with some farmers, helping Aisha out with calming the fears of the colony. He has a seat, helping Eamon out a bit, reassuring the farmers that all that can reasonably be done about the dangers of the island is already being done. Soon enough, breakfast starts wrapping up, as people head off to do their jobs for the day, with Eamon and Kaimana lingering behind a bit.

Once the farmers head off, Kaimana finally sighs. "I wish we had something more concrete we could tell them," he notes. "Such as, I dunno, 'it's a creature called this, but if you put salt out, it won't come near'. You know?"

"Mhm. Maybe that's why some people are focusing on the concrete ideas, like focusing more on building walls," Eamon notes. "But, that's the dangers of heading into the unexplored, I suppose. I'm sure eventually we'll find out exactly what this is."

Kaimana nods. "I'm sure we'll find it eventually, and deal with it then. The tracks Jax found let into the ocean, so we're going to check if Koloshkora is familiar with something like that before doing anything else today."

Eamon nods. "That sounds like a good place to start from. I do hope it's nothing too dangerous, if it's something you end up fighting," he says, with a touch of concern in his voice.

"I wanted to ask you about that, actually." Kaimana rubs the back of his neck as he tries to pick some words. "Does it worry you a lot that I'm out fighting stuff most days now?"

Eamon takes a pause to think, and pick his words. "It does. But I know that it's your job, and you're among the best suited to the task, and that Aisha is a very capable healer," he says with a sigh. "But I still worry some. I don't think that will go away."

Thinking for a moment doesn't help Kaimana figure out what to say to that, but he decides it's better not to leave the silence hanging long. "I guess that makes sense, yeah. I mean, I feel like I'm getting better every day, my magic is definitely getting stronger, which is still kind of weird but it's useful so it's fine? But this place is all unexplored, so..." He frowns. "I wish I knew what I could do to make the worry go away, short of not going out?"

"It's okay," Eamon reassures Kaimana. "Spending time with you in the colony when we can helps me to feel better about it. I don't think there's anything you or I can do to make it go away entirely, because sometimes a bit of worry is just natural, but I appreciate you wanting to do what you can," he says, giving Kaimana a smile, and taking his hand to squeeze it.

Kaimana smiles back and squeezes Eamon’s hand lightly.

Koloshkora unfortunately has no idea of any creature beneath the waves that might have attacked the goats like that, but promises to let everyone know, and to keep an eye out.

The party returns to the colony to make their report, then continues on to the coordinates from the last Pathfinder site. As they approach the coordinates the group sees an impact crater more than a hundred feet across punched into the mountainside, shrouded in dense vegetation and surrounded by toppled stone blocks, crumbling pillars, and shattered statues obscured by the island’s lush flora. Small streams flow down from the mountainside into the yawning crater that descends into the earth.

The party carefully begins their descent into the crater. As they approach the ruins, Jax's eyes wander over the crumbling remains before settling on a pattern in the scorched stone. "There's shadows burned into the walls," he notes to the others.
As they continue their descent, they approach an ancient pillar marked with strange runes, now overgrown with moss. "Anyone know how to read this?" Jax asks.

"Give me a moment," Amissa says as she leans in closer to investigate. "Oh, this is quite straightforward. It's indicating that there are undead further ahead in the chasm. We'll need to be on alert, I think."

As the party moves closer, Kaimana is the only one to spot moving humanoid silhouettes against the ruins. Not knowing what might be coming, he readies himself to attack any foe that might appear. Unfortunately, no foe presents itself, only the sky darkening, and fiery stones plummeting towards the ground, exploding in fiery impacts.

After they're all struck by the flaming stones, with Amissa and Kaimana taking the worst of it, Amissa identifies it as a haunt, and Aisha first tries springing to action, casting a powerful heal, but being struck by the flaming rocks threw her off and stopped her from pressing her palms into the haunt. Fortunately, both Kaimana and Jax landed potions on it that suppressed it, and Aisha instead spent that spell, and several others, patching everyone back up. Suppressing the haunt also revealed a deep vertical tunnel. Aisha peers down that hole and frowned. "The tunnel opens up into a wider cavern. Gotta be pretty deep, I can't see the bottom of the cavern."

Kaimana looks briefly confused, but after a moment of consideration, comments, ”I guess your vision’s better than mine, I can’t see down there at all.” He looks around and finds a small rock, dropping it down. The sound of it hitting the bottom comes up after a short time. ”That doesn’t sound too bad?”

"It should be about eighty feet," Amissa says after a moment. "I definitely wouldn't want to fall down there, but with some careful planning we could probably make our way down if we needed to."

Jax nods. "How much rope do we have? Since we're here, we should explore it if we can."

After finding that they have enough rope, the four descend down into the pit, Kaimana's sword aglow with Amissa's magic to light the way, with the women holding onto the mens' backs. However, upon descending down, they find themselves beset by a pair of blast shadows, smoking, burning undead who quickly fall upon Jax with their claws while their burning auras chip away at all the others as well. Jax and Kaimana focus their attacks on one together, with Aisha struggling to keep the shapeshifter standing, efforts that ultimately fail when a simple splash of acid from Amissa causes the first of the undead to explode in a burst of flame, knocking Jax to the ground. Aisha immediately screams in Celestial, hoping that Amissa can translate for Kaimana,"Don't take the other one down yet! If it dies it'll kill Jax!" And yet the undead seems to shrug off every spell that Amissa can throw at it, from pits to blinding dust while Aisha desperately tries to keep Kaimana standing and Jax alive.  

Kaimana was no medic, but he could see this menace was doing more than Aisha could patch up. She was healing him too, so he must be getting hurt, and Jax still hadn't gotten up. A stupid, desperate idea came to mind, and the half-elf shouted and slammed his shoulder into the undead in the direction of a pit Amissa had created. The manuever must have caught the creature off-guard, because it toppled off into the pit. With that threat temporarily subdued, Aisha quickly stabilizes Jax then focuses her efforts on healing Kaimana up while the half-elf drags Jax's unconscious body behind cover and Amissa works to strengthen Kaimana. Kaimana catches his breath when everyone except him is safe behind cover, barely registering what was going on with the situation, but he knows what to do when Amissa's next spell doubles his size. The sword swings into the undead twice to an explosive end.

With the threat dead, Aisha immediately moves to tend to Jax's wounds, first spending the last of her own magic on it and then casting spell after spell through the wand until his wounds close but for a few scratches. Before tending to the others, she then lets out a deep breath and folds down against the wall, wiping the stressed, worried tears from her eyes.

Jax is silent as the party is healed, seated with his arms loosely wrapped around his legs. Eventually, a shaky whisper comes out. "What are we doing here?"

Aisha, having calmed herself and set about healing herself and the others, replies in a steady tone that masks her own stress, ”Because if we don’t do this, everyone else is in danger too.”

Amissa climbs out from her hiding spot behind a wall, and slowly walks over to Kaimana. On reaching him, she collapses into his back. "Tired...." she murmurs.

Maybe it’s better Aisha answered first, Kaimana notes internally with some embarrassment, having been about to tell Jax they took shelter there from potential explosions. He turns his head when Amissa slumps into him. ”Might be a sign to be done for the day,” he notes, squatting slightly. ”Here, wanna hang on and I’ll climb with you?” the half-elf offers to Amissa.

Kaimana's suggestion fails to register with Jax. "But these things are getting more dangerous, and we keep getting closer to..." Jax trails off. "And I keep being the one holding you all back."

Aisha places her hand on Jax's shoulder. "Jax, if those things had focused on any of us first, we would have gone down," she points out. "You're not to blame here," she adds, not mentioning her own feeling of responsibility and cracking a small smile. "Now, you mind carrying me out of here so we can get some rest? I'm uh, not exactly a climber, and I'm totally out of juice right now."

Jax breathes deeply, then exhales. "Yea, let's go." he replies, his voice a little steadier than before.

Amissa nods, hanging onto Kaimana.

Seeing Aisha and Jax are also on board and Amissa’s securely latched on, Kaimana begins climbing. ”Good job on the pit, by the way,” he comments.