The Dauntless

With things taken care of for the morning, you pack up and head back down to the river. You retrace your steps, finding the sledge and shattered pillar where you left it, and follow the path further south to find a large boat tied up at the riverside. Inside the cabin, you find a number of valuables; a bundle of golden idols of jungle animals (six in total, worth about 25 gold pieces each), a pair of +1 striking handwraps of mighty blows, and a thurible and a statuette of a snake made of jade that are both magical. You also find Pendergrast's adventure journals. The most recent one is open to his latest musings on a temple he'd heard of twenty miles to the northeast that potentially disproved an extensive treatise he'd written on the Bonuwat deity Shimye-Magalla.

As Antoinette looks over the contents of the boat she smiles. "Normally I am not much for theft, but in this case I believe we should just take what he has here. The lout has abandoned it, and his team."

Taking their new boat along the river, the group approaches the totem Chioma'd found the night before. As they approach it, two drakes drop out of the sky, surrounding Dorrak and talking about 'fresh meat'.

Antoinette works her way around the drakes and starts working on pushing over the totem, which has started shooting poisonous lasers from its carved eyes, while Dorrak and Suki engage the pair, with Django delivering healing as necessary.

Shortly after engaging in combat, Suki successfully terrifies the closer of the two drakes with a cold glare, and bringing her fauchard around in a spinning slash disembowels it. Seeing this, the other Drake decides it would rather feed in peace than pieces, and picks up Dorrak before running for the trees. Not content to simply stand for this, the rest of the party follows suit.

The Drake doesn't make it far before the rest of the party catches up and starts laying into it. Dorrak, still in its mouth, stabs it in the pallet with his sword, prompting it to spit him up and try to get its prey to stop moving so much. Seeing Dorrak not doing so good from an almost continuous onslaught, Suki decides enough is enough, and with another whirling chop cleanly cuts the Drake's head from its body.

As the second corpse lies charred and steaming, Antoinette casually makes her way back over to the totem, and this time easily manages to push it over.

Letting the other two smash the tower, Dorrak sits down against a tree and beckons Nova over while Django tends to his wounds, with Dorrak himself pressing his palm to his own chest to mend one of the stings. "I never told you to chase after it when it had me," he comments, though he's smiling and his tone is gentle. "It could have gotten you hurt. But it's the exact type of thing I taught you to do, and it was very brave, so I'm proud of you for doing it."

Nova's tail wags in response to the praise and she sits down so that she's pressed against the side of Dorrak's legs. "You were in trouble. I... still don't get it, entirely, but you're pack. I had to help."

Dorrak rests his gauntleted hand on the back of Nova's head and strokes through her fur gently. "You're getting there. All the rules I try to follow lead to the goal of helping people, so that's a good reaction to have."

Antoinette begins gathering samples from the drakes, getting a decent quality sample of their blood, venom, and scales. After she finishes she sits down and rests for a moment. "Well, that was more than a little exciting. I did not expect it to get so much worse so fast."

"You're telling me," Dorrak chuckles. "Still, most fun I've had in a fight in a long time."

The rain, nearly constant within the jungle, comes down in sheets between the broken gaps of the forest canopy here, the clouds above almost black and flashing with lightning. Several of the trees in the area are split open, with jagged wounds along their bark, their insides smoldering red as they burn from the inside out. In the middle of this clearing is another pillar, this one bearing a yellow head.

As they approach the pillar, Dorrak's gaze immediately moves to the trees. "Fool me once," he mutters, seeing the rustling of movement. "In the trees, declare yourselves!" Dorrak roars up, his glare fixed right on where he sees movement.

A group of strange batlike creatures screech and begin descending from the trees as the totem focuses in and fires lightning at Dorrak. While Suki and Dorrak run in to fight the creatures, Antoinette rushes forward and topples the totem with one shove. Suki does an excellent job of fighting the bat-like creatures, but one of them begins attacking Django. Dorrak begins defending Django as Antoinette rushes back into the fray. After a few moments of combat, two of the creatures are dead and the last tries to run. Dorrak chases after it and manages to use fire from his magic charm to finish it off.

Following the fight, Antoinette immediately begins further destroying the totem.

When the totem is destroyed and you set up camp for the night, Renali returns with her report. "Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, at the top of the cliff to the north, I found something interesting. Some kind of old temple set on the clifftop. The bad news is that because it's raining so hard, I couldn't check it out. Rain and climbing don't mix, even for someone as skilled as I am."

The next morning, while you're packing up camp, a squirrel enters the campsite, runs over to Dorrak, and deposits a small note in front of him. It then runs up his arm, nuzzles his cheek, and then leaves.

The note reads: "Friends, while we cannot explore the jungle ourselves, we have found ways of using animals such as this to gain some awareness. I will pass on what we learn to you when we learn it. Our preliminary reports are that there is a pillar shockingly close to Akrivel, only twenty miles due east. Its head is painted black, though I do not know what this means. Yours, Nketiah."

After some discussion you head north, finding a slope to lead you up the cliff, and double back southwest to where Renali saw the temple. An overgrown ridgeline rises up from the jungle here, presenting a craggy stone face to the south. Perched atop the forty-foot-tall cliff is a mostly overgrown stone temple. A trio of stone balconies extend from the temple’s southern facade over the cliff’s edge, while several triangular openings in the stone walls that may once have held windows are now filled in with packed clay. The building’s walls are adorned with badly damaged carvings that may have once been androgynous, butterfly-winged figures swimming in the sea and flying through the sky. As you arrive, you see a familiar figure backing out of the front door, pouring something out of a sack as he moves. It's your old friend Gerhard Pendergrast.

"Hello again, Charlatan Ponderghost or whatever your name was," Antoinette calls out. "Why don't you stop whatever you're up to and have a chat with us?"

Pendergrast starts but straightens up quickly and looks at you with a scowl. "Oh, it's the archaeological vandals. If you've come to destroy another priceless relic, you've come to the wrong place. Nothing here but lies and sabotage from my competitors trying to undermine me. No worries, though, I'm already setting it to rights." He pulls a tindertwig out of his pocket and strikes it against the leather strap around his hat.

"If you attempt to damage this temple, on the lands of our friends the Ekujae, I will kill you and leave your body for the beasts to devour. Your legacy will be nothing but the stories of cowardice that your abandoned team will tell of you," Dorrak calls out, approaching slowly as he speaks, tone filled with icy certainty.

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