Setup

Hurodash awakes on the floor of the Temple of Shagambi. After a short discussion in which he comes to find a dead god co-habitating in the space between his ears, he leaves to find his friends. What is the plan? The voice in his head responds, “To become a God again.”

Meanwhile, the party wakes up and steps out of last night’s Tiny Hut. Thankfully, Norm had not died during the evening.

After a minor misadventure at the Temple of Kubazan that almost resulted in a solo showdown with the Froghemoth, Hurodash reunited with the reset of the party. The party decided to allow Norm to lead them to another temple, and all the while Norm insists on making clear the dangers within.

Bring Out Your Dead

Norm leads the party to the Temple of Papazotl, one of the temples from which the Polonians were unable to extract the soul stone. Upon entering, skeletons immediately streamed from a magic gate in one wall. The party saw a sack of first-sized rubies, a mural on the opposite wall consisting of three figures with empty eyesockets, and quickly deduced the need to put the rubies in the sockets to stop the skeleton.

Skeletons poured out at an alarming rate, some picking up and attaching the parts of skeletons killed by the party. Some climbed the walls and pulled out rubies placed in their sockets by Corliss, Rhagal, Ser Shadow and Nymeria, each of whom had climbed the mural wall. Meanwhile, Hurodash and Yornan concentrated on the skeletons themselves. A “Turn Undead” destroyed a dozen while Hurodash smashed a similar number. The party began letting go of the wall and crashing to the floor, carrying skeletons with them, as one of the prime methods of protecting the seated rubies from the attackers.

As the fight wore on, the pack of skeletons finally wrested Hurodash to the floor and began inflicting significant damage. At the moment though, the wall climbers had filled all the eyes, the gate closed, and the remaining bits formed Voltron-style into one super-sized skeleton behemoth. A well-timed and surprisingly well-maintained casting of Tasha’s Hideous Laughter by Corliss incapacitated the behemoth, allowing the party to kill the remaining skeletons, then the behemoth, and finally to claim the soul stone within the temple.

Wrapup

Soul stone recovered, skeletons dead, the party awaits their next move.

Setup

Picking up from where we left off previously, Hurodash clutches the Soul Stone in both hands as he lays incapacitated on the floor of the Temple of Shagambi. No amount of effort can cause Hurodash to let go, shy of breaking his fingers, which the party is loathe to do. The party leaves a note pinned to his chest saying that he should catch up when he feels better and follows the Polonian captain (nicknamed “Norm”, short for “Normandy”) out into the jungle.

Crossing the Road

A twenty foot wide road, paved with cobblestones and not overgrown by the jungle cuts a wide swath through the undergrowth. Norm is leading the party to the Temple of Kubazan that exists on the west side of the road. The party ponders crossing the road and spots a handful of Pterodactyls circling overhead. One by one, our heroes cross the road as the creatures circle closer and closer, finally dive bombing Nymeria as she is the last adventurer to cross. The angle of attack is too steep and Nymeria is too well prepared and the Pterodactyls miss.

Raiders of the Temple of Last Jurassic Something?

Norm leads the party through the near impenetrable undergrowth to the Temple, walking in the paths previously trampled by his mutinous Polonian squads. In order to enter into the temple, the party would seemingly have to navigate all sorts of stuff as well as an angry Froghemoth that Norm explains had previously eaten a number of Polonians that dared to approach. That would have been quite a challenge, but Yornan cast Control Water and parted the six-foot-deep pool. The party blissfully leapt six feet down into the mud without a single slip of note, searched for coins amidst the mud, and climbed out the other side. And then they went back for seconds. And thirds.

Approaching the temple itself, Norm read the inscription over the gate, which read: "Kubazan urges us to tread without fear and to give back as much as we take". Both Ser Shadow and Rhagal failed to pick the lock on the gate, but then Rhagal just made another half-assed, questionable attempt and managed to luckily unlock something that had proven to be beyond his skill. Grr. Luckily, a Glyph of Warding was triggered by the lock picking attempt and frightened Rhagal such that he could not continue further into the temple.

A fearsome challenge awaited the party within the temple as they would be forced to leap from beam to beam, perched precariously over a 30 foot deep pit filled with sharped spikes, in order to reach the Soul Stone resting on a pedestal on the far side of the room. And then Rhagal cast Fly on Ser Shadow, who crossed the pit without issue, landing next to the pedestal on the far side. Corliss called out, “Give as much as you take. Place something on the pedestal when you take the stone!” Ser Shadow quickly figured that the stone weighed about the same as 25 gold pieces and was prepared to make the switch. And then didn’t.

Snatching the stone from the pedestal and prepared to fly back, a gate dropped and poison gas filled the room, blinding Ser Shadow. However, of course, with the aid of some bardic inspiration, Nymeria rolled a 32 to dead lift the gate, Yornan cast Light on the end of a rope, and Corliss held his breath, slid under the gate and dangled the rope over the edge of the pit. The blinded Ser Shadow was unable to immediately find the gate, but he lowered himself gently to the floor, squeezed himself between the spikes, and eventually found the rope and pulled himself out after taking only one breath of the poison gas.

With the Soul Stone retrieved, the party left again in the same fashion, with the only actions of note being Yornan barely failing to hip check Norm into the Froghemoth pond and the flying Ser Shadow discovering the key to the gate in the mouth of a frog statue.

The Perils of the Open Road

Norm stated that he knew the location of six of the nine temples. Three that the Polonians had plundered, two that the party had visited, and one more that he would lead them to. However, to get there, the party would have to traverse the road in the near dusk conditions. Three triceratops turned out to be using the road as a runway for trample and stop attempts. A Banishment spell from Yornan evened the odds, but Nymeria - who felt the need to plant her six-foot-four-inches of badassedness directly in the middle of the road - was twice trampled to near death. The fireball and lightning bolt that she blasted out might have been some small recompense for her troubles as they were instrumental in the ultimate death of the dinosaurs.

Wrapup

The night ended with the Corliss casting Leomund's Tiny Hut in the burned out section of jungle cleared by Nymeria’s fireball. Everyone looks to rest peacefully within. Except for Norm. Corliss decided to not let him in. Poor Norm.

Setup

The party finds themselves on the edge of steep valley, looking out over the remnants of ancient city that has been retaken by the jungle. After a quick inventory check, they head off to find their way into the canyon.

Dinosaurs

In the undergrowth ahead, the party spies a raptor. As they stretch out and separate in an attempt to engage it on their terms, the other hunting raptors in the back fall on the party from all sides. Clever girl, indeed. The party survives despite taking serious wounds.

Into the Valley

The party heads down to the valley floor, slowly making their way through the undergrowth, and finding that the valley is filled with small stone huts. As the make their way northward, they come upon a crumbling Walled Compound. Within the walls they find the remains of a Polonian company with only two survivors. One survivor, wearing a tourniquet above the bloody stump where his leg had been bitten off, is quickly dispatched as a mercy kill.

The other survivor, the captain of the original expedition explains that they had been sent to recover soul stones from the temples in the area. His expedition had recovered three, but the other temples proved too challenging to recover the stones from. And then, apparently, after a series of attacks by dinosaurs, the expedition had mutinied and left the captain in the compound with the dead and dying.

The Temple of Shagambi

The party read and eventually discovered the meaning of the dwarven text over the door to the temple. It had said “Shagambi teaches us to fight evil with honor.” The clay golems that guarded the temple could be convinced to disappear and leave their spears behind if killed after accepting their salute in the main fighting pit.

Upon successfully acquiring the spears and placing them in the hands of statue guardians, the soul stone emerged from a pedestal. Hurodash, who had been hearing whispers the entire time, now hears a voice frantically repeating “Let me in, let me out. Let me in, let me out.” Hurodash takes hold of the stone and appears to be struck dumb as a presence invades his mind.