🌱 is greatly intrigued by Obo’laka’s suggestion to add more salt. "Dur-Dur-Dur, do you still have your brewery kit? We can use it and the alchemy jug to make salt water and—"
"Weeell I wonder if we just open the sarcophagus!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, stepping through the salt pentagram towards the sarcophagus and—
Oh no, it’s almost as if that salt pentagram did something—like keeping a gray slaad contained within. Right when Dur-Dur-Dur steps through the salt, the slaad breaks invisibility and is standing before him, smiling a toothy grin. The slaad is nearly black in color, with a monstrous mouth and frog-like appendages.
"Hey I'm Dur-Dur-Dur have you seen my—"
The slaad slams Dur-Dur-Dur twice with a massive greatsword, Sekelok style, and the combat begins! The slaad then winks at Dur-Dur-Dur, sidesteps so that it can see the party down the hallway, then throws a hand forward to conjure a devastating fireball that will hit all the squishy PC’s—
Zanzibar screams, "COUNTERSPELL! I COUNTERSPELL! NONONO! ONLY ONE PERSON HERE GETS TO CAST FIREBALL! LAST TIME SOMEONE TRIED TO CAST FIREBALL, I CUT OFF HER HANDS!"
The slaad’s spell fizzles. Dur-Dur-Dur then winks at the slaad.
"I'm gonna hit the crap out of you!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, swinging Durminator. He misses the first swing, then hits the second one. "All me!"
Artus Cimber is low on magic ring charges, so he fires off three shots with his bow and arrow from down the hallway, misses all of them, and pouts.
🌱’s opossums then close in and dogpile... well, opossum-pile the slaad profusely by biting it. But they're opossums, so you know… nothing really happens. One opossom climbs on top of the sarcophagus and snatches a rainbow-colored grung from among the wooden statues.
Armand steps up and tries tolling the dead, but the slaad resists. Valour then steps up and tries to hit the slaad, but after rolling a natural 1 and a natural 2, he blames the salt pentagram and the octopossums for distracting him.
Dragonbait runs into the room and accomplishes very little just like everyone else.
Zanzibar lobs a ray of frost at the slaad, but he misses and runs away.
🌱 uses thorn whip, but he also misses and also runs away.
Chumbawumba goes for a long-ranged artillery approach, so he sets up a force ballista way back in the Papazotl tomb and aims it down the hallway towards the slaad. He launches an attack, but just like his teammates, he misses. He then orders Tubthumpin to soar down the hallway into battle.
Oh look, it's the slaad's turn again!
The slaad’s wounds begin to repair themselves—that ain’t good. The slaad then raises its hand again and summons a fireball in the middle of everyone. The party looks to Zanzibar, waiting for him to counterspell the fireball, but his islands are tapped out.
The fireball hits, engulfing almost every party member, spilling through the hallway and exploding out the other side. Zanzibar portents a 16 to pass the Dexterity save, but several party members take a massive chunk of fire damage. Armand critically succeeds his save, which is still a 19 when adjusted for his slowness, so he drops to zero and begins to bleed out.
Dur-Dur-Dur then gets two crits on the slaad, and then a regular hit for 36 damage, which finally starts to pull the fight into the party’s favor. Apparently the orc is the only thing that can land a hit!
Speaking of not being able to hit, Artus Cimber tucks his bow away and uses the Ring of Winter to summon a giant constrictor snake made of ice that closes in on the slaad, but misses when it tries to constrict it.
🌱 feels inventoril'y appropriated that the high level NPC is conjuring giant snakes when he could do the same with his snake staff.
Armand fails his first death save.
The opossums pile in again and nip the slaad wherever they can. 🌱 makes several remarks about multiple penises on multiple animals, then one of his opossums takes another wooden grung—a gray one, and flings it off towards the salt, rubbing it into the pentagram and messing it up so that the salt pentagram is getting ruined.
“That's not what I said at all!" Obo’laka chastises 🌱.
Valour steps in, swings his Holy Avenger, and then finally gets a decent hit. He loads the hit with a smite that keeps the slaad from going invisible and escaping.
Dragonbait steps up and swings his Flametongue, but the slaad’s armor is too high, and he can’t land a hit.
Zanzibar casts ray of frost at the slaad and actually hits it, then 🌱 uses healing word to get Armand back to 5 Hit Points. He then backs up even further because fuckin’ fireballs, and casts chill touch on the slaad, hitting it and stopping the slaad from regenerating.
"Well I'll be damned. Let's just shoot this big boy!" Chumbawumba says, then fires the force ballista and crits, then shoots a fire bolt from his gun. Tubthumpin charges into the battle.
The slaad smacks Dur-Dur-Dur with the greatsword, then it bites him, dropping him to 7 Hit Points. Dur-Dur-Dur then goes reckless and swings, chopping at the slaad. His last swing cuts off the monster’s hand, and it bleeds out black blood all over the salty floor before collapsing in a heap near one of the pillars.
The party (mostly) survived!
"Get wrecked, lizard," Armand says from the ground.
The opossums and Dur-Dur-Dur start to gather up the wooden grung figurines. The opossums and the ice snake open the sarcophagus, and when they do, a bouncing skeleton with a square-shaped head leaps out and runs for the crawlspace to the frozen wine. The constrictor snake lashes out, catches it, and kills it.
Which is exactly what 🌱's snake would have done if he had chosen to conjure a snake but he didn't out of his own accord and not because he didn't want to compare snakes with Artus Cimber...
... something-something-multiple-penises let's just move on!
"Something tells me there are five of these," Valour says, looking at the skeleton head-key handout. This skeleton head is shaped like a square. The other one that Dur-Dur-Dur found in Moa’s tomb was shaped like a triangle.
Dur-Dur-Dur peeks into the sarcophagus and sees an urn. He grabs the urn, then is overcome with a desire to dance as he fails a save to an Otto’s irresistible dance spell trap. He then takes 2d10 psychic damage, which is just enough to drop him to 0 Hit Points.
This is the first time Dur-Dur-Dur will drop to zero Hit Points this session.
"Everybody watch out! He's got the dancing fever! I told you to stop grabbing stuff!" Valour says.
Armand goes up and casts spares the dying, stabilizing the orc. Armand then reaches into Dur-Dur-Dur’s pocket and plucks a goodberry out, feeding it to him. Armand then walks off with the parting words, "I'm getting away because he scares me. Unholy dancing."
"I thought you liked the unholy?" Zanzibar says.
"... Dancing..." Armand says.
"Whoa, am I tired!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, waking up.
"Dur-Dur-Dur, before you do anything else, how many more potions and stuff are you going to waste?" Valour says.
"... Zanzibar come identify this urn!" Dur-Dur-Dur shouts.
"I ain't touching shit!" Zanzibar says.
They break the urn, and inside is an egg-shaped rock, a supreme healing potion, and the bones of a grung. Valour grabs the potion and puts it into Tubthumpin. An opossum goes to eat the grung egg, but Dur-Dur-Dur smacks it away. Valour uses Moa’s power and goes invisible.
"I wanna pick it up. Should I pick it up!?" Dur-Dur-Dur says, looking at the grung egg. He then drinks his last potion of healing.
🌱 goes to give Dur-Dur-Dur some greater healing potions, but Valour swats him away. "No! Give him a regular one. He'll just waste these."
Dur-Dur-Dur gets angry, then snatches the supreme healing potion out of Tubthumpin and stomps down the hallway, shoulder-checking Zanzibar as he passes by.
"Moa is this the thing that would bring Nangnang out?" Valour says, looking at the grung egg.
"Yes,” Moa says.
Valour draws his sword and drops it down on the petrified grung egg, shattering it in half. At that time, angry Dur-Dur-Dur stomps back into the room and begins venting his grievances to the ice snake. When the egg splits, a tendril of slime rises from its surface and transforms into a frog-like head that bobs towards Valour. A croaking voice sounds out in his head, “Nangnang will help you now!”
Valour withstands the Trickster God's advances, and Moa kicks the bastard out of the paladin’s head. Nangnang then soars towards Dur-Dur-Dur, creeps into his head, and plants himself down on the couch within.
"What a fine couch we have in here!" Nangnang says.
"I have so much to talk to you about!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, perking up. “I’m Dur-Dur-Dur! Look through my head and see my daddy!
“Oh yes!” Nangnang says.
The two then have the most wonderful of conversations!
Valour glares at this ordeal. "Moa, is there any way to kill you guys?"
I thought this guy was supposed to have high Charisma!?
"Acererak keeps us here," Moa says. "He slaughtered us and imprisoned us within this tomb. It keeps us anchored."
Dur-Dur-Dur realizes his new abilities from Nangnang let him climb on the walls and ceiling. "This is amazing!"
Everyone else starts checking out the room, searching for hidden stuff.
"Let's find somewhere to rest," Valour says.
Zanzibar proceeds to have a mental breakdown about how little time has actually passed, meaning that it will be very hard to obtain the benefit of a long rest due to rules as written.
Dur-Dur-Dur grabs an opossum and tries to juice the wine out of it.
"Let's take another short rest, spend some Hit Dice, and try to survive this god-forsaken place." Dur-Dur-Dur says, the opossum not nearly as juiced as he intended.
While the party is resting, Valour begins to speak with Moa. "Moa, why are you guys called Trickster Gods?"
Moa thinks for a bit, then begins to speak, “Omu was once the jewel in Chult’s crown—wealth in abundance, the merchants growing fat on commerce. To enter Omu, it was said, was to enter the gates of paradise itself. Such wealth brought greed. Omu’s hunger for slaves made her rulers demand even greater tributes from their neighbors, and when their vassals couldn’t pay in flesh, they paid in blood. Omu’s feared legions marched across Chult…”
"Hrm... I don't like the way you refer to Omu," Valour says. "Also, me and Pretzelcoatl are cool, and, uh, I was sent to kill some of you… but you’re cool!”
"I was sent to kill some of you... but you're cool!"
—Uul'valor "Valour" Stevenson
🌱 starts dissecting the gray slaad and gets some teeth out of the ordeal, but he cracks open the slaad’s head and finds that there should definitely be something in the center of its brain area. Dur-Dur-Dur finds the same thing, since he also tends to lack something in the center of his brain area. The gap in the head looks like a polygon object should fit in there. He tries to insert a skeleton head in there, but it's too big.
"Hey Nangnang, why is there a little hole in this thing's head?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"I don't know! It's not as good as this couch though!" Nangnang says.
"That's right!" Dur-Dur-Dur says. He then grabs the greatsword from the slaad’s corpse. "This is mine now!"
And so it was his now.
As the party starts getting a good ways into their rest, like maybe… a couple of hours’ worth, as Zanzibar is duly notating and grumbling about the whole time, a loud clattering/drumming sound echoes out from the upper floor, just like the sound that kept them from resting previously. Valour dashes out of Papazotl’s crypt to look upward, seeing nothing.
"It's probably hiding in that hole where what's his name got his arm ripped off!" Valour says.
"We need to investigate," 🌱 says.
"We've got lots of staves," Valour says. "Let’s put one in that mouth and see what happens."
"If we're leaving here, I'm drinking that potion. I'm at 5 HP." Dur-Dur-Dur says, grabbing the potion of supreme healing that was in Nangnang’s sarcophagus.
Dur-Dur-Dur downs the potion of supreme healing and WHOOPS! Turns out it’s actually a potion of poison instead, which drops him back to 0 HP.
This is the second time that Dur-Dur-Dur will drop to 0 Hit Points this session.
Valour goes over and slaps Dur-Dur-Dur for 1 HP as he uses lay on hands.
"I'm worse off than I was before!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
The party goes up the stairs, stopping at the open mouth of Guga where Orvex lost his arm.
"All right, give me that stick," Valour says as 🌱 hands him his quarterstaff.
Everyone backs up.
Valour sticks the staff inside the mouth, and something tries to grab it. He pulls it back out, seeing that the staff is now clawed to hell.
Valour glares into the magical darkness. "Hey... uh, if you clawed this stick, then you suck. Come fight me!"
Nothing happens.
They check out the claw marks, concluding that no animal made these marks.
"Shoot your cannon in there!" Dur-Dur-Dur tells Chumbawumba.
"All right, well… Uh, let's see. I can set it up out there," Chumbawumba says, setting the force ballista up at an angle to the face. He unloads several shots for a minute straight, filling the inner mouth with shots of force damage. "This is what we call a barrage where I'm from!"
After several shots, an inky-black shadow demon emerges from the face and skitters across the floor towards towards the grate nearby. Valour is lurking near the mouth, invisible thanks to Moa’s blessing, and just smites the SHIT out of the demon, homerun-batting it right into the wall where it dies.
"Hehe, that's what we call flush and dush!" Chumbawumba shouts.
"Let's never call it that again!" Valour says.
"Stick your staff in there," Dur-Dur-Dur says, pointing at the mouth.
"Hold up! Just give me a minute." Chumbawumba says. He fires a few more shots inside the mouth just for good measure.
Valour pokes the quarterstaff in. Nothing happens. Valour pokes head in. Nothing happens. He takes a 10-foot pole out and sticks it in, feeling the edge of a wall about ten feet past the mouth.
"WAIT! You had a 10-foot pole and you took my staff? Give me that!" 🌱 says, snatching his quarterstaff back.
"I forgot I had it," Valour says.
"You forgot you had a 10-foot pole!?" Zanzibar says, aghast.
The party then gathers around the grate that the shadow demon was heading towards. They peek through and see water.
"Okay, we can all be a fish if we want—" 🌱 begins.
"I've got a better idea!” Zanzibar blurts in. “I've got an owl!"
Zanzibar sends the owl down, which notices a river flowing a long way beneath the dungeon. He flies southward and sees a pocket of gas as well as a stairway. He decides not to go down there, so he instead goes north.
"What do you see through your owl's eyes?" Armand says.
"I see all kinds of stuff!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, trying to puppet Zanzibar.
The owl continues to fly, following the river until it is out of Zanzibar’s range. The wizard then recalls his familiar after he goes on for a bit.
Zanzibar explains his findings. "So to the north it goes on for quite a while without any interesting landmarks. However, I got to a part where I could not go any further. To the south I was cut off pretty quickly by a cloud of gas. I couldn't tell what it was. I couldn't go much closer. There was gas in there."
"Could be a spirit," Armand says.
"There were stairs, though they may lead up into Obo'laka's tomb,” Zanzibar says.
"Confront the apparition!" Armand says.
The party decides to check for secrets on Obo'laka's tomb. While searching around, Armand finds a loose brick behind one of the thrones the wights were sitting in.
"Armand, you gonna poke that button?" Valour says.
"Oh no no no,” Armand says. “Dur-Dur-Dur, I think I found something for your specialty of opening things and finding monsters."
Dur-Dur-Dur steps up and pushes the brick. The hidden wall opens, and a piece of flint on the bottom makes a spark which ignites the gas on the other side, catching Valour, Zanzibar, and Dur-Dur-Dur in the explosion. They all save, taking 8 fire damage.
Dur-Dur-Dur falls to 0 Hit Points.
This is the third time Dur-Dur-Dur will drop to 0 Hit Points this session.
Armand spares the dying on Dur-Dur-Dur. He pats him on the head and says, "Good job."
Valour slaps Dur-Dur-Dur with lay on hands for 1 Hit Point.
"That was CRAZY!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, waking up.
"Dur-Dur-Dur, you must warn me when you plan to do that again," Zanzibar says.
"They literally said, 'do this,' and I did it. What more do you need?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Valour dunks the 10-foot pole into the water and sees that it's 3 feet deep. Dragonbait leads the way down the towards the south, eventually coming to the end. The river’s end has water seeping in from several cracks in the walls, but a strange chest with a skull-mouthed keyhole hangs from chains in the air.
Zanzibar reads the words etched around the keyhole, which says, "I devour all but the greatest thieves."
"Shoot it with your cannon!" Dur-Dur-Dur says to Chumbawumba.
"Hold off on that thing," Zanzibar says.
"Just say fire when you're ready, sir!" Chumbawumba says, setting up the cannon.
Zanzibar casts detect magic on the chest and sees that it has an aura of evocation magic around it.
"That's the magic that blows stuff up!" Zanzibar shouts.
Everyone backs up, and Chumbawumba fires at it with his cannon from afar, exploding it and dropping its contents into the water.
"Tubthumpin, go get us the treasure!" 🌱 says.
"Well, that's just it. He already has treasures inside him,” Chumbawumba says.
"Give them to me then." Dur-Dur-Dur says, and Nangnang mentally high fives him.
"NO!" Chumbawumba says.
Dur-Dur-Dur just takes the stuff from Tubthumpin anyways, and the tub dunks itself into the water to scoop up the loot. Altogether, the tub finds 300 gp, a mug that has a sad face on it when empty and a happy face on it when filled with contents, and a stoppered bone tube with a scroll of remove curse inside.
Dur-Dur-Dur instantly trades 500 gp for the smiley mug.
The party then navigates up to the northern end of the river, at one point remembering that there is a demigod kingfisher living in Dur-Dur-Dur’s beard. Sikkukurut leaps out, eyeballing the two new party members.
"Ah yes! New faces, mm, yes!" Sikkukurut says. "Who are you two, yes?"
"I'm Armand the cleric," Armand says.
"Hello Armand, yes," Sikkukurut says, then turns to Chumbawumba. "Who are you, goblin?"
"Don't talk to him, Chumbawumba," Valour says.
"Hello, I am Chumbawumba, and this is my homunculus tub, Tubthumpin."
"Homunculus? Ah yes. Very progressive! Yes!" Sikkukurut says.
"Are you calling me a tubbosexual?" Chumbawumba says.
"He's a tubby chaser," Armand says.
Everyone loses it at Armand’s sudden quip.
"Who is this bird?" Armand says.
"We forget he exists until we do, and then we have to talk to him,” Valour says.
Sikkukurut then goes and hides in Tubthumpin.
The party keeps going north along the underground river. They see some stairs branching off from the river, which they discover lead to a secret door. They open the door and step through, realizing that they are in Moa’s tomb.
The party notes the new discovery, then heads back up the river until they find its end. The underground river plunges down into a dark, rocky chasm. Cold air swirls up from below like the breath of some monstrous creature. Through the gloom, the PC’s spot an ornate treasure chest resting on an opposite ledge.
Zanzibar casts light on a coin and throws it down the shaft. It falls a bit more than 100 feet until it dims. After a minute or so, the light goes out as something covers it up.
"Is somebody up there?" a childish voice echoes in Zanzibar's head, the sound reminiscent of a deep, rippling cavern that has been unseen in aeons.
Zanzibar is almost ready to poop his purple pants, but he is able to telepathically communicate back with this entity. "Nope! Nobody is up here!" he says.
"That's silly. If nobody's here, then who am I talking to?" the childish voice giggles.
"Uh... you caught me in a lie..." Zanzibar says.
"Ahah! I caught you!" the voice laughs in an infantile manner.
"Who are you?" Zanzibar says, carefully.
"I'm G'lyh'rul!" The voice says.
This is definitely not a regular-people name.
Zanzibar ponders for a bit. "Do you know Withers?"
"Withers? Oh, you mean Gorra!" the voice says.
"What? Gorra?" Zanzibar says.
"Gorra was his first name," the voice clarifies for him.
"Do you, um, are you part of the Company of the Yellow banner?" Zanzibar says.
"Never heard of them!" the voice replies.
"Do you live here?” Zanzibar says.
"Oh yes."
"How did you get down here?"
"A bad man did it,” the voice stifles a bit, as though recalling a terrible memory. “He put me here."
"Did Gorra put you in there?"
"No! The bad man made Gorra into Withers," the voice clarifies.
"Oh..." Zanzibar says, then takes a deep breath before asking his next question. "Is the bad man Acererak?"
"Oh… oh, oh, oh!” the voice panics a little bit. “That's the bad man, yep! That’s the bad, bad man!"
"Can you get out of here?" Zanzibar says.
"No silly! I can't walk. I swim!"
"Do you need help?" Zanzibar says, peering over the edge.
"Well um..." voice begins to speak, but then it fades. Just before Zanzibar asks what’s the matter, a different voice echoes in his head—this one is deep, guttural, and sinister. "What are you doing here?" it accuses the wizard.
"What? Who are you?" Zanzibar says, desperately wanting the other voice back.
"I am G'lyh'rul,” the ominous voice declares. “How good of you to notice."
"You are G'lyh'rul? Who were we talking to? You used to be a little girl?"
The voice butts in, full of anger and determination. “I await the coming of the death god, the herald of the fall of divinity! Nobody will prevent the ascension of the Child of Guga!”
Zanzibar nopes away from the edge and tells the party what the hell just happened.
"Send that bird down there!" Armand says.
The PC’s decide to send Sikkukurut down the waterfall tunnel to figure out what the hell is going on with the two voices. He descends down into the darkness.
He doesn’t come back.
"Kingfishers eat fish though,” Armand says. “That might have been a bad idea.”
"I don't think a bird is eating that," Zanzibar says.
They listen for a bit, but they hear nothing else. Still, there is a treasure chest sitting on the other side of the open hole.
"I think Dur-Dur-Dur should go over there with his Nangnang powers." 🌱 says.
"Tie a rope around me," Dur-Dur-Dur says.
The party ties a security rope to the orc, and he crawls over the ceiling to the other side where the chest is. He takes another rope and begins to tie it around the mimic…
Wait, did I say mimic?
Turns out the treasure chest is actually a mimic! The minic smacks Dur-Dur-Dur in the head, drops him to 0 Hit Points, and sticks to him with its adhesive side. Ah shit, now Dur-Dur-Dur is stuck to the monster!
This is the fourth time that Dur-Dur-Dur will drop to zero Hit Points this session.
Zanzibar casts ray of frost across the hole at the mimic while Dragonbait runs over to Valour and holds onto the rope tied around Dur-Dur-Dur. Artus Cimber fires a volley of arrows, hitting the mimic with two of them as 🌱 uses healing word to bring Dur-Dur-Dur to consciousness with 6 Hit Points.
"Get up Dur-Dur-Dur! There's something stuck to you!" 🌱 says.
"OH NO!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, alarmed that he’s attached to the mimic.
The mimic then smacks Dur-Dur-Dur again and drops him back to 0 Hit Points.
This is the fifth time that Dur-Dur-Dur will drop to zero Hit Points this session.
Chumbawumba drops the cannon and fires several times at the mimic while Armand begrudgingly uses healing word to heal Dur-Dur-Dur back to 5 Hit Points, further terrifying the orc at the horrible back-and-forth situation that he is quite literally roped into.
Valour keeps one hand on the rope tied to Dur-Dur-Dur and uses the ring of jumping to leap across the chasm, landing next to the mimic chest. He raises his sword and jams it into the mimic’s open mouth, slaughtering the monster and saving his orc ally.
"We've got to get out of this terrible place!" Valour says as he shimmies onto Dur-Dur-Dur's mimic-encrusted back. Dur-Dur-Dur piggy-backs them to the other side.
"Hey Zanzibar, ask your girlfriend why she didn't tell us about the mimic!" Armand says.
Zanzibar peers back over the edge of the cavern. "Hey, are you still down there?"
After a few seconds, the cheery voice returns. "Oh you're back!"
"Hey, so, there was a mimic up here," Zanzibar says. He’s kind of pissed.
"A what?" the voice says.
"It's like... a monster... you know what mimics are?"
"No..."
"Oh, uh, well it's a thing up here,” he says. “What's down there?"
"Well, not too much,” G’lyh’rul says in a ho-hum manner. “Some boats. Some gears. I think you can turn the gears and connect some bridges? Oh, and Napaka!"
"Who is Napaka?" Zanzibar says, unable to keep track of all these dangerous sounding names.
"You don't know who Napaka is?" G’lyh’rul says, aghast.
"We're new here! We've only been here for 7 hours even though IT FEELS LIKE A LONG TIME!" Zanzibar shouts.
"Queen Napaka,” G’lyh’rul says. “She's the last Queen of Omu!"
Dur-Dur-Dur could have told Zanzibar this. After all, he told Ezekiel this back in episode 38.
"Queen! Does she live here?" Zanzibar says.
"Yes!"
Zanzibar hesitates a little. "Is she alive?"
"She's asleep."
Zanzibar suspects something super dangerous about this sleeping queen. "What happens when she awakes?”
The telepathic voice stutters a bit. "People might die... she might flatten them with the stone."
Zanzibar is glad to know this, but he is very unhappy that this information exists in the first place. He then tries counting the number of floors within the tomb that they are familiar with.
"What floor are you on?" Zanzibar asks.
"Well, Gorra said we are number five! Yep!"
"What else is on the floor that you live on?" Zanzibar says.
"OH YEAH THERE'S THE GOLDEN MASTODON OF CH’GAKARE!” the voice blurts into his head like a child who just remembered that they have to use the bathroom right now Mr. Teacher I need the hall pass!
"Is that friendly or unfriendly?" Zanzibar says.
G’lyh’rul huffs. "You’ve never heard the story of Ch'gakare? Here it goes. So Ch’gakare was a Chultan warrior who stole his king’s prized steed: a mastodon named Ghom. As punishment, the king’s sorcerers banished Ch’gakare and Ghom to the Nine Hells. And that’s bad! But the two fought their way back home. On his return, Ch’gakare chopped off the king’s head and turned his skull into a jeweled chalice! And that's their story!"
Zanzibar now knows why damn near nobody knew where the fuck Omu was because who in the hell would want to go there anyways? And that's without the tomb of death! "The jeweled chalice… is it there?
"The mastodon is!"
"Is that a magic item?"
G’lyh’rul’s voice shifts into a deep, accusatory tone. "Is what a magic item, Zanzibar?"
“Oh… you know my name!” Zanzibar says in a mild panic.
"I know many things about you, Zanzibar the Magnificent,” the evil voice taunts him. “I know you are a noble. I know you have a wide family. I know you are the son of the Manzibar of Kinchasa. I know your nobility stretches far beyond Kinchasa’s borders. Who knows... maybe that merchant prince title will make its way to you one day?"
The voice fades away.
Zanzibar freaks out a little bit.
