Chapter 4 : Tzlaj

surrounded a large city, the remains of which are only just visible around us, and around it, dismal marshy lands stretch out. The atmosphere is hot, moist and clammy – what one might expect on a chase after snake-people. Before us is a lake in a basaltic plateau, clearly the result of a one-time eruption of the still smoking volcano that we see beside it. A small, square island in the middle of the lake, clearly artificial, holds a small town with two wooden bridges leading to it. To the side, construction works are ongoing on the old city works and even on some of the ruined building, although at this moment the short tropical dusk is setting in and people are streaming back into the city.

This is the town of Jiang-ti, although we cannot make sure yet from this distance. In the middle of the town is a huge, square-based, stepped pyramid with what appears like an altar on top of it. A similar pyramid, but much smaller and rectangular, rises among the ruins at the lake shore. Meanwhile we have witnessed the arrival of several barges manned mainly by dwarves and a few humans, and the sun is setting rapidly. The only people to be seen outside the town, are the guards at the ends of the bridges, so we decide to make our way through the ruins to the nearest bridge.

#### Dark intentions

Our path takes us along the base of the smaller ziggurath (let’s just call it that) and while we pass it, Terrak hears what appears like a door falling shut. On a hunch we decide to follow suit. A careful search of the ziggurath’s top (and indeed, it holds an altar) finally reveals that pressing the snake statue’s left eye activates the opening of a secret door. Behind it is a deep shaft with the faint flickering of firelight at the bottom, and the sounds of something scraping on stone rise up from below – Tinder says it must be a pry bar used to unwrench stones. Terrak goes down first, careful not to make any sound and listening all the way for signs of discovery. He reaches the bottom of the shaft without problems, but then faces a tricky situation.

The shaft ends in the center of the ceiling of a square room, leaving no other option than to jump down the final few yards, and the persons that obviously must be the source of the noises, are still nowhere to be seen. Two of the rooms four doors stand open, and the light and noise come from one of them. Taking the chance, Terrak lets himself down to hang on the bottom step, then jumps the last yard and immediately rolls away to the room's far corner. Nevertheless, he was spotted and sees something that looks most like a giant lobster coming to him – apparently it had been standing guard, or happened to have been facing that way. Facing it alone seems like a bad bet, so he darts away into the next room and takes position on top of the large stone sarcophagus that stands there. Meanwhile, Druw has jumped down as well and Rufus (who was right behind him) is scrambling down as fast as he can. They come together with the lobster at almost the same moment, leaving it flanked and within easy close-range bow shot from me. Right after Rufus’s first strokes, one of my arrows whizzing past it, and a fierce thrust from Druw, Tinder jumps down on top of the beast. In rapid succession, Rufus’s next attack lands, my second arrow goes in up to its fletchings, and Tinder chops the beast literally to bits.

#### Twisted Intentions

To our dismay, Druw repays Tinder by attacking him – it is clear to us that, altogether mad the Bard may be, he must be under someone’s or something’s influence. I distract him by nailing his tunic to the door he stands before, and Tinder strikes him down with the broad side of his axe. At that moment, a third door opens and another one of those beasts jumps into the room. Tinder and Rufus attack immediately, but after his first attack on the beast, Rufus turns on Tinder! This must be the doing of the third creature that Terrak briefly saw while darting across the room – wasting no time, he runs to it and to his own immense surprise (and relief!), finishes it off in one blindingly effective stroke with his rapier. This, fortunately, frees Rufus and between his and Tinder’s next attack and Terrak jumping on top of it, the beast is done. After reviving Druw, we have a good look at where we are. It was already clear that these must be the tombs of these people, and it has all appearance these creatures were ordinary grave-robbers. Not willing to descend to their level, we quickly decide to leave the graves and tombs in peace, but we cannot resist taking the spilled gems and coins littering the floor. As well, we take some interesting items from the villains.

After that, Druw informs us there is some apparently unfinished business down here, since his necklace is shining blue – a clear sign of undead creatures in close proximity. We swiftly narrow it down to the fourth, as yet unopened, door. Behind it we find another sarcophagus, still closed and apparently untouched. After some deliberation, we decide that opening it to destroy the undead inside, is no sacrilege (1). Hendel befalls the honors of opening the stone lid, and is rewarded immediately by getting grabbed by the throat. With its other hand, the mummy (or whatever) is holding a sword and it is clearly intending to use it. In a swift succession of axe and sword strokes, and Druw’s very convenient nascent Turning ability, we managed to blow it away.

Another round of searching followed, and we must count ourselves lucky that Terrak found a space underneath the coffin, inside the sarcophagus, where a magic sword was hidden. It’s inscriptions bore a meaning something like ‘I slay snake-people’. A curious thing to find so close to ‘Snake-town’, especially with the mummy of an undead snake-thing. Finally, we leave this place by the tunnel those robbers clearly dug to get it. Deciding it is no good way to start a good relationship with a new town by arriving in the middle of the night, we seek a safe and quiet spot in the ruins in front of the town-lake and wait the coming of dawn.

#### A New Light

Dawn comes and goes as swiftly as twilight does here in the tropics, and just after that people start streaming out of Tzlaj. Most are clearly craftsmen going for their work, but there is also a large group of humans, elves and other non-snake-people led by snake-soldiers, clearly they are slaves, who pass close to us through the ruins, apparently headed to the restoration works at the old city walls. I am starting to develop a slight disliking for these people.

The Jiang-ti guard at the foot of the bridge is civil enough, although very business-like, but he appears to be smelling something bad whenever he turns in our direction. After entering our names in the book, and hearing a short lecture of do’s (stay in the non-snake quarter, and obey orders from snake-people) and don'ts (anything else), we are free to enter. Let’s just hope walking out will go as smoothly.

#### The Golden Cup

To keep on the safe side for once, we go immediately to the ‘scale-less’ quarters and look for the inn there to settle ourselves in. The innkeeper of ‘The Golden Cup’ is only too happy to explain the many intricate rules and habits of his town, or rather, their town. Disobeying any of the Jiang-ti can be enough to get you enslaved, and at night the crocodiles that infest the lake will come into the city when they are particularly hungry. Apparently these snakes think we smell bad, so it is best to wear some sort of snake-perfume for their benefit. In between he has selected us a few fine rooms, and baths are being brought in. We hear the directions to the local trader, descriptions of the few other shops there are and an admonition that, since the snake-people regard us as some sort of low-life, bugs really, they do not see why we should pay fair prices when buying stuff, or why they should pay fairly when we want to sell. By that time, breakfast has been served and is already more than halfway finished.

The day we spend by looking around the ‘scale-less’ compounds, getting to know the people and their backgrounds a bit. At night, during Druws performance with Harp and Song (2), we engage in small talk with the other guests. Hendel quickly befriends the Dwarf merchants guards that came on the barges but learn that although this is not their first visit here, they know little of the city for never having ventured beyond the restricted area. While Terrak tries sniffing out any undercurrents in the many conversation around the room, a snake-woman suddenly enters and goes asks Rufus to sit and talk with her.

#### Proposal from HssTafi

While Hendel asks his Dwarven friends and the innkeeper what they know of her, and signals Terrak to keep an eye on her, Rufus sits down with the snake lady and hears her out. She comes up with one of those classical ‘business proposals’ – she is from House HssTafi, one of the more powerful families in the city, and would like to tip the balance of power with respect to one of the rivals, House H ́Sossoth or something like that. This, apparently, is best done by removing a set of ancestral statues from the rivals, which they believe to be the main source of their strength. For this we would receive a miserly five thousand gold pieces – only a fraction of what we saved after killing those grave-robbers.

Rufus comes over and motions us to join him for deliberation – he is very much in for a bit of random adventuring, as, clearly, are Druw and Hendel. Terrak cautions that several criteria should be met, we should know more about the target and about her motives, and we should receive substantial financial and/or material support. In the end we decide Rufus should try for more information, and not worry about the rest (3). We do get some more information. It appears this other family is living in a tent-like structure at the city’s main square – it’s canvas walls should make getting in or out very easy.

Much of resistance is not anticipated, it is mainly a residential place housing at most one or two hundred people (if memory serves me). Of course, the most likely storing place for the statues would be in the middle of the house, and it stands to reason that it would be guarded in one way or another (or in more ways).

#### Scouting

Juneeka and Terrak are sent out to scout the way into the tent-like house, which turns out to be no easy task. The tent is ill-suited for climbing, especially when one prefers to remain unnoticed, and the nocturnal active Jiang-ti incessantly roam their corridors. After venturing in and out two of the closed entrances, Terrak decides to leave the work to Juneeka, who manages to remain almost completely unnoticed in her mouse-form, except for one encounter with a snake who sees a tasty midnight-snack and is rewarded by Tunica’s full-size human boot heel on its scull. She manages to obtain the lay-out of most of the main corridors, and locate the most likely place where the statues are kept.

The next night we go in full strength. Due to the detailed knowledge of the tent’s interior, and Druw’s magic Harp that made us invisible, we are able to get to the statue’s holding place completely without being noticed. There were a few very close near-encounters, but a bit of luck and a nearby corridor were enough to counter that. Major annoyance were several clouds of stinking, acrid fumes, that had a nasty mind-numbing effect. Luckily only Juneeka and Terrak were affected. In short order, we cut a hole in the room’s outer canvas wall. Rufus and Hendel went in with Druws Bag of Holding, and although we expected many nasty magical traps, nothing whatsoever happened when Hendel removed the statues from their places and put them in the Bag in short order. Except for noting that there were twenty, and each very different in size, shape and material – ranging from wood to clay to stone to iron – we did not take the time to examine them in any way.

On our way back we had another breath-taking close shave. As we re-emerged from the slit in the room’s canvas wall, some commotion broke out somewhere inside the House. Immediately, one of the nearby doors opened to emit a fully armed Priest, clearly rushing out to find the source of the commotion. We could only just manage to keep him away from our Circle of Invisibility – we would have become just as visible to him as we are to each other. After that, we could simply retrace our way back to where we entered without any further ado or problems on the way. After some deliberation, we decided not to try and hide the Bag of Holding with the statues outside the city. Although it would be wise not to have them on us, the bridge guards would certainly notice us and our conduct would be questioned.(4) Instead, we take it along back to the Inn, and simply hope that the Dimension fold inside the Bag will provide sufficient protection.

#### Laying Low

The next days there is not much for it but to try and remain as unnoticed as possible. The following morning at breakfast already a Jiang-ti search-party comes by the inn and command everybody to stay at their tables while the Inn is being searched. The innkeeper observes it all with little display of emotions – he is probably not happy with this, but also not willing to try and stop them. Meanwhile we hear from the first-floor some noises as people are unceremoniously wakened and put out of their rooms, and we sweat our way through the waiting. The soldiers leave again.

That evening, Druw performs again at the Inn, as he has done most of the evenings up to now. His performance this time is so superb – even we have to agree that there is some spark of talent in him, after all – that he attracts the notice of a representative of the Priest-hood and is invited to perform at a party in the Temple the next night. He warns Druw that his play should be at least as good as it was tonight.

The next night, while Druw is finally playing after a stupid encounter with some tentacled beast that lives in the deceptively calm looking pool in the Temple complex, Juneeka and Terrak try to scout out the buildings of the complex. Unfortunately, Terrak does not manage to remain unnoticed and is forced to flee in haste. While waiting out his pursuers at the mouth of an alley, he is attacked from behind and swallowed whole by what looks like a mound of rotting vegetation. Druw and Hendel, who had been waiting nearby, rush to his aid and manage to free him before any serous harm could be done. As they arrive back at the Inn, the inn-keeper sighs and tells us that he told us not to go out at night!

Some days later, maybe even in the evening, a Jiang-ti comes to see us at our table. We have, or rather, Juneeka, has seen the commander of this party before – he was standing guard outside the room with the statues. The rulers of House H ́Sossoth clearly have not been pleased with him, judging his back full of fresh whip-marks. He furtively approaches us and asks without much ado whether we would be willing to reclaim some important items from their rivals, House HssTafi, that they have recently stolen. Feeling rather smug, the statues he must be referring to are still in our possession, we decide to hear him out. He is willing to offer seven hundred gold pieces per statue retrieved. Hendel negotiates with him, and suggests we may try to take more back from them. The Jiang-ti finally agrees to pay an additional four thousand for the staff and necklace that are worn by the Head of House HssTafi.

1. and hope the townspeople will share our view if we ever come to the situa- tion that we have to explain...
2. There is something of a talent in him after all, it seems.
3. Not the best of deals we could have cut, in my opinion.
4. And although I am quite sure of my abilities, it is not without doubt if I could have made it out of this island-city and back in again completely without notice...