Lizard Lockdown

## Synopsis

In Season 2, Chapter 13: Lizard Lockdown, an unconscious Graven found himself lost in another buried memory – this time exploring the mountains with another young goliath whose tattoos bore a resemblance to that of a childhood friend's.

A prolonged trek took them to the site of a frozen lake rumored to be the last resting place of an Ice Elemental – and the crystals at the bottom were prized by the great totem warriors whose footsteps Booraj hoped to follow in.  All seemed to be going smoothly when Booraj slipped below the ice to begin his dive, but as Graven waited at the surface he spotted a strange, three-eyed fox and immediately felt that something was amiss.

Moments later the ice was cracking and Graven plunged into the water to rescue the boy – but he found nothing other than darkness, and liquid turned to air as his surroundings changed to that of a Soul Shelter.  It was another memory… this one more recent but also distorted – and soon the culprit of these irregularities would reveal himself to be none other than Bufmir, the god of trickery and deceit.

Like Donovan Ainsley and Grom'legail before him, Bufmir believed that Graven's continued pursuits made Q'usñi uncharacteristically weak – and in the zero-sum game played by the meddling gods, this represented an opportunity for the others to increase their level of influence.

Bufmir replaced a small piece of Graven's divine connection with one of his own and then helped him find his way back to the party through the use of the Seeming spell – making Graven appear as an oversized Kobold to get him through the door of the Hanas Theater.

Between Erland's reemergence, Graven's deception and the disappearance of both Ka'imi and Ravi, there was plenty of explaining that needed to be done – but in this rare moment of isolation with the Lodestone in sight, now was hardly the time.

With a mighty swing of Ichabus's metal maul, Graven realigned the stone and the sound reverberated throughout the building – alerting the colony to our presence. Metal bars locked into place to secure the doors and we had no choice but to stand and fight – and though we foresaw this to some extent, we did *not* anticipate such monstrous reinforcements in the form of a Giant Subterranean Lizard.

A well-placed fireball roasted most of the Kobold combatants right away, but the lizard sunk its teeth into Erland and things were looking grim until we forced it to spit him back out.  The creature soaked up attack after attack and at one point even swallowed Graven whole – until at long last a shot to the eye and a slice to the belly from Safira got us back on our feet and headed for the exit in haste.

Back through the foyer and into the courtyard we went, picking off scouts as we ran. The gridded puzzle outside proved to be quite a challenge without Malyk's map, so we looked to Orba to rack her brain for the correct route and lead us safely across into the foggy ruins of Manasami.

The lift at the base of the crater was thankfully still intact, but the group was too heavy to ride up together – forcing us to split into teams of two. First to the top were Erland and Safira and they hustled to send the platform back down as quickly as possible, a welcome sound to Orba and Graven who were anxiously waiting at the bottom.

Before we had the opportunity to board, we heard the sounds of fast-approaching foes – and we knew we'd have to buy ourselves some time against the wave of Kobolds that was about to crash upon us.  With as much fire and fury as we could muster, we picked off our enemies from range and the lift finally settled at the base of the cliff.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: two natural ones were rolled in this Chapter. 1 each by John and Jordan.