ToA: Session 55

## Golden Eye

As the Company of the Golden Coin end their battle, the Squad goes up to talk with them. The Company is surprised to see the squad, but the conversation turns to the question of if the squad had heard anything from outside the jungle. They had not, and the Company shows them that the illness has spread out of the jungle and has started to afflicted places as far off as New Cyre, Sharn, the Mrorholes, and all of them are in various stages of pandemic response. Streets are empty, houses are closed off, healers are crowded, great halls filled with the dead, and leaders and mages arguing over the situation.

## All That Glitters

The Squad share the informationt hey have regarding the lich with the Company, though the discussion uncomfortable and tense as the Company acts in their self-assured manner and dismiss the information and the Squad. As they speak though, Neb notices that the Company look less magnificent now than they did before. Their cloaks are not the same ephemeral cloaks that had appeared on the members of the Squad, instead they look like simply magical cloaks. The weapons gifted to them are quality without a doubt, but it is easy to see they are not divine, magical perhaps, but not divine. The squad attempts to cooperate with the Company, informing them of what they had dealt with in the jungle, and what they believed to be important, but Sivis and Aurand speak in gnomish with each other to badmouth the squad privately. This leads to arguing between Neb and the company. The discussion gets worse and worse until they cross the line by joking about the Mourning.

## An AU-ful Anger

Neb takes a moment to express his displeasure with the actions and antagonism of the Company. Perhaps they will reflect on this and cease to be such abhorrent, up their own ass, absoltuely insufferable, hypocritical bastards.

## Fool's Gold

After Neb goes off to speak to the chameleon folk and cool down, Kinlek tries to discuss the importance of Ubtao with the Company, to patronizing rebuttling. After they insult Daedalus's mental fortitude, he gives Sivis a good shock by using his horrid whispering mind to scare the shit out of her, albeit unintentionally. He had meant to show her they could speak psychically, but it did not quite work out as he hoped. It becomes clear that they do not believe anything the Squad have to say, or value their methods at all. If nothing else they at least seem intent to go to the Great Works in the center of Omu as well. But they seem sure it is some device there that is causing this, and not Raz Nsi or some lich. Fargus grabs Aurand by the shoulders, and tells him that at the end of it all, he will be lost to the void. This scares the absolute shit out of Aurand. After Neb notices just how haggard and tired the Company looks, he decides to try to smooth things out so they can get on with things already. He can see they are not well either, and there is no point in arguing further. Auran gives a flask to Daedalus, some sort of liquid having to do with Daldon. The Squad promise to return the Chameleons to their families, and the two groups mercifully part ways.

## Golden Days of Youth

As the Squad escort the chameleon folk, they overhear them talking about a story one of them, Uaxi, back when she was a child, and how she used to sneak into the grand library to learn about history. She talks about how sh truly believes in the Company as the heroes and this gives her hope, Zeltic dismisses her though. They continue on to the story of how she had fallen into a hdiden room as a child in the library, and that he had helped find her and other children who had gone and gotten lost in the ruins. Uaxia talks about how she saw reference to Ubtao and the heroes, particularly she remembers the mention of the peacock cloaks, and how in ancient times the heroes had wrought something upon Omu, which they are destined to repeat. She also mentions something about a pearl heron.

## Golden Oldies

Kinlek asks Uaxi about the pearl heron, but Zeltic interrupts and says if a priest of Ubtao does not know about it, it can't be real. He hijacks the conversation to speak to Fargus about what he said regarding the chords. He tells Fargus about how there was an elder in the tribe back when he was younger, who would speak about the same things as Fargus, but that he had plucked out his eyes for the wisdom. He wonders how Fargus came to have this wisdom.

While they talk, Neb asks Uaxi about her adventures in the library, to try and pinpoint where the hidden room would be and what she had seen. He asks specifically about the Heron, and she tells him. The Pearl Heron was some sort of ancient clan that no longer exists. They were perhaps a House or Dynasty, or perhaps some sort of inherited title or honor given to others. She says they were not like a knightly order, nor a scholarly order, but were more like a family, a family not bound by blood but by being of the Pearl Heron.

The Squad takes a break to rest and refresh themselves, which Zeltic uses to speak to Fargus about the elder from forty or fifty years before some more. He tells Fargus how the elder had not been blind but that he wen tinto the jungle and traded his sight for knowledge. He asks if they know about the god Ruarte, the snake god that Fargus had in fact killed. Ruarte was the one who gave the elder his vision, and was the god of the Chamelon folk, called the god of coiled knowledge. Zeltic tells Fargus how for much of his life after, the elder would sleep and drink his days away so as to avoid the horrid knowledge he had gained, and that he never truly knew happiness or comfort afterwards. Eventually the elder passed. Zeltic recalls how his father, when he became an old man himself, would speak about the elder and describedhim as a lost hope. He told Zeltic how he had asked the elder about the spirits before, but that the elder would not speack of them, but instead of his brother who was lost in the jungle. It was his final memory, which haunted him to the end. After a moment, he asks us if we know what the owls sing of.

**Will the Squad find yet another strange connection to the divine? Will the library yeild anything of value to them? Or will the owls sing of them next? Find out next time on, TOMB OF ANNIHILATION!**