You rested for the night in Rittame's house after Maugis blessed Boamund (finally!) and the Baronet's wounds, so the party was closer to fully healed. Meanwhile the Baronet and Captain guffawed and blagged in a drunken stupor, watched sternly by an all-too-sober Rittame. Some of you had vaguely strange dreams and wondered what debt you owed to Old Brewbreath for her healing– you felt your dreams had something to do with that, and often thought of her the next day.
Yet in the morning the Baronet came to stop laughing, as his hangover hit and his suffering began. You were awakened by a commotion down in the harbour. On investigating, you found that the fishermen had hauled in their local nets to retrieve their overnight catch, and were amazed by items they'd caught. One by one you looked into the great nets, full of flopping fish, scuttling crabs, gnarly driftwood and slimy seaweeds, and spied recently lost items of yours: the Captain's aluminium magic bowl from Stormswallower (which the Baronet said they could keep by right of finding it, but he wanted to use once beforehand), Maugis's staff (which he argued for but then relented to let the poor fishermen keep), Ciddar's new crossbow (which the sea had badly mistreated, but he got back in return for some help taking the nets back out to sea that morning), and Lord Shaven's shield (which he tried to get back for nothing, not being able to do labour for the villagers). The fishermen told of how they'd seen a funny, wide-eyed and gaping-mouthed little green fish near their nets that morning, and had tried to catch it to no avail, but it had not been seen since – this, of course, you knew must have been wily old Omen – surprisingly far from his home coast of Giraine.
Ciddar had a solution to the latter item's return that amused almost everyone: the Baronet could get his heraldry-embossed shield back not for labour, but for entertainment! With much frowning and groaning, the Baronet was cajoled by the party and sailors to dress up with seaweed hair, a bolt of sail cloth for a dress, and crab shells for, ahem, chest decoration. With the hornpipes and clapping and stomping of the locals, he reluctantly gave a lame little dance that satisfied everyone else (they were relieved that neither his dance nor appearance were fetching). Rittame watched all this with a stony face, arms crossed.
Having retrieved most of your goods, you waited for Ciddar to lend a hand as he'd promised, while the Baronet withdrew to regain his composure and mutter about revenge on Ciddar. Maugis cast some final healing on Ciddar before he left to haul the nets. Captain Ahappi intoned Malkioni phrases as he held the aluminium bowl (full of seawater) and meditated on reaching out to Stormswallower. He lulled himself into a trance and heard her voice. She told him that Handra had been wrecked and then was plagued by pirates (Wolf Pirates, she said), so she could offer no help with the Red Vadeli. She answered that your quest must be to suffer until Magasta was satisfied. As Bar'ran's quest helpers, she implied you were to either suffer and live (persevere his trials), or suffer and die (fail his trials). That seemed to be it, and the Captain closed the connection just as she related that he must “beward of the purple…”— purple what?
You found out soon enough what the purple menace was. Rittame and two of his fellows took you out in Rittame's old family fishing boat, the Longfin, and the old seafarer would hear nothing of Ahappi's warnings that there was a curse upon you and these poor fishermen and their craft were all doomed. “Makan watches over me, I know that. The Longfin has survived for generations in my family, enduring many a storm and reef and sea beast. And Old Brewbreath told me this morning that, while I might travel further than I expected, I would return safely.” This all seemed to be wrong, when near dusk you approached the nearest Pasos islander port that the fishermen thought might offer you transport back home. A thick fog bank enveloped you, and Rittame drew the Longfin to anchor. Through the fog, you saw that the twilight seemed to coalesce into a violet glow in one western point in the distance, and that glow grew. It turned out to be something riding on the seas that drew closer and closer to you, with the purple glow growing more intense as it did. Rittame and his fellows became quiet and grim, as you secured yourselves to whatever you could and awaited the worst.
Soon you all saw it cleave through the fog, and could see six great oars that plied their way not through the sea, but through a purple mist that a great vessel floated upon, just over the waves. Ciddar shouted out “Luathans, no!!!” as he spied figures on deck– thrice the size of a man, and violet-skinned, and ornately armoured. From a mast-like structure where two Luathans clung, you saw a deep violet flash, and a concentrated beam of blinding purple light leapt from that spot and struck the Longfin. With a hiss, the entire ship disintegrated into lavender fog, and you plunged into the seas. Whatever it was- the magic of the Luathans or the misty remnants of the Longfin, or your quest, or Makan himself, you had no time to react further: after a few shouts of alarm and the Captain's cries to Magasta to take you to the Gates of Dusk (which he thought would be fun!), you entered a dazed state… and woke up elsewhere.
Boamund found himself on a lovely white sand beach a few strides away from a thick, verdant jungle bursting with life– a great contrast to the homogeneous, silent, mosquito-haunted Red Vadelis' jungle on Alatan isle. He found tracks: odd two-toed ones, and horse hooves, amongst many smaller ones. So he followed the nearest horse prints to the jungle's edge and tried slashing his way in through the twisting, dense undergrowth but found his sword-arm quickly tiring. So he chanted his Pithdaran magics and conjured his ring-of-flames to burn the jungle away, and that helped him walk in, but soon caused him to lose what little trail there was.
After over an hour of hiking his column of fire wore out, and he took the opportunity to look around. He decided to try using his fireblade magic to blaze a new trail through the jungle, so that he might see things better. Immediately he spied movements in the jungle all around him, and espied a large dark non-human figure moving stealthily, then the motions stopped. From another direction, he spotted a flurry of motion just in time to prepare to defend himself. A man-sized, feathered and scaled thing well armed with nasty claws and teeth leapt just past him, misjudging its attack, then wheeling about and preparing to grab him in its feathered arm-wings… but Boamund's blade struck true, severing its taloned foot as it shrieked in pain. Its shrieks, soon ended by Boamund's next blow, were answered by similar shrill calls from near and far within the jungle.
Boamund knew he was hunted, and called up his fire-wall again. He continued to burn a route through the jungle, and could tell from their calls that the lizard-bird-things (Deinonychus) were following him and gathering their numbers… But then they stopped, quite suddenly, and Boamund heard an ominous rumble. Dropping his magic, he saw smoke ahead, with flames leaping high above it, and a hot and cinder-strewn wind: a forest fire! Had he started it – how, if it was ahead of his path? He sought cover, such as boulders or a pond, but found none suitable, and decided he would instead try to outrun the conflagration. With his skin-of-life magick enacted, he could endure the growing clouds of smoke, and very well that he could! He ran swiftly and flanked the heart of the fires, then found a safe place to enter the charred lands where it had been, and used that as his path, and he again brought forth his fire spell.
After some more time hiking, he halted himself suddenly as his foot sank deeply into ash-covered, sucking mud. Remembering similar experiences along the Pithdaran coastal swamplands, he skirted the area, probing the ground with a charred branch, and found a safe way around the obstacle. Soon enough he was back in intact jungle, but found a nice trail! Removing his flames, he set down that trail. Boamund soon followed fresh tracks by one or more horses, and spotted other ones- diverse, large beasts, it seemed. And soon he spotted the trackmakers: two centaurs with limp humanoid bodies lying on their backs, a manticore, and two burly minotaurs— beastmen! He hid off the path and there were some tense minutes where the beastmen stopped at his tracks on the trail and the manticore sniffed around, but it soon lost his trail and he breathed a sigh of relief, waited a while longer, then returned to head up the trail.
Boamund suddenly paused as three arrows whistled into the ground at his feet. Looking around, and speaking calm words of peace, he saw no one. Then a great green leaf fluttered down from the canopy, right in front of him, and he saw two runes written on it in ashen mud: a death rune superimposed on a fire rune. The warning was clear enough for him: no more fires. He'd never met elves before but knew their presence when he met it. They did not show themselves, but he was sure they were watching.
The trail continued on for over an hour, then met a glade of lush flowers and fruit trees, where it began to fade and split left and right, skirting the glade. Boamund headed to the left side and soon saw boot prints on the trail! Civilization? These prints turned into the glade itself before the path split into several more leading into more normal jungle. So he followed the tracks warily into the glade, smelling sweet perfumes of flowers and passing a rainbow of colours of plump fruits. And then he realized the glade had thinned into a sort of clearing, where many great logs were laid out, and figures reclined atop beds of reeds and leaves on those logs. Some other figures were attending them, waving them with cool gusts from palm fronds.
Boamund halted, slack-jawed, as the Baronet sat up from lounging on a log and held up a coconut, saying “Aha! Ho there, Boamund! Come join the party!” And the group was reunited at last– the Baronet had been unconscious for a while, fortunately for him because he was unhappy to be “taken prisoner” by cold-hearted plant people. The others had washed up on various beaches and wandered around without incident before meeting elves and being kindly treated then escorted into the glade for doting applications of Aldryami versions of luxury. The elves did, or would not, speak any tongues you knew, and seemed never to speak to each other, but would make simple gestures or write a few runes to communicate with you. They were mostly brown elves; gnarled, leafy-haired, bark-skinned plant people, short of stature but long in prowess with using the powers of their forests.
You reasoned that you must be in the Kanthor Islands– Ciddar, in particular, was sure of this. These fantastical, wild isles were the next chain northwest from the Pasos Islands, where you'd come from (Barehook isle being in one remote nook of that archipelago). Some of you, like the Baronet, wondered how a jungle could be in these lands, which you expected to be more temperate, but Ahappi reminded you that the sun set not far from here, so its warmth made this land more tropical. These were no yellow elves, which the Baronet and Captain chilled you with tales about– headhunting, disease-bringing flowers, and worse. They were just peaceful elves of a small subtropical island, far from any great forest, and so with simple means and short memories of past politics.
Long ago in the Second Age, this region had been part of the whole land of Seshnela, but was shattered by the Closing, the end of the Middle Sea Empire, and especially the earth-rending magics of “a paltry few” Luathans from the lands of Dusk. Elves and beastmen and such had moved into these lands later in this Third Age, and the Kanthor Islands has been a wilderness ever since, interposed between the seafaring men of the Quinpolic League like Pasos, Nolos and Pithdaros on one hand, and the dark, mysterious, old-fashioned Malkioni of the Castle Coast to the north and east. All that lay to the west from here were legendary lands like perhaps Brithos, the Vadeli isles, or even the fabled Gates of Dusk, all of which mortal men kept far away from, but heroquesters might dare to tread…
Ahappi tried to explain your doom-laden quest to the elves with some simple diagrams scrawled in the sandy soil, and they watched him with keen interest, then suddenly fled en masse into the jungle with uncanny gracefulness and group coordination. You were left alone for the night, but amply provisioned and rested. The next morning, the grove showed signs of wilting and the onset of rot. You took this as a prompt to leave, but as you did the elves returned just as suddenly and quietly as they'd left, and in a rush of excitement. They were all pointing to the west, and helping you to quickly eat some breakfast of tubers and fruits so you could leave with them. They hurried you through the jungle, with the plants at times visibly moving to part a way for you. There were no signs of the forest fire, dinosaurs or beastmen as you jogged along with the Aldryami, and soon you saw through a gap in the jungle to the beach, and the ocean beyond, where a gorgeous and ornate Pasos naval trireme sat at anchor.
You walked onto the warm sands and heard shouts as a rowboat was lowered from the vessel. Again your thoughts were occupied with grim curiosity about what doom would come next– impressive as this ship was, you felt it was certain to meet an even more impressive end at the hands of Magasta's furious curse.
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