You rested (while Maugis healed) at the Shadow (not poisoned this time!) and met with Syrr Kogag in his aeropod the next morning. Syrr K went over the “treasure map” with you and what intel he had (from Black Arkat meditations on your foes, and from maps and charts he'd compiled while waiting for you). But he could not see inside the hidden harbour from here-some exotic magic blocked his sorcerous senses. There was, however, a trail through the jungle that leads to the harbour. So he suggested/indicated this plan: “Our foes claim to be “against twilight”. So we shall bring them the powers of twilight and they will face their reckoning. We strike at twilight with the forces of darkness and fire. Watch our enemies' base until you see me arrive and begin the devastation. Plan your assault while you await my coming. We shall kill every one of them; wipe these “prophets” out. Listen to no pleas; smash their loathsome mouths in. Then I will keep watch while you explore their base. Gather intelligence; look for any writings – but be careful reading them! Bring them to me. Destroy what you can that seems of the enemy's making; do your best. Come to me when you are ready to depart. Then I'll return you to Gothalos and you can take the Shadow home- I will have other business to deal with, depending on the outcomes of this mission. In time, I will return to Giraine and continue to investigate its significance to the Hero Wars…” And finally he did ask if you liked his plan, and you did. You gathered provisions for your trip and set out. The dense jungles were quickly overgrowing the trail, feeling as if they grew even while you hacked a clear path. It was hot and humid under the canopy but you endured; even grumbling Maugis; except with some light fatigue. Leading the way, Boamund (or was it Fraud?) cut a swath of vines away and was confronted by stern-faced grey, cracked stone statue of a bearded Jrusteli noble, pointing into the distance behind you. He casually walked around it, unshaken by the magical power emanating from it, and the rest of you gave it a wide berth. Whatever magic was left there was surely not good or worth messing with, and Boamund was too strong-willed of a Malkioni to have his faith rattled by a potent reminder of a fallen wizarding empire. Later, you heard some movement and you saw a great beast in the jungle. It had been munching on vegetation but was frightful to behold: a bizarre bird-reptile-like thing with a small, almost beaked head bearing little teeth, a long neck, a burly (seemingly obese) body, stubby clawed hind legs and tail, and huge arms ending in metre-long scythe-like talons. Miguel smartly reasoned that it must be a draconic thing like a dinosaur; not a chaos monster; but like no Gazzam (earth-shaker/dinosaur on Genertela) you'd ever seen or heard of. Ahappi opted to step forward and cast his Dark Foreboding spell on it-it paused, looked his way in surprise, displayed it huge talons and then slowly accelerated away into the depths of the jungle, crashing as it went. It arced back behind you but did not pursue; it must have returned to where it was feeding. Still later, you came upon a succession of ~4m diameter earthen mounds in jungle clearings; three sets of them, each time involving a pair of mounds topped with odd, moist, blue fungi. You'd spotted some bits of bones in the soil that the mushrooms grew on and thought it was best to skirt these things and continue on your trail, so you did do without further incident.
Finally, you approached the edge of the jungle as twilight drew near. You were on the southwestern edge of Gothalos island, and found higher ground to look down upon the walled fortress and harbour that you sought. Sturdy stone walls and double towers with wooden gates blocked entry from the land. The towers boldly sported grey flags with purple runes of Illusion, Disorder and Chaos-clearly proclaiming that this was a Bad Place. Past the gates, there was a 6m high hill with an equally tall ruined keep perched on its brim, and from there an eerie glow emitted, like unhealthy sunshine. On the west side of the enclosure there was a new-looking wooden hall, two-storeys tall and flickering with torchlights in the windows. The harbour waters were strangely dark, whereas shadows and lights danced in the open ground between the harbour and the hill. In the harbour there was a single dock where a galley sat moored. You watched the fort and saw little movement but it surely was occupied.
You planned your assault: although the tall trees near the fort walls were all cut down, there was enough jungly growth to give you added cover for a stealthy approach in the shadows of twilight. And so you did that as the right time drew near. You hid near the base of the walls east of the gates and readied a rope for Fraud to carry to the top, which he easily did, allowing the rest of you up. As you mounted the top of the walls, you saw Syrr Kogag's aeropod round the western side of the harbour and a commotion arise in the fort-torches were lit and shouts echoed. But then the two towers, one by one, were blasted by huge magics from the troll sorcerer-hero: each one was suddenly frozen at its peak in cold lead, 6m in diameter! No one inside could have survived, and indeed the towers fell silent. Seeing your opportunity as figures ran across the open fort grounds and threw magics or missiles at the aeropod (and got blasted by Black Arkati magics in return), you descended and rushed the glowing hill, with your magics cast including Maugis's very useful Haste spell.
On the hilltop, you rushed into the broken walls through the remnants of the keep's old gates, squinting in the strange pale (but blinding, to weaker folk but not you) light that hung everywhere inside the keep. There you confronted some of your foes, and they were dire! Five bestial humanoids, well-muscled and hairy and sharp-toothed, had readied their maces and shields but hadn't quite expected you to come from behind them, so they'd just turned around as you arrived and they had no special magics ready. You smashed into them and speedily hewed down three-although Ahappi had acid vomited in his face, the fifth creature cast a spell that levitated it with chaos power, and the first one of them (a rune-decorated priest, you soon realized) after some effort invoked a strong divine spell that shifted the whole balance of the battle!
From the body of the eagerly muttering creature who accepted the spell from the priest, rending the flesh of its host apart like rotten fruit, a huge demon burst forth. It was almost a SIZ of 50 and sported clawed hands and fangs with paralytic venom, smashing clawed feet, a barbed tail, and whooshing batlike wings. Its huge frame was massively armoured with scales (16pts!) and its blows could casually knock aside all but your heaviest weapons. It engaged you with relish-this was a demon from the deeper pits of Hell, delighting in being set loose upon this world to spread destruction and despair! Your struggle with it was desperate. Maugis managed to knock the priest unconscious with a Palsy spell but his Banish spell, some blows from Ahappi's anti-chaos spear, some critical hits from Boamund's spear, Fraud's Curse Chaos and more all did little or nothing to it. Soon, Fraud lay in the dirt with his leg paralyzed from its venom, Boamund had his abdomen crippled too, and Ahappi was envenomed in his chest. Miguel had kept you standing as much as he could with Heal spells, and rained in arrows as extra distractions.
But it was one alone against three strong warriors in melee, and you managed to get in a lucky blow-Ahappi dealt it a critical hit when it fumbled. With that, his spear drove deep through its leg armour and it howled in torment and alarm - “Saint” Buquaim's magic spread through that wound and knocked it quickly dead! It fell and burbled away into rapidly decaying ichor and other bits. You'd won-but how dire was the cost?
Ahappi was dying- he dropped to the ground, his spear falling from his hands as his chest went numb. He had his Abjure Breath keeping him from suffocating but his heart and other organs might soon fail, it seemed. Maugis inspected him and proclaimed the urgency of your situation. And the other two warriors were only able to crawl. Miguel saw that, behind where the humanoids and the demon were, in the centre of the keep's open core, a strange device emitted a 2m-diameter black void; a Chaos Void, Boamund and Fraud said. An entry to the netherness; the utter non-existence; of Chaos itself, surrounding the real world and planes. The strange device was a semi-pyramidal little black wooden or metal box with a wiggling pendulum that swung disturbingly back and forth, in ways that no material should be able to. Miguel stepped over to the device and whacked it with his spear. It was not dented but fell over and the void that had been erupting from it hissed and vanished. Maugis had been looking around at the bloody graffiti on the keep's stones and the strewn layers of bones; old and fresh; and ascertained that many sacrifices had been done here. Miguel picked something (a blue crystal on a cord hanging from the priest's neck) up and bagged it; he also threw a sack over the black device.
It didn't take long for Fraud and Boamund to piece together what was afoot here on the hilltop keep area: these humanoids were ogres; Chaos beings who could hide among human societies by adopting more human-like false forms, but these ogres hadn't bothered. They had kept to their inner nature and reveled in being man-eating destroyers of everything, and they had brought a priest of their ogre god Cacodemon; greatest spawn of the devil Wakboth; for some terrible purpose. That priest had called an avatar of Cacodemon here to try to kill you: a Fiend; and it almost had succeeded. Considering that ogres (before, in your team's researches, indicated to be involved in the Purple Prophets' schemes) are here and engaged in demonic summoning, the news is very bad. This isn't just singing crazy songs. A Fiend is deadly on a tactical scale, but the involvement of the Cacodemon cult could even bring the Cacodemon itself to this world, and destruction on a geographic scale befitting the Hero Wars.
There was no time for more investigation here. You knew your time was short, especially for Ahappi. Reasoning through your options and risks, you hoped that Syrr Kogag had some remedy in his aeropod. But you'd have to get there. There was still the fort, probably with enemies, and the ship, whose crew had gone below decks under dark-fire from the aeropod; if not any further foes. Something had been issuing deep, chuckling laughter that boomed around the walls and that had not stopped. You didn't like that. But you had to do something, and fast.
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