KHAZUUL

"Quick thinking Kiddo," Freki praises Sow after she kills whatever was creating the mucus ... or was it the mucus itself.

"I have no idea what it was, but it seems dead now," he responds thinking she was asking about what was in the trunk.

He doesn't have a torch so he moves out the way for someone else to help Sow and instead takes a closer look at what's in the book.

"Looks like it," he agrees with Cutwell's guess at a tin whistle, "anyone know how to play?"

As the twilight descends on them Freki suggests, "Let's not mess around too much here. We need to find a place to hunker down for the night. Probably just using our tents where there's some cover. We don't want to draw any attention to ourselves this close to the Dreadwings."

"Here, I have a lantern." Flint lights it and holds it over the hole, peering in cautiously.

"You're right of course Freki." he says over his shoulder. " Let's see what we can see first. Then we can think about finding a place to camp, and no, I've never played any instruments. I would have liked to learn though."

"We won't want to accidentally camp near one of these things," Sow says as the light is raised and they can see into the opening...

Taking notice of the surroundings, the jungle doesn't look particularly different than any other patch of jungle. The only notable differences are the lightning-struck tree and the presence of a relic of the Old Empire.

Flint casts his lantern's light, and he and Sow peer into the orifice. At this closer range, you inhale a sickly aroma that consists of the sweet smell of rotting fruit, yet thick with the scent of iron that always accompanies spilled blood. Under a blood-spotted strands of mucus, you see the inside of the tree is lined with hundreds of fleshy, pink polyps, or perhaps fungi, that are fading to grey. The grey ones are shriveling and cracking, oozing blood and mucus as they die.

Neither of you have never really seen anything like it. You aren't even certain if they are plant or animal, or perhaps a bit of both. They do seem to be the cause of the mucus.

Backing away from the sight with a sickened look on her face, Sow just shakes her head. First no from what she'd seen, trying to cast it from her memory, and then yes to Freki and his idea to move on and make camp.

"Whats so special about that?" Cutwell asks, not bothering with the tree. When he finally has his arm reattached, he points a metallic finger at the flute and then at Saffron.

"Does it do magic, or something like that?" he asks, wondering why something like that would need to be stashed away.

Hearing everyone's reactions to the inside of the trunk Freki can't help but take a peak himself. "Ugh ..." he pulls back momentarily to hold back his gag reflex and then looks again a bit more carefully.

"I wonder if those fungus-like polyps can be harvested for something useful?" he wonders aloud.

"The darts that I have are coated in a tincture made from a poisonous mushroom up north. Maybe these could be used in similar way, although there's no telling what the effect would be. The mushroom tincture cause sleeps. I don't know what a distilled version of that mucus would cause."

"Can I borrow your knife a second," he asks Cutwell in order to cut off a handful of polyps. He wraps them in a broad leaf and puts them in his pack. "I only have 3 of my darts left, so I might try experimenting with this later."

---

As he's doing this he listens to Saffron's story behind the flute.

---

After he looks around the jungle and says, "To be honest, this might be as good a place as any to make camp. The local fauna probably stay away because of whatever that was, but now that we've dealt with it, it might be the safest place to stay the night."

"I was wondering the same," Flint says to Cutwell, head cocked sideways at the mysterious instrument as he tries hard to forget the disgusting contents of the hole.

"I'm not sure about camping here for the night," he saysto Freki stifling a shudder.

"We just need flat ground," Sow says with a sly smile, producing the tiny hut from a pocket...

Flint looks at the tiny hut as if it just sprouted wings and a tail.

"What if it shrinks while we're sleeping? Will we shrink too and be tiny people or get crushed, or will we be left sleeping under the elements?"

Sow shrugs as she looks happily at the little dwelling. Her voices breaks partway through her response.

"When you shrunk it -- kaff -- when you shrunk it down... d-didn't it toss what was inside out?"

Cutwell makes a face and then quickly another, as the points were raised about being crushed to death in their sleep.

"Thats true, ain’t it?" he admits of Sow’s argument. "Well, best we put it where they can’t see it." he says, motioning to the their competitors camp. "Only I reckon they’ll come investigate, won’t they? If they see this thing suddenly pop up on the hill!"

Freki puts a hand on Sow's shoulder to show that he shares her enthusiasm for the relic but agrees with Cutwell, "Yeah, I think we're too close to the Dreadwing's to risk using that tonight. They could have patrols out that might see that thing from a far, like I did last night before the storm."

"Luckily, it's not pouring tonight, so we should be able to stay dry."

Turning to Flint he says, "Well, if you don't like it here then lead the way. We'd better get moving before it gets too dark to find a good spot."

"Just far enough away that the Dreadwings can't hear us or see our campfire if we dare make one." Flint heads in a direction away from the Dreadwings.

"I don't trust this weather holding out, but we can hope it does. I rather like being dry for once."

Short clean-up post to deal with questions in my absence!
Yes, we can say that. For the two used to euthanize the dying men, Cutwell would have injected them without damaging the dart. For the Eater, however, there is a chance the injection mechanism would be damaged if it hit bone, etc. Roll a Die of Fate!

1-3: Dart is permanently damaged
4-6: Dart is functionally and can be reloaded.
The polyps are shrivelling and dying, but they will still contain a sample of mucus and blood. You confirm the polyps were growing out of the walls of the tree's hollow interior, as if part of the tree itself. After removing the polyps, you see that there is sweet-smelling green wood beneath them, like a sapling's. You would have expected the tree to char straight through.

Day 7, Watch 3
Wilderness Action: Make Camp
Location: Hex 2 (!)
Weather: Nice!The company searches the local area and finds a reasonably concealable position suitable for their nightly camp. Once the camp is set up, you share a meal of rations (Please consume 1 ration and adjust inventory). As you eat, you are presented with Khazuul's night sky for the first time. It seems utterly foreign to all of you. During your month-long travel through the wastes of the Old Empire, you became comfortable with the star positions on this side of the world, but this resembles nothing of that sky, nor any other night sky you've ever seen.

The night is filled with a chorus of wildlife as the drama of the natural world plays out all around you. You serve your watches in turn, each a tense vigil that spies things moving in the woods but ultimately sees no challenges to your camp.

Sow had been in a bit of a glum mood while the group made camp, having been prevented from setting up the magical abode they now possessed. What good was the wondrous thing if they didn’t use it?

In the morning, the girl’s injures trouble her despite the leeching Cutwell had performed on her bruises the night before. She’d taken some pains to hide the crawling darkness beneath her skin during his treatment, and feared she hadn’t been entirely successful. Still, she was happy to see during a private inspection of her bare skin that the condition hadn’t seemed to have worsened these past few days…

"More where they came from, ain’t there?" Cutwell remarks, examining the welt the leech had left on Sow’s body. His eyes are purposely unfocused when not looking directly at the sore.

"If it’s still bothering you later, I can pop another one on, can’t I? I’ll just need to fish some more out of all this wet!" he says, clearing his throat and looking about his feet, as if he might find a plentiful stock of leeches down there.

"Reckon we could find some down in the wet!" he says, pointing in the direction of the swamp.

Whether we want to or not… he thinks, knowing they’d probably take on a few ‘passengers’ if they spent much time down in the muck.