Dur-Dur-Dur has just received a black token from the Ytepka Society, which means that he has committed an act of serious taboo in Port Nyanzaru and risks retribution if he continues to commit any other social crimes. The Ytepka Society is an underground organization with spies everywhere, and damn near anyone who grew up in Port Nyanzaru (like Dur-Dur-Dur has) knows what the society represents.
"I'm in! I'm in!" Dur-Dur-Dur proclaims, slamming his fist on all the doors in the inn and waving the token in the air.
Dur-Dur-Dur kicks down the door to Zanzibar's room and starts jumping on the wizard's bed, waking his tired ass up.
"What are you in!?" Zanzibar shouts.
"I don't think I can tell you!" Dur-Dur-Dur huffs. "It's a secret... can you keep a secret?"
"Much more than you can," Zanzibar says.
Dur-Dur-Dur slams the door to the bedroom shut and barricades it with pillows and furniture. "I'm in the Enigma Society," he says.
"What is it?" Zanzibar asks.
Dur-Dur-Dur tells Zanzibar a completely wrong backstory behind the Ytepka Society.
"Well who gave the coin to you?" Zanzibar asks.
"I don't know. It's a secret! Let's go ask Shenice!" Dur-Dur-Dur then picks up Zanzibar, bulldozes through the barricade, and heads downstairs to the restaurant side of the inn to speak to Shenice behind the counter.
"Did we have a visitor here last night?" Dur-Dur-Dur asks the barkeep. "Any that were... secrety?"
Dur-Dur-Dur tries to beat around the bush regarding his coin, but he doesn't want anyone else to hear, which just confuses the barkeep.
Zanzibar speaks up, "Barkeep, my friend here is trying to ask you a question, and he needs a private room."
"... I rented him a room," she says.
The three of them go upstairs to Dur-Dur-Dur's room, and he shows her the token.
"WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!?" Shenice says, then proceeds to explain the truth about the Ytepka Society instead of letting Dur-Dur-Dur indulge in any bullshit he thinks is the truth.
Zanzibar believes Shenice much more than he believes Dur-Dur-Dur. Probably because when Zanzibar looks at Shenice, he thinks about f—
Dur-Dur-Dur ponders about what taboo he must have done. "Denise, I didn't do anything! I invented the dur-dur-saur, I came to town, I spent... I know what I did. I spent some money with a dwarf. I need to go apologize."
"Who are you trying to apologize to?" I-Guess-Her-Name-Is-Denise-Now says.
"The people in the society!"
Denise-Sure-Okay shakes her head. "What did you do yesterday to get in trouble?"
"I rode a dinosaur in the race. He said 'hit me' so I hit him and then we won."
Denise leans in, her voice teeming with shrewd implicit Dungeon Master hints. "Is that aaaaall you did to win the race?"
"It's all I did!" Dur-Dur-Dur keeps insisting.
Zanzibar speaks up, "There may have been some... pregame tampering with the race. I suggest we don't commit any more taboos then!"
"Wait, wait, wait... I didn't cast the spells. Why am I in trouble?" Dur-Dur-Dur begins to argue.
Zanzibar decides he would have a much more intelligent conversation speaking with plants. Excuse me... speaking with 🌱, who is in his own room getting gear and spell components and beetles ready to venture out.
Zanzibar and 🌱 agree that heading to Firefinger would be a good quest to start immediately since that would get them out of town for a bit and keep Dur-Dur-Dur on the down low.
🌱 goes down to the dock to get Valour while Zanzibar stays at the inn, keeping an eye on Dur-Dur-Dur. Denise explains to Zanzibar and Dur-Dur-Dur that the Ytepka Society helped liberate Port Nyanzaru and establish its independence, and the organization is also constantly trying to root out the criminal Zhentarim that run the black market in the port.
🌱 finds Valour grieving over the loss of their NPC's. 🌱 suggests he drown his sorrows with some brand new NPC's that are waiting for them back at the inn.
"I don't want new NPC's!" Valour says. "I want Minion and Eku!"
"Now now, Xandala and Azaka are fine. You just got to get to know them!" 🌱 ensures the mourning half-elf. "Hell, maybe we'll see Lilac again on our venture!"
"Or maybe we won't!" Valour says.
They return to the Thundering Lizard Inn.
Azaka and Xandala join up with the party. Azaka is geared for a rough adventure, and Xandala is dressed like a little damsel with an adorable parasol and just an oh-so-cutie-wootie disposition!
She's doomed.
🌱 gives Xandala a goodberry. "It's a goodberry," he explains. "It feeds you for the whole day and restores 1 hp. So if you see someone go down, you could shove it in their mouth or whatever else they eat out of and bring them back!"
Valour goes off to buy potions.
The party gets ready to leave.
Zanzibar goes off to buy whistles?
The Kinchasan mage purchases some signal whistles carved from the skulls of dead velociraptors. He tries giving one to Azaka, but she says she doesn't need the whistle since she can make her own noise, and she lets out a loud roar!
🌱 says that he can do that too, so he casts druidcraft and cries like cicadas. Azaka loves him.
Xandala distresses how she misses her father, and how she wants to be an adventurer like him.
Valour buys the naturally gifted sorcerer a useless spellbook. "Here, just hold this," he says. "It will make Zanzibar comfortable.
"YOU ARE WASTING YOUR MONEY ON THIS SORCERESS!" Zanzibar shouts. "I AM VERY ANGRY NOW!"
Dur-Dur-Dur shows Xandala how to draw in the book, just like he draws in his own book. She scribbles in it, ruining the expensive arcane-enchanted pages, which pisses Zanzibar off even more.
The adventurers set out town the River Tiryki!
While on the River Tiryki, the party has a wonderful little collection of random encounters and events, which may or may not include any of the following that have been laid out in a numbered list:
Valour conducting a coming of age ceremony on Xandala and giving her some potions, welcoming her to the club. Zanzibar is probably mad at this too.
🌱 checking out the Eku egg and seeing that it neither matures nor rots. It's not a natural egg. "This isn't an egg," he says. "It's a seed! Should I cast plant growth?"
Dur-Dur-Dur and Azaka screaming and barking and roaring at a flock of pteranodons that got too close to the boats, with Azaka complimenting Dur-Dur-Dur on his roaring, which leads to a long story about how "My daddy taught me how to scream. I never got into a fight as a kid because I just screamed. When I was 17 I got my first fight, I had lost my voice. I couldn't scream back at the kids because I went to the dinosaur races and saw Chompy Jr. He was my favorite dinosaur. I won a lot of money betting on him, and I took the money to the bar and spent it all. I've been there ever since. That's where I met Denise!"
🌱 finding some sinda berries, which he and Dur-Dur-Dur then press into potions, which impresses Azaka.
Valour waking up one night to see Azaka at the top of a tree, staring at the moon. She tries to hop down, but slips a bit. She lets him know that she gets the willies when up really high, and that's why she needs the party to reach her mask up on the tops of Firefinger. They talk about Tyr. Azaka says she believes in Chult, not deities. Valour says Tyr speaks in many ways.
Eventually the party comes across Firefinger WAY earlier than they thought because Dur-Dur-Dur told them the wrong location on the map.
The party docks their boats and creeps up to the massive stone tower, but some four-armed gorilla zombie bullshittery jumps out at them, causing them to fight.
Fortunately for them, zombie bullshittery is their specialty!
Valour wails on one of the girallon zombies with his magical sword, bringing it from 59 to 13 hit points in one turn! The zombies retaliate, making ten attacks at the armor-plated paladin as they bite and punch, but only one hit reaches through his defense.
Azaka steps in and swings her scimitar while Zanzibar drops cover fire with magic missiles. 🌱 freezes the girallons with ray of frost, and Dur-Dur-Dur decapitates a zombie with his great weapon mastery. He chucks it aside, then begins hacking away at the second one.
Minion II, Valour's warhorse, stampedes through the jungle and bulldozes into the final zombie, sending it to its second death!
With the monsters vanquished, Azaka suggests ascending Firefinger at night so that the terrorfolk won't see them. The PC's take a short rest to recharge, then reach the base of the tower. They find a dead corpse at the bottom, its cause of death clearly being gravity.
Firefinger looks like a long-ass Kit-Kat bar sticking out of the ground, with several little rooms on the side that are connected by ladders.
Azaka tries to climb one of the ladders, but rolls a natural 1 and stumbles down. She nopes the hell out of climbing anything else, choosing to stay on the ground with Minion II where there is a substantially smaller number of rickety ladders.
Speaking of rickety ladders, the rest of the party climbs to the first level of the tower, finding an empty ("empty") room with a small pit in the middle that is definitely not full of large spiders that—
Dur-Dur-Dur leaps over the pit and falls and wakes the spiders and they attack everyone. Xandala gets bit nastily on the hand, but when Dur-Dur-Dur stands back up, he starts hacking spiders apart! Those ants in Yellyark taught him a thing or two about how to fight insects that want to eat your booty!
Zanzibar wipes out the final spider with a ray of frost, and Valour doctors up Xandala with some of his holy magic. She has suffered her first wound as an adventurer!
The party crosses the pit and finds a chimney tunnel that heads upward, which the PC's start inching their way through. 🌱 unfortunately get stuck in the tunnel because he's butt-plug-shaped, so Zanzibar has to shove the wood elf through the rest of the way like that Winnie the Pooh episode.
You know the one...
That one...
The second level features a cave that is filled with stirges, which are like a combination of mosquitos, rats, raccoons, and the West Nile Virus. Fortunately, the stirges are snoozing away on the ceiling of their cave, so the party can sneak by if they—
NOPE THERE'S LOOT IN THE CAVE AND THE STIRGES GOTTA DIE!
The party barges in on this skeeter slumber party and just starts stacking leathery, bug-monster bodies from floor to ceiling. Everything dies! The PC's find a dead body in the room with a gold ring and little onyx figurines of chingwas, which Dur-Dur-Dur recognizes as being little tooth-fairy-like creatures that roam Chult and sometimes borrow stuff from humanoids they meet.
The PC's realize the only way to the next level is to step onto the ledge outside, which is 160 feet above the ground. 🌱 almost falls while a gust of wind comes by, but he wildshapes into an ape and King-Kong's his way out of danger. Dur-Dur-Dur tries shimmying around the edge, but he's blown off the edge!
Valour holds onto Dur-Dur-Dur with a rope, and the team manages to pull Dur-Dur-Dur back to safety.
🌱 helps the rest of the party cross over to a ladder, which they then climb up to the third cave. The PC's cluster around the entrance to the cave and see some terrorfolk gathered around a campfire. The party decides to creep in and—
HELLLL NO THEY DON'T! Dur-Dur-Dur just starts cleaving bitches into halves-of-bitches as he meets a terrorfolk in the cramped cave and proceeds to slice the pain away.
As the PC's begin butchering the terrorfolk in the cave, the terrorfolk perched on the top of Firefinger circle up and begin charging the PC's on the edge. One terrorfolk tries pulling Valour off the ledge, but the paadin kills it and divine smites another that tries doing the same thing. Valour steps back into the cave.
While inside, Dur-Dur-Dur hears someone calling for help. He darts around and finds an aarakocra tied up in a corner, mumbling through a gag for help. Dur-Dur-Dur realizes that he can't speak Muffled, so he tells the aarakocra that he'll go find a translator, then just sits down and starts talking to him.
While Dur-Dur-Dur talks to the bird-man, a raging terrorfolk fight rages outside, ragingly. 🌱delivers a gorilla-punch in the face of one terrorfolk, sending it cascading to the ground. The terrorfolks start lobbing javelins at the mouth of the cave, scoring a few little pinpricks of damage against the PC's, so Zanzibar goes full fuggit-mode and lobs a fireball at the center mass of the clustered terrorfolk, brutally charring all of them except for the leader.
He knows it's the leader because of the scar on its eye!
The leader of the terrorfolk flies upward, disengaging from the fight, and disappears as he returns to the roof of Firefinger.
The PC's gather around this strange bird creature that Dur-Dur-Dur found, which Zanzibar unties. The aarakocra introduces himself as Nephyr, and he hails from the village Kir Sabal. Nephyr thanks the party for rescuing him, and tells them that he will spread word of their heroism at Kir Sabal, which he goes to mark on their map...
... but it's already there...
Anyways, the PC's catch sight of the final terrorfolk starting to soar off with bags full of money and shit, and they are not keen on letting him soar off!
With this party, you only soar in!
Unless you're Soren... then you die and get made into go-go juice.
So the big boss terrorfolk flies away, and Zanzibar scrambles up a little chimney and then misty steps up to the uppermost level of Firefinger. He casts ray of frost, tapping into that spell-sniper magic, and does exactly the right amount of damage to drop the terrorfolk leader out of the sky with a ray of frost!
Chests of loot spill EVERYWHERE!
The party bids farewell to Nephyr, who CAW-CAW's away to his home. 🌱 reaches the top of Firefinger and realizes that it is indeed a massive tower with a huge flame burning at the top. 🌱 figures he's got no time for magic flames, so he casts dispel magic and watches it dissipate.
The party spends the rest of the night collecting the dropped treasure from the ground, and Zanzibar comes across Azaka's wooden mask, which is shaped like a tiger's face. Azaka thanks him for it, then helps find the rest of the treasure:
1,800 copper pieces
700 silver pieces
4 gemstones (50 gp each)
spell scroll of commune with nature
The PC's decide to camp out until morning on top of Firefinger, allowing themselves to get a grand look of the landscape at first dawn and add more shit to their map...
... Dur-Dur-Dur is also officially not allowed to scribble anything else on the map.
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