22 Rova 4719, night

Jungle South of Akrivel

It has been five days since my previous journal entry, and while the disturbing events I recounted then may have contributed to this, the primary… the real reason is that I have been distracted. No, distracted is not the right word — it is more like captivated.

The jungle has me enthralled: the nearly infinite greens of the tropical canopy and storied underbrush, the vivid color of the fauna, the murky muddy browns of the river stained to russet at the edges where the fallen leaves steep to make a riverine tea in which brightly colored fish and other aquatic life frolic. And above bright hues flit against the splashes of deep blue sky.

And the sounds: the nonstop clamor of a thousand insects thrumming — one chorus for the day and another for night. The raucous call of the birds. The soft “hrumph” of some hidden jungle cat. And the sound of wind and water in the trees.

When the storms come they come hard as the wind whips the tree tops to and fro and the warm downpours drench everything below, making the already humid air nearly impossible to breathe.

I was raised in the temperate forest of the Chitterwood and found it a place of remarkable beauty, but here in the jungle is a different kind of beauty: it is more saturated and noisy. 

We have Renali as our local guide, but mostly she serves as a councilor on how to move and survive in the jungle, while I eagerly scout a little ahead of the team.

We took to the river on the 18th and finally made good use of our boats. While the water is wide the current is slow and so we paddle to make way even though we were heading downstream.

On that first day we met Gerhard Pendergrast, the famous archaeologist (in his own mind — none of us had heard of him). He was arrogant and mostly clueless and had led his team to a dragon totem — a blue one — where he expended them fighting the boggard guards and the effects of the blue totem. They managed to triumph in the end, but only Gerhard remained standing because all of his workers had been turned to stone by the totem. He had managed to topple it and get it wrapped in burlap and was trying to drag it back to his boat on the riverbank.

We had detected that it was magical and thus a threat, and had pleaded with him to let us disable it, but no, he knew better: he had the situation well in hand. Except he couldn’t drag the thing on his own and he offered to pay us each a shiny gold piece to help. Liberte and I exchanged a look and he smiled and stepped up to help move the totem. And at the first patch of rocky ground he managed to “accidentally” drop his end. Hard. There was a loud crack and a split now graced the totem and it was no longer radiating magic. Gerhard was a little upset at this, but his good spirits soon returned and we helped him load the thing into his boat.

The last we saw of him he was paddling desperately against the current as he headed upstream.

Later that same day we realized we were being followed by a band of Cinderclaws (well, we assumed they were, and they were) and so we stopped and set a trap for them. Two ran away, one — a boggard — Qantrip put to sleep, and the rest we killed.

We questioned the boggard and he was surprisingly helpful. We learned about the  location of their main fortress, the composition and general number of their members, and the different colors of the other dragon totems that they had placed in the jungle. Apparently they can detect when one is disabled and this patrol had been sent out to find the people who had “shutdown” the green one.

We let him go and advised him not to tell his superiors about us because it would make him look bad. He blanched at that and said he thought this was sound advice.

Over the next two days we continued to explore along the river before crossing over to find the village of the elephant people. The village had been torched and a pair of very upset elephants eyed us suspiciously from the far side. We heard someone within one of the burned out huts cry weakly for help, and we were able to help him.

Edka had been the village elder and after he calmed down the two elephant guardians he explained what had happened. A group of Cinderclaws showed up at the village and demanded that they be given elephants to work in their gold mine. The villagers refused and the Cinderclaws set the huts aflame. The elephants then attacked, stamping some of the Cinderclaws to paste as the rest fled. The villagers had escaped south, but Edka had been trapped beneath a fallen timber.

He shared a lot of information about the Cinderclaws and warned that their fortress had a lot of things that looked like dragon totems on the walls. He set off to find his people while we followed the Cinderclaw trail east.

Today the ground became more and more swampy and we had to be careful with our footing and even used the boats to cross some of the larger and deeper mires.

We stopped early enough this afternoon that I was able to draw a number of vignettes from our recent exploration and encounters.