This Chult's Got a Death Curse!

The group took the saved Grung to Nangnag’s Shrine, explored it unchallenged. The group took a single Omuan coin from the piles of treasure through the shrine and offered it to Nangnang, securing a puzzle cube. The group went to Papazotl’s Shrine and fought some crocodiles. The mother had Vogon in her jaws much to his horror, Jewel teleported him out and Vogon turned her into luggage.

Bart solved a shadow puzzle, the group discovered a hidden passageway behind a bat statue, sent Caesar in to examine the tile key. The group solved the final puzzle and secured the puzzle cube of Papazotl. The group went to Unkh’s Shrine and examined the many keys. Triggered a trap with the wrong key and fought some Ghasts, then layered the keys together to find the correct one, acquiring Unkh’s cube.

The group traveled to Obo’laka’s Shrine, found a strange teleporting pool, but struggled to solve the tricky puzzle of the Shrine. Nearly got petrified grabbing the puzzle cube before it was safe, luckily Caesar noticed a secret door that allowed Vogon to determine the solution and grab Obo’laka’s cube. The group traveled through Omu only to be ambushed by a group of yuan-ti.

The party finally reached Omu and immediately found how much the jungle had already taken from them. Potions had spoiled during the long trek, forcing Pizza and Philomena to salvage what they could, and even that practical problem underscored the length and attrition of the expedition. Before settling into the city proper, the group also met a chwinga, copied a translation tablet, followed vegepygmies, and saved a grung from sacrifice, a reminder that Omu still sat in the middle of living Chult rather than apart from it.

Once inside the ruined city’s orbit, the party reconnected with Orvex and began taking on shrines. At Wongo’s shrine they deciphered the animal-viewing puzzle, fought su-monsters, and recovered the puzzle cube. Later, in the ruined bazaar, they clashed with kobolds maintaining Omu’s traps, killed the leader, searched the hideout, and used Speak with Dead to learn more about Acererak, the shrines, and the location of the Tomb of the Nine Gods itself.

By the end of the session, Omu had shifted from destination to active dungeon space. The group dressed the princess in finer clothes, mapped dangers, and learned that the tomb’s exact location was finally within reach. The city had taken thirty-six days to find, and when they arrived it greeted them not with one revelation but with decay, puzzles, expired supplies, and the growing certainty that the endgame was approaching.

After a long rest, the party resumed the final stretch of their overland trek toward Omu. The journey took days more than anyone wanted, with the company repeatedly pushing onward through Chult one day at a time while weather and terrain threatened to sap their momentum. Heavy rain, fog, and the constant risk of losing their way slowed the crawl, and at one point they lost five hours to the jungle’s confusion, though not enough to ruin the day entirely. Even so, they endured, keeping the group together through the last miserable stretch toward the lost city.

Along the way they found the Diurna Varun mine and spent time experimenting with the strange control panel inside. They tested gem after gem, correctly realized that the center console was the key to activating the hidden mechanism, and came very close to understanding that the true answer lay with the power gems, though they did not fully solve it yet. Elsewhere in their preparations, they managed an improbably clean effort involving razor wire and a portable hole, putting together a plan meant to leave a future enemy dead and contained. The party was not simply marching at this point. They were probing old Omuan secrets, preparing traps, and trying to get ahead of whatever waited for them at journey’s end.

The last approach to Omu brought one final confrontation before the city itself. Ifan Talro’a and Heel intercepted the party in the jungle, with Ifan revealing just how much he had pieced together about the amulets and their powers. He laid out his ambition plainly: to use the Amulet of Souls, the Amulet of Death, the Amulet of Resolve, and eventually the Amulet of Dreams to corner the market on life itself, reviving the dead for profit and using that monopoly to rise above the merchant princes as king of Port Nyanzaru. Heel emerged at his side, and the confrontation turned violent. The party killed both Heel and Ifan, fought through the danger of Ifan’s dinosaurs, and came away with an Omuan coin that ended up in Jewel’s possession.

At last, after all those days of marching and delay, the company reached Omu and rose to level 7. Their arrival was marked not by silence, but by the bitter, mocking voice of an ancient construct still echoing the city’s old welcome, directing merchants, performers, petitioners, and the ruined survivors of conquered places to their proper destinations in a city long since swallowed by tragedy. It was a grim threshold to cross. By the time they entered Omu, the party had survived the jungle, tested the secrets of Diurna Varun, cut down one of their oldest enemies, and stepped into the dead heart of Chult at last.

The group met Artus Cimber and his companion Dragonbait and learned about his Ring of Winter that allows him to control the cold and prevents him from aging, he did not divulge how he acquired it. The group learned about Chultan history, the Barae Rings, Ras Nsi, and more. The group discovered Dragonbait communicates by emitting smells. Dragonbait and Artus sized up the party and decided not to travel together, but offered a place to sleep for the night.

While sleeping, a group of frost giants located Artus and the party, as well as a roaming frost drake and her hatchlings. The party killed the giants and the mother frost drake, acquiring a magic staff that can cast Zone of Truth. During the chaos, Azaka Stormfang transformed into a weretiger and attacked Artus, succumbing to the temptation to take his ring. A well-timed Calm Emotions by Jewel ended their spat.

The party discussed meeting up with Artus later in Omu and parted ways as they headed for Kir Sabal. Asharra performed the Dance of the Seven Winds, sacrificing her ability to fly for the group to grant them temporary flight after a show of faith. Jewel and Pizza had faith and acquired a Feather of Asharra, though Vogun, Philomena, and Bart did not.

The session carried forward the aftermath of the party’s time in Nangalore, but not gently. During the night, their sleep was invaded by nightmares thick with the influence of the Sewn Sisters and the looming shadow of Dendar. They dreamed of bodies writhing in agony, of flesh being torn apart between pointed teeth, of loved ones devoured before their eyes, and of those horrors widening at last into a vision of the sun itself being swallowed by a colossal black serpent. It was not restful sleep so much as an assault, and they woke cold, shaken, and with the sense that the forces gathering around Omu were no longer distant threats but things already reaching into their minds.

The dream-terror also carried with it the lingering weight of the campaign’s older bloodshed. The unfinished struggle against Ras Nsi and the revelations tied to the Sewn Sisters hung over the session like a wound reopened, binding together the fate of the current party, the doomed level 10 predecessors, and the monstrous machinery that had been moving behind the scenes all along. By this point the truth was impossible to ignore: the death curse, Ras Nsi’s ambitions, the hags’ grotesque experiments, and Dendar’s promise of apocalypse were all threads of the same tapestry, and every nightmare only made that clearer.

Morning brought no real comfort, but it did bring Queen Zalkore herself. Approaching the party in the garden she thanked them once again for saving her domain from the devastating flood, and for having come to her not as murderers or plunderers but with compassion and curiosity. In one of her clearer moments, she spoke openly of her own grief, her despair, and the self-destructive habits that had consumed much of her life, then declared that as the rightful queen of Omu she wished to reward them with a royal blessing. When she lifted her veil, the resemblance to Syndra was unmistakable, only younger, crowned with living serpents, and terrible to behold.

Zalkore’s blessing was as dangerous as it was generous. She commanded them to gaze into her eyes like loyal subjects before their queen, forcing each to brave the threat of petrification in exchange for her favor. Those who withstood the moment came away changed, gifted with a new measure of strength and marked by the queen’s strange approval. The session ended not with battle, but with dread, revelation, and a dark kind of anointing: the party had survived the night’s visions, stood before Omu’s fallen queen, and stepped forward bearing both fresh power and a sharper understanding of the ruin waiting ahead.