The Lost City

You head for the jungle structure, maybe just a vine covered cliff for all you know, with a wary eye on the lake. Huge predators lurk there, and the kind that could snatch one of the land.

Let's make Awareness(Survival) rolls to navigate the jungle and maybe find food on the way.

Jarik finds a safe path through the jungle around the lake.

While you trek, Roderigo and Jarik choosing your path with some efficiency, you also manage to find a fruit tree. A few quick tests tell you that the heir are not poisonous and are both edible and delicious.

You make your way to the verdant wall and find that it is indeed a wall guarding the lake. It becomes clear that the lake is a vast jungle lake encircling a single great island upon which squats the vine-covered bulk of lost Zukundu of which Otawla spoke. You see glints from roofs, towers, and minarets, finished in metal, above the tops of the overgrown, vine-encrusted stone walls.

You also discover a few dugout canoes, pulled up on shore near the outer wall.

On the island, you saw glints from roofs, towers, and minarets, finished in metal, above the tops of the overgrown, vine-encrusted stone walls. You find the dugout canoes and manage one large enough for your horse, once you convince it to enter the craft and kneel. You attempt to cross the treacherous waters.

Oversized reptiles from prehistory soon erupt from the waters of the lake to attack you. Barely evading the scaly giants, you then reach the overgrown island, clambering up the vine-draped stone walls to escape the cavernous snapping maws below.

You easily scale the walls into the enclosed space of the city-palace, down through the canopy of trees on the other side, and into the darkened levels of Zukundu proper. Wet, hungry, and battered, they find themselves in a section of the city-palace unclaimed by any tribes. The only light comes from the ever-present green star-fruit. An old vine trap, triggered by their footsteps, goes off and narrowly misses you as it drops a ton of masonry behind you.

You quickly notice the fine — if aged — construction of the labyrinthine halls and chambers beneath the rampant plant growth and the amount of semi-precious stones and metals used in the site’s construction. If only you had the wherewithal to pry the valuable materials free and cart them off in great quantities, you could live like royalty.

In a courtyard choked with succulent creepers and dark overhanging trees, a beheaded female corpse lands wetly at your feet. Across the courtyard a great shaggy, colorful shape, more beast than man, bellows balefully and lopes away into the undergrowth. The creature grips something head-shaped in one mighty claw.

The canoes seemed like they were local, made from local trees, anyway.

The body wears a number of small golden trinkets. It's dark skinned like much of the inhabitants of the area. You could make a Challenging (D2) Observation test to learn more about the body.

"Aiiee! Outsiders! They have slain sweet Dako!" Their language shares roots with Kushite so Roderigo and Jarik understand, and Odan picks up the gist from similarities to Stygian.

Suddenly, six tribesmen of similar dress as the body arrive from another direction. They seem to have drawn the conclusion that you are the killers.