The Lost City

You take your time and cross the log slowly. It rocks precariously and you sense the snarls of some predator trapped at the bottom. One by one you cross safely.

The Feathered Ape takes advantage of the delay to make good its escape, leaving a trail that leads to the nearby Jade Keep of the Mekutu.

The approach to the keep is uneventful, but eerily quiet. Tembo tells you that the leader of the Mekutu tribe, Khenaton, is immortal; he is centuries old.

On the edge of the killing ground before the Jade Keep of the Mekutu, the player characters discover Xhotatse severed heads displayed ominously. The heads bob and jerk in a large jade ornamental fountain fed by a natural spring. The fountain has carvings of a strange androgynous face, repeated around the basin. Above this face are the ornate words: "For the Pleasure of Khenaton" in the language of Zukundu, readable to anyone who can read Stygian.

The disembodied heads and rictus grins whirl and careen in a hideous, blackly comic fashion. The Xhotatse guide spits with rage.

"The insult is plain! We must revenge ourselves on the foul Mekutu!"

The guide Tembo urges you to find a way into the Jade Keep immediately and take their revenge on the vile Mekutu.

Cur takes in the area, and looks around for signs of foot traffic.

Tembo tells you that the Mekutu are the "unholy" tribe, possessing strange artifacts and monstrous creatures. All adults have distinctive "long smiles" — eerily broad mouths which are ritually sliced wide upon reaching adulthood. They are as savage in battle as the Xhotatse, but more inclined to torture captives to death rather than simply executing them.



A flat, open killing ground around the keep is clear of vegetation, though littered with the rotting, arrow-stuck skeletons of past attackers. Crude arrow holes adorn the high, jade walls high of the fortification. Anyone crossing the killing ground and approaching the door to the keep will be visible to the keep’s defenders. Barely-glimpsed Mekutu guards, safely ensconced up high behind the keep’s jade arrow holes, can easily fire down at anyone venturing into the killing ground and approaching the door.

"Tembo not know."

Care to make a Challenging (D2) Observation test, an Average (D1) Warfare test, and a Daunting (D3) Insight test?

Each of you can make all three. Each test is for something different.

Jarik is not so much with the understanding on this particular problem.

D2 Observation test (TN 9) - (2d20)

( 18, 8 ) = 26

D1 Warfare test (TN10) - (2d20)

( 13, 15 ) = 28

D3 Insight test (TN9) - (2d20)

Together, you deduce that:
- the jade walls of the keep are both high and smooth, save for the small arrow holes and securely-shuttered windows several floors up, there is no way to climb in here. The keep's walls are too far from any trees to cross over, and there is no access within fro the smoothly sloping roof.

The killing ground seems a poor choice.

You can see that there are side chambers outside the killing ground. Whether these provide an alternate route, you cannot tell from without.

You search the side chambers outside the killing ground and find a darkened stairwell leading down into the Jade Keep. Footprints reveal regular traffic in the area. The stairwell leads straight down for some distance and then levels off, continuing as a stone passage. Clumps of rotting star-fruit — left by passing tribespeople — hang from crude iron hooks at irregular intervals, lighting the passageway with patches of faltering, eerie green luminescence interspersed by long expanses of darkness. The passage ends at an iron-barred gate with a latch that is easily unlocked by humans. An unpleasant stench wafts from beyond, a mixture of meat and dung. An Average (D1) Animal Handling test or a Challenging (D2) Survival test might tell you more about the scent. It is strangely chilly down here too.

Jarik detects a strong reptillian odor among the other foul smells.