Episode 2: Welcome to the Jungle!

Battle Music

Ybus' conjures a flaming puppet to block the west passage. Screeches of dying vermin echo around the crumbling halls, and the smell of burning rat flesh adds to the already vomitous stench filling your lungs. But there are just too many of the diseased beasts! They swarm around you, clawing and biting! Erden takes 9 piercing damage, and Urban takes 6 before DR.

Urban and Baracus rush the downed rat god. The paladin tries and fails to pin the hulk to the ground, but creates enough of an opening for the half-orc to land a crushing punch to the monster's skull-head, and pierce its thigh with a deft thrust of the First Sword.

Some of the cultists, freed from their jars, begin to stir. Groaning and wild-eyed, some rise to their knees, slick with whatever foul mixture they were immersed in to effect the strange alchemy powering the portal. The glowing ring begins to spin - slowly, but gaining speed - and the space in its center begins to pulse with the dark energies being channeled into it from the jars.

Erden's magical wards spare him from the vicious rats. Lightning surges from him, turning several of the filthy little beasts into charred corpses. It also races up the circuitry and feeds into the portal, which flickers violently.

The awakened cultists, seeing their god embattled, stumble forward. Some seem intent on attacking the human and the half-orc, others fall to their knees spouting prayers and hexes, but many, overcome with fear, simply collapse to the floor and wail incoherently.

Urban tries to endure the oppressive wave of evil.

Battle Music

The Rat God rears up and roars once more, and a wave of pestilence washes over the entire hall. The cultists sprout black tumors and collapse, writhing on the floor in agony, leaking blood and excrement from every orifice, slain by their terrible god.

Aplu swipes at Baracus savagely, knocking him back into a bank of jars, shattering the lot. The rat god then grabs Urban and hurls him right through the portal! With less and less energy being channeled into it as the rat god continues to wreak havoc on its power banks, the infernal machine begins to shudder and whine. The portal begins to close!

Urban tumbles through the void, flung through the planes like a leaf in a hurricane. As the paladin plummets in a dizzying spiral, falling through the cracks between realities, he glimpses an array of visions familiar and bizarre. By sheer force of will he clings to his sanity by seeking a pattern to the madness. Out of the chaos he singles out:

• Aishwarya standing at the prow of a ship. Urban cannot tell if it is the Kestrel or not...

• A tribe of tattooed warriors with the heads, hooves, and tails of majestic horses locked in a desperate battle against a horde of goat-headed cultists. Over the battleground hovers a round portal etched with strange, glowing symbols...

• A ritual on the lip of a volcano. A man dressed in jaguar pelts, his head adorned with a headdress of condor feathers, approaches a stone altar upon which lies a human sacrifice. With an obsidian blade, the priest carves a sigil of pain into the chained man's forehead before draining his blood into a stone trough. Above the altar, a round portal begins to glow...

• In the shadow of a great obelisk, slaves quake in abject fear as they prostrate themselves before a colossal statue of a crocodile-headed god. In one hand he holds a chain. In the other, a many-tailed whip. At his feet, standing before a round portal, an arch-priest dressed in the manner of Hiptos raises his hands...

• The Pradeshi sewers. The turtle monks have returned to the tunnel crossing where you fought the slimes. In the unexplored north chamber they discover an inert portal connected to a small jar just large enough to house a child...

With a true feat of strength, Baracus wrestles the hulking god up the ramp and grinds its skeletal face against the portal's spinning metal ring. Aplu thrashes about, but Baracus has him held fast.

The spinning rings begin to falter, and the portal slowly begins to close. If it shuts completely, it may sever both the rat god's neck and Baracus' arm. And Urban would be lost!

Urban: The images dissolve and reform. Now you can no longer see Aishwarya, but you do see your friends doing battle with the rat god. That portal is fading fast! A conviction grows in you that you can make your way to any of the portals you choose. But even as you sense this, you become aware of a new presence, an evil that chills your blood. A malevolence that feeds on energy siphoned through the portals. It blocks your path back to your friends. That way is closed.