Episode 2: Welcome to the Jungle!

You make the climb and set up camp. The sun sets, and soon darkness falls.

Music: A Brief Respite

This close to The Scar, you hear none of the night sounds you would expect in the jungle. No insects, no nocturnal animals rooting about. Nothing but the rats. Are the scratching, scraping and gnawing sounds real, or is it all just in your head?

Night passes uneventfully, though your sleep is plagued by nightmares filled with rat tails, melting eyeballs, worm-infested guts, slurping noises...Feeling a strong pull from the First Sword, Baracus decides to rest the weapon in his lap during his morning meditations. He discovers sacred geometries never revealed to him before.

Toying with the Heat of the Ocean as he urinates into The Scar, Ybus finds he is now able to comprehend the spell inscribed on the back.

Puffing on his cigar, Erden is pleased to find he can now create incredibly complex smoke rings.

Urban fails to notice the Captain's Shield has been sitting right next to the fire. When he picks the shield up, it suddenly glows red hot, but he suffers no burns!

Rydler discovers the Wondrous Robin is missing. A frantic search turns up nothing, until the unnatural silence surrounding the Scar is broken by a lone bird song, and Rydler spots a red-breasted robin regarding him curiously from its perch on a nearby rock.

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Crossing the temple's threshold, you find that the plague rats have returned, but they scurry away at your approach. You also notice that you are no longer affected by the foul miasma that hangs about these halls.Now and then you seem to hear whispers tickling the back of your minds. Is the Gibbering Mouther roaming around down here, or is it just your imagination?

What do you do next?

The short staircase leads to a cluster of small, interconnected rooms, each equipped as a workstation for a complex laboratory. Glass instruments and vials fill one station. Another is crammed with vats in which float bizarre living specimens, no doubt the results of twisted experiments. Yet another is a sizable library in which Erden finds, among other things, several scrolls inscribed with some of the most unspeakable of magics.

A muffled crash from one of the stations tells you you might not be alone here.

Ybus' glowing rat lands in the middle of the rooms, illuminating the nearer half of each station, and throwing the farthest corners in shadow. You see movement here and there, just out of your vision, but Baracus and Erden can see that it is mostly just the plague rats scurrying about. There is no response to Rydler's challenge.

The search turns up a variety of items, mostly related to the disease-related research being conducted here, as well as some evidence of study on the construction of the portal machine in the halls below. There is no sign of an intruder, but under one alembic, a candle is burning.

It's Erden who discovers the crawl-space behind the bookcase, half concealed by a treatise on tumors and a heavy volume filled with anatomical drawings. The tunnel is too small for anyone but Erden or Ybus to crawl through.

What do you do?