Out of the land of the White Ghost
Having made peace with the White Ghost and her army of jungle animals, the rest of our passage through the jungle is relatively uneventful. We at last come out into the savannah, where we get to see even more lovely animals for Ailyll to turn into. Before long we encounter a pair of lionesses who lead us to meet the Sabu. Harald wins him over with a tribute of elephant tusks and he allows us safe passage through his domain. The Sabu beleives that we are seeking another human who has been taken captive by the rival cats opposing Snowflake(see JC and Harald, together again. From his description it seems as though the man may be Asian. We ignore this side-quest and continue towards the City of Silence with a cheetah guide lent to us by the Sabu. Upon leaving his kingdom, however, we are set upon by a rival Sabu, whom we narrowly defeat.
After a day or two the savannah turns to desert, and we thank our various gods that we have clerics who can cast Create Water and who are not susceptible to melting in the heat. Our Daku friends leave us with directions to the City of Silence and return to Axum. We travel onward, arriving at the edge of a giant cliff. Before we can look over it two Giant Dragonflies attack us, and prove quite tough. We finish them off and then look down into the City of Silence at last. It is large, and in poor repair. The streets are filled with rubble and Necrophidiuses, and the many buildings are home to a teeming population of Cynocephali. Mamun heads down to scout, but is immediately paralyzed by a Necrophidius. The rest of us jump down to save him, protected by a Feather Fall spell. Luckily we cast it just before entering the enormus bubble of magical silence that covers the city. We save Mamun, but are forced to flee soon after as Cynocephali begin launching a barrage of stones and stink fruit at us. We rest back on top of the cliffs.
After healing up some we try to go back and fight another Necrophidius as well as an undead that resembles it exactly. Once again those damn dog-heads swarm us soon after we down the snaky fellows, and we are forced to flee. We make a brief flyover to determine where the statue we have been sent to destroy is before returning to the saftey of the cliff tops.
Out third journey down into the city happens in the dead of night. The dog-heads seem to be sleeping, so we go down into the building holding our statue of interest. The floor is reflective marble, polished so that it shines like water. Seconds after we notice this a giant crocodile slithers up with pearls in its ears and attacks us. It seems to polish the floor with its belly-scales, aided by water laid out by the dogheads. Speaking of which, a bunch of dogheads appear bearing skulls full of water and other offerings. We have a big fight, and those damn retch fruit are employed to good effect by the dogheads. We take down the croc, and then have a hell of a time getting out of the building while fending off hundreds of dogheads. On the way out we notice that the statue has three lion's heads and four arms. The arms hold a bell, a ball with two strings hanging from it, a spider, and one hand is empty, clawing at the air. The statue is magical and magically trapped, which I am sure will cause us trouble sooner rather than later. There are also some stairs leading down in the corner of the statue hall. We eventually extricate ourselves and return again to the cliffs for healing and resting.
