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[Morrow]

From the journals of K.Garnham Vanderboren-Black as translated from the Vallossan

We decided to send J'Kara back to the Dragon. Dexter had concerns about his safety and wanted to ensure that he relayed his message from Noltus to Vesserin.

N'Tel continued to guide us through the tunnels and caverns of her homeland giving us good intelligence of a roper and steering us through a barrier seemingly made up of the spirits of Ohlman warriors that whispered to us in their native tongue.

N'Tel told us about an isolated village called Barbas that she believed would be the last possible sanctuary before we made it to the temple of the Ancient Ones.

Barbas, from what she knows, is populated by mongrelfolk and a few members of other races.

We traveled to Barbas. Elyosha steered us through a series of poisonous molds that seemed to have been grown specifically to ward out intruders. As we grew nearer we became aware of six hook horrors that awaited outside the gates of the town.

We convinced the guards of our peaceful intentions and were allowed in. We were met by an albino mongrel man, heavily scarred, missing part of his right ear who introduced himself as Vertrum, the headman of the village.

The citizenry seemed a bit put off by the strangers in their midst. We did some trading with them and chatted. Every once in a while you could catch them whispering the things that you had just said in your voice. Weird.

We were treated to a feast in our honor. I think one of the components of good diplomacy is a strong stomach. Their delicacies were ..... an acquired taste. Nothing wrong, just very different. Still nothing worse than the phanaton feast we attended.

Vertrum told us a bit about the history of Barbas. Many generations ago the forefathers of Barbas were held as slaves to demon-fish in the city of Golismorga. There was a great war with the demon-fish and a tear from the rain god forced the water out of the demon-fish city.

The slaves, now free, formed the village of Barbas and took up the worship of the Snake Father, a god that doesn't seem to actually exist as far as Maggie can ascertain.

We spent the night in Barbas only to have our sleep disturbed by an assault from an umber hulk, two hook horrors and a grell. They died.

The next morning we spoke again with Vertrum. With the assault on Barbas the night before he had decided to relocate his village. We contacted Lavinia via Sending to see if Farshore would take them in. We told Vertrum that we might have a place for his people and gave him some basic survival tips for the surface before we continued on.

Before we left he showed us one of the devil-fish. He said that it still lived and that particularly brave souls had placed their ears to it's side and can hear it's evil heart still beating.

It turned out that the devil-fish was an aboleth. Without water it seemed to have dried up and become inert. Knowing what evil it was capable of we killed it.

We traveled a day and came to the cavern N'Tel spoke of. It was mostly submerged in water. I'm not certain how this much water was supposed to be here given what we were told by Vertrum about the tear. Perhaps it's a sign that the old magic is failing.

Upon entering N'Tel walked to the center and said "They are here, the heroes you wanted."

The spirit of a serpent-folk materialized over the water and said, "Thank you my daughter, you have served me well."

He then proceeded to introduce himself as Seth and explained that the Shadow Pearl production could be stopped by reflooding the city and forcing the Kopru out. He referred to the item holding back the waters as Tlaloc's Tear and that we would need to destroy it to stop the pearls even though it would reawaken the aboleth.

He also said that Demogorgon was behind the Shadow Pearls.

On arriving in the cavern we had noticed unusual writings on the walls and ceiling. Most noticable of these was a rune on the ceiling that seemed to share some properties with aboleth glyphs. Elyosha examined it with her monocle and determined that it suppressed an aboleth's ability to magically enslave others. She was also able to tell that the serpent-folk spirit that we were talking to was an illusion.

We confronted it and it revealed itself to be an aboleth. It tried to convince us that we needed to destroy the Tear to get rid of the Pearls and it tried to convince us that it's people wouldn't be a threat to us for hundreds of years.

We fought and killed it.

We traveled on and have now camped on the edges of the fetid city of Golismorga.