That night you are disturbed by movement out in the jungle. There seem to be people moving to surround you and more people across the river. You challange the unknown people and get a reply from a captain that steps forward. Niles Breakbone has sent a decent force to recover you, and the captain demands that you all give yourself up as deserters and as assisting deserters. You refuse to do so and are attacked by a large force of soldiers and scouts. It appears that Breakbone has sent as many able-bodied men as he could to recover you. You defeat them, killing many soldiers, but all of the soldiers on the other side of the river escape. You spend the rest of the night on high-alert. In the morning you look at your map and plan your journey. You decide to head further up the river and around to the abandoned city of Mbala, which is marked on your map, and then onward to Orolunga from there. This means you are able to travel more quickly as the river broadens out into a swamp. You are able to avoid the swamp and the jungle by walking through some grassland bordering the jungle. You leave your boat behind and start walking. The next day, as you are walking, you round the edge of the jungle as see before you s 1,800-foot-high plateau with sheer cliffs rising above heaps of boulders as large as ships. You get quite close to the cliff before you camp again. The next day you explore the cliff and find a narrow path is cut into the cliff face and seems to climb all the way to the top. You begin climbing the narrow path. It takes 3 hours, during which you are attacked by Magmin and observed by a hungry, banana eating skeleton. When you get to the top you are treated to a great view of the basin and jungle below. Off in the far distance you see what looks like a heart floating above the jungle, and you also see a skyship traveling to the southwest.. About a hundred feet below the lip of the plateau, the path veers directly into a natural cleft in the stone face. Steps are cut into the 15-foot-wide crevice, and scenes of jungle predators, flying lizards, and erupting volcanoes are carved in shallow relief onto the walls in ways that make creative use of the natural shape of the rock. The stone steps emerge onto the top of the plateau beneath a once grand, but now decrepit wooden gateway. The gates that sealed this entrance are rotted away; only their rusted iron hinges and reinforcing bands remain. In their place are heaps of human skulls. Picked clean of all flesh and bleached white by the sun, they grin up at you from the roadway and down from atop towering mounds. With some hesitation you bypass (or climb through) the skulls and find the remains of a once large city. Most of the structures were wood and thatch, and they're now just crumbling compost heaps demolished by rain, wind, and time. A few stone foundations and overgrown ramps poke up through the debris. The only structure still intact is a lone hut about a thousand yards southwest of the gate, at the edge of a boulder field. The hut is made from thatch and animal hides stretched over the rib cage of an immense reptile. Animal skulls, wind chimes, and totems of feathers and shells rattle in the breeze, and smoke drifts from hut. A creature shuffles slowly around the hut, hunched over in an animal-like posture. You realize it's a human woman: impossibly old, crippled by arthritis, blinded by cataracts. Her dark face and bald pate are outlined with streaks of yellow clay suggesting the shape of a skull—or perhaps it's her shriveled flesh creating that illusion. B'urp greats the old woman in Chultan and she responds. After some pleasantries she invites you to share lunch with her. She explains that she has been in M'bala for a long time before all the people died. She doesn't say specifically what killed them, but from what she describes you suspect it was a plague of some sort. She explains that she is a follower of Myrkul, the Lord of Bones, and that he was willing to overlook her when he killed everyone in Mbala. You have shared your lunch with her and she offers to help you in future. She claims she has the power to re-animate anyone who dies, but those who are animated retain their thoughts and memories. They are dead, but still themselves. She also requests that you assist her if you get an opportunity. She tells you of Pterafolk to the west who are dangerous to her. She says that if you kill them she will reward you greatly. When she learns of your quest to Orolunga she also asks you to retrieve a scale of hers which will help her with her dark magic. You decide to head onward and spend the rest of the day travelling west on top of the plateau. The next day you reach the edge of the plateau. You are lower than you were at the other end, but still over 1000 feet up. You can see a ziggurat emerging from the jungle a few days away. You find a very narrow path leading down, but partway down there is a cave. Denny looks in the cave and sees nearly a dozen Pterafolk hanging from the ceiling sleeping. Behind them is a dessicated corpse and three small chests. Denny sneaks in to try and check the chests, but is not stealthy enough. The Pterafolk awake and battle ensues. It is a close thing, but you are victorious and able to look at the treasure you have found.
