Treasures Age Old - Session 9 Player Recap

Present: Charlie Betts, Oscar Katz, William Chapman, Sam Bebbington, Polonius Fumke (Jack Richardson)
Last Session: Treasures Age Old - Session 6 Player Recap

The Jungle Approach and the Birth of Grizzfest 2

The session began with the party split around Amokuali Temple, with one part of the group (Bruno Culina (William Chapman), Dino Wrangler (Oscar Katz)) already near the temple hill and the other (Polonius Fumke (Jack Richardson) and Barry Cuda (Sam Bebbington)) still making the miserable overland approach through the jungle.

For Barry Cuda (Sam Bebbington) and Polonius Fumke (Jack Richardson), the jungle route was not a clean road so much as an old, half-reclaimed track: once used by Conquistadan travellers or work crews, perhaps, but now swallowed back into mud, rain, leaves, and darkness. The night had not been kind. The rain was persistent, the storm was worsening, and the party were already dangerously short on sleep. If they stopped for too long, there was a real risk they would simply pass out where they stood.

The travelling group realised that, despite the urgency of reaching the temple, arriving exhausted might be worse than arriving slightly later. The other pirate groups on the trail were also starting to flag. Enough of the treasure-hunters, bounty-seekers, and opportunists were visibly considering a four-hour rest that the party had a window: if they stopped while the others stopped, they might recover some fatigue without losing too much relative ground. The calculation was grim but practical. Continuing through the storm without rest would mean reaching the temple at a severe penalty, possibly unable to fight, flee, or think clearly. Resting carried its own risks, but at least it meant they might not collapse at the worst possible moment.

They therefore moved off the road rather than sleeping on the obvious trail. The plan was not to vanish miles into the jungle, but to get just far enough away that someone would have to deliberately look for them. They wanted to remain able to relocate the path, but not be lying directly in the route of every passing pirate, slaver, predator, or supernatural horror. Soldiering and survival sense were applied to find somewhere that was not obviously lethal: not a bed of poison ivy, not a low mud hollow, not somewhere exposed to immediate ambush from the trail.

The chosen rest spot was a sturdy tree. Rather than sleeping at the base, they climbed up into it, getting roughly ten yards off the ground. The idea was crude but sound: in the jungle, especially in heavy rain and at night, people do not naturally look up. The canopy, darkness, rain, and fog imposed brutal visibility penalties. Even someone passing fairly close below might miss them completely unless actively searching. Sleeping in a tree also made casual attacks by ground-level creatures or wandering men less likely. It was not comfortable, but comfort had long since stopped being a relevant concern.

There was a brief debate about whether to sleep fully or take watches. Eventually, they settled on shifts. A full four-hour collapse would have been more restorative, but it raised the problem of waking up at all. By sleeping in alternating watches, each person got some rest and someone remained alert enough to stop the party simply losing the rest of the night to unconsciousness. It was still a poor sleep: wet, cold, exposed, and full of thunder. The fatigue penalty improved, but did not disappear. They were no longer at the edge of total collapse, but they were still operating as exhausted people in a storm-sunk jungle.

They were woken by lightning in the distance, with multiple strikes rolling through the dark. Somewhere amid the storm there was also a scream - but whether a person or a bat, it wasn't clear - it was impossible to tell much from the sound. The forest was too loud: rain battering leaves, thunder rolling through the canopy, the constant noise of water and wind, all of it making anything more than a few dozen yards away uncertain. They specifically listened for the feared bat noises associated with the temple, but did not hear anything clearly enough to confirm that the death bat was active nearby.

After waking, they returned cautiously toward the route. They did not walk down the middle of the trail. Instead, they moved alongside it, close enough to keep the path in sight but far enough away that they were not presenting themselves as obvious travellers. The jungle remained dark and fogged, so this meant moving slowly, tracking the road by its shape and the disruption of the undergrowth rather than by any clear line of sight.

As they progressed, they began passing camps. At first these looked like ordinary stopping points: tents and sleeping arrangements left along the route by the same pirate bands and bounty-seekers who had been pushing toward the temple. But the camps were unsettlingly quiet. There were tents, but little or no sound from inside them. No ordinary camp noise. No snoring, muttering, movement, cooking, arguing, or watchmen calling out. The party considered whether these were simply abandoned, occupied by silent sleepers, or some kind of trap.

They did not immediately loot or investigate. Supplies were always useful, and the idea of stealing tents or turning camp debris into more Grizzfest material was floated, but the party remained suspicious. A tent in this context was not just a tent. It could be bait, a sign of slaughter, an abandoned camp, or evidence that the owners had been taken. The party kept moving, increasingly aware that something had happened ahead of them. The lack of ordinary human noise was itself the clue.

The further they went, the more obvious it became that the mass movement toward Amokuali Temple had changed. Earlier, there had been heavy footfall and a general sense of multiple groups converging. Now there were empty camps and missing people. Either the other groups had woken earlier and moved on, never rested properly, or had been intercepted. With hindsight, this was the first sign that the Chained Hag force had already begun filtering the loose rabble of Freeport pirates before those pirates could arrive at the temple in full disorder.

The group also reflected on what they knew of the temple’s history. It had once been sacred to the local Aslani or Azcelani tradition, then abandoned or at least left behind. Later, Conquistadan or Caelor-aligned builders had attempted to convert it into a Caelor temple, probably because it was too large and impressive a structure to ignore. That conversion had itself been abandoned. Work had stopped decades ago, and nearby settlements apparently regarded the place as unhallowed ground. It was not just an old ruin. It was a place repeatedly claimed, repurposed, rejected, and finally avoided.

While the jungle group were inching toward the temple under that pressure, the group already near the hill (Dino Wrangler (Oscar Katz), Bruno Culina (William Chapman), and Carrie Takeson) took a different approach entirely. Rather than immediately entering the temple, searching it, or fortifying themselves in a conventional way, they committed to Grizzfest 2.

Grizzfest 2 began as a distraction, a bait, a joke, and possibly a psychological weapon, but it rapidly became a real installation at the base of the hill. The party used the abandoned construction site around the temple as raw material. Rotted timber, half-useless tools, bits of old equipment, and anything else lying around became signage, shop dressing, or possible souvenirs. The effect was not military preparation so much as cursed festival infrastructure. The hill below the haunted bat temple began to acquire a fake visitor attraction.

The signs were part of the performance. There was “Come One, Come All,” there was “This Way to Grizzfest,” and there was the important “Right Leg / Left Leg” signage, which had enough ambiguity to function as both festival nonsense and a callback to previous Grizz-related leg fixation. The party even discussed creating a fake fork in the route where none existed, simply by declaring with signage that one path was the right-leg route and the other the left-leg route. The terrain did not naturally support this, but Grizzfest logic did not require the terrain’s consent.

There was also a food element. Bruno Culina (William Chapman) had already been acting as the self-declared greatest chef in the world, and the group had a supply of cooked food, including the grim remains of earlier dinosaur cookery. The idea was to sell meals to arrivals for $10, turning the approach to a death-bat temple into a roadside catering opportunity. This was not just practical. It was branding. A pirate mob might ignore warnings, but a pirate mob could plausibly be delayed, confused, or redirected by food, signage, spectacle, and the rumour that Grizzlebeard was somehow involved.

Carrouba "Carrie" Takeson (the scholar's caretaker) was made part of this arrangement despite having every reason not to participate (including her fear of Grizzlebeard). She was frightened, exhausted, traumatised, and deeply distrustful of the party. She had recently been drugged, nearly sacrificed, fed her own beloved Shimmerscale, survived a lightning crash, and repeatedly woken near dead or burning dinosaurs. Now she was being placed into something resembling a gift-shop role at the foot of a haunted temple. Her contribution included nervously offering or pushing forward rusty tools as if they were authentic souvenirs. She had no real understanding of what the party were trying to do, and the party’s explanations did not make the situation more coherent.

Carrouba "Carrie" Takeson (the scholar's caretaker)’s presence sharpened the absurdity of the scene. To the party, she was useful as a guide, a witness, and possibly a kind of reluctant staff member. To Carrie, this was another stage in a nightmare in which the people who claimed to be rescuing her kept making increasingly deranged decisions. The “shop” was not comforting. It was evidence that the party were not merely reckless, but capable of building a commercial attraction at the entrance to a place everyone else had the sense to fear.

The temple itself dominated the scene above them. As the storm gathered around the hill, Amokuali Temple rose out of the wet black-green jungle as a dark stone pyramid above the bog. It was not lit from within. There were no welcoming fires, no guards visible at the entrance, no lanterns, no chanting, no sign of ordinary habitation. The great doors were shut, slick with rain, and swallowed in darkness and fog. Lightning periodically illuminated the whole structure in harsh white flashes, exposing details that vanished again almost instantly.

Those flashes showed old Azcelani carvings across the stone, along with the remnants of the failed Caelor conversion. Broken Conquistadan scaffolding clung to parts of the structure. There were signs of an attempted window or stained-glass insertion, as though someone had once tried to impose Caelor architecture onto the older temple. Around the hill lay abandoned beams, pulleys, chains, rotted rope, half-dressed blocks, rusted tools, and timber softened by decades of weather. The work had stopped abruptly and no one had returned to finish it.

The road up to the temple led toward a half-collapsed bridge over the bog. The bridge was not an elegant crossing, but a compromised wood-and-stone structure, slick and dangerous in the rain. The bog made Carrie’s fear more acute: without Softfeather, she could not safely read the supernatural paths through it the way she normally would have. For the party, the bridge was a choke point, a potential toll gate, a hazard, and a theatrical approach to Grizzfest all at once.

The atmosphere around the hill became a mixture of horror and farce. There was mud, rain, old leaves, wet stone, and the smell of cookery. The only living light on the hill was the flickering torch associated with the party’s improvised festival/shop, giving the impression of some insane attraction set up inside a gothic nightmare. The party themselves recognised, at least partly, that they had become the strange NPCs in someone else’s adventure: the inexplicable people selling food and rusty tools outside the cursed temple rather than going inside it.

That strangeness was the point. Other groups were coming for treasure, the old man, Grizzlebeard, or whatever rumour had dragged them through the jungle. The party set themselves up as if they were there to run an event. “Grizzfest” was not explained because explaining it would probably make it less useful. It was a sign, a song, a meal, a misdirection, and a claim that Grizzlebeard was nearby. It did not need to be true in any clean sense. It only needed to slow people down, provoke questions, and make dangerous arrivals think for a moment before charging straight up the hill.

The first proper test of the setup came when an advance figure from the Chained Hag arrived with two captives. He appeared to be part of the disciplined force moving ahead of or ahead within the larger Chained Hag column, not one of the disorganised Freeport rabble. The captives with him were recognisable as former members of the crowd that had been heading toward Amokuali Temple, implying that the Chained Hag had already encountered, overpowered, and enslaved some of the loose pirate groups on the approach.

This scout did not simply blunder in. He approached the bridge carefully, used the captives to test or precede him, and looked for traps or danger. He saw the flickering light, the stall, the signs, and the party cheerfully presenting Grizzfest 2 in the middle of the storm. His reaction was confusion more than immediate violence, which counted as a success. He asked why they were there and why they were making things in Grizzlebeard’s name.

The answer, essentially, was that they were feeding the masses. The price was one coin per person, framed as festival food. Bruno’s cooking did its work: after sixteen hours or so of jungle travel, wet rations and fatigue made a hot meal attractive even to a suspicious man. The scout paid with a coin taken from one of the captured men, was served a bowl by the self-proclaimed greatest chef in the world, and thus Grizzfest 2 made its first confirmed sale.

The exchange also demonstrated the moral texture of the scene. The enslaved captives looked pleadingly to the party for help, asking to be rescued. The scout struck or threatened them, warning that he would cut out a tongue if they spoke again. The party did not launch a rescue. They continued operating the stall. The first customer walked away fed, the captives remained captives, and the legend of Grizzfest spread one bowl further.

By the time Belladonna Valenza herself approached, the whole situation had become more dangerous. Her column was nothing like the rabble from Freeport. The Chained Hag force moved with discipline, soaked and mud-spattered but not broken by the journey. Belladonna’s chosen fighters carried themselves with the confidence of people who had survived both combat and Belladonna’s own hierarchy. Their chains were maintained, barbed, and ready, and their posture suggested they could turn from marching to killing in an instant.

Belladonna’s arrival also reframed the Grizzfest setup. What had worked on a scout as confusion and novelty was less likely to work on her. She looked across the bridge, past the captives, at the signs, the shack, the food, and the temple beyond. She was not fooled into thinking this was normal. But she was interested. The whole spectacle seemed to tell her that the people she was looking for, or at least people connected to the chaos around Red James, Juarez, Grizzlebeard, and the Chain Hag, had somehow arrived before her and decided to build a festival at the threshold of the prize.

Belladonna Arrives at Grizzfest 2

The first sign of Belladonna Valenza was not her voice, or her face, but the sound of chains moving through mud.

From the temple side of the broken bridge, the party saw shapes emerging through the rain. The sound was not the bright clash of weapons, or the loose clatter of badly carried gear. It was a low, ugly, dragging noise: iron under command. Chains slid and knocked against one another as a disciplined column approached through the storm.

Twenty captives came first. They were bound together at wrists and throats, stumbling through the mud as a single miserable procession. They were soaked, bloodied, exhausted, and mostly silent. When one slipped, the others instinctively moved around them or steadied the line, not out of kindness, but out of terror of what weakness might cost them. These were not Belladonna’s warriors. They were prisoners, probably remnants of the rabble that had set out from Freeport for the bounty and treasure, now reduced to cargo.

Behind them came the crew of the Chained Hag.

The contrast with the Freeport pirate mob was immediate. The rabble had been loud, hungry, self-interested, and easy to stir up with promises, signs, soup, and violence. Belladonna’s people were not that. They moved like a verdict. They were soaked and mud-spattered, but not broken by the journey. They were not cheerful, rowdy, or chatting amongst themselves. They were waiting for command.

At their head came Belladonna Valenza herself.

She looked furious, but not uncontrolled. Her expression was almost a permanent snarl of frustration: frustration at the weather, at the jungle, at having to personally march to this remote haunted ruin, at the indignity of being made to chase after the old man through mud and rain. But she moved as if the storm had no right to touch her. Rain ran from her hair and shoulders, and she did not hurry toward the smell of cooking, though she might have noticed it. If she enjoyed the smell, she did not permit that enjoyment to show.

Closest to Belladonna were some of her Chosen, fighters of the same class as Juarez, but clearly more dangerous. The party had already killed Juarez in public, but the impression here was that Juarez may have been one of the weaker or less prestigious of Belladonna’s elite. These Chosen were heavier, more confident, and more disciplined. They had likely risen through the same brutal hierarchy as the rest of the Chained Hag: slaves first, survivors second, killers third. Their chains were well-kept, barbed, and ready. Even while walking, their stances looked like combat stances waiting to happen.

Behind them were the rest of the Chained Hag force: dozens more, perhaps around sixty, disciplined and dangerous. Their eyes measured the broken bridge, the sealed temple, the hill, the signs, the food stall, the weather, and the party.

Lightning flashed across the chains.

The captives reached the bridge. The chain-handlers yanked them back tight. Belladonna raised a hand. The entire column stopped.

For a moment, there was only rain striking stone, mud sliding underfoot, the bubbling of soup, and the ridiculous presence of Grizzfest 2 standing at the base of an unhallowed temple.

The party had made signs. “This Way to Grizzfest.” “Come One, Come All.” “Right Leg / Left Leg.” The setup looked like a food stall, shrine, scam, battlefield marker, and tourist attraction at once. There was a shack or stall at the hill’s base. There were signs dotting the approach. There was food. There was song. There was the smell of cooking.

Belladonna looked across the gap, past the captives, across the bridge, toward the temple, the signs, and the little Grizzfest installation. Her eyes narrowed. For the first time, she smiled slightly.

It was not a joyful smile. It was the smile of someone who believes the thing they came looking for has just revealed itself.

“Identify Yourselves”

Belladonna did not play along.

She looked at the party, the stall, the signs, the food, the shack, and the entire improvised structure of Grizzfest 2, and ordered them to identify themselves.

The party attempted to answer as Grizzfest proprietors rather than as wanted chaos-agents. The pitch was simple: “Come one, come all. One real for a nice tasty meal. Various souvenirs.” There were a lot of mouths in Belladonna’s column, and the party had a lot of soup.

Belladonna immediately treated this as suspicious.

She asked what the meal was and whether this was trickery. The party insisted that no one tricks people with food, which was not a convincing claim to make to a woman literally named Belladonna. She noted that people absolutely do trick others with food. The party continued trying to frame the event as legitimate catering, with Bruno presenting himself as one of the finest chefs to travel from Conquistadan to explore the flavours of the new world.

Belladonna did not waste long on that. She asked where Red James was.

The party tried the obvious answer: “Who?”

Belladonna was not impressed. She clarified that she meant Red James: the only James she knew them to be associated with. The attempted ignorance did not land well. The party had already tied themselves too visibly to Red James’ orbit, the earlier mob violence, and the broader mess involving Juarez and the Chained Hag.

Carrie Takeson also reacted badly to Belladonna’s arrival. She had previously identified the Chained Hag as terrifying, and seeing Belladonna’s slavers in person was enough to break what little composure she had left. Carrie had already survived being drugged, almost sacrificed, fed her own pet, crashed out of the sky, and repeatedly woken beside dead dinosaurs. Now she was looking at a disciplined slaver column at the bridge. She failed to hold herself together and began backing away.

Her problem was that there was nowhere sensible to run. The bog lay behind and around the approach, and she no longer had Softfeather to guide her through supernatural hazards. She wanted distance from Belladonna, from the party, from the temple, from all of it, but the terrain itself trapped her in the nightmare.

The party attempted to smooth this over by claiming Carrie was their caretaker and was “looking after the shop.”

This did not make the scene less strange.

Belladonna Tests the Lie

Belladonna examined the Grizzfest signs and the food stall with increasing suspicion. As a gesture of good faith, she suggested that the party ought to feed her people for free. The party, still trying to preserve the commercial sanctity of Grizzfest, resisted. They offered samples. They offered reduced rates. They argued that once Belladonna tasted the meal, she would understand its perfection.

Belladonna pushed harder. It was either free, or they would not have it.

The party tried to sell the prestige of the food anyway. Bruno leaned into the idea that this was the best food ever made. Belladonna interrogated the practicalities. Where had the food come from? Had they carried hundreds of pounds of corn into the jungle? How did this shack and sign festival to a man they had supposedly never met appear at the base of the temple before she arrived?

The party’s story had too many loose edges.

Belladonna then moved to the real issue: one of her men had been cut down in the street.

The party attempted to detach that from Grizzfest. That, they argued, was not part of Grizzfest. That was an unrelated event, before or after the official Grizzfest halls, depending on how one defined the festival. The signs about right legs and left legs were not evidence of involvement in the dismemberment or public killing. They were, allegedly, references to chair legs or route choices.

Belladonna had enough information to press the association. Reports described a group aligned with Red James. Among them was a chef. Bruno was now in different clothes, because he could not carry everything, but he was not truly disguised. Others were similarly not hidden so much as differently dressed.

She was not certain of every detail, but she did not need certainty. She only needed to decide whether these people were dangerous, useful, or both.

The answer was both.

Belladonna did not immediately execute them. She had a haunted temple to enter, an old man to secure, and an unknown threat inside. The party were suspicious, but suspicious people could still be made useful. More specifically, they could be made useful by being chained and sent forward.

She ordered her acolytes across the bridge.

The Party Are Chained

A group of Belladonna’s chain-fighters crossed toward the Grizzfest stall. There was no serious military exchange to be had. The Chained Hag force outnumbered the party overwhelmingly, and individually many of Belladonna’s people were far more capable fighters. Fighting at the food stall would have been suicide.

The party understood this. Someone at the temple doors, seeing the Chained Hag fighters coming across the bridge, considered whether the movement could be interpreted as customers coming to buy soup. It could not. Their posture, weapons, and approach made the intention clear enough. This was not commerce. This was seizure.

Some of the party submitted. The Chained Hag fighters began chaining them individually: hands bound, a chain around the neck, and the neck-chain connected to a handler. The logistics were not of one great chain gang, but of controlled individual captives, each assigned to someone strong enough to yank them where needed. The handlers were strong, disciplined, and accustomed to controlling prisoners.

Before being searched, Polonius Fumke (Jack Richardson) managed to slip a lockpick into a hidden position. The attempt was risky: there was a quick pat-down, and the Chained Hag were not fools. But the concealment worked. The lockpick remained accessible despite the chaining.

Other property was confiscated and set aside. Books, obvious tools, and weapons were taken. Bruno tried to preserve his chef’s knife by making a fuss about it. A chef, he argued, must always hold his knife. The Chained Hag were unmoved. The knife would be looked after. He could have it back later, assuming “later” remained a meaningful concept.

The party’s role was now changing. They were no longer fully Grizzfest hosts, but not yet dead. Belladonna had turned them into expendable assets.

Carrie, meanwhile, was not immediately chained with them. She had backed away and was trying to remain out of the centre of attention. But Belladonna’s people had seen enough to know there was another person nearby, and two of the Chained Hag were sent to look for her. Carrie remained both crucial and vulnerable: she knew Bennett, knew the route, knew the temple, and knew too much about the party’s behaviour.

Barry Cuda (Sam Bebbington) had earlier opted to investigate the temple, and circumnavigated it and climbed the roof and investigated the doors - and made a screeching sound to mimic the bat. He found some barrels on near the entrance. He did not see any sign of Carrouba "Carrie" Takeson (the scholar's caretaker) or the two Chained Hag crewmates sent to find her. He also spotted a crowd moving towards the temple in the distance, from another direction.

The Temple Doors

While this was happening below, attention shifted up the hill to the temple entrance.

The doors of Amokuali Temple were enormous stone slabs, carved with dense Aslani or Azcelani designs and set within a larger ceremonial facade. There were pillars and a sheltered area near the entrance, giving some protection from the rain. The doors had no ordinary handles, no ring-pulls, and no simple way to open them from outside.

Instead, the carvings and stonework included outcroppings like hooked hands or cradles. These were not hinges and did not operate the door. They looked as though they had once been designed to hold a bar, beam, or ritual object across the front, perhaps to keep something inside. No such beam was currently in place, though there were rotting timbers and old construction materials scattered around the site.

The door mechanism itself was strange. The hinges were heavy stone, and the slabs were angled so that gravity naturally encouraged them to swing shut. The default position of the doors was closed. They did not need to be pulled shut; they wanted to be shut. Holding them open would require effort or a prop.

The problem was that the doors were not merely shut. They were chained shut from the inside.

Looking through cracks and gaps, the party could make out large chains running from the old construction site materials to fixed points on the floor and to the inner side of the doors. These were not ancient Azcelani chains. Metalwork like this did not match the oldest layer of the temple. The chains were probably from the later construction or conversion attempt: the failed Caelor works that had been abandoned decades ago. Someone inside had used them to secure the doors against entry.

This meant the obvious solution — pull the door open — was impossible. The force needed was not just against the weight of stone, but against the chains anchored on the inside.

There were discussions about blowing the door open. Bombs could perhaps be placed against hinges or used to break the chains, but the geometry was awkward. The chains were inside. Throwing explosives blindly through a crack might break something, but it might also do nothing useful, or kill the very person everyone wanted. There was also the issue of what, exactly, waited inside.

A humanoid figure was briefly glimpsed within: not winged, roughly person-sized, standing in the darkness and then slipping away into shadow when light was thrown or passed through the opening. This suggested the temple was not empty. Someone, or something, was watching.

The Bat-Sound Gambit

Before fully committing to the door, one of the party tried to weaponise the temple’s reputation.

The stories of the death bat had already become central to everyone’s fear. The bat, or bats, were said to tear heads from bodies. The old lore involved people surviving through head-coverings, gourds, or other decoys, which had inspired the party’s barrel-based anti-bat precautions. The temple’s name and reputation meant that even hardened pirates were sensitive to signs of the creature.

So Barry Cuda (Sam Bebbington) near the entrance produced the loudest bat noise he could manage: a shrieking “eek eek eek” into the rain and stone.

The sound carried strangely around the temple entrance, muffled by rain and thunder but still audible enough to make people look up. Those below heard something that might have been the feared bat. Belladonna’s people did not panic outright, but they did react. Someone said it was the noise of the bats, or wondered whether it was. Belladonna ordered caution and warned that these people were known to play tricks.

That was a fair assessment.

The fake bat call did not scatter the Chained Hag. They were too disciplined. But it achieved something: it reinforced uncertainty. The temple was already locked, haunted, and associated with decapitation. Even Belladonna’s people had to treat it seriously. The party’s nonsense remained useful because the environment itself was already primed to make nonsense plausible.

Using a Child

The door still needed to be opened.

Since the chains were inside, the cleanest solution was to get someone small through a gap to inspect the mechanism and possibly unfasten it. Belladonna’s force had captives. It also had younger or smaller followers. Eventually, attention settled on a child named Mickey, short for Miguel.

Mickey did not want to put his head inside a temple where everyone had been talking about bats that tear heads off.

Belladonna did not care. She kicked or shoved him toward the door.

The party, despite their own staggering record of moral compromise, recognised this as impressively brutal. Belladonna’s method was simple: if there might be a bat, send someone expendable first. If the child died, the adults learned something. If the child survived, the door problem might be solved.

Mickey was sent to look through and then enter the gap. The line of sight mattered: guns were trained on the door, and the hope was that if someone inside moved against him, they might be shot. But the interior was dark, awkward, and full of unknown angles.

Inside, Mickey began trying to work with the chains or wrappings. He moved toward one of the statues or chain points and started unwrapping or freeing part of the mechanism, looking left and right for the unseen middle-aged man inside.

Then a voice called from deeper in the temple, down the stairs.

The voice ordered them to get the child to stop, or they would kill the old man.

This changed the entire door problem. The temple was not just locked. It was occupied by someone using the old man as leverage.

Red James Arrives

Before the standoff could resolve cleanly, another force arrived from the far side.

Red clothing appeared through the murk. Red James and his crew had come by a different route, likely using a river approach that gave them a slight time advantage over some of the overland rabble. They had gone the long way in one sense, but with a different method of travel that let them arrive while the temple-door confrontation was still live. Barry Cuda (Sam Bebbington) briefly filled them in on the situation, and Redd James, not wanting to make an enemy of Belladonna Velenza, opted to go and meet her himself face-on.

Their arrival complicated everything.

Belladonna wanted the old man. Red James also wanted the old man. Both likely wanted him alive. Neither force could simply ignore the other. Belladonna outnumbered Red James heavily, but Red James was still a recognised, dangerous captain with a crew, reputation, and enough force that murdering him outright at the threshold of the temple might have consequences.

Belladonna immediately confronted him over the killing of one of her Chosen.

Red James tried to distance himself.

He claimed there had been a misunderstanding. His crew-mates had acted without him. He had only known them for about five days. They went off and did this on their own. He pointed out, quite accurately, that anyone who had spoken to the party could see they were not right in the head. He suggested he did not truly associate himself with them anymore after what they had done. In his framing, they had originally been more like captives or burdens than proper crew.

The party reacted poorly to being disowned, but the problem for Red James was obvious. Belladonna had lost face and blood. Juarez had been publicly butchered. The Chain Hag had been targeted. Grizzfest was now operating outside the haunted temple, with the same people orbiting Red James’ name. If Red James claimed responsibility, Belladonna would have cause to escalate. If he denied responsibility, he had to sacrifice the party socially.

The party attempted to frame Grizzfest as a festival of peace.

Both Red James and Belladonna turned to them.

Neither knew what Grizzfest truly was.

Red James remembered enough to identify it as “that stupid shack thing” where people charged others to see Grizzlebeard, or someone they claimed was Grizzlebeard. The party tried to claim that everyone was actually friends with both Belladonna and Red James, and that neither of them yet understood the deeper endgame.

This was not persuasive, but it was sufficiently strange that it remained hard to respond to in a conventional way.

The Door Standoff

Red James cut through some of the absurdity by stating the obvious: everyone was there for the old man, and the group outside seemed to be taking too long to get inside. He went up to the temple doors.

The doors were still locked from within.

From inside, a voice called out again: go away, or the old man gets it.

The threat echoed out through the stone entrance. Everyone outside heard enough to understand the situation. Someone inside had the old man, or at least claimed to. They were using him as a hostage. This created a stalemate, because killing the old man would mean no one got what they came for.

The party and the factions debated possible responses. Could they gas him out? Could they start a fire and smoke the interior? Could they throw bombs in? The problem was always the same: everyone wanted the old man alive, or at least useful. If the old man died, the prize was lost. If the person inside killed him, then Belladonna and Red James could besiege or murder the hostage-taker, but that would not restore the objective.

Eventually, the figure inside produced an old man near the threshold.

The man presented as the survivor was not Grizzlebeard. He was a pirate-looking man, not as intensely bearded, walking alongside a very old cloaked figure. He claimed he was the last survivor inside: just him and the old man. The bat had supposedly attacked, killed the others, and left.

He explained that they survived by hiding, using cylindrical wooden things or gourds on their heads so the bat took those instead. This happened to echo the party’s own barrel logic, making it both ridiculous and possibly plausible. The party immediately interrogated the detail. Where did he find gourds in the temple? He claimed they had brought supplies.

Belladonna compared this to the party somehow finding ingredients for soup at the temple, which undercut the ability to mock him too hard.

The survivor drew a pistol and held it to the old man’s head. He told the assembled factions to clear off and go very far away, or the old man would die.

Red James and Belladonna both understood that this was bad negotiation. If the survivor killed the old man, then he lost his leverage and guaranteed his own death. But the threat still mattered because no one wanted to force the loss of the prize.

The survivor also claimed that the bat had already fed and left. The party questioned this. If the bat could only feed once, did that mean once it took a head the victim died? Was he claiming actual knowledge or improvising? The whole story was unstable, but there was a man with a pistol and an old man in reach, so the instability did not make the problem easier.

More Children, More Pressure

The outside factions did not accept the stalemate.

If one child could be sent in, another could be sent in. If the man inside could threaten the old man, the people outside could keep sending small bodies through the door to force the chains, unwrap the mechanism, or flush him out. Belladonna had already spent one of her own prospective assets. She now suggested it was Red James’ turn to contribute someone expendable.

Red James’ side reluctantly produced another child, one of his own younger followers or crew-adjacent boys.

The child was shoved inside with pistols trained toward the interior. He began working near the statue or chains, looking for the hidden man. The hostage-taker called again from the stairway, ordering them to stop or he would kill the old man.

The wording gave something away. Earlier, he had claimed to be the last survivor with only the old man. Now he said “we” would kill the old man. The party immediately seized on the inconsistency. Who was “we”? Was there another person? Was the old man complicit? Was there another statue? Another survivor? Another hostage?

The man tried to explain it away, but trust was already gone.

The child kept working.

At this point, the man inside had to reassess. He could not remain hidden forever if they kept sending children in to unwrap the chains or expose the mechanism. Eventually he would have to show himself and risk being shot, or the door would be opened by increments.

So he offered a compromise.

He would let a few people in. Not the entire mob. Not eighty or a hundred armed pirates. A limited group.

The VIP Entry Proposal

The hostage-taker’s proposal was essentially a controlled entry. He did not want the whole armed crowd pouring into the temple. He would allow a small number of people inside, enough to negotiate or inspect, but not enough to immediately overrun him. Numbers were debated. Ten became the working shape of the proposal.

This produced another problem: who counted as sufficiently important or neutral to go inside?

Belladonna wanted representation. Red James wanted representation. Both wanted the old man. Both distrusted the other. Neither wanted the other to control the interior. The party, somehow, proposed themselves as a neutral party: Grizzfest proprietors, initiated into both factions’ nonsense, equally distrusted by everyone and therefore balanced.

This argument was absurd but had a certain political logic. The party had offended both sides. Belladonna and Red James both had reason to distrust them, which made them perversely “neutral.” They were not trusted enough to be allies, but not immediately aligned enough to be excluded.

There was also the barrel issue. Some of the party were still wearing barrels as improvised protection against the bat. These barrels had become part of the entire visual identity of the scene. They were ridiculous, but given the temple’s death-bat mythology, they were not completely irrational. The party treated them as important protective gear, and by this point the surrounding NPCs had seen enough strange things that the barrels were allowed to remain part of the plan.

Weapons were negotiated. Since the party were entering as semi-neutral or useful parties, Belladonna was willing to return some weapons, or at least tolerate more equipment than she had when treating them purely as captives. This was partly because she believed she could kill them if they turned on her. Her combat skill and confidence were such that a few under-equipped weirdos in barrels were not her main concern.

The final group began to form: Belladonna and some of her side, Red James and some of his, selected party members, and possibly Pulo as not-quite-a-person for counting purposes. Redrick and other named Red James associates were part of the surrounding calculus. Carrie, crucially, was not confidently under anyone’s control; she had backed off earlier and her exact position was increasingly uncertain.

The temple was about to be entered not by a unified rescue party, but by a hostile committee: slavers, pirates, grifters, barrel-wearers, and faction leaders, all trying to keep one another from seizing the prize first.

That was the next phase of Grizzfest 2: the festival had successfully delayed and confused two major factions, but it had also chained the party, endangered children, failed to open the temple cleanly, and forced Belladonna Valenza and Red James into the same doorway with the old man as bait.

The absurdity had not prevented disaster. It had merely reorganised disaster into a formal queue.

Meanwhile, the two crewmates had not returned with Carrouba "Carrie" Takeson (the scholar's caretaker) - so Belladonna Velenza then sent two of her chosen to find her.

Inside Amokuali Temple

Once the hostage-taker agreed to admit only a limited group, the scene outside the temple briefly became almost formal. The storm was still raging around the hill. Belladonna’s people, Red James’ crew, the chained captives, the barrel-wearing members of the party, and the remaining Grizzfest debris all crowded around the threshold of Amokuali Temple, each faction pretending there was a plan.

The agreed entry group was never genuinely based on trust. Belladonna Valenza wanted bodies inside who could be spent if the temple turned dangerous, but she also needed representation near the prize. Red James wanted enough of his own people present that Belladonna could not simply seize the old man and leave. The party somehow inserted themselves as a neutral bloc: too distrusted by both sides to be clearly aligned with either, and too absurdly central to the last several disasters to be ignored.

The barrel strategy continued. Several party members still wore barrels as improvised head protection against the death bat. By this point, the barrels had become part of the tactical language of the situation. They were ridiculous, but not obviously wrong. The myths said the bat took heads; the party had decided to give it false heads or armoured heads. In a saner context this would have been nonsense. At Amokuali Temple, in a thunderstorm, after children had already been shoved through a door because everyone feared decapitation, the barrels were tolerated.

Weapons were partly returned or allowed. Belladonna was willing to permit this not because she trusted anyone, but because she believed she could kill them anyway. Her confidence was grounded in skill rather than bluster. She was the master of the Chained Hag chain-fighting style, and even the strongest present had reason to treat her as one of the most dangerous combatants in the region. A few unstable Grizzfest proprietors with returned knives did not seem like her main problem.

Red James, for his part, warned the party against funny business. He drew a distinction between “the game” and simply doing whatever the hell they pleased. This was a significant line coming from Red James, because his whole ethos celebrates daring, betrayal, style, and risk. The party had apparently gone beyond even his tolerance for flamboyant chaos. He did not deny that games matter. He denied that their current pattern had direction.

The party defended themselves by pointing out that they had reached the temple first. They also questioned why this had to be Grizzfest rather than Reddfest. Red James did not seem comforted by the answer.

Before stepping in, Belladonna stepped back to her crew and whispered something to them. She also remarked in frustration that her two chosen had not returned with Carrouba "Carrie" Takeson (the scholar's caretaker) either, so four people had disappeared looking for her.

The group moved in.

The Air Inside

The first thing about the interior was the smell.

It was not merely rot, or dust, or bat guano, though there may have been elements of all of those. The smell felt soaked into the structure. It was like the way the Slippery Three’s shack had absorbed the stink of refuse, smoke, old bodies, dirt, and bad living, except older and far less mundane. The temple’s darkness seemed to hold the smell. It was as though something associated with death had occupied the place long enough to season the air, walls, floor, and carvings with itself.

Marco’s knack for the supernatural read this as the lingering presence of something dangerous and death-adjacent. The obvious answer was the bat. Not just an animal in a ruin, but a supernatural predator whose presence had made the temple itself feel inhabited even when nothing was visible.

The interior was dim and close. The entryway opened into a space with carved stone, damaged icons, and the remains of the failed Caelor conversion. The old Azcelani structure had not simply been abandoned; it had been defaced and then badly repurposed. The result was not a clean overlay of one religion on another. It was ugly, rushed, and unfinished.

There were statues near the entrance, fixed or bound with chains. Once released from their restraints, their mutilation became clearer. Their eyes had been gouged out. Attempts had been made to reshape or reinterpret their faces into something more Caelor, but the work had not been skilful enough to transform them cleanly. Instead, the proportions looked wrong. The heads seemed too small or awkwardly altered. New symbols had been carved over or around older ones, but the result felt like a hurried, nervous act of religious vandalism rather than confident conversion.

The temple therefore carried three histories at once: the original Azcelani sacred site, the later Conquistadan/Caelor attempt to claim and remodel it, and the most recent desperate occupation by Grizzlebeard’s people. Every layer had damaged the previous one. Nothing had truly replaced anything.

The entry group advanced only ten or fifteen yards before the space dropped toward stairs leading down. The hostage-taker stood at the top of those stairs. He did not look like a triumphant guardian of the prize. He looked like a man whose position had collapsed into improvisation.

He had put away the pistol or lowered its immediate threat, and now held a club or thin length of wood more for moral support than as a convincing weapon. His confidence had been eroded by the fact that Belladonna, Red James, and a mixed group of armed weirdos in barrels had actually entered. The deal he had offered was meant to control the situation, but now he was standing in front of people who could plausibly kill him in less than a second if the old man was not a factor.

The Hostage-Taker and the Supposed Old Man

The hostage-taker tried to make the situation about the old man’s fate. He asked what the group intended to do with him after leaving the temple. What happened to him next? Was he being rescued, bought, ransomed, killed, delivered, or dragged into some other nightmare?

No one had a reassuring answer.

This mattered because, from his point of view, handing over the old man might not be saving him. It might simply transfer him from one danger to another. The people in front of him included Belladonna, a slaver-pirate with a reputation for brutality; Red James, a pirate captain with his own agenda; and the party, who had arrived in barrels after building a festival outside the door. The hostage-taker had no reason to believe any of them meant well.

Still, he had limited leverage. The chains were being dealt with, the factions were inside, and the old man was the only reason he was still alive. So he gestured back down the stairs.

The old man shuffled up.

He looked frightened, aged, and uncertain. He moved slowly, glancing back toward the pirate as though needing permission to continue. The hostage-taker pointed him forward, and the old man came up into the entry space.

He was not Grizzlebeard. That was immediately clear. He did have facial hair, but not Grizzlebeard’s immense grizzly beard or public identity. He looked old, rough, and altered. His beard had been shaved or badly cut back, as though someone had tried to make him fit an image or disguise him. The party immediately raised the possibility that this was another fake, another decoy, or even some kind of trap. The old man might have a bomb. The old man might be the bat. The old man might be connected to the bat. None of these possibilities felt completely absurd at this point.

Belladonna did not rely on his face.

She stepped forward and tore open his clothing.

Beneath it was a tattoo.

The tattoo was far more intricate than the copy the party had previously worked from. One of the party produced the sewn cloth copy made earlier and compared it. The match was strong enough to make everyone pay attention. This was not merely a random old man. The markings corresponded to the design connected to the bounty and the old man everyone had been chasing.

More importantly, in person, the tattoo revealed details the copy had not fully captured. Ancient Azcelani symbols could now be made out within the design. The tattoo was not just a mark of identification. It was a text, map, ritual key, historical record, or something close enough to all of those that the factions immediately understood its value.

The old man flinched when Belladonna tore his clothing open. He seemed startled and exposed, not like someone calmly waiting to reveal his significance. Then, in broken Conquistadan, he spoke one phrase:

“I...hungry.”

That was all.

Bruno Feeds the Old Man

In the immediate Grizzfest interpretation, hunger was treated as a catering problem - Bruno responded accordingly.

If the old man was hungry, then Grizzfest had food. No one goes hungry at Grizzfest (except perhaps those who do not pay). Red James was asked whether he had ship’s biscuits or similar supplies. He handed over some poor ship’s biscuit material, and Bruno transformed it as quickly as circumstances allowed.

This was not full kitchen work. Bruno did not have his ideal equipment, controlled heat, proper supplies, or calm conditions. He had speed, seasoning, and confidence. He made a fast salted biscuit, good enough under the circumstances and certainly better than the raw material deserved to become.

The old man took it in both hands and nibbled at it. He ate slowly, almost timidly, then wiped crumbs from his lips. Chains clanked nearby and he flinched at the sound.

This was one of the stranger pauses of the session: a supposedly world-important old man, marked with ancient Azcelani writing, standing inside a haunted bat temple between Belladonna and Red James, being fed a hastily improved ship’s biscuit by Bruno as part of the ongoing Grizzfest hospitality apparatus.

The old man looked longingly toward the outside world.

That made him look less like a mastermind and more like a prisoner who wanted to survive.

Belladonna Makes Her Move

Belladonna did not linger.

Once the tattoo appeared to confirm the old man’s importance, she moved immediately toward extraction. She had not come to debate metaphysics, taste biscuits, or preserve a balanced council of pirate interests. She had come to secure the prize.

She ordered one of her pirate-slavers to chain or control the old man. He was not in a position to sprint away, but that did not matter; Belladonna wanted possession made physically explicit. A chain around the old man’s hands or body turned the question from “who has found him” into “who is holding him.”

Then she began moving for the door.

This was the decisive moment. Until then, Belladonna and Red James had been in a tense shared operation. Both wanted the old man. Both needed him alive. Both had tolerated the presence of the other because the temple door, hostage-taker, and death-bat threat created temporary common interest. But once the tattoo was confirmed and the old man was within reach, that common interest ended.

Belladonna tried to turn discovery into possession.

Red James' crew could not allow that.

If Belladonna left the temple with the tattooed old man, Red James' crew would have failed completely. Worse, Belladonna would gain the old man, the prestige, the bounty leverage, and possibly the knowledge needed to find whatever treasure or war-changing secret the old man represented. Red James was already politically damaged by the party’s behaviour and by Belladonna’s accusation over Juarez. Letting her simply walk out with the prize would make the damage permanent.

So the moment Belladonna’s people began dragging the old man toward the door, the whole mixed entry party fractured.

The Door Becomes the Battlefield

The fight did not begin as a clean duel. It began as a traffic disaster in a temple doorway.

Belladonna’s people started pushing toward the exit with the old man. Red James’ people moved to prevent them. The party were in between or near enough to the pressure point to be immediately relevant. Some were wearing barrels. Some were trying to position themselves ahead of the old man so they would not be trapped inside. Some were trying to get around Belladonna’s people and reach the door mechanism. The interior was cramped, the doors were huge, the hinges were heavy, and the rain outside made the threshold slick and chaotic.

Belladonna’s side wanted to close or control the door on their terms. Red James’ side wanted to stop her leaving with the prize. The hostage-taker was suddenly much less important. The old man was no longer merely a hostage; he was an object being dragged through a factional collision.

Belladonna herself moved with alarming speed and control despite the chains she carried. Her people began forming a blocking shape near the door. Others prepared to encircle and strike. The Chained Hag fighting style made the doorway especially dangerous: chains could reach, hook, trip, and control space in ways ordinary blades could not. In a dense threshold, that mattered more than individual sword flourishes.

A Chained Hag pirate-slaver drew a chain and prepared to strike through the press, including at one of the barrel-wearing party members. The barrel was useful against a head-taking bat, but less clearly useful against a trained chain fighter who could strike around or through awkward protection.

The party’s response was not unified.

Some moved to help push or close the door, effectively aligning with Belladonna’s immediate goal of sealing the temple and managing the crowd. Others tried to slip out or around the melee. Their loyalty was not really to Belladonna or Red James. It was to not dying, not getting trapped, and not being the most convenient target when the two most dangerous pirate factions on the hill finally turned on each other.

The outside conditions made everything worse. The hill was dark, the storm was loud, fog reduced visibility, and there were very few stable lights. People could barely tell who was where once the bodies began moving. A brutal melee formed around the threshold, with Red James’ people, Belladonna’s people, slaves, captives, party members, and probably confused bystanders all compressed around stone doors that wanted to swing shut.

The Party Choose the Door Over the Prize

There was a crucial tactical and narrative choice here: the party did not successfully seize the old man.

They did not extract him. They did not kill Belladonna. They did not side cleanly with Red James. They did not solve the hostage-taker problem in any elegant way. Instead, the moment the interior collapsed into factional violence, their priority became survival and positional advantage.

Closing the door became the most actionable objective.

If the door closed, the people outside could be separated from the people inside. If it was chained again, Belladonna could secure part of the field, trap enemies, or at least prevent a full uncontrolled rush. For the party, helping with the door also gave a plausible reason to move in a direction that was not “stand in the middle of Belladonna versus Red James.”

Bruno Culina (William Chapman) therefore moved to assist with closing and chaining the door. Belladonna’s people were already doing the same. Whether out of panic, opportunism, or a sudden instinct to be useful to the person most likely to survive the next ten seconds, this aligned the party temporarily with Belladonna’s side.

The door shut.

Once fully closed, it could be sealed again. Belladonna directed her people to work on the chains and secure the entrance. Outside and around the threshold, the brutal melee continued, but the temple itself was now divided again by stone.

This was significant. Red James’ force had come with roughly twenty-five to thirty of his thirty-five crew, nearly his whole effective strength. Belladonna had brought a much larger and more disciplined force. In a straight field fight, Red James’ people were at a severe disadvantage. The door closure, the darkness, and the chaos did not create a victory; they created a rout.

The party were now outside the immediate centre of the melee. They could see Red James’ people trying to flee toward the route or riverboat they had used to arrive. The storm, fog, pitch darkness, lack of torches, and sheer confusion meant that people were striking wildly. Some combatants likely hit allies or shadows. In those conditions, survival depended as much on leaving the wrong knot of bodies as on being a better fighter.

What Was Actually Won?

On paper, Belladonna appeared to have won the immediate exchange. She had the apparent old man. She had sealed or controlled the door. Red James’ people were being scattered. The party had avoided immediate execution and had not been torn apart by either faction. Grizzfest 2 had, somehow, escalated into a diplomatic prelude to a pirate-faction battle and the opening of a haunted temple.

But the result was unstable.

The old man had spoken only one useful phrase: “It is hungry.” He had a matching tattoo, and ancient Aslani symbols were visible in it, but no one had yet established what the tattoo meant or whether he was the true final target. The hostage-taker had earlier used inconsistent language, saying “we” despite claiming to be the last survivor. Someone or something might still be inside. Grizzlebeard had not appeared. The death bat had not been resolved. Bennett had not been recovered. Carrie Takeson was missing or uncontrolled. Red James, Redrick, and Big Flame’s exact positions were not yet settled.

Most importantly, the temple itself had only been briefly entered. The group had reached the threshold, seen the layered desecration, confirmed the smell of death, obtained the apparent old man, and immediately turned the doorway into a battlefield.

The Door Seals and the Melee Continues

Once the temple doors slammed shut, Amokuali Temple became divided again: the people outside, the people inside, and whatever was still deeper in the temple were no longer part of one shared scene. The stone doors were fully closed. The immediate question was no longer how to get in, but who was trapped where, who had the old man, and who was going to survive the next minute.

Outside, the ring of brutal melee continued.

It was not a clean pirate battle. There were too many bodies, too little light, and too much weather. The storm was still crashing over the hill. Rain lashed down over the old stone, the broken Caelor construction works, the slick mud, the collapsed bridge, and the remains of Grizzfest 2. Fog smothered the lower ground. There were few torches left in useful positions. In the dark and rain, even trained fighters struggled to distinguish friend from foe. A lot of the fighting became shapes striking other shapes, chains lashing into the wrong silhouettes, pirates stumbling over stones, and men realising too late that the figure in front of them was on their own side.

The party were no longer in the exact centre of the melee. The door had closed, and the pressure of the fight had shifted. This gave them a moment to decide whether they were going to keep helping Belladonna Valenza, run for the jungle, hide behind the abandoned construction equipment, or try to reconnect with Red James’ surviving crew.

Bruno Culina (William Chapman) helped Belladonna’s side secure the door. This meant assisting with the chains, rather than trying to reopen the temple or rejoin the factional fight. Belladonna directed some of her Chained Hag slavers to work the door mechanism and make sure it stayed shut. Her priorities were brutally practical: seal the route, contain the situation, and then deal with the enemies still outside.

Belladonna herself turned from the door toward the crowd and began picking people off.

This was the moment where the difference between a pirate mob and Belladonna’s people became very obvious. Red James’ crew had swagger and courage, but they were now in a nightmare kill-zone: outnumbered, half-blind, caught between the sealed temple, the bridge, the fog, and a disciplined chain-fighting force. Belladonna’s Chained Hag fighters had the numbers and the method. They could chain, trip, hook, isolate, and knock down. Their goal did not even need to be immediate slaughter. Capturing, disabling, and breaking morale worked just as well.

Red James’ people started fleeing toward the side of the hill where they had originally arrived. They were trying to get back to their route, probably the river approach. This confirmed that Red James had not come by the same main overland road as the party’s earlier jungle group. He had used a different approach, likely faster or at least better concealed.

The party noticed this and had to make a decision: follow Red James’ crew, make their own way back through the long jungle route, or try to hide until Belladonna’s force was done.

None of the options was good.

Following Red James’ crew might offer a route back and possible protection, but the relationship with Red James’ people was extremely strained. The party had repeatedly associated Red James with disasters he did not order, including the Juarez killing, the Chain Hag escalation, and now the catastrophe at Amokuali Temple. If Red James’ surviving crew understood what had happened, they might blame the party. If they did not understand, they might still assume the party were cursed, treacherous, or too dangerous to remain near.

Making their own way back meant a long jungle trek, possibly sixteen hours, in storm conditions, while exhausted and with Belladonna, Chain Hag survivors, Red James’ remnants, bounty-seekers, and the temple’s unresolved horrors all behind them.

Hiding near the temple was also bad. Belladonna had brought her full force up the hill. The Chained Hag were not a passing patrol; they now controlled the area. The only thing giving the party any chance of slipping away was the storm itself. Visibility was awful enough that even a large group could lose track of a few people if those people moved quickly, kept low, and did not carry obvious lights.

The party’s working conclusion was simple: leave before Belladonna’s force finished reorganising.

Red James’ Crew Breaks

As the fighting scattered, it became clearer how badly Red James had misjudged the position.

Red James had around thirty-five people in his crew overall. About twenty-five to thirty of them had come to Amokuali Temple, meaning this was most of his effective force. Belladonna had brought something closer to a small army: her Chained Hag force, her Chosen, and the captives she had already stripped from the Freeport rabble.

The mismatch was not just numbers. Belladonna’s fighters were prepared for chain-based crowd control and close-quarters domination. They had already proved capable of reducing disorganised pirate groups into captives before even reaching the temple. Red James’ people were brave, but in this context bravery mostly meant they were close enough to be beaten, chained, or killed.

The party considered whether, if Red James were trapped or killed, someone might be able to get back first and potentially shape the story among the remnants of his crew. There was even a thought that if Red James was gone, a surviving party member with enough leadership might be able to claim some kind of captaincy or influence. This was less a plan than the kind of opportunistic calculation that emerges when one’s patron may have just been destroyed in a foggy temple melee.

The practical question remained: where was Red James?

During the immediate rout, he was not clearly visible among the fleeing crew. Nor were some of the key named figures associated with him, such as Redrick or Big Flame. This was ominous. They might have escaped cleanly through the confusion. They might have been captured somewhere out of sight. They might have remained inside the temple when the door was sealed. They might have been separated from the main crew by the crush of bodies.

No one could confirm it in the moment.

This uncertainty mattered. If Red James was dead or captured, the political situation changed completely. If he was alive and trapped inside Amokuali Temple, then the sealed door had just trapped a pirate captain, possibly with the real old man, Grizzlebeard, Bennett, or whatever else remained inside. If he had escaped, he would have every reason to reconsider his relationship with the party.

For now, the visible reality was enough: Red James’ crew was breaking.

Belladonna’s Temporary Victory

From the outside, Belladonna Valenza appeared to have won.

She had forced the temple open. She had controlled the entry. She had used the party, Red James’ arrival, and the hostage-taker’s own fear to create a limited-access negotiation. She had obtained the old man who appeared to bear the correct tattoo. She had moved to extract him. When Red James resisted, her side had turned the doorway into a killing ground and then sealed the temple behind her.

After the worst of the fighting, Belladonna’s people began regrouping. The Chained Hag force gathered the injured, secured prisoners, checked the door, and imposed order on the hill. Compared to the chaos around them, they looked intact. Red James’ side had been mauled; the loose rabble had already been mauled before arriving; the party were fleeing or pretending to be useful; and the temple was closed again.

Belladonna then went to inspect the old man properly.

This was when her victory collapsed.

Up close, with the immediate urgency of the doorway fight over, she realised the old man was not the true target.

The tattoo had been convincing enough at speed. The old man had looked plausible under pressure: aged, frightened, marked, and brought out by the hostage-taker at the right moment. But once Belladonna had time to examine him carefully, something was wrong. He did not match what she needed closely enough. The apparent prize was a decoy.

This retroactively made the hostage-taker’s behaviour more suspicious. He had said “we” despite claiming to be alone with the old man. He had offered the old man under pressure once the outside factions started sending children through the door. He had managed to make everyone focus on a plausible visible target while the real objective remained elsewhere.

The conclusion was clear: the true old man was probably still inside Amokuali Temple, or at least had not been secured by Belladonna.

Belladonna responded with characteristic mercy.

She stabbed the decoy old man. Belladonna killed him not because he remained a threat, but because he had become an insult: a false answer presented to a woman who had marched a full force through storm and jungle to seize the real one.

The hill’s situation therefore inverted. Belladonna had won the fight but lost the objective. Red James had lost most of his crew but might still be connected to the true prize. The party had escaped the worst of the melee but had not gained the old man. Amokuali Temple had swallowed the truth again.

Belladonna would almost certainly have to go back to the temple.

The Party Scatter

The party did not stay to watch Belladonna process the full strategic implications for long.

The melee gave them a chance to disappear, and they took it. Some scattered through the construction debris. Some moved toward the jungle. Some oriented toward the direction Red James’ people had fled, not necessarily to rejoin them socially, but because that route likely led back to transport.

The darkness was an ally. The fog hid movement. The storm covered sound. The lack of torches made pursuit harder. Belladonna’s people were dangerous, but they were busy: sealing the temple, finishing the fight, managing prisoners, checking the false old man, and working out whether the real prize was still inside.

For once, the party’s best tactic was not to talk.

The remains of Grizzfest 2 were left behind: signs, stall, food, the absurd proof of one sale, and the wreckage of a festival that had somehow become the diplomatic threshold for a pirate battle. The idea had worked in the sense that it delayed, confused, and reshaped the encounter. It had failed in the sense that the old man was not secured, Red James’ crew was mostly destroyed, and Belladonna remained alive, angry, and more informed than before.

Still, survival counted.

The party moved toward the river route.

The River Route

After a few hours of miserable retreat, the party reached the river.

This appeared to be the same route Red James’ crew had used to approach Amokuali Temple. The surviving members of that crew were there as well, or at least some of them. Only about ten to twelve had escaped. The rest of the twenty-five to thirty who had come to the temple were dead, captured, unconscious, trapped, or otherwise lost. Red James’ effective fighting strength had been gutted.

This was a major campaign consequence. Red James had been one of the party’s few powerful associates, even if the relationship had always been strained and theatrical. His crew had offered status, protection, and a route through Freeport’s pirate politics. Now most of that crew was gone, and Red James himself was missing or unresolved. Even if he survived, the damage to his power base would be severe.

At the river, they found a small Aslani riverboat — likely the craft Red James’ group had hired or used — and Tlali. This gave them an actual way out. After the temple, the bridge, the storm, and the factional rout, the sight of a boat was almost a miracle.

Naturally, the party discussed sabotaging it.

One suggestion was to throw bombs into the riverboat and sink it, leaving themselves as the only survivors or at least hindering anyone else’s return. The logic was classic party logic: if the witnesses are gone, the story can be controlled. If Red James’ surviving crew cannot get back quickly, the party might get to Freeport first and shape the narrative. There was also the ongoing pattern of someone wanting to blow up a boat whenever a boat became relevant.

Counterarguments existed. Red James’ survivors might be needed to sail. They also knew what had happened, and they might not actually be the party’s immediate enemies. Killing or stranding them would create another pile of consequences, especially if Red James was alive and later learned of it. The party could perhaps persuade some survivors to join them, especially if Red James was gone. Or they could simply use the route and stop creating additional naval crimes for a few hours.

The riverboat was small enough that bombs could plausibly damage or sink it if thrown properly. The bottom was not especially thick. But the choice carried obvious political risk.

The clean final decision is somewhat obscured by table chaos, but the practical outcome was that the party took the river route back toward Freeport, with Tlali available and the surviving Red James crew reduced to a handful.

The journey back took roughly eight hours.

Return to Burning Freeport

When the party finally neared Freeport, they came in around where the river met the city, which gave them a view of the immediate consequence waiting for them before they had even properly re-entered.

Someone was nailing up a wanted poster.

The poster showed rough drawings of Peg Meg-Leg, Bruno Culina, and Marco. The listed accusations included killing Lazarro Altaviti, mayhem in the docks, and mob violence in the streets.

This was an important escalation. Until now, much of the party’s chaos had circulated through rumour, factional grievance, and interpersonal consequence. Belladonna hated them. Red James was furious or embarrassed by them. Carrie distrusted them. Matthew Clever had used up his willingness to lie for them. But a wanted poster was different. That meant a public case had formed. Someone with enough authority or influence in Freeport wanted them identified, hunted, or at least blamed.

The Lazarro accusation was especially dangerous. Lazarro had been a valuable transport operator controlling or coordinating Swooping Terror access, and the contract with him had been burned after his death. Killing him was not just murder. It disrupted strategic mobility during a siege and created financial/political problems for every pirate lord or faction dependent on his flying service. Even if some people benefited from his contracts being voided, the public blame had landed on the party.

The dock mayhem and street mob violence connected the poster to previous disasters: the failed attack on the Chained Hag, the explosion of attackers in the harbour, the public butchering of Juarez, and the broader pirate riot energy that had spread from the party’s actions. The wanted poster effectively tied together crimes and accusations that had previously been scattered across multiple scenes.

The party immediately debated the fairness of the charges. Some argued they had not personally done particular elements. Some had not killed Lazarro. Some had not been directly involved in every dock disaster. But the pattern was now too strong for technical innocence to matter. From the outside, they looked like the same small group at the centre of every crisis: mob violence, dock violence, dead Swooping Terror pilot, ruined contracts, temple catastrophe, and now the weakening or disappearance of Red James.