Plot for session 59

After resting up, the group will travel to Blood Glade, where they hope to find a mercane's magic chest.
What is usually a 3 to 4 day journey will become a 1 day journey thanks to Fair Bargain's shadow dire pangolin mounts.

Last time you rode the dire pangolins, you were in an open desert, where the large beasts could roam and manoeuvre without an issue. Their going is significantly harder this time around, in the thick forest that surrounds Ooloodee.

If they continue travelling by land, they have a combat with empowered leeches.
The phantom speed has the option to fly, if the characters choose to fly over the terrain, rather than travel below the canopy, they experience the following:

Throughout the day, you experience nothing but impossible winds on your face, hands, and anything else that is exposed. While your mounts do not seem to be bothered by the wind, hours and hours of travelling in these conditions have left all of you somewhat ragged and slightly defeaned by the constant wind in your ears.
However, the views afforded to you are beautiful: changing trees from the wetter mangrove forests gradually changing into a drying rainforest. The height advantage also allows you to spot the area you must be travelling to. An unmistakable red spot in the horizon of greens of the rainforest. You could arrive tonight if you press on, but your bodies are on the edge of exhaustion from the long, windy travel.

If the PCs approach the antimagic field while flying on the shadowy dire pangolins, they suffer fall damage.

Approaching the Blood Glade

The Blood Glade is patrolled by armies of heinous creatures never seen before in the world. They are here for two reasons:

1. To stop people from helping those inside
2. To slowly kill those within when they have to go out

The Curse Sentinels

Those living within are ragtag of individuals who have been shackled to remain here, whether because its the only way to free them from their curse (since the magic that affected them does not work here), or because they have become addicted to the magic-infused plants/food from living here, and leaving permanently is unthinkable.
The oldest person, Markun The Simple, that remains within was already here when the first plague-stricken or plague-feared people began seeking the legends of the Blood glade. Little by little, he provided comfort to those who died and recruited those who survived into the quest he had inflicted himself: to make sure the artifact that bore one-fourth of the consciousness of the evil aboleth who was involved in enacting the plague in the first place.
Four weapons had torn the aboleth's body into pieces, but their soul lingered in them. The four people split up, each seeking a different method to destroy their relic, or at the very least, keeping it from reuniting with the other weapons, to prevent the soul from ever being reunited.
Over time, however, all his past friends came back to him, some alive, others dead (their remains carried on by their new companions): none had found the means to contain the evil hosted within the weapons, and at last, when they noticed their will weakening to the constant whispers of the weapon, they had resorted to seeking the one person who had seemingly been able to stop the weapon in its tracks: Markun The Simple.
Once here, Markun, the old friends that remained, and the Curse Sentinels, started studying and investigating how to rid the world of this evil. Once, they thought they had the key, and destroyed one of the weapons. This did not destroy the soul, but rather, freed it, entering a corpse recently interred in the outskirts of the glade.
Taamba a recent arrival to the Blood Glade, offered to go capture him. He was able to restrain the grippli inside of the deactivated magical chest, and then kill it within, safe from most of its attacks. The soul then attached itself to the chest, which Taamba brought back into the Blood Glade.
Since then, the Curse Sentinels have been devising a method that will forever destroy the soul of the aboleth. But the soul's escape did not go unnoticed, and ever since then, waves of unknown creatures to mortals have been making their way to the Blood Glade. Unable to enter, they are, however, able to make their lives almost impossible, to the point where they cannot go outside to culminate the ritual they have been developing.
The proposed ritual entails releasing the essences into a corpse, battling it, and ending it back inside the Glade, where the protection circles that have been created around it should ensure no undue lingering occurs.

Travel by Foot

They fight the personification of thirst and its hydration sucking ticks (which return half the health they sap from its victims to the personification of thirst).
MELADAEMON + 2 tick swarms

Travel by Air

They fight an insect ridden pestilence, propped up by a jellyfish.
ACRIDIDAEMON + skirk nettle

Ritual

1. Prepare a body in the vicinity of the glade
2. Take all the weapons out, and stab the body with them
3. The corpse reanimates
4. Fight the corpse
5. Bring the corpse to the blood glade
6. Kill the corpse while in the blood glade
7. Inter the corpse in the blood glade

While doing this, the one threat the PCs didn't deal with (depending on their mode of travel) will attack if they have not dealt with it before.
The people there are in no great shape to fight. They are all debilitated, tired, and most of the people who know how to fight are actually quite old. Thus, it is up to the PCs to kill the corpse.
Reanimated corpse: Jackal Prince statblock (Feast of Dust)

After the Ritual

None of the inhabitants can leave, all of them now completely dependent on the magic-infused plants that they eat in their day-to-day lives to remain alive. They are all very grateful to the PCs and provide them with the chest plus the other three weapons.

Blood Glade

There are five gripplis, two elves, one tengu, and one human living there right now.

Markun The Simple

A grippli pirate from the pirate islands, three generations removed from Oceasile. He is currently very old and on the brink of dying, not unlike Mogo himself.

Dundor

A male Saltskin grippli from Pertkwugo. He was quick enough to understand how bad this new plague was, and decided to put himself up for being a guide to Marka when she announced she would be going to investigate if the tales behind the Blood Glade were true.

Balagee

A female grippli from Gleeful Meander. They came here with two others, they both have died now.

Walbook

A male grippli from Untuteb. He was young and eager, and thought a trip down into Blood Glade was a better idea than a trip down Pertkwugo with the strange sickness rumours coming down from below. He regrets his decision terribly.

Boolda

A female grippli from Untuteb. Came to find what happened to Walbook. He is a good hunter and felt compelled to stay and provide for the ragtag individuals, many of whom had no wilderness knowledge.

Safiyy'eh

Pirate elf, used to be part of Markun's gang. He is not looking forward to spending the rest of his life in this Blood Glade.

Gaya

Pirate elf, used to be part of Markun's pirate gang. Became a druid during her stay here, but hasn't been able to practice her powers since they started to get attacked, so she feels rusty to say the least.

Curved featheres

A tengu cursed by the gripplis when it tried to sneak past their coastal guard, she was able to escape their pursuit, and found this place by happenstance, as they were trying to avoid the Candle River and its many settlements along the way.

Marka

A female human, very old and failed. Used to live in Pertkwugo, was a visiting professor there when the plague started, and decided investigating the whispers behind the Blood Glade were worth investigating.