Day 27: 6th Day, 9th Month, Year 507

After having defeated the pirates, Ilmari went to talk with the freed prisoners. They told him that most of them were fishermen who had been caught by the pirates, but apparently the people who had the pirates hunting for slaves didn't want them to draw attention to their home base and so the pirates kept them in their camp instead. The other prisoners still at the pirate camp had been left there because they were not healthy enough for whatever their masters were needing them for.

Meanwhile Alamar and Haren interrogated the four pirates who had surrendered, who told them that their captain had made regular trips to the main island to deliver the slaves they had captured or were transporting from the cult outpost on the mainland. Not wanting to risk the prisoners causing them any trouble in the future, the two executed all four of them.

After searching the camp and the pirates stores for anything useful, it was decided to give the second pirate ship that was docked at the pier to the fishermen so they could return to their villages. An offer to join in the hunt for the pirates' masters was declined.
Since they were not certain that all the pirates had been killed and there could still be more out there, the whole camp was then set on fire and burned down completely.

The next morning the ship headed northeast to search for the place the captured slaves had been delivered to. When they came close to the location indicated by the interrogated pirates on a map, Haren, Alamar, Ilmari, and Sagari took a boat to the beach to scout ahead on foot. As they were trying to cross a muddy river flowing from the forest into the sea, they were attacked by an enormous crocodile. It managed to land a hard strike on Ilmari, but was quickly killed by Haren and Alamar.

Continuing along the beach, the group soon spotted a small bay with several ancient white marble ruins that still showed some signs of the architecture of the ancient Naga. The ground had been dug up and huge piles of earth were surrounding the ruins. Sagari sent out Jawa to scout out the area, who spotted a group of frog men digging in the ruins and half a dozen armed reptilian humanoids patrolling the area. There were also several tunnel entrances in the surrounding hill sides, which raised the possibility of much larger numbers of warriors being present inside.

Sagari and Ilmari sneaked forward along the edge of the jungle and ambushed two of the patrolling serpentmen with a sleep spell. Sagari then created an illusion of a small shack around the two prisoners to fool them into believing they had been taken far away from the ruins while they were out. The first of the two prisoners refused to say anything to his captors and did not respond to any intimidations from Ilmari and Haren, so they killed him to get the other one to talk. Alamar telepathically whispered into the mind of the captive that he was an allied servant of the Naga and managed to convince him to tell his captors what they wanted to know, as it would make an ambush waiting for them more believable. He told them that there was a Naga in charge of the camp, and about a dozen serpentmen warriors, as well as numerous slaves who were doing the excavation. Feeling confident that they would be able to deal with these forces if an open battle broke out, and convinced that the reptilian slavers were cruel and heartless masters, they killed the second prisoner as well and went to make plans for entering the ruins.