Serpent's Skull [Racing to Ruin] (IC)

[lostsole31]

ROVA 4710 (Beginning of Autumn) ...

The survivors of the wreck of the Jenivere slowly die off for several reasons ... madness (via running off into the jungle's of Smuggler's Shiv, never to be seen again), disease, and cannibals. The remains of what Aron considered the "core group" of survivors that were the bravest finally broke the power of the Thrunefang tribe of cannibals. Towards the end, they cornered Ieana/ Yarzoth in hidden ruins of a place called the Temple of Zura (the apparent reason for Yarzoth's engineering the Jenivere in the first place) and kill her, though her body wasn't found as she fell into a pit. Meanwhile, they found one of their missing former castaways, Aerys Mavato, a woman with a secret talent for fiction writing.

The remaining survivors rebuild just enough of an attempted Chelish lighthouse, taking control of it from more Thrunefangs (who were the descendants of the original Chelish sailors that became debased) and managed to light its beacon, discovered an ancient Azlanti temple and defeateed Yarzoth, and all that was left to do was only to wait for rescue. And the defeat of Yarzoth gave clues to a place called Tazion, a set of ruins in the Screaming Jungle of the Mwangi Expanse that itself supposedly had clues to a lost Azlanti city named Saventh-Yhi.

The rescue ship that finally comes is a whaling vessel bound for Eleder, the Red Gull, captained by Aulek Tegerten. They send longboats to the shore and pick up not only the survivors, but also another friend of theirs they made on the island .... one Pezock, a crazed tengu sailor that had originally sailed with what seems from his descriptions to have been Mantis cultists.

It actually took some time for the party to sort through Yarzoth's notes, and included a significant amount of time in a library once they got to Eleder, the capital of Sargava, the recently independent country that was once a vassal state for Cheliax before the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune took power in the empire to the north.

But split loyalties and the party being observed was all that was needed for multiple factions to recognize what the party had stumbled onto.

Aron and Gelik (the latter having been a disgraced Pathfinder himself), gave information to the Pathfinders.

Stephan Brauer, Erin (who may have had a crush on Stephan), a Shoanti ranger named Ankarum, a former legal clerk named Jask Derindi, and an elven "Calistrian paladin" named Lalarlia made sure the government of Sargava knew about the clues leading to Tazion (and from there, supposedly, Saventh-Yhi).

Pezock tried to curry favor with the cultists of the Red Mantis. They took the information he had, but rebuffed him from serving as Pezock (a former slave) was not really a believer. Pezock joined forces with Aerys Mavato and the two of them instead went to the Free Captains and found a place with them.