ADVENTURES ⟩ THE RUINS OF JERIBO
Any Kananite character (including Ezra and Zubai) knows the arch symbolizes passing into the authority of the town’s chief.
A Kananite corpse lies just within the archway, an arrow with bright, multicolored fletching piercing through the back of his neck.
The two “sentinels,” keeping their distance, gesture for the party to enter the mansion.
If the heroes walk past the door, they can see into the building’s interior and notice the monsters, spoiling their ambush.
As soon as any heroes knock or interact with the door, a kulu brute wielding an uprooted tree bursts out of the building’s wall and attacks, along with a girtablin riding on its back.
The two elus make their stand here, while Madenifel the dragonrider rains down arrows from the Citadel (with maneuver advantage, but with a -4 penalty).
If the ambush is successful, the combined force of monsters is likely more than a match for the heroes. Make it clear that the heroes can retreat if they're outmatched. If they do, only the kulu brute and girtablin pursue.
Heroes who ask the right questions can recognize the devastation as a controlled detonation, not an external attack.
If the heroes defeat the monsters in the area, Hotep, the hippo-headed Mazrian panjandrum, peeks out from a trapdoor amidst the rubble, like a hippo emerging above the waterline.
Hotep activated a magical device that sent a distress signal to Mazr—and blew up the office in a controlled detonation.
He immediately assumes the party is the assistance he summoned.
He also asks if they can repair their malfunctioning crystal (see below).
Tey, an ibis-headed Mazrian factotum, lingers in the small cellar below the trapdoor. She worries that their communication crystal is malfunctioning—she can’t get any imperial “angles” to work.
Tey finds Hotep, her boss, repulsive.
She’s also dejected that the Kananite townspeople abandoned them. She had made friends with the local baker and was heartbroken to watch him run away without stopping to get her.
The crystal angles stopped working three days ago.
If a hero knows the Scrolls of the Sorcerer or Wisdom of Adod lore, they can quickly determine that the crystal is working fine. The problem is that there’s no longer any signal being transmitted from Mazr. (Hotep will refuse to acknowledge this is the case, especially if a Kananite hero delivers the news.)