Episode 22 – Drakken and Caradiru

Dreams That Beckon

Dawn cracked through the stained glass windows of the chapel in Kethys, casting vibrant flecks of amethyst and emerald across the worn flagstone floor. The morning was dry, with a strange stillness to the air, as if the winds themselves were watching, waiting. Birds chirped half-heartedly in the distance. A low chant, rising and falling like breath through reeds, resonated from the altar.

Theyr-Rha was already awake—his eyes hollow with worry, his robes tangled with sweat and dust. He’d been pacing long before first light, haunted by a dream he could not shake. His voice shook as he called the Roving Adventurers from their cots.

“I saw it again,” he murmured, his hand trembling as he pointed westward. “A ruin, cloaked in vines and sorrow. A place lost to time. The ghosts there—they weep. They scream. They wait.“

He paced as the others sat up groggily.

“This ruin—it lies within a land they called Drakken. A jungle world, older than our oldest cities, more treacherous than any I’ve seen in dreams. The tower I glimpsed… it was no temple. It was a prison.”

He turned, eyes wild. “Something stirs there; something old. A thing that remembers. We must go. Today.”

Makhulim growled low and nodded. “If it’s evil that needs an axe to the skull, I’ll carry This and That sharpened.”

Nayzungit flexed his fingers, already thinking of healing prayers and wards. “Poison, disease, fever. We’ll need salves, incense, poultices. This place reeks of corruption.”

Marcho groaned and pulled on his boots. “Let’s stock up. I want something to keep jungle leeches out of my breeches.”

Faylen lingered in the corner, staring at the fading incense smoke curling in the chapel air. “This feels like fate’s hand,” she whispered. “Like a story half-told.”

They prepared. And they set out.

Of Ships and Secrets

The docks of Kethys bustled with movement, but one ship stood out. Dark-wooded and gilded at its edges with sun-worn silver trim, it creaked impatiently against its moorings as if it knew the journey ahead.

The Tidewraith, a fast cutter ship known for strange routes and even stranger passengers, had docked only a few hours before. Captain Rewright, a gaunt human with a sea-weathered face and an unsettling habit of speaking in riddles, welcomed them aboard with a grin that never touched his eyes.

“I’ve ferried bones and riches, curses and songs,” he said as they boarded. “But never a fate this heavy.”

Theyyr-Rha left them, stating that he needed to remain in Kethys, holding vigil at the chapel.

Each night on the voyage, Rewright found a different adventurer and sat with them alone, speaking low, feeding them stories like fish to a net.

Makhulim

Rewright spoke of an ancient forge lost deep in the jungle—The Crucible of Roztarr. “The weapons made there shaped themselves,” Rewright whispered, “pounded and quenched by unseen hands. They say one still burns with the soul of its first wielder. Others… speak in dreams.”

Nayzungit

Rewright spoke of the Chapel of Withered Grace in the heart of Caradiru. “Once,” he said, “priests summoned miracles under its roof. Now the gods have turned away, and the altar bleeds if you kneel too long.”

Marcho

Rewright shared the riddle of the Vaults of Ehnnoj. “Treasure unlike anything you’ve seen—gemstones that breathe, coins etched with forgotten names. But they’re guarded by the Statues of the Last Lie. Blink—and they move. Speak—and they judge.”

Faylen

Rewright recounted the sorrow of Calliea the Seeress. “She saw too much, saw the unraveling of nations. So she took her own eyes out, left them sealed in a jar. It’s said she still whispers prophecies from within the ruins, waiting for someone who won’t look away.”

And each night, after the tales were told, Rewright would return to the helm and stare westward, his lips moving in silence.

They sailed seven days. Storms brewed and dissipated in moments. Sea creatures blinked up from beneath the surface. And through it all, the horizon westward remained oddly… still.

Until Caradiru rose from the waves like a memory.

City of Forgotten Crowns

Caradiru.

A sprawling city of stone and vine, draped in grandeur and cracked beauty. The jungle pressed in from every side, a constant reminder of the wild. Towers leaned with age but stood tall; streets twisted like veins through the heart of the city. Domed halls with murals in crushed sapphire, broken aqueducts still whispering with water, market stalls hung with fruit, insects, steel, and secrets.

Their arrival caused a stir. Foreigners in Caradiru weren’t rare—but foreigners with the mark of fate drawn behind them like a cloak were.

At the Painted Crescent Inn, they met guides, thieves, and treasure seekers. All warned of Drakken’s Hunger—an unseen pull from the jungle that drove men mad, turned maps to lies, and made compasses spin wild.

In a whisper-thin library, Faylen uncovered a tome bound in snakeskin, referencing an ancient tower near the Hynmarsh—built to hold the Evils of Ehnnoj, sealed after a war between gods and jungle spirits.

Children in the street played songs about Calliea’s Curse—“Eyes for Sight, Blood for Night,” they chanted.

A temple on the western cliffs spoke only one name now in hushed tones: Caradiru the Lost.

And in every telling, one word returned again and again: Ehnnoj

Preparations and Portents

They spent four days in Caradiru preparing.

Makhulim commissioned new pauldrons enchanted to resist venom. Nayzungit filled satchels with divine tinctures, garlic paste, dried hag’s root, and flybane.

Marcho traded two silver rings for a map etched on ghost-parchment and another for a compass that only spun when you lied.

Faylen studied star charts and the alignment of the moons with old druids who hissed through stone teeth.

Dreams troubled them each night.

Faylen walked endless halls of bone. Marcho stared into his own grave. Makhulim saw his axes turn to ash. Nayzungit stood alone on a broken bridge, calling to Angradd—but no voice answered.

They knew the jungle waited.

Into Drakken

They rode out beneath a bruised dawn, westward from Caradiru and into the Hynmarsh, where the jungle grew thick with silence.

The first few miles were uneventful. Local guides refused to pass beyond the ancient Obelisk of Teeth—an overgrown standing stone, worn smooth but marked with deep scratches that oozed amber sap. This is where they met Shtely.

He was a tall, lanky human with arms like vines and eyes that never stopped moving. He is standing, arms crossed, leaning against the obelisk. “Took ya’ long enough,” he says, “Theyr-Rha seemed to think you were qicker!”. He claimed to know the jungle’s edge “better than my own mother’s face.”

The trail twisted, faded, disappeared.

Ferns the size of horses. Trees with bark that shimmered like beetle shells. Butterflies with eyes instead of wings. Sounds without source. Every breath felt heavy. The air was wet with heat and the hush of a thousand watching things.

Then came the fog.

It rolled in from the roots—not above, but below—curling up from the earth in slow coils. Voices murmured in it. Sometimes words, sometimes only weeping.

“Ghosts,” whispered Shtely. “Or memories.”

Ruins of Caradiru Penitentiary

They found the first stones half-buried beneath moss and clawroot vines.

A gate. Or what remained of one. Two columns shaped like entwined snakes, now cracked and weeping moss. Beyond, a sunken avenue of cobbled stone choked with jungle rot.

The ruins emerged like a dying wreck to a race of gods. What were once towering buildings and strong walls, now crumbled into rubble.

Walls bore reliefs of screaming faces, some human, some reptilian, others… neither. A tower, cracked near the top, loomed over the ruins. Its spire leaned like it was listening.

Inside, the air was cold. Not cool—cold. Their breath fogged.

Chambers echoed when no one moved. Murals showed rites—chains of light, flames that did not burn, serpents coiling around stars. And always, always, a figure with hollow eyes.

Faylen spoke a name from the murals.

“Ehnnoj.”

Shtely went pale.

“Then it’s real,” he whispered. “The prison is waking.”

The Vault of Echoing Steps

Deeper inside the ruin, they found a stair that descended seemingly into the roots of the world. Torches, ages old, cold to the touch, and a part of the walls themselves, flickered against walls etched with bone chalk and smeared ink.

They passed statues of guardians: hulking, silent, blind, mouthless.

And they found the vault.

A door; massive, round, sealed with silver lines inlaid like a spiderweb. Marcho reached out, as if drawn. Upon touching it, visions washed over all:

Marcho, drowning in gold that turned to maggots.
Faylen, her arrows burning away mid-flight.
Makhulim, facing a reflection that screamed when he did not.
Nayzungit, seeing Clementine melt in his hands.

Makhulim grabbed Marcho pulling him away. All staggered back.

A voice whispered from within the vault. “You came too soon.”

They fled. They rushed from the vault, back up the stairs, into the waiting, cold air. Whispers and shadows following them, reaching out, grasping for them. They kept the hustle, heading out of the ruins and back to the safety of the jungle.

Nightfall and Names

They camped in silence beneath a moonless sky. The jungle hummed with insect song, predator calls, and something far away, whispers chanting, something stirring.

Shtely told a tale then, voice shaking:

“In the old days, before Caradiru Penitentiary fell, there was a mage among the inmates who called himself Ehnnoj. It’s said he gave up his heart to learn the name of every dead thing. He wandered between worlds—First, Shadow, Dream, Void—and always returned knowing more than he should.”

“They tried to entomb him hear in one of the towers. They failed.”

“He built the vault to seal his knowledge inside, not himself. He was never found, gone, it seems, to far away lands. And now, he calls again.”

They listened. And none slept easily.