One day, Atl and Hamud went out to explore the abandoned village, with Hamud disguised not as a jaguar warrior, but as a beautiful woman. The disguise was very good, especially from a distance. While exploring, they met two men, dressed in rags, but carrying weapons. The men said that they also lived in the village and they had been watching them and promised that they were good people and thought they looked like good people too. There was a friendly conversation, but it soon became awkward and the meeting ended with an agreement to avoid each other.
Feeling confident, Hamud wanted to go into Tezat and Atl agreed. He wore the jaguar armor and presented Hamud as his slave, using him/her to begin negotiations with a merchant who gave them information about where the tabaxi was held captive and in return Hamud agreed to go with the merchant to his house. As they entered the dark street where the merchant lived, Hamud revealed his true nature and attacked. The merchant ran into his house and his guards came to his rescue.
Atl and Hamud killed the guards.
Hamud cast off his disguise and the pair joined the search party for the strange woman, while collecting more clues about the tabaxi. In time, as Hamud revealed his penchant for violent mischief, Atl persuaded him that they should instead return to their hiding place in the village.
A few days later, Tameme (one of the porters) showed up in the village with some important news. He had been lucky to escape Azatl alive. After going their separate ways on the causeway, Paal had tried to follow Zolin’s orders to lead the other back to the ridge. But Hoscotl had betrayed them, offering them as captive sacrifices or slaves to a group of jaguar warriors. Paal had fought to protect Tamema and the other porter and the three of them were captured, along with the local warrior that Atl had defeated. As far as Tameme could tell, Hocotl didn’t get more then a few quills of gold and a hunk of smoked meat.
At the slave pens, Tameme learned a lot of interesting information. There were stories about Atl and Hamud’s explots in Tezat and about the fact that they were looking for the captive tabaxi. Based on this, a large group of warriors were planning to raid Tezat and take the tabaxi themselves. Paal and the other porter helped Tameme to escape so that he could warn Atl. Atl and Zolin thanked Tameme and decided this was their last best chance to find the tabaxi. Together with Hamood and Divemoye, they went to Tezat.
The ruined city was quiet but tense. The few people out on the streets were hostile or fighting amongst themselves. As they reached the center of Tezat, they saw a group of larmed men striding purposefully down the street with smoldering torches. They enter a two-story building, climbed to the roof, and set it on fire. At Hamood’s urging, the travelers chased the arsonists. But then they heard sounds of a counter-attack and decided they would do better to hide and watch. The smoke of several more fires filled the air. The warriors of Tezat raised the alarm. Warriors were raiding the sacrifice pens!
Moving from house to house, the travelers approached the center of the commotion. From the midst from a large combat, a lone figure broke free. As the figure approached she showed herself to be a bipedal jaguar. Her arms were found, and she dragged a stone tied around her ankle. Zolin freed the tabaxi, who introduced herself as Chioptl and then took off running out of the city. Unhampered, Chioptl was much faster than the party, but every so often, she stopped for them. One they were out of the Tezat, Chioptl gratefully followed the travelers to the abandoned village where they had made their base and when asked told them everything she knew about the cloak of the plume.
The tabaxi elders had determined that humans were no longer worthy of the Cloak and had sent a party to take it and carry it back to Tabaxi-land. The tabaxais had determined that the cloak was guarded by a rain serpent on the slopes of Mt. Nexal. Together they could kill the rain serpent. It would be most helpful to find some cocoa beans and some jade and offer the rain serpent a gift.
Hamood had some cocoa beans, but no one had any jade. While inventorying their possessions, Zolin passed around the medallion that he’d taken from the jaguar that had attacked them in the jungle. Atl refused to return it, believing that it wad cursed; Atl and Zolin began to struggle. Hamood attacked Zolin with his maca. Zolin turned away in time and suffered no more than a glancing blow, but Chioptl attacked Hamood. Hamood refused to yield so Chioptl killed him and ate him.
The party decided that the next day they would go back to Tezat and try to buy some jade. These pans changed the next morning, and for the very best reasons. A warrior named Willy introduced himself to the party, explaining that he had been watching them for days, but had been hesitant to approach because of Hamood. Now that the strange man was dead, he hoped they would accept him as one of them. He had a good spear, and a few pieces of jade. The party welcomed him, offered him Hamood’s maca, and explained what they were trying to do.
The party followed a path up the slopes of Mt. Nexal, a forbidding landscape of black rock, noxious steam, and occasional spurts of lava. But among the many hellish caverns, the party found one that was cool and misty. The stone lintel was carved with the image of a rain servant.
Entering this cave, they found an altar, on which they placed their cocoa and jade. After a few moments, the ground began to shake, and the fog became thicker and warmer. Anticipating the approach of the rain serpent from a large pit in the floor, the party prepared their weapons.
The serpent was about thirty feet long with two heads, that of a snake and that of a jaguar. Greedily eying its alter, it was completely unprepared for the spear that Willy plunged into its belly. It recoiled in pain, pulling the spear out of Willy’s hands and breaking it off. The rest of the party rushed to attack. The serpent slithered deeper into its cavern. Only Chioptl was fast enough to catch it; she leaped onto the serpent, and raked it with her rear claws. The serpent seized Chioptl in both of its mouths and ripped her apart. Atl and Zolin shot it with arrows from a safe distance, while Willy and Divemoye pressed the attack, hacking through its scales and clubbing its enormous fanged heads. Atl and Zolin dropped their bows and charged with their own melee weapons, driving the serpent into a tight space in the cavern where it couldn’t bite them. The serpent likewise took a defensive posture, pulling itself into crevice there it was safe from their weapons. Divemoye approached the jaguar head and when it pounced, met it with the Axe of Justice, severing it with the fine metal blade. The other charged wit their knives and stabbed the serpent until dead.
Zolin and Atl led the charge deeper into the cavern while Willy inspected the serpent’s corpse. Zolin was the first to see the cloak while Atl was the one to seize it. Noticing the air was quickly becoming hot and sulfurous, Zolin did not protest and assisted Atl in collecting the other treasure in the serpent’s hoard—several gold quills, weapons, and an oddly-carved wooden box. The dragon-slayers rushed out of the cave and made their way back down from Mt. Zatal.
The travelers spent a day examining the treasure they'd discovered and planning their next move. Reflecting on their reasons for coming north to Nexal in the first place, they acknowledged the obvious, there was no food in the north, and if they were wanted there, it was not for any good reason.
Atl remembered his time with the old man from the pyramid who gave them gifts. The man had asked for the cloak of the one plume. Atl didn't know what it was at the time but now he did. And even though he liked the thought of keeping it for himself (it did give him a sense of confidence and authority, the others noticed it too) he proposed that rather than starving to death or being captured in Nexal, they should try to return to the pyramid and give the old man the cloak.
The first night out of Nexal, the travelers were pestered by two large feral cats. When the cats became vicious, they were killed, roasted, and eaten.
