The Set-Up

The sharrug gatorfolk are rising up against the Free City. Slithering their way through the tangled network of sewers and basements and first floors and second floors that have been built and sunk into what were once these lizardkin's bayou dens, they have struck into deep and unprotected parts of the city. Repeatedly.

Only 40 years into their newfound and hardfought independence, the Free City finds itself faced with a seemingly unconquerable foe, one driven both politically and spiritually to greater and greater acts of savagery. The citizenry cannot turn to either the Haeno clans nor the nations of Aporuë for help. The Two Kingdoms and Aprasaham care little for their fate, and the tribes of both Ndata-mbanye and Pesh find what help they can send weakened by the rightful anger they feel at their oppression by the colonizers. Only the Burnt-Out Coast seems willing to help, but they seem ineffective against these attackers.

The famed Free City University, refuge for all manner of strange studies, has stepped up with one of their wild theories. At this point, the citizenry of the Free City cares little for the oddball directions into which their desperation pitches them. They have sent you as their last, best hope.

The University keeps records of old texts written by the first Haeno and Aporuëna to have settled Pesh, some few even predating the outbreak of the First Free City War.  These books include Peshwa descriptions of shurrag origins, which tell us that they came many thousands of years ago from an island far to the south.  Subsequent investigations sought answers from the shurrag.  Given the gatorfolk's propensity for savagery and the colonizers' blinding curiosity, these investigations looked more like tortures, but answers were achieved in those days before walls and paving stones pushed the gatorfolk to the edges of the bayou.

The shurrag claimed that they were descended from a race they called the arallav, who walked invisible through the jungles and swamps of the island.  They spoke also of items and places of great power to which they still feel a spiritual connection, if a distant one.  Haeno researchers, in marginalia scribbled amongst these notes, questioned if the island meant was the obscure island of Salgam south of Aprasaham.  Further researchers, building on an ever-dwindling stream of information, have determined that sharrug magical bodies maintain a link to these faraway places and objects of power.

Your mission?  Travel to Salgam, an island still largely unexplored by foreign peoples, find those sacred places and/or objects, and pull on them to ensure the Free City's victory.  The University suggests that there are two possible solutions:

1. If you can find the three Sampy Houses, and if you can find the one with the appropriate sampy (magical artifacts whose powers extend over the entire community and ensure the ruler's sovereignty and the integrity of the state) and install the small god you carry with you in that House, the Free City will gain the protection of those sampy when battling the sharrug for as long as Mboloké's child lives there.  The appropriate sampy are kelimalaza, which turns rotten eggs into weapons with power beyond imagining, ramahavaly which controls all forms of reptile and repels their attacks, manjakatsiroa which protects the sovereignty of the king from rivals, and rafantaka which protects against injury and death.
2. If you use Vanmi techniques to build a grigri magic bag containing not only the bit of river muck from the Free City but also some sort of appropriate connection to the Twelve Sacred Hills of the island, whosoever wears the grigri bag will find eirself victorious against the sharrug, no matter the odds, and can lead Free City forces as a conquering hero against the gatorfolk.

In order to achieve all of this, you are sailing on a ship headed with supplies to the leper colony that was established long ago on the island.  Nations from all over the world relocate their lepers, plague-ridden, and grotesques to this colony, so that they don't infect or bring down those nations.  From there, you should be able to delve deep into the surrounding jungle on your quest for survival.

Good luck.