"It would be against the Death Curse, I suspect. Thank you."

"Do you know the details of that curse?

We have a greater than average experience... helping souls into new bodies. If that would help with your curse, we may be able to help."

"What we know is that the souls of the dead aren't making their ways to the afterlife - they're instead being trapped in an artifact. Those who have died in the past and been resurrected are also withering, gradually weakening until they too die. Anyone whose soul is trapped can't be resurrected, and we suspect the demi-lich doing the trapping is planning on using the souls to boost his own power tremendously."

Iyanna makes a hard to read face. "Some those problems are similar to our own -- souls being trapped, the withering-- but we do not have perfect solutions. It may take some design, but competing, personal artifacts to counteract the trapping, similar to waystones but designed for your species, may help."

"That actually does sound really workable? We're hoping that defeating Acererak and either destroying, purifying, or otherwise operating his artifact will reverse the process."

"If he could be plausibly defeated in the near term, such competing artifacts maybe unnecessary. But if the timeline is longer-- I will see what Iyanden can do to assist."

"We're hoping he can be defeated in the near term, waiting or delaying might actually make him harder to beat, depending on what he's doing with the souls."

"Our manpower is limited, but we may be able to offer some people to help defeat him."

"We'd appreciate that. Air transport might be the most useful, our big stumbling block has been that he's somewhere in a largely unmapped jungle and all of our aircraft are vulnerable to arrows."

"We have aircraft that can stand up to arrows, certainly. And we may also have greater mapping capability, depending on what is leading the jungle to being unmapped."

"That's good. I'm not sure about the unmapped part, I'm unfortunately not local to Chult."

"Hmm. It's still likelier than not that we can help. If this jungle is merely-- dense, as opposed to magically protected from mapping, we should be able to help. And if it's magically protected from mapping, we may still be able to."

"Thank you. Especially if you have any kind of imaging that can go past the outer layer, the ruins we're looking for shouldn't be hard to spot - it was the largest city on the island before its fall, though the jungle's since swallowed it. I have a few descriptions of buildings in it I found while trying to research it's location, even."

She looks unbearably smug. "That should be well within our capabilities, once we are able to access it."

"Thank you. Hm, for what else..."

It’s a relatively quiet month. They work on trying to find a way between dimensions, but they don’t make much forward progress. Iyanden is unconcerned, a month being barely a blink of an eye to them, but still.

The Merry Band is seconded to guard, to patrol the Webway around Iyanden—as much as terms like ‘around’ or ‘near’ can be applied in the Webway. It’s an uneventful month there, too.

Right till the end of the month.

They find a hole in the Webway. Luckily, not a hole into the Warp, as most such holes are. It’s a hole to somewhere relatively realspace like. A different galaxy, though.

Probably a different dimension too.

Deep breath, and, to Zerri, "That seems worth checking out, though I don't know for sure it leads to my dimension, and I wouldn't want to strand your crew if you decided to help me..."

"It looks relatively stable, at least? I wouldn't worry too much about being stranded, especially if it's just a quick hop to check if it is your place."

"Yeah. If you guys are willing, I'd like to try it."

They go there.

The whole in the Webway is some distance from the planet. It takes them an hour or so to get close enough to pick out individual details-- anything more specific than 'yep, that looks like the sort of world humans and tieflings could live on'. Close enough to see the broad shape of the continents, then close enough to see the green of tilled fields in contrasts to the green of forests and plains.

But when they get close enough--

It's Liliane's world. Definitely.

Deep breath, and "That's it. Chult's underground, unfortunately. That big continent under us, near the middle-bottom's Midgrave, through the giant sinkhole next to it's the entrance to Chult - I can direct us better near it."

"You wanna head straight there? We can do that."

The ship judders slightly as the slip into the atmosphere, and they start heading towards Midgrave

"I suppose it depends on if we want reinforcements, but I do think moving quickly might outweigh that. As for stopping in Midgrave... I do have at least one ally there - I'm hesitant to involve her in this, but when the fate of the world is considered..."

"You know the most about this. Allies would be helpful, but it depends on how much time is of the essence, you know?"

"Exactly. But I think I'd err on the side of another fighter - I don't know exactly which caliber she's reached since I last saw her, I myself have been advancing so quickly..."