Hélène: Losing ourselves

It had been argued that we should probably allow for a few days, possibly even weeks, for Jomba Town to calm down, and so we directly proceeded to this ominous island where someone was allegedly waiting to be rescued by Barton Grey. After a pleasant day's journey we got said island into view, and from afar it appeared just like a tropical paradise, with a radiant white back backed by a craggy, lushly overgrown hillside.

We went ashore in a dinghy and looked around. On the beach, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, there were no hidden treasure chests nor anything else but warm sand, so we decided to move inland. Scaling the hillside was a rather difficult and arduous task, and it was made even more difficult by the wildlife. At one point, we spotted a group of rather savage-looking monkeys, but we managed to sneak by without startling them.

A while later, we had to pass a narrow ledge while moving further inland. And there we were attacked, by a man in what looked like a ragged military uniform, who appeared up the cliff above our heads, and from there, threw down an explosive device, which blasted apart a portion of the ledge, with the splinters gravely injuring some of my friends. After that, the assailant ran off, and we were in no position to pursue. We pressed on, though, and managed to reach the end of this narrow climb, where we found that a device with a tripwire had been installed, probably in order to alarm the inhabitants, who had otherwise remained hidden from us.

There was nobody around, though, and we took the risk of hiding in the vicinity and taking the time to tend to the wounds my comrades had suffered. We remained undisturbed for the half hour I needed, and after all of us were in shape again, we decided to follow the path of the wire, to find the source of the attackers. This led us towards the large, dormant volcano, and when we reached the crest, we saw that there was a settlement within the caldera. From the distance, we could see that multiple shapes were moving around the buildings; this was not a small village.

Before we could come to a decision how to proceed, Carlton claimed that he had seen a creature or person, someone vaguely humanoid with feline features, who had obviously observed us for a while, but now, having been seen, retreated back into the jungle. We decided to follow its tracks, which to me, were only few and far apart, but the others claimed they could follow them easily. This went on for about half an hour, when it became increasingly clear that there were no usable tracks, and we found ourselves lost in the jungle, with no obvious way out.