Last time was waaaaaay back here. Thus beginneth a new adventure!
The heroes are in Cyrene, Dabba, deciding what to do. Rather, they know they want to go to Khemit and try and figure out the whole "closed borders" thing (with a side order of "free the slaves"). Akala asks around the docks to try and find a ship that will take them east and drop them in Khem, leaning on her reputation as a chronicler of heroes, but that actively seems to turn captains off. Imani, wielding the universal language of money, pays a fisherman (who looks pretty desperate) to sail them down the coast and let them off. "My poverty, and not my will, consents," Ahmose the fisherman says.
The heroes get on the boat and sail away, sail away. Ahmose tells them that if they see one of the Pharaoh's ships, they'll need to hide - while he doesn't doubt the heroes are brave enough to fight the cipher scarabs, he doesn't want to lose his boat (or, like, die). A little ways into the voyage they do indeed see a ship with a scarab insignia on the sail. They hide below deck, and the ship pulls up alongside Ahmose's boat. A Khem sailor descends and asks Ahomse's business; he claims to be fishing. The sailor opens a small, wooden box and releases a scarab with a magic symbol on its back - a cipher scarab.
The scarab flies around the boat, clearly looking for stowaways. Eithne, thinking quickly, creates a ward against scarabs around them, and the bug ignores them completely. The sailor takes the bug back and the Pharaoh's ship sails away, and the heroes breathe a sigh of relief.
They reach a strip of beach and Ahmose lets them off. They are confronted, though, with an enormous wall of sand. Rather than push through it, Akala prays to Orunmila to be transported through it. It takes hours, but the heroes vanish.
Akala experiences the teleportation as a rush of images, truth, and color, but this time it's all stinging sand and bites. She sees Orunmila, standing miles tall, in the sand, carrying the characters through. But then a great serpent - Set - strikes his hand, and Orunmila drops them. All of the heroes reappear miles above the ground, falling to their deaths.
Well, not Akala; she can fly. Eithne casts a spell to slow their descent, and it helps, but not enough. Thanos calls up his own magic and flings blood at the ground, attempting to turn it soft and pliant. Instead, he turns the ground into snakes. Lying in the middle of this immense snake pit is...Thanos.
Not wanting to land in whatever fresh hell this is, Eithne summons wind and blows the heroes off course. They land, hard, but survive. Akala floats towards them, but then sees the other Thanos stand and walk across the snakes towards them. She tries to hurl a chakram at him, but it gets caught on her belt. She calls out a warning, but the doppelganger is already casting a spell.
Winds blow up the sand and flay their heroes' flesh. Eithne casts a barrier in front of them to block it, and Imani hurls her spear through other-Thanos' chest. He snaps the spear and tries to cast, but the snakes behind him start biting him. He points at real-Thanos and rasps "I'll see you. You'll be me," and then collapses dead.
The snakes turn back into sand, and the heroes examine their options. Akala knows Khem pretty well, and figures that heading east is the best bet. They'll probably hit a village before too long - or a slave camp.
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