Saturday, February 28th 1920:
Randolph Carter summons the party to the office of Professor Armitage who is still away on urgent business. He advises that Armitage urgently needs them to travel to the Yucatan. There they will make contact with the mysterious and reclusive Ktula people.
The Ktula are hunter-gatherers who live near the ruins of a great city, possibly Mayan or older, that lies somewhere beyond a great rainforest in the "Valley of the Dead".
These have carried on many traditions from ancient times and possess two very valuable spells that Armitage requires. The first allows you to create a special protective powder. The second spell allows you to create a magical spear called a fetch stick.
Besides these two tasks, the most important part of the journey (Carter emphasizes) will be collecting a rare specimen of butterfly that lives somewhere in the rainforest near their village. The Feathered Serpent butterfly is a brilliant, rainbow-colored butterfly with fluffy, almost feather-like wings. With its wings outstretched it is about the size of ones hand. Collecting a live intact butterfly is of the highest priority in their quest.
Passage to the Yucatan has already been booked by Carter. From Kingsport, they will travel by steam ship to Belize City in British Hunduras where they meet with Buck Reynolds the pilot and engineer that will return them to Arkham. From there, a group of Hutterite porters will transport them out of the city by horse and buggy to the edge of the rainforest near the Ktula village. From that point on, they will travel on foot through the jungle until you make contact with the Ktula. Carter says they should welcome you and are aware you are traveling there.
The party wanders through the jungle due West where the road out of Belize City ends. After several hours they make contact with the Ktula. They inquire about learning the two spells and the Ktula advise that in order to meet the medicine man they must prove themselves worth of being warriors in the tribe.
A creature they call the child of bast has been terrorizing the village and eating some of their children. They ask for volunteers who wish to prove themselves warriors. The Colonel, Buck Reynolds, and Madeline accept the challenge and are given special spears that have been blessed to take out the creature. Father Jonas stays in the village and Sadie comes along with the hunters to observe. One of the Ktula leads them through the rainforest to a small cave entrance.
Buck Reynolds enters the cave. The colonel tosses a torch over his head, nearly setting his hat on fire. As the colonel looks around a puma pounces on him from the darkness and starts mauling him. He steps back further into the cave and draws his pistol firing at the creature. The colonel tries to spear the animal as well and fails and is bitten. They kill the puma and drag it's body out of the cave to present to the ktula.
At a fireside ceremony later that evening, Madeline, the colonel, and buck are granted the status of warriors. Madeline and the colonel dawn the traditional body paint and garb of the Ktula warrior, a redish color. The colonel is given a puma loincloth made from the kill of the day. Father Jonas and Sadie wear the bluish body paint reserved for the women in the village. The paint provides a resistance to the insects in the jungle. Buck doesn't wear the warpaint and he gets bitten up by the jungle insects that night.
The next day they rise early to visit the medicine man. He advises that the warriors may learn the spells they need if they eat the flesh of atlach-natcha. He leads them to a clearing in the jungle where there's a large mushroom. They approach the mushroom and an enormous 2' long spider leaps onto madeline, biting her with it's venomous mandibles. The colonel blasts the spider to bits with his elephant gun and begins to scoop up chunks of the dead spider and eat it. Buck Reynolds disgustedly joins in. Madeline has already fallen deep into a trance from the spider's venom. The Father and Sadie watch as the medicine man builds them a fire then takes some of the spider guts himself and enters a trance.
The warriors and medicine man travel to the Dreamlands where they meet the ancestors of the Ktula. They appear naked in a cave filled with a great purple flame. The Ktula teach Madeline the corpse dust spell, then they lead Buck Reynolds down the 700 stairs of sleep into a great wooded area. Several days seem to pass in the dreamlands though only a few hours have passed in the Yucatan. Buck cannot learn the spell because the requirements for the ritual to make the fetch stick are too vile. Nonetheless, when the colonel and buck return from their trance they find that they are both given fetch sticks (though they cannot make more).
Back in the village they meet up with Toni, who had sea sickness and then malaria and was left behind in Belize City for a night. He recovers nicely with the help fo some jungle herbs. The Ktula lead the party through the jungle to find the creepers they need to make the corpse dust powder. That night they set up camp in the valley of the dead. The next morning they awaken to find that Buck is being crushed by a python. Father Jonas chops the thing in half with his crucif-ax. They eat the snake.
One Ktula leads them further to the stone marker, a giant totem pole with fearsome images on it. Colonel Angus freezes it with the Mi-go mist gun then approaches. A dart shoots out from it and sticks to his torch in front of his face. Toni investigates further and finds more poison darts, but nothing else. As they head down the path Toni steps on a panel and a poison dart hits Father Jonas. The poison causes him to have trouble breathing, but he recovers after several hours from medical attention.
They find the poisoned river of Yig and a rickety bridge crossing it about 60' above water. Everyone makes it across okay until Buck Reynolds tries to cross. The heavy adventurer falls through one of the planks and grasps at the bridge finally slipping down into the water. The rest of the party had tied a rope to him earlier so they pull hard to draw him up out of the river.
The colonel sees a dark shape moving towards Buck under the water. Sadie gets pulled onto the bridge while they try to pull Buck out and she falls through the bridge as well. She holds on for a while then falls into the waters below. Buck is pulled up out of the water before the creature can get him and it passes then turns back around to get Sadie. The colonel takes some shots at it while Madeline comes down by the shore downstream and fishes for Sadie with her spear.
Sadie stuggles with the current and cannot swim so she begins to drown. The creature passes by her and she feels cold scales brush against her under the water. Finally she sees the spear Madeline has held out in front of her and grabs onto it and is pulled to safety. The colonel continues firing on the submerged creature as it retreats back upstream swiftly.
They head further down the path and by sunset they have reached the temple of Yig, a squat pyramid with a stone building on top. They see that the feathered serpent butterflies cover the side wall facing the sunlight and shine brilliantly in the twilight. Colonel angus sneaks up and nets one just as five skeletal conquistadors rise suddenly from the jungle ruins and attack. They blast all of the conquistadors before they can be injured and proceed to investigate the temple at the top of the pyramid.
A heavy stone door on the structure won't budge, so Buck uses some dynamite to blow a hole in the heavy solid stone door. Father Jonas pulls a chuck of stone out of the debis big enough to create a hole that someone can hunch over and fith through. The colonel tosses a torch into the room and sees it said past a chest of treasure down into a well in the center of the chamber, where it splashes and is extinquished.
Sadie enters with her flashlight and rope tied to her and takes a couple of gold circular things out of the chest and puts them in her back. She hears a sound from down below and without looking down she begins to flee. She makes it just outside the temple entrace when she is grabbed by some unseen thing inside and dragged back in kicking and screaming. The party clutches at the rope desperate to pull her back through the hole, and eventually the resistance drops away and they feel only the weight of her body. They drag her back through the entrance and see that she has been bitten by some large thing and is now dead. Madeline sees her back with the gold in it just inside the temple.
She reaches for it and is bitten by a large serpentine head. The poisonous fangs instandly kill her. The large feathered serpent uncoils and emerges fully from the temple to attack the rest of the party. The colonel, who had until now refused to look turns back around to witness the horrible thing. Toni unloads the rest of his clip from his thompson into the great snake, obliterating the foul creature.
They retreat back through the jungle to the Ktula village arriving by dawn the next day. The Ktula resurrect the two dead party members and celebrate the death of Yig, whose head they brought with them. They return with the two gold amulets of the sea gods Dagon and Hydra to Arkham where they present it along with the head of Yig, and the other materials they gathered.
Armitage is pleased with their haul and offers to keep their relics and trophies hidden away for them on campus, where they can be retrieved if needed by the professor or Carter during regular school hours. The party takes a much needed rest. Sadie, Father Jonas, the Colonel, and Madeline spend the next month in the Asylum trying to get better. Some of them succeed, more or less.
Survivors: Colonel Angus, Toni, Madeline, Father Jonas, Sadie, Buck Reynolds
