You gathered in Pavis to revisit the Puzzle Canal, this time with the newtling shaman Blu, a new recruit. Also, you got a new mapper courtesy of Bendrath, Sergio the Trader, a trainee from the Pavic Grey Company; a powerful adventuring group based in the Real City. At Meskavio's pool hideout, you were dismayed to find pieces of the five newtling friends of Blu, their craft, and Meskavio's raft. Something horrible had happened here, and the place seemed to harbor an evil curse now, as wraiths of the newtlings manifested moaning of how they had been sent into an ambush, drained of blood, and had their tails eaten! It was a scary fight but you destroyed them. Curious as to what happened to Meskavio, you went south to the isle where Tarranyr and Gregor had been buried, and found there that the graves had been opened, runes of death, chaos, and spirit had been arranged as a hex around the island, and Tarranyr and Gregor now haunted the place as vengeful ghosts! As they assaulted Caernak, they howled of his failure as a leader and his abandonment of their bodies to evil things that cursed and ate them. Just before they were dispelled to the underworld, they told you that the cursers had been none other than Meskavio and his crew, ogres! Ogres of the most diabolical kind. You were beyond fury with this malevolent betrayal. Yet you were tired from the spirit battles and decided to retire in Pavis for the day and return again tomorrow. In Pavis, Caernak tried to divine from Zola Fel where the ogres had done, but failed, so Che'enshashan did his own divination and Zola Fel replied, "The marauders only crossed my waters once." You came back to the Puzzle Canal a fourth time, this time to seek revenge. You made your way east to a truth rune-shaped section of the canal, and were assaulted by a horrid walktapus who was apparently a berserk of Urain, the foul chaos wind, and seemed to know who you were and wanted to kill you all. He came close enough to doing just that! It had enormous rune and spirit magics on it, and was very tough to harm. The Urain grabbed Dorgon and maimed him, holding on tight enough that even Dorgon's frog legs spell couldn't leap him free. Dorgon fell but was saved by rapid healing, and snatched to safety by Rup's tongue. Arcus and Ji confronted the walktapus with Ssrussut's harrying and Caernak eventually after Arcus was badly wounded. Luckily, combined blows eventually wore it down enough that it suddenly collapsed dead, to your amazement. You went toward the exit of the Canal and Caernak sent Dorgon somewhere secret with the regenerating body of the walktapus. After a couple of hours, during which time you were attacked on land by vicious flightless mosquitoes (easily repelled), Dorgon returned with a faint smile and no walktapus.
Further south and east along the canals, you explored new regions that seemed to lead in the wrong direction. Kennakuna spotted some odd yellow thing in the water, and it floated up underneath the boat, revealing itself to be a nasty gorp. It ate a big hole in the boat before Caernak and others' magics turned it into a cloud of dust. But you were horrified to see that it was not dead, just playing dead, and continued to eat through the hull even as you paddled away; destroying one set of emergency repair planks. You cast powerful protective magics on the boat and Blu led the gorp away, up onto land. It changed color each time it was hit, ranging thru the colors of the rainbow, and either growing, gaining armored skin, regenerating, absorbing magic, or turning into dust. With some trickery you managed to surround it with Firebladed warriors and destroy it with a simultaneous attack. But its depredations had worn you out, so again you left the Puzzle Canal. On the way out, Caernak spotted an eddy along one section of the canal near where you thought the river daughter's pool might be, and Rup found that it was indeed an underwater passage that you had missed several times before. Lucky! Rup scouted it; it led 40m north to another canal near the pool (#21) you'd been trying to find the entrance to.
You considered delaying the expedition for another season, but Che'en convinced you that you had enough time for one last venture into the canal if you conserved your magics more carefully, and loaned you a 12MP crystal as a show of confidence. For the fifth time in a week, you returned to the Puzzle Canal. By now the city had heard rumors of the River Voices having success in the canal, so you got some more attention, well-wishers from the river cult, added paperwork from the Lunars, and curious onlookers.
You went straight for the underwater passage, this time with 4 extra coracles in tow, and plenty of armor and gear, expecting an ambush from Meskavio sometime. You portaged the coracles across land above the passage, and set them down in the canal on the other side. As you prepared to paddle around the canal, Caernak caught a glint of metal and movement on the land above the underground pool. You assumed this might be Meskavio's ambush, and it was. You charged with magics blazing as the four ogres did their own magicing, and Meskavio managed to call up a big Fiend from Cacodemon as well as the ghost of a broo shaman that went after Caernak. The ogres were enraged with bloodlust and overconfidence, especially when Meskavio managed to summon the fiend (POW 46, DEX 34, 19 AP, etc etc). But you outnumbered them, and Blu distracted the Fiend with a Diversion spell. It looked bad when Caernak's hand was severed by Meskavio, but then you slew two of the ogres and Dorgon and Ji took down Meskavio after Caernak healed himself. You charged the Fiend and those 3 warriors hewed it down quite quickly! The battle was won, and vengeance was yours. As he died, Meskavio coughed that you'd still die before you ever found the river daughter.