About two weeks ago, the Vola floating before you, Captain Kukulcan, hired you all as a secondary and tertiary crew to assist with the excavation of Cuauhtemoc, a long-lost Island Turtle imprisoned at the bottom of the Sea Below the Sea. Using experimental magitechnology, your ships dove beneath the waves of the Ribcage to reach the island.
(Unbeknownst to you, an unconscious Two Tons was onboard Kukulcan's ship, stuffed in the cargo bay, while Willow Wisp was busy searching for him on Agyl Island. Two Tons had been kidnapped by unknown assailants, deactivated, and sold to Magoja, one of Kukulcan's crewmates through the Black Market. Technically, through a deal negotiated by Kukulcan, Two Tons is now part of his crew.)
After around a week of navigating the depths below, you found Cuauhtemoc, encased in a strange marble of a golden smoke, the likes of which you had not seen before. Beyond the golden smoke was an island that was in the process of being stolen straight out of time. Time flowed erratically here, as a result of a long battle of attrition between the guardian deities of the island, and the forces of the Vault, an eldritch phenomenon located at the south end of the island. The guardian deities protecting the island had lost much of their divine power, and with the native population of the island gone, the faith which strengthened them had run dry, and the deities had lost even their own self-conceptions, dwindling to little more than husks.
Captain Kukulcan eventually named himself as the Thunder Serpent, one of the guardian deities of Cuauhtemoc, who had escaped long ago with his fellow goddess, Vice-Captain Two Reeds, who was once the Smoke and Mirrors.
Kukulcan's claim was dubious to be sure, but he had the knowledge of the pre-sinking life of the island to bolster it. Still, that claim was thrown into question when Cerulean, in the course of exploring the Skull Temple at the north end of the island, met a faint remnant of a spirit, who claimed to be the Thunder Serpent, and had no knowledge of Kukulcan. Kukulcan himself went into the Skull Temple to investigate these claims himself… though you do not know how that went, you do see him here now, augmented by a tremendous power he did not boast before.
>>764213>>764284>>764286>>764285https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh6xVZ349iAKukulcan hangs his head in dejection at Cutlass's retort. "Pardon me for not bringing cake, streamers and fireworks. But yes! Consider this my official announcement of returned divinity. The Skull Temple… I had squirreled away some fragment of my divine spirit there, now recovered past these o'erlong years."
The reactions of Hollow Promise and Auspicious Sign are those of muted surprise, you notice. They seem to have been out of the loop on this. Really, only Two Reeds and Sir Diamantaire seem to be taking this in stride.
"But with this," Kukulcan continues. "We have fulfilled two of the three conditions we needed to meet to breach the Vault."
