The characters depart the Skin Adapoi encampment, venturing into the dense, deep jungle. They include Messerbad, Pawnroker, and Yorden. They leave the erstwhile poet Tarrago with the Skin Adapoi for supposed safekeeping.
Several days after their departure from the Skin Adapoi village, the characters encountered a frozen youda and a frozen human. After some delay, they determine that there is a nest of eyesnakes in the area. The youda dies of eyesnake bites before they can rescue him, but they retrieve the human and enough equipment from the youda's body to determine that the youda was one of the Jhokkada. The human turns out to be Garret, a refugee from another world who ventured across a Bridge unknown to most of Abbatine. The other characters estimate that Garret had been frozen for about two days, while the eyesnakes fed on his horse.
Both Pawnbroker and Messerbad (Naturalists) identified a way to identify eyesnake nests: the snakes leave small piles of animal bones around their territory.
The characters spend a limited amount of time at the Celebrant festival ground. They learn about the two dead Jhokkada, cast a few spells to take advantage of the magical strength there, and head on their way.
This thing looks a bit like a furry dinosaur with massive hindquarters and a strong tail topped with vicious bony spikes. It attacked the characters at night, and badly wounded Messerbad before Pawnbroker managed to kill it dead.
The characters' first welcome to the First Home of the Jhokk is an encounter with the Jothava tribe. They saw a single Jothava, who ran into the trees. Messerbad followed, and was netted. The remaining three (Pawnbroker, Yorden and Garret) followed his trail to the Jothava village. They had an interesting convesation with a Jothava elder who spoke of his people as the Last Children of God. Pawnbroker gave him the Sacrificial Dagger in exchange for a blood-soaked copy of the Book of the Jhokk, apparently taken from a dead Jhokkada master. The Jothava Elder mentioned that the knife would be useful, "When we hide from God." The characters did manage to make the connection between the Jothava and the Jhokkada, but don't know much about why the Jothava look the way they do.
The Jothava agree to get the characters across the river between their village and the First Home (which the Jothava refer to as the Last Home of God, guarded by God's Dead Children).
The characters' first approach to the river was driven back by a flurry of crossbow bolts fired at extreme range from the other side. They made their crossing (on a raft supplied by the Jothava) far upstream of the First Home, then ambushed the pickets and killed all but one of them, including the Jhokkada master Sagullus.
Pawnbroker made a brief reconnaissance of the First Home of the Jhokk. He determined that the Saculum of the Unquenched Thirst was incomplete (and toured the completed portions of it), and that the Jhokkada were fortified in the Saculum of the Egg. He then returned to the characters.
Each character recieved three experience points. Yorden recieved an extra experience point for suggesting that Jhokkada patrols could be repelled by creating an illusion of an eyesnake. Because the Jhokkada should already know the dangers of eyesnakes, they wouldn't pay much attention to it, so the illusion wouldn't even need to be too good.
There are currently two surviving Jhokkada masters and seven surviving other Jhokkada.