Akrivel
The treetop home of the Leopard Clan, ten miles north of Huntergate — and the first Ekujae settlement the party set foot in.
Akrivel sits in the canopy of the northwestern Mwangi Jungle, roughly ten miles north of the ruined Temple of Ketephys and the Huntergate aiudara. It is the home settlement of the Leopard Clan, one of the Ekujae clans, and the first place the party found allies after stepping through Huntergate into the Mwangi Expanse.
The settlement is built entirely in the treetops, its foundations woven from living branches braided together over decades. The trunks of the largest trees, each over ten feet wide, are decorated with carved roots and trained shoots arranged into images of elephants and leopards. Vine bridges spread outward through the canopy, giving the elves rapid movement through the surrounding jungle for miles in any direction. The city's highest platforms support terrace gardens and grafted fruit trees, providing food without clearing or disturbing the forest floor.
Akrivel is not a trading settlement. There are no merchants, no shops. Guests are provisioned by the clan's generosity rather than commerce, and the elves' relationship with the jungle means they can provide most necessities from the forest itself.
The Leopard Clan
The Leopard Clan governs through shared leadership by twin co-rulers, Ose Panin and Ose Atsu, who are advised by a linguist who serves simultaneously as diplomat, historian, storyteller, and vizier. At the time the party arrived, that linguist was Nketiah, daughter of Jahsi and a half-elf of considerable standing. Jahsi himself was the clan's senior warrior and a keledi, a title marking those who have sworn their lives to the fight against Dahak.
The clan guards Huntergate as a sacred obligation stretching back thousands of years. The Cinderclaws' assault — which temporarily drove the Ekujae back and allowed the portal to be opened — was felt as a personal failure by Jahsi and the warriors who retreated. They returned and drove the remaining cultists off, but the tension remained when the party emerged from the gate.
The Party's History Here
When the party came through Huntergate, they emerged into the Temple of Ketephys surrounded by twenty Leopard Clan warriors with arrows nocked. Jahsi stepped forward, identified himself, and offered an invitation to Akrivel rather than a fight.
The visit that followed was the party's first extended contact with the Ekujae. They arrived to find Nketiah waiting at the base of the settlement's trees. That evening, before the full clan, Nketiah told the story of Dahak's imprisonment — the original battle, the anima invocation, the cost in Ekujae lives. The clan also hosted a celebratory feast and a contest of daikada, a traditional dance-game. The party met Harriet, an unusual lioness living in the settlement who apparently considers herself a leopard and whom the Ekujae find quietly amusing. Before the feast, Ose Panin and Ose Atsu called the party to a private audience and asked each of them direct questions about their backgrounds and values.
The party returned to Akrivel twice more during the Mwangi campaign: once for a war council before the final assault on the Fortress of Sorrow, and once afterward, bearing the bodies of Nketiah and the Ekujae scout Ifiok. On that last return, Jahsi named the party kelesi, a title of honored outsiders, and formally recognized them as guardians of the ancient gates. The clan gave them the Dreamgate key, Eclipse, before they left.
Akrivel is not where the party lives. But it is where they were first trusted on another continent, and the Leopard Clan are, at this point, allies in the older sense of the word: people who have stood beside them and lost their own in the same cause.