"I'll never get used to traveling like this," Han said as they suddenly appeared on the new isle, which right away he noticed had a foggy atmosphere to it, there was no sunlight, they were surrounded by gnarled, dead looking trees where nothing grew up on them.
"Great gods!" he heard a voice exclaim behind him, he and Chewie turned and saw two figures clad in hooded robes, they couldn't see the men's faces. One of them said, "Did you see that? A man just appeared out of nowhere."
"Funny how nobody ever mentions a wookiee too," Han said to his friend, "like they don't notice you until you're right up on them. That, or your kind aren't so unusual to see around here."
The other hooded man said, "Perhaps he was sent by the spirits, I see no boat."
The first one replied, "He is an intruder, no matter how he got here. Grab him!"
"Not again," Han groaned as they came over to him. Chewbacca snarled and pushed them back but Han raised a hand and told him, "It's alright, Chewie, let's just get this over with." He addressed the two men and said, "Look, we'll just leave, it's not a problem."
"I think not," one of them told him, "let's go."
A twig snapped somewhere and Han saw several more hooded men had appeared from somewhere, several of them surrounded Chewbacca and tried to get him to move.
"Guess we might as well check it out, pal," Han shrugged, "how bad could it be?"
How bad could it be? When they arrived wherever they were, which was in the center of a ring of vertical standing stones with connecting horizontal stones laying on top of them, Han was met with a very unpleasant image of a huge bonfire burning, right next to a wooden cage roughly the right size for a full grown person to crouch down in, which was connected to a rope suspended over a large tree branch that would dangle the cage right over the blazing inferno.
"OH COME ON!" he yelled in frustration. There were only so many times and ways you could nearly get killed in one day before you reached your limit, and he was officially at his.
One of his captors announced, "We found a trespasser on the beach, Arch-Druid!"
So these were the Druids, he wished he'd known that sooner.
The one addressed as Arch-Druid was an older man with a gray beard, dressed in a red and white robe with a purple sash tied around it, and a spotted wildcat fur pelt tied on his head, and just looking at him, even without the burning implication of his soon to be fate, the man gave Han Solo the creeps.
"This must be the foreigner we were warned about," he told the others, "how appropriate he should come during our rain festival. Place him in the sacrificial cage."
"WHOA! Hold it!" Han yelled at them. "There's been a serious mistake here!"
Chewbacca howled deafeningly as he clobbered several of the Druids and knocked them down, Han kicked one of his captors in the side and when he fell off balance, he turned and knocked the other down as well. Others rushed to him, Han drew his blaster, quickly set it to the maximum adjustment and fired a bolt at the bonfire. The explosion that occurred had enough force to put out most of the flames but he still ran a risk of becoming a crispy critter if they didn't get away from these crazy people.
The earth below his feet shook, and it sounded like the whole sky exploded. Han thought he'd gone deaf, he thought the planet had opened up and was going to swallow all of them. Then he realized that it was thunder from a sudden storm that had appeared out of nowhere. He was very nearly hit by a large bolt of lightning that touched down very close to him as a downpour began and quickly smothered the remaining flames in the fire pit. He was too stunned by the noise of the storm to figure out what to do next, he was only faintly aware of the Arch-Druid exclaiming, "That man is a powerful nature wizard, by the sacred oak, release him!"
"I can't take much more of this, Chewie," Han said as he wrung his shirt out after a short but furious thunderstorm that had left him dripping wet from head to toe. "I'm about to start cracking up. In one day I've nearly been drowned, impaled, ripped apart, gored, turned into a warthog and now barbecued! Even Jabba was never this bad, just what did I do to make the galaxy hate me so much today?"
Chewbacca roared in response as he furiously shook from side to side to get the excess water out of his fur.
Han saw the Arch-Druid approaching him and his first instinct was to grab his blaster, but the older man told him, "I must apologize for our rude welcoming committee, we've been feeling inhospitable ever since the winged ones stole our sacred oak tree. Besides, Vizier Alhazred sent a message that we were to watch out for a highly dangerous foreign assassin. I assume you are the one he meant."
"This Vizier is the guy marrying that princess on the Isle of the Crown?" Han inquired.
"Indeed."
"Well that's very interesting, because I sure don't know anything about him," Han said, "but somehow this guy considers me a threat. I've never even seen this guy, so..." Han stopped, and his eyes widened, "he'd have to have someone spying on us to know what we were up to. But all I want to do is get out of here, my ship..."
Han closed his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind.
"The winged ones...the people on Sacred Mountain? They stole your tree?" he asked.
"That's correct."
"Would you excuse us for a minute?" Han asked, and stepped away with Chewie.
"They said the winged people stole their oak, the winged people said the queens stole their golden fleece, the queens' guards said the beast stole their singing stone, and the beast said these guys stole his family's coat of arms...do you see something wrong with this picture, Chewie?"
The wookiee nodded and snarled.
"There's something else, we've been to five islands now, and I haven't seen any mode of transportation leading anywhere out of any of them, have you?" he asked.
Chewbacca shook his head and snorted.
"So how are all these people supposed to have gotten to all the other isles to steal from the people there?" Han wanted to know.
They thought about it for a minute, and Han turned back and addressed the older man, "Arch-Druid, you know the Vizier Alhazred, are you and your people expected to attend the royal wedding?"
"We were," he answered.
"And now the wedding's closed to the public," Han said. "What is this Vizier so scared of that he doesn't want anyone present?"
"These are violent times for all the isles," the Arch-Druid said, "fighting has broken out between all the people, no one is to be trusted."
"But everybody trusts the Vizier," Han said, "who is he? He's marrying into the royal family, not the other way around, so how'd he come to be engaged to this princess?"
"For that, you'll have to consult someone close to the source," the Arch-Druid told him, "all I can tell you is that he has been a faithful liege to us for years, we adhere to his warnings, his enemies are our enemies."
"Well that's very quaint," Han dryly remarked. "This is probably a dumb question but, you guys aren't planning on going anywhere, are you?"
"These days we stay on our own isle," the older man answered.
"Good, you do that," Han said, "because we might be back later."