DW Session 36: Luuk's 2nd and 3rd Wishes

General Summary

9/1/897 - 10/1/897 Having obtained the Iron Flask with much difficulty from Grettir, the RKB began the voyage north towards the port city of Poroshenko. The party agreed that they would sail through Poroshenko, travel east to Noggin, and from there make it to Kassadeia to fight the Sunken God head-on. The party also hoped to obtain more allies along the way: after the Gleb Invasion and Cereus' death at the hands of Thorvald during the Trials of Grettir, the Castellan II was starting to feel emptier and emptier.   The RKB's voyage to Poroshenko started uneventfully: Jax and Helena spent more romantic time together, Beleren and Kacie threw knives together, and Flora continued her existential crisis as she tried to wrap her head around her new thri-kreen body. The situation wasn't helped when Helena told her that thri-kreen tend to live only thirty years (compared to an aasimar's 200-year lifespan).   One day Helena gathered the RKB and crew together to go over a recent letter from Queen Astrid. The news of Cereus' death was upsetting, but the Queen was reassured to learn that they'd obtained the Iron Flask. A Gamerian vessel docked in Poroshenko would take Cereus' body and quarterstaff back to his family in Oftin where it could receive the burial it deserved. Meanwhile Queen Astrid confirmed Paoli's claims that Silvio had withstood the Sunken God's forces: some Gamerian sailors said that a band of berserkers came out nowhere and helped the Sardivelian troops defeat an army of sahuagin. And in closing, Astrid reassured Flora that no matter what form she took, her and Erivo would always love Flora.   Suddenly, the meeting was interrupted by a giant crashing sound above deck. The RKB and crew went upstairs to investigate, only to find Luuk Linden Jansen de Groot III ready for his next fight with the Royal Knights Brigade. He didn't hold any punches in the first battle, summoning several water elementals and a band of gnomes possessed by the Sunken God. Margaret and Simon were both KO'd by the end of the fight, but after what felt like ages the party managed to beat back the powerful elementals. Asdis Loderr got to display her fighting prowess for the first time, trapping one elemental with her net and landing some powerful blows with her Divine Smite.   After a short rest the party tried to bargain with Luuk into rescheduling the third fight, but he wasn't willing to risk the ire of the Sunken God like before. Jax asked Luuk about where genies came from and what the Plane of Water was like, upsetting Luuk about metaphysical questions of where genie life came from if it didn't start on the elemental planes. Beleren offered the genie some truth serums and a bit of gold, so Luuk agreed to go a little easier in the next round: instead of summoning a rogues' gallery of past villains, he would only bring back Gleb and a handful of sahuagin. Luuk would also have to get involved this time, but only from the sidelines with some well-placed shots of water.   The ship's deck transformed into a scene of chaos when one of the sahuagin summoned a swarm of flying piranhas using 'Spirit Guardians', dealing damage to almost everybody on board. Jax worked his way down to Gleb to fight him face-to-face, and together with Margaret they dealt devastating amounts of damage and left him a pile of jelly on the ship's floor.   The fight didn't come without its losses. Kacie would have died without Flora's 'Revivify', but Simon was killed by Gleb when the monster stunned him and ate his brains whole. Even if Flora had the power for it, there was no bringing Simon back from the dead without his brain.   Pleased with the entertaining battles, Luuk bid adieu to the party and reminded them to liberate his lamp from the treasury vaults in Kassadeia. Beleren swore to castrate the genie like a goat one day, and the rest of the crew paid their respects to Simon. Margaret Keats begged Flora to bring him back from the dead by any means necessary, but Flora insisted the resurrected version of him wouldn't be worth it.   Late that night Kacie Whately stopped by Flora's cabin to discussing using the spell 'Create Undead' to bring Simon back to life. Flora demurred, and when the crew called a meeting together the next morning to discuss using the spell every member of the RKB opposed the idea. Jax explained that the undead version of Simon wouldn't be worth the resurrection, and Flora said that such a spell would alienate her from the Temple of Erivo's tenets of the purity of life.   While Margaret wept for Simon, Asdis observed that the party and its crew were getting mighty small and wondered aloud how they'd ever be able to defeat the Sunken God. She got into a tiff with Beleren, but everybody on board agreed that they'd need to find some new recruits in Poroshenko.   The last week of the voyage was somber and silent aboard the Castellan II, but by the start of the month of Laertum the party had arrived. Located on the only waterway that connected eastern and western Pescat in its southern region, the first thing to greet the party in the port city was a massive fire consuming a nearby shipping vessel. Villagers screamed of a sahuagin attack.   The RKB rushed to the piers and jumped aboard the vessel, killing the sahuagin above deck and rescuing the lone elven survivor before plunging into the fires below to search for more monsters. At the end of a hallway they found a lone sahauagin speaking in Abyssal, but when Beleren killed it with his crossbow it continued talking in a deeper voice and in Common. The Sunken God was there to talk.   Tired by seeing so many of his forces destroyed by the RKB, he explained how they were only delaying the inevitable and that the best thing to do would be for them to return home and pray for the sweet release of death. The party taunted the Sunken God and his failures, to which the Sunken God replied that at least his distraction had proven successful. With that final remark, the ship began breaking apart as the mast crashed down onto the party below dealt a serious amount of damage. To be continued...

Rewards Granted

1,300 GP for completing the Trials of Grettir in the previous session.

Missions/Quests Completed

The party managed to sail closer to Kassadeia and the Sunken God.