Session 13: Travel to the Winterglen Report

General Summary

Prologue:

  Delann Winterhound of the Emerald Enclave is involved with investigations into recent dragon attacks in the Druid grove the Winterglen. She spent weeks in wild shape form, traveling from the Moonshae’s to Waterdeep. She brings word that a Green Wyrmspeaker and the green dragon Chuth are leading the raids. The cult raids have slowed down and now the cult has spread out across the islands. They appear to be looking for something. The Cult of the Dragon still controls the trade route between Waterdeep and Callidyrr. A group of Harpers lead by Leosin left for Caer Callidyrr more than 2 months ago. No word has come from them since. The council fears that the Harpers may not have even made it to the Moonshae. Typically, the Harpers would notify the council once they arrived, but no word has been heard. The trading vessels with Caer Callidyrr have essentially stopped. At this point, everyone is too fearful to travel the open ocean.  

Story time:

So it begins…   We start with being reminded that Wilbo did some shady shit a while back. Xanathar was successful in placing a fake member on the board. This worked to our advantage to gain some much needed information on our coming journey. Thus far, our pawn on the board has worked out, lets hope it can last. Just when we thought Cher was going to open up and tell us how they became a purveyor of smoked meats, they had to bail last minute, to tend to their tasty smoked meats.   Several days have passed since we killed the White Death. Wasn’t that rad? While in Winterglen, we did get a chance to chat with the council and were informed things are FUBAR. T-Pain forced some of the army to fulfill his promise which shorthanded Winterglen. Because of this, there has been some discussion about closing the gates to protect their people. The council fear the Green Dragon Chuth and are doing their best to stay out of any danger. Their main goal is to take out the Green Dragon but they don’t have the army to do so. That’s where we step in…I guess. While enjoying our breakfast Martha began her water ritual and granted us the ability to breath underwater. “You know, just in case” Martha said before we all boarded the ship. From Winterglen, it will take several weeks to travel to Moonshaes by boat. For a change, we are passengers on this ship, but whenever have we ever been able to just enjoy a cruise? To pass the time Deo has been practicing his sword techniques. Martha is deep in here books. T-Pain is continuing to train Sparky. Kinda surprised they let us travel with a dragon. Wilbo is clearly confused at how he arrived on this ship. He spends most of his time contemplating this and trying to figure out how we even managed to kill the White Death. Lilifern has been getting well acquainted with her staff of feathers and digging into her books, realizing that it could’ve been helpful with battling the White Death. Hooves is, well, being Hooves and doing questionable things.   The weather has been surprisingly mild and the sun has been out. That can’t be right? “Oy, there is something in the distance cap!” yelled one of the boatman. “I think its a wrecked boat! Might be the one we’ve been looking for cap!” The Cap agrees with what the boatman sees and things we should stop and check it out. “I think we’re a few days out from Callidyrr, we can spare some time” the Captain said. “We’ll bring the ship as close as we can to the shoal”. Hooves gets a feeling that something is off. He decided to roll some dragon bones and consult his ancestors. The ancestors deliver and send Hooves a message, followed by a vision. The ominous shoal has what appears to be a magical pool. But I can’t discern if the effects are good or bad. All I can see, is myself drinking from it.   Martha gives Hooves a side eye because he is clearly spacing out and lost in his own thought. Rather than stand their and stare, she decides to send out her owl out to the shoal. The Owl makes its way to the shoal to find that their are three survivors, but barely seem to be surviving. The rest of the party are starting to see the shoal but suddenly they hear a big crash. "What the hell did you ?!” The Captain yelled. “No idea sir, it still looks plenty deep to me!” the boatmen yelled back. At this point the captain orders the crew to slow down and the ship is now dead in the water. T-Pain gets curious as to why we stopped and wanted to see if this was something natural that caused the issue. Thinking back to his days on a ship, he notices the water is actually pretty shallow. Much shallower than the boatman originally thought, but that didn’t seem right either.   Wilbo is doing his best to see whats going on but can’t make anything out past the ships rail. The one peak at water he got, he could only see bubbles. Lilifern sees Wilbo staring and decides to see what he is looking at. Lillifern notices a strange stream of bubbles where Wilbo was looking She also notices see some humanoid looking crab things. Lillifern then noticed that some of them are climbing up the side of the ship.   Suddenly, shouts break out on the lower deck, screaming that the ship has sprung a leak. The crew run down to try and patch the hole. More loud noise is heard on the outside of the ship and the crab people are starting to gather at one end of the ship. T-Pain does his best to guide Sparky away from the leak since Sparky isn’t a fan of water.   Martha walked to the edge of the boat to get a better sight of the crab people and points at one. Suddenly, she is hit with a wave of information and learns that they’re amphibious. They use their claws and shields as defense. Huh she thought, that was weird she learned that when she pointed. Lilifiern decides this is a great time to wild shape into a killer whale and begin attacking the crab people. Its party time and the party is ready to fuck some shit up. Wilbo readies his dagger to throw and his dagger lands true, murdering the first crab person. As Wilbo always does, he then tucks back to where he cannot be seen. Martha readies a spell and throws a lightning bolt, nailing and killing two of them. Hooves leaped up in the air. Then performed a beautiful swan dive, as beautiful as a Centaur could do, into the deep blue water below. Raging, he comes up swing his great axe and takes out another crab person. The last crab person realizes they fucked around and found out, and nopes the fuck out of there. Lilifern is determined to no let the crab person get away. She swims after the crab person and takes a nasty bite out of it. T-Pain screamed “Cannon Ball”, unsheathed his sword, and jumped into the deep blue water below to help Lilifern stop the crab person. T-Pain catches up quickly and slices the crab person straight in two. As it dies the crab person sends out is telepathic cry. Lilifern hears this cry and realizes the crab person doesn’t understand why it attacking them, she’s a whale, a friend….Lilifern just shrugs it off and prepares for the next battle.   Before things get too dicy again, the party decided it would be best to finish repairing the hole in the ship to keep it upright. For once, T-Pain was proud to see the phrase all hands on deck used appropriately. Lilifern still in her whale form, takes a swim around the ship to inspect for further damage. What she finds is there is a significant amount of damage done to the rudder. In fact, it looks like it was torn off. Lilifern is concerned by this and heads back to let the party know. Only one problem, she forgets she’s a Whale, Whales can’t speak english. Lilifern sees that T-Pain is still in the water and makes her way towards him. She dives underwater and aims to pick T-Pain when she breaches. Of course, T-Pain has no idea this was her intent and before he knew it, he had a Whale under him. T-Pain did all he could to hold on and happened to get a grip on her dorsal fin. Lilifern then made her way to back to the rudder. T-Pain still slightly confused tries to figure out why the whale brought him to the back of the ship. Before long, he realized that the rudder has been completely ripped off. Knowing what he must do, T-Pain got back to the party to let them know they aren’t going any where fast. Hooves decides to take a look, with his advanced wood working skills, tells the party it’s definitely broken and its going to take at least take a day to get it squared up. The rest of the party looked at one another and then back at Hoove’s, shrug, and accept his knowledge as is. The captain has decided to drop anchor and begin to repair the boat rudder. The party decides that while the rudder is being repaired, they will venture to the island near the shoal. The party make their way into the dingy. Deo hops on Brian instead of the dingy and Lilifern remains a whale so she can patrol the water.   The party has landed on the island. The first thing that caught their attention was that on the back side of the island, the water shelf drops off to severely deeper water and that there is a kelp field on either side of the island. This seems odd and the party does there best to not dwell on it too long. Once on the island, the party notices the survivors, the three Martha’s Owl saw earlier. Deo consults his gods to figure out if what/who is on the island is good or evil. They don’t look good, but Deo recognizes one of the people on the island and is pretty sure it’s Leo. His god sense tingles and he senses the others are good. However, he does sense an evil near the kelp field. Deo also notices various debris and a dark pool on the island. Feeling like mother Teresa, Deo checks on the status of the three people on the island. He confirms Leo looks damn near dead and the other two appear to have marks from where they may’ve been bound. The other two are also in a bad way. Deo lays his hands on each one of them, like a pervert, and makes sure they are all at least coherent enough to talk.   Leo breathes deep and recognizes Hooves and T-Pain immediately. Leo was not expecting Hooves or T-Pain when he opened his eyes and is in a state of shock. Leo mutters out “Where the rest of the Karokans?!” “The crab people?” Deo asks. “Yes, the crab people, they are known as Karokan in these parts” Leo said. “Well, we killed a small enclave of them before making it to the island” Deo responded. Leo proceeded to ask if they saw their ship and let us know that their rudder was destroyed. Shortly after, they were taken prisoner. Deo, connecting the dots asked if we’re safe, Leo said “No…we must keep our eyes out for the Barnacle Ship before it is too late.”   Hooves makes his way on to the island and sees the pool. The one he is fairly certain is from his vision. Not able to shake his vision, he begins to make his way over to it. Hooves makes it to the pool and kneels down near its edge. Taken in by its beauty, he sees his reflection on the surface, his scared, ugly mug staring back at him. He takes a deep breath, trusts his ancestors, and begins to drink from the pool. “Oh fuuuuu…” he trails off as the pool before him changes. Hooves sees the barnacle ship Leo spoke of. He can see that the party and the others on the island will be ambushed. Hooves sees a giant creature breach the surface. What he sees is a giant battle hardened sea turtle. As the vision continues, he can see that the ambush will consist of us being covered with nets and drug into the water. The vision begins to fade but he feels better protected after drinking from the pool, almost as if his armor class gains a plus two. “I must tell the others what I’ve seen, by my ancestors, my they believe me…”   Martha was also curious about the pool and followed Hooves without him knowing. Before Hooves drank, she wanted to know if the pool was magical. It was, but not a simple bad or good type of magic, it was chaos magic. This type of magic isn’t as common and there is no way of telling what it could do. Before she could tell Hooves, the dumb horse was already drinking from the pool… Hooves moves swiftly and tells Deo to fly Brian to warn those on the ship and attack is coming. Hooves then tells the rest of the party what he saw in his vision. The party worked quickly to figure out what to do not to get captured. Martha throws out the first idea and thinks it may be a good idea to cast a wall of fire around the island before things get crazy. As Martha attempts to raises the wall of fire, just like Hoove’s vision, we begin to see the Karokans pop up around the edge of the island.   Lilifern sees the Karokan surround the island and swims into attack but, narrowly misses. Deo makes his return and flys in to attack on the back of Brian. Brian comes in with his talons and lands a slash, murdering his target. Deo attacks the next one in his sight and lands a decent blow, wounding the Karokan. The Karokan tries to attack back, but misses. The Karokan specialize in net capture and attempted to bag Wilbo, but somehow missed? Specialized alright… The Karokan turned their attention to Martha and again, missed. T-Pain was next and again, the Karokan missed. Hooves was the last target on the list and the Karokan finally landed one of their nets. The Karokan have had enough and moved in for a real attack. Wilbo is the first to take damage, but only takes a minor wound and then gets netted. The Karokan decided to take another chance at Martha and T-Pain and some how completely missed. Getting tired of failing the Karokan decide to kick a man while he’s down. They went for Hooves and landed a hit. Two other Karokan felt left out and wanted to land a hit as well. So they gained up on Hooves and landed their hits. Feeling they broke their missing streak, they went for Martha again and, you guessed it, missed. Probably a good thing Hooves can soak up hits like a sponge cake or he’d be dead. Martha gets fed up and raises a wall of fire around us. A 20’ wall of flames appears in a circle and begins roasting all the baddies. T-Pain frees Wilbo from the net and just as he was headed over to help Hooves, Hooves hulks the fuck out of the net, still raging. Lilifern continues to patrol the island in the water, ready to murder. More Karokan emerge from the water and Brian, quick on his Griffon feet, turns and lands a decent blow. Deo sees his precious Brian being attacked and comes in for the cleanup, taking him out. Some of the other Karokan realize they don’t want to fuck around and find out, and noped the fuck out of there. But the others continued to charge forward to attack. It’s time for the party to party.   Martha drops the wall of fire and attacks the first Karokan she sees with her toll of the dead, dropping them immediately. T-Pain gets wet and starts slashing at some Karokan and lands a brutal blow taking him out. He turns to hit the next Karokan and kills him dead. Hooves leaps into the water and goes for the big mother fucker with the enemies and completely misses. Just can’t catch a break. Wilbo goes for his typical sneak attack and for once, misses. Lilifern has a craving for crab and goes for a tasty treat, devouring the Karokan. Deo realizes there is no one to help at the ship. He decides to go back and help those on the ship. Brian lands a hit with his beak and then comes in with the claws, murdering. Deo goes for the second one and takes it out. While all the battle is gong on Lilifern sees a strange ship rising out of the deep near the shelf behind the island. This can’t be good…   Two of the netters left, throw a net at Wilbo and Martha. The net slaps against Martha’s shield and misses. But second net lands on Wilbo. To add insult to injury, Wilbo gets stabbed with a spear. The other Karokan surround T-Pain, double teaming him, giving him a hefty blow. Hooves gets surrounded by all the big fuckers and takes some severe damage. Hooves, relying on his rage, wildly swings his axe and lands just an okay-ish blow on one of the enemies. Things aren’t going well for Hooves. Wilbo lands a deadly blow to one of the Karokan, dropping one of the enemies. Wilbo, seeing Hooves get rocked, goes after one of the big Karokan surround Hooves and lands a pretty decent blow, for a bunny. T-Pain also sees Hooves getting rocked and comes in swinging, landing two nasty blows. Martha is right behind T-Pain, hitting em with her toll the dead, dealing some decent damage. Lilifern decides to sneaks in and takes a chunk out of one of the big Karokan and then scurries away. After taking care of business at the ship, Dio decides to join the fun. He flies over to help the party. Deo tries to drop down all cool like into the water and kinda fucks himself up in his full plate armor. Nice. He’s a hurting unit but comes in with an attack and somehow murders the one of the Karokan. Struggling, Deo swims to the next Karokan for an attack and just plain misses. The last netter nets Martha, goes in for the spear and some how completely misses her. Come on, she was in a net! Hooves finally remembers how to handle his ax and lands two decent blows on his attackers. Martha cuts her way out of the net while T-Pain and Wilbo prepare to attack. T-Pain leaps into action and comes in for an attach on the big Karokan surrounding Hooves, inching him closer to death. Wilbo came in after T-Pain and completely destroys him. Feeling luck, Wilbo then goes after the second big Karokan and just obliterates him. Way to go little bunny. Lilifern gets hungry again and goes for the last netter, devouring him whole. Finally, Dio comes in for the clean up and kills the last one. The party gets a brief rest to heal before the next battle.   Lilifern does her best to warn the party that there is a giant ship in the deep water coming our way, but she’s still a whale. Hooves remembered the ship from his vision and let the party know, he was amazed that the vision has been spot on. “I should really consult my ancestors more often” he thought. We recoup on the island to become an easy target. Which is why Deo throws out the idea to head back to the ship. We all agree this is the smartest decision Deo has made and head back the ship.   Suddenly, the barnacle encrusted ship breached the water. For a few moments, the ship is mostly still, just bobbing in its wake. But then, a group of them leap from the ship and land on top of the water. Yes, on top of the water. Perhaps a miracle? They seemed to move towards us without walking and the closer they got, we the realized under the feet was a giant Dragon Turtle. The Dragon Turtle and the Crab Archon on it come to a halt at the base of our ship.   The largest Crab Archon of the four speaks. “I am the King Karkinos, I see I have underestimated you, if you value any of your lives, all I need is your cargo and 10 of your men to replace the ones you killed.” You know what level of stupidity is coming next.   Hooves rages, leaps from the ship, and lands on the giant turtle’s back. Smack dab in the middle of the Crab Archon and just gets completely fucked up by the three Crab Archon. Clearly Hooves underestimated them. Wilbo aims for the first Crab Archon and deals some hefty damage while also causing damage to the one next to him. Lilifern came in next to deal some damage on the one Wilbo hit. King Karkinos, the bigger of the four, gets ready to inflict damage on Hooves and deals some deadly blows. Hooves is barely hanging in there but knows he needs to take a hit for the team. T-Pain joins the party from the ship deck and aims his javelin of lighting at the giant Dragon Turtle. His aim was true, nailing the Dragon Turtle. On the way, the lightning from the Javelin hits two of the Crab Archon. Feeling lucky, T-Pain readies his second lightning javelin, heaving it at the Dragon Turtle once more. Again, his aim is true and he nailed the Dragon Turtle, taking out one of the Crab Archon with the lightning.   The glass cannon, Martha, readies a spell from the ships edge, aiming it directly at the damaged Crab Archon, the King, and the Dragon Turtle, dealing damage to all three. Deo decides its time to fly, aiming for the wounded Crab Archon. Brian lands his talons in its skin, hitting a main artery and taking it out. Still having some talon energy left in him, Brian attacks the king, landing a minor blow. Deo leaps from Brian to heal Hooves before he dies.   The Dragon Turtle decides to dive. Dio has to act fast and grabs a hold of its shell, getting pulled under the water. The Turtle breaches up by the boat and opens its mouth for a breath attack, with Deo still on its back, hanging on for dear life. Lilifern was able to mitigate some of the damage from the breath weapon. However, Martha, T-Pain, and Wilbo all took some significant damage. The Dragon Turtle retreated back underwater with Deo still hanging on. Martha recalled how dangerous Dragon Turtles are and warns the others to stay out of the water since the Dragon Turtle is capable of boiling the water. Martha calls lighting to hit the Dragon Turtle and deals significant amount of damage. Deo decides to take action and begins attach the Dragon Turtle while continuing to hang on to its shell, deal a decent amount of damage. Wilbo gets courageous and leaps from the ship with the intent to take on one of the Crab Archon. But looses all his grace and belly flops. A little stunned, Wilbo shakes himself off and attacks the Crab Archon. He causes a hefty amount of damage to the Crab Archon and the King as well.   Hooves finally gets the opportunity to attack and lands two blows on the Crab Archon, doing some damage. The King sees his opportunity and attacks Hooves, taking him out of commission. Wilbo saw it all go down and is inspired to help Hooves out. But before he could, Wilbo becomes the next target and takes a decent amount of damage himself.   Meanwhile, the barnacle boat is getting closer to the party and appears to be getting ready to ram the ship.   T-Pain has had enough and jumps down on the back of the Dragon Turtle. He begins slashing at it but only causes a little damage. T-Pain yells to Wilbo to help out, but chokes and can’t get his words out. T-Pain clears his throat and calls out to Wilbo one more time to assist. Wilbo gets the message and lands a double hit. One on the Dragon Turtle and one on the Crab Archon. Deo sinks his sword deeper into the back of neck of the Dragon Turtle. Martha sees the struggle below and aims her lightning bolt to hit the Dragon Turtle. She deals some significant damage and The Dragon Turtle is not happy. Dio, sword deep in the Dragon Turtle, sends Brian in to kill the netting Karokan, taking him out before they even had a chance to throw the net.   The Dragon Turtle has had enough and is going to do his best to knock off T-Pain and Deo. Thrashing about in the water, the Dragon Turtle succeeds. The Dragon Turtle goes for the closest victim and snags T-Pain. The Dragon Turtle claws and then bites T-Pain. This proves to be too much for the fighter and the Dragon Turtle takes T-Pain out of commission. Wilbo sees his opportunity and preps the potion enema he plans on giving Hooves. The enema is a success and Hooves rises from the depths, rages, and aims for the closest Crab Archon. Hooves obliterates him in one blow and then turns his attention to the King. Hooves lands his axe, dealing some major damage, and then proceeds to stomp on him with his hooves, causing more damage. Lilifern comes in and takes a bite out of the King, dealing some damage, but its just not enough to take him out. The King turns to attack Lilifern and almost lands some decent blows, but Hooves’s guardians are keeping Lilifern safe.   One of the netter Karokan on the barnacle ship netted Wilbo and followed up with a trident straight into Wilbo. The Karokan, thinking Wilbo was done, then turned their attention to Hooves, but only landed a tiny scratch. Martha busts out the big guns and throws a fireball directly at the enemies on the barnacle ship. Decimating three of the four enemies on the deck. Deo sends Brian towards the last enemy for the client up, but this enemy is on his guard. The guard swings at Brian and lands a critical blow. Brian, not one to give up, tries for another attack, but misses. Brian also knows when to get the hell out of there, and flew a way to tend to his wounds. T-Pain does his best to come back to the battle, but just can’t get up.   Dio aims to avenge T-Pain and ignites his sun blade. Deo sinks his sun blade straight in to the Dragon Turtle dealing some heavy damage. The Dragon Turtle isn’t doing well but does its best to shake Deo off, but just can’t shake him. The Dragon Turtle dove deep trying to get Deo off. As the Dragon Turtle breaches, he aims for Martha, taking her out of commission. Lilifern went in to bite The King and completely missed. Capitalizing on the distraction, Dio brought Martha back from the brink. The barnacle ship was able to ram our ship. Capitalizing on another distraction, Wilbo dashed to T-Pain and brought him back from the bring with his classy potion enema. Hooves moved in and tried his best to smash the King but just couldn’t land a single hit. The King ignored Hooves and went straight for Lilifern. The King landed a decent blow but Lilifern was able to swim away. The NPCs on the ship finally realized they needed to jump in and start helping out. The arches focus their arrows on the large crab Karokan on the ship and wounding them. Martha is pissed, aims for Dragon Turtle, and lands a critical hit. Dio followed up after Martha and dealt a decent blow. The Dragon Turtle is hurting pretty bad at this point.   T-Pain is ready to cause some damage and payback the Dragon Turtle. The Impaler is out and T- Pain deals his first blow. The Dragon Turtle is down and T-Pain just rams The Impaler straight through its jugular, ending its life. The King is still standing and Lilifern is gonna try to take a bite, she doesn’t miss this time. Hooves does his best to chop the King down and still can’t just land a blow. Wilbo comes in for the surprise cleanup. He throws his shadow dagger and splits the King right between the eyes. The rest of the Karokan realize they are no match for this party and nope the fuck out of there. Time to loot them bodies…   The party ended up with 6000 gold, a potion of giant strength, many gems, the unhappy dagger, the ring of life, cement boots, and a cats paw. We thought it best to tuck the Dragon Turtle into the bag of holding for some new armor later.