2023-06-13 Southern Voyage
Player Characters
- Remly
- Igneous
- Auri
- Laucian
Allies
Summary
In Port Flizna, the PCs met with Captain Cinderbeard, a human gentleman, to request join his exploration into the South Ocean. He interviewed each of them to learn how they would fit into the crew.
- Auri: assistant bosun
- Remly: assistant quartermaster
- Igneous: topman
- Laucian: assistant chef, entertainer
The party boarded the Drunken Dragon and set sail for new horizons. They spread out to meet the new crew and explore the ship.
Remly poked around the lower decks. He attempted to pick the lock into the secured section of the cargo hold but couldn't get it open.
Laucian met Mog, an orc woman working as the ship's chef. He helped chop the veggies for supper.
Igneous found a strong half-orc man named Glunk among the crew, and chatted about their weaponry and battle. Igneous sharpened the crew's weapons during downtime on the sea.
Auri met Calaria, the halfling woman employed as the ship's bosun. Calaria taught her the basics of carpentry, but seemed disappointed in Auri's lack of strength.
Night fell. Some crew members stayed up in the main cabin to play cards and drink. Laucian shared tales of adventure with them, telling the story of how the Tists took over a pirate ship. The crew members loved his story and responded with a few of their own.
Remly walked around the top two decks, eavesdropping on conversations. Calaria was smoking silkroot with another crew member; he overheard her mention she was growing her own in the bosun's office, as well as some mushrooms.
Remly approached Calaria, who offered him a hit of her pipe. She asked where he was from, and he told the truth: he was simply a street urchin scraping by. She complained about Auri's lack of experience as the assistant bosun, and reiterated what she had told Auri earlier: "fortune favors the prepared."
Igneous met a strong elf woman named Rhondle. She was a polite woman of few words who wielded a maul. He challenged her to a sparring contest, which she won.
Auri spent time mending small imperfections in the ship's hull in the lower deck. She made some progress reinforcing it while avoiding a few scurrying rats.
A few days passed at sea...
- Laucian talked to the first mate, Diz, a quiet, stoic halfling man. Diz was a little exasperated by Captain Cinderbeard's obsession with pirates, but otherwise focused on his work.
- Igneous tried to rouse the the crew to practice sparring, but many of them were too lazy and didn't join.
- Remly, Auri, and Igneous went to the lower deck to break into the secured cargo section together. Laucian watched with clairvoyance. Inside, they found some gold, empty chests, salt-preserved extra rations, and old captain's logs. The old logs mentioned a tiny island that Captain Cinderbeard had named after himself ("Arvel Island"). There were also some rat nests, and rats had chewed into one of the stored ration barrels.
- Igneous talked to the rats, and tried to convince them to leave, which they refused. Auri tried to mend the chewed-open barrel shut, but rats continually blocked the spell.
- The group stepped out, and Laucian joined them. They reported the rat issue to Calaria. When she came to see it, she noticed the lock had been picked open, and told them to be more gentle next time.
- Calaria asked Needles, the surgeon, for rat poison, which he concocted. Auri suggested poisoning the open barrel since the food inside was unsafe to consume anyway. Poisoning the food eliminated the infestation.
After a few days, Headway, the tiefling woman working as the quartermaster, reported two small pirate ships approaching. The crew prepared for battle.
A pirate battle ensued. The party rammed the front of the Drunken Dragon into one pirate keelboat, and pirates boarded the galley while Remly and Igneous swung onto the nearest keelboat by rope. Laucian blasted some pirates into the water with thunder wave while Auri blessed the party and commanded allies to attack. They used the ship's mangonels and ballistae to fire upon the enemy captains and bards. One keelboat went up in flames.
The party wanted to commandeer the remaining keelboat. Captain Cinderbeard commanded them to leave it, as it would be too difficult to tug and splitting the crew could be unsafe in future battles. (He also may have felt threatened by splitting his crew with another captain, according to Diz.)
After some debate, the PCs reluctantly agreed to destroy the second ship. They first claimed the gold from it. Remly was caught trying to hide some of the loot, and had to relinquish more of what he found (but still pocketed some extra).
Two days later, Headway spotted an island in the distance!
Once the ship was in range of the crescent-shaped island, two away crews assembled to travel to the shore. One was the four PCs, and the other contained four sailors and was led by Diz.
The party first traveled to a sideways ruined galley beached on one shore. They found it deserted, with a hammock stretched horizontally from floor to ceiling holding a skeleton. They found a wooden safe that had weakened with age, and Igneous smashed it open to reveal gold.
The party traveled northward through the standing stones and found an abandoned camp. A skeleton lay to one side, the remains of barrels, crates, tents and a fire were scattered about, and gravestones were set nearby. They found a journal written in halfling, which nobody understood, and a map with a crescent shape.
They continued toward the forest. Igneous spoke to the local bird population, asking them about dangers and the strange eyeball labeled on the map. The birds warned the party of "big ones" near the center of the forest, but didn't know of big eyes.
Laucian used clairvoyance to peer from the peak of the first hill. Looking northward resembled the map's point of view.
They traveled around the outer beach, avoiding the center of the forest, and approached the next hill. Laucian once again scried from the top of it, and saw a camp of sorts on the northeast beach.
The party headed to the excavation site, evacuating the quiet central forest as soon as possible.
They found an old dig site, shovels and picks strewn about. Whoever dug this place spent a lot of time there. Laucian cast move earth to excavate enormous portions of sand and earth, but found no treasure.
Diz's team stepped out of the forest, and asked the PCs what they had found. He translated the journal, which told the grim tale of sailors marooned on the island. It also mentioned "sea devils" who would deposit mysterious conch shells on the shore at night, as a deceptive cursed gift.
The party had about 3 hours before sundown; not enough time to reach their tenderboat. They traveled back to Diz's tender. Not everyone could fit on it at once, so Igneous rowed the sailors to the Drunken Dragon while the other four remained on the island.
Night fell as Igneous rowed back from the ship. Under the moonlight, the party saw two heads in the water. One stood, revealing a sea elf man. He spoke in elvish and introduced himself as Wade. Wade invited the group to visit his world beneath the waves, and offered a conch shell that would allow them to breath underwater. He told them of a village within a kelp forest, and a deeper city in a coral reef.
The PCs interrogated Wade about his intentions, and asked about the person who had accepted his offer long ago, according to the journal they found earlier. He told them the invitation was out of curiosity, and to offer help in case they were stranded. He told that a man had accepted the shell many years ago, and that that man was old, but alive and well in the village. The old man now lives in a house in a magic bubble, allowing him to breathe.
Wade went back into the water to get more shells while Igneous showed up. The party filled him in on the encounter in time for Wade to return. He dropped the shells on the shore, and warned the party that the shells would break if they became too dry. If they did not want to accept the offer now, they would be welcome to return anytime. Wade and his sister Cordelia returned to the sea, leaving the party to choose what to do.
Remly, Auri, Laucian, and Diz each accepted a shell, and tested them to verify that they could breathe underwater. The conches worked as promised. Igneous could not trust the strange sea elf, but the others considered the offer for later, as they had other adventures planned in the immediate future.
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