Maiden's Voyage

Characters

Pimsen Stonebridge: Halfling Paladin
Mae'viz Dreinor: Eladrin Monk
Kivuli: Kalashtar Bard
Venni Seastar: Halfling Rogue

A bounty is tacked on to Galloran's Hearth's Board. It reads: “Adventurers of Vareholm, The newly commissioned ‘Maiden of Aksum’ is preparing to sail on its first mission. Her crew is ready, but I’m in need of a few bodies to retrieve a relic, and defend the ship and her crew. A generous reward will, as always, be provided. If you believe yourself to be capable, come see me. Kindly, Jackal.”

Goal: Retrieve a small statue for Jackal!

The group set out on a sail, into a perpetual storm. After a few hours on board, an unusual human with a staff casts a magical spell, creating an identical image of the ship and crew on either side of the main ship.

We hit the storm wall. A bit later there seem to be rocks jutting out of the water, with shipwrecks and bodies scattered around.

Breaking through the storm wall, we look up and notice we’re in the eye of a storm. Just at the edge of our vision, there seems to be a shadow of a big island in the distance. There's a smaller island in the middle of the hurricane's eye that we went toward. Standard tropical island.

Getting closer, there's a mass with red all over. We make out the shape of a turtle shell. Anchoring on the shore, this thing looks like a giant dead turtle. Looks like it was struck by lightning.

We head into the jungle, following a trail. Venni stays behind on the ship. The trail is winding, overgrown, and a bit clunky to move through. Pass the ruins of wooden houses. Nothing interesting inside.

Taking the lead, I take my next step and it looks like I barely stepped over a rope trap. Following the rope, above me there's a number of spikes. Forward, there's a number of similar traps and a snare. We successfully evaded all of them.

Not much activity on the island that we could detect, but every now and then Pim hears rustling behind him. When he checks behind, there's nothing there. Maybe being watched? Now that we think of it, there's been a feeling of being watched since we went into the storm wall.

While walking along the trail, Kivuli detects any magic in the area, and feels a general magical aura in the air. Nearby, there's an ordinary stick poking out of the ground, that seems to have an aura orb of abjuration around the tip. Touching it does nothing.

Moving on, we come across various stone pillars and stone arches. Crumbled.

We found a ruined temple. Very old, angular design, sunken ceiling. Poking a head in, there's a route along the left wall to a back room. Stepping into the temple, the inside feels unnaturally cold. Not too cold to deal with, fortunately, though cold enough to cause our breaths to fog. Heading along the left route, we can see the back end of the temple has a main open area that's caved in.

Peeking in another room, there seems to be an altar in the middle with a small statue, 11 inches in height, picturing a humanoid with a large belly, standing on it. Kivuli senses a dangerous magical aura about it. Pim uses Divine Sense, and feels a faint celestial aura. The statue rested on a small stone plate. A small hole was detected just below the plate of stone, aiming toward the party (the front of the stone). Mae'viz tried to Indiana Jones the statue, but failed and set it off. Faint toxic gas emitted from the hole, dealing a bit of damage. We now had the statue.

Heading back to the ship we saw nothing different, avoiding the previous traps. Mae hears footsteps and sees a bush rustle behind us. She threw a dart, Nat 20, hit a tree. Nothing was there.

We heard a cannon shot and rushed to the beach. We found a dead goblin laying on the sand, seemingly pummeled by a cannonball, and more goblins were climbing up the ship. Roll initiative.

Kivuli charges and fires a spell at a goblin, hits, and the goblin runs back and retaliates with a spear but misses. Mae charges and throws her own spear at it, killing it. Mae Summer-Steps Kivuli closer to the ship and Pim runs up behind and heals Mae.

Kivuli climbs aboard and kills a goblin, alerting the rest. Goblins continue attacking the shipmates and Mae approaches the ship. She tries throwing her spear again, at further range. She missed and it damages the ship. Pim runs up and throws a javelin at a goblin on board, disadvantage, still hits and kills.

Two more goblins emerge from the jungle foliage, one of them seemingly more beefy than the others.

Kivuli kills a goblin that Venni was fighting on the ship, gives Bardic Inspiration to himself, and jumps off the ship into the water. The beefy goblin (Big G) runs up and impales Pim - ouch. The small goblin throws his spear at Mae, but misses. Mae picks up the spear, moves to the goblin, and shoulder checks it. She moves around the goblin and throws the goblin spear at Big G. Hits, kills Big G. Pim runs over and crushes the goblin's skull. The rest of the goblins are killed by the crew. Pim recovers his thrown javelins. One human shipmate died in the battle. We set sail for Vareholm.

We head towards the storm wall; we hit it, an assault on our senses. There's no double ship illusion this time.

After a while, a red glow appears under the ship; it appears to be following us. We look closer and we can see that it's attached to a shadow that's circling the boat. We break through the storm wall and the shadow follows us for 200 meters. Its outline is massive and the storm wall seems to warp with it, but soon it retreats and the weather becomes warm and sunny. The crew dumps the dead man overboard with some words, and we make it back to dock.

Pim handed the statue to Jackal and the group got 4 bags of coin. Mae tries to haggle - she has info, and tries to get some extra coin for it. Jackal disagrees, he says he's trustworthy and will give her coin if the info is worthy. Mae gets 1 gold for the attempt, though.

Mae'vis tells Jackal about the underwater creature and its influence over the storm. Jackal gives Mae a bit of extra coin for the information, and we go our separate ways.