The Narrative Ripens

Discovery, Exploration

The Fractured Pack find a horror centralized around a lost seafaring vessel run aground in the middle of the jungle. They hear of some mysterious "Lady" before having to deal with a bloodsuckin threat. Within the vessel, they find austere evidence of an aberrant force of nightmares that Hali claims to be a lead on the Tertalak.

Continuing Northeast, the Fractured Pack was headed towards the Sunken Ship. Either this was a place the people of Craven Cove kept their slaves or it might at least give insight into the area. On the way, the party found an increasing number of hollowed and flattened skins, empty of organs and muscles, with puncture wounds similar to that of the stirges faced with the behir. Buck approached the more swampish terrain before his companions, stalking in stealthily. The four tiered ship was grounded among trees, ropes and lines caught among them. The whole of the vessel was covered with more stirges, perched and sleeping. Buck silently diverted to the side, hoping his companions would inadvertently distract the stirges allowing him to sneak in.
  When the trio arrived, they did get the attention of the occupants. In this case though, it wasn't the stirges directly. Showing itself upon the highest teir of the ship was a shaggy cross between a stirge and a person: four limbed , partially clothed, and fully proboscised with the doubled wings. It telepathically spoke out to the newcomers asking what message “the Lady” had sent them with. Hali picked up on Buck's plan as this creature calling itself Ripus seemed to not know of Buck's presence. Hali did not align herself with “the Lady” but also could not gain more information on who that was. Ripus figured that meant someone should be kept alive for questioning but the others could be eaten. With that, not only did the stirges perk up but also the skins drapped on ground and fence, sloppily pulling themselves towards the companions. Hali continued to up the supposed number of unaccounted for intruders but this merely led Ripus to decide that everyone present was food as there would be others coming out to be questioned.
  During this time, Buck had covered himself in Dust of Disappearance, climbed aboard the vessel, located the messhall filled with stirges and ascended to be in close proximity to Ripus. It was here though, so close to her, that the horde began to rise as it was time to feast. The conflict against Ripus then began whether Buck wanted it to or not.
  Broxon sprinted forward in a frenzied rage, bellowing and shouting as he went, vaulting over the fence. He bounced up the decaying gangplank and disturbed the matte grey, paper mache like lob on one of its fencing posts. He surged up to the deck and then upward, density warping from the main deck of the ship to the top tier next to Ripus. Stirges surrounded the dwarf and began to cling on, his rage pushing away the pain of the punctures but doing nothing for the blood drain. Ripus attempted to assail the dwarf as well, their acidic claws slashing through but the proboscis not finding it's way through the slots of the plated armor.
  Back on the marshy ground, Hali, Anna, and Fluffins had quite the ordeal to deal with. A majority of the stirge flock was headed their way and more of the skinsacks across the ground began to pick themselves up and drag across to the trio. Hali conjured another warding wind to surround the girls and protect from the blood sucking aerial horde. A few conjured blasts of eldritch energy tore through two of the boneless undead. Fluffins ran out finish off a boneless but got itself all wrapped up in it's constricting flesh. Anna plunged out of the wind to cut the boneless from her creation before retreating back in. A game of picked and measured shots against incoming remnants of past meals was the play. If they managed to disturb Hali's connection to the winds, the stirges would be able to flood in.
  Back on the ship, Broxon landed a flurry of blows on Ripus, causing them to realize the danger of the situation. They were used to sucking people dry in a matter of moments. But they had failed to get through the armor. The children, while working at the dwarf, had long to go before he would drop. Ripus shoved the dwarf away and used the flurry of the stirges to fly off, out over the lower levels of ship. Broxon decided that he would fly too. The dwarf launched himself out over open air, more stirges latching on for the ride. The dwarf hammer through the strigoi, shattering and tearing through it before slamming down on the deck below, splattering many of the parasites clung to him in the process. As he picked himself up, a door on this deck flew up and reaching and clinging black and green tentacles stretched out, out , out across the deck like cheese. While Broxon's remained confused to this sight, let's take a step back to understand.
  As the battle begun, Buck remained invisible on the mid deck of this ship. As the his companions fought off the hazards, the shifter snuck into the cabin that Ripus was perched upon. Within he found a large nest right inside the door.. To the right hand side was an altar, shrived organs and bones seen on a quick glance. In the back of the room was a center woodburning stove long cold with a large chest in the corners. As Buck approached the chest he heard the sudden groan overhead of Broxon's density warp dropping his weight on the structure. The chest was oilstained and partially rotting. Tarnished brass bindings held it together and locked it. Buck examined it for traps beut found no wires or springs. As he began to fiddle with the lock, it resisted opening. Well, to be more specific, both the lock resisted being picked and the chest itself put up a fight.
  The stains and discolorations across the top of the box gathering into a profane sigil on the top and long tentacles formed, naturally clinging out onto Buck's invisible form. He felt his lifeforce be pulled away, sucked through the tentacles into the chest. He ran. Trying to get out of the reach of the tentacles, they stretched out and over the room and the entire upper deck. Getting to the opposite side of the top deck and still held, he drew venom cloak and attempted to cut them away. Despite the magical nature of the dagger, the tentacles twisted and wrapped around it, unphased. With the aggression, though, the invisibility fell away for Broxon to see Buck wrapped in the hollow spots of the form. Continuing to feel his life force zapped and unable to escape, Buck had a choice: return to the trap and attempt to disarm it or try to out run it. He went for running. He lept down to the main deck and to the railing. The tentacles continued to stretch outward and out, the wraps decreasing across his arms and chest to a point of only minor contact. He flung himself over the railing, snapping the connection, and plunging into a stagnant pool below.
  Up on deck, the dwarf found himself being sucked dry. Broxon swung and slammed, shimmied and stomped, splattering as many of creatures as he could But the more he did, the more they clung, and the more they came. More stirges began to poor out of the mess hall below him, pushing through small cracks and warps in the wood like a swarm of wasps from a hive. Well, exactly like that, as a direct comparions could be made. The nest Broxon had disturbed on his gangplank run now buzzed with wasps, lifting over the ship and diverting around the stirges toward the sound of water.
  Down on the ground, the girls had their work set out. Anna and Fluffins churned their way through the boneless as Hali focused on the horde. A sonic wave splattered many of them before Hali recognized the true danger Broxon was in. She moved forward to get the dwarf in range a gamechangin incantation, one of life and death. Withering the swarms immediately surrounding the dwarf, she also revitalized him. Doing so came at a cost though. The gap Hali had to close left Anna exposed to the stirges about the women. They swarmed in, clung and sucked, winding and stunning the hastened women. Seeing the problem as it was, Hali turned about applying the same tactics from the dwarf down onto the winged friend.
  Buck burst from the water to be met by the swarm of wasps and began an interchange of volleys, sending arrows to help the others for them to return fire with, well fire, and blasts blows. As suddenly as the battle had began, the companions were gather in the muck in heavy breath once again.
  Ripus' proboscis was harvested and the companion climbed back into above cabin Buck had run from. Searching around, greater details were taken in. The nest had rotted leftovers but nothing significant. The altar contained an offering: dried, jerky like fish and crabs wraped in a woved basket crafted from a braided cephalopod before drying. Moving on to the chest, divinind magic revealed the arcane trap as it recharged. Working quickly, Anna and Buck tagteamed the lock to break their way in. Emptying the contents of the trunk, the relocked it and abandoned the room for fear of disturbing the trap after it reset.
  In their possession was an old map, a stack of seven journals, and what appeared to be a dowsing rod. A fragment of orichalcum was found in the dowsing rod which Broxon immediately took interest in before pocketing under the idea that it was worthless. Hali's recognized the otherworldly substance and heard a whisping voice behind her head stating "Find more. Find more and have Blessings." She shared her spotty knowledge of orichalcum with the others present but not the supernatural source or decree. Louisa Prescott's Journals
  Retreating from the ship, the party set up camp not too far away using Hali's page-formed hut. They got away from the decay and the dead while maintaining proximity to sleep in the claimed territory of Ripus to decrease possible disturbances. Through the evening, Hali skimmed through the tomes and began the process of copying down what she could into her own tome. When she read the term “the Shrine of the Slumbering Nightmare” upon the stained topographical map of the jungle, she knew that this would be the next lead in finding the Tertalak. The companions agreed and the next morning Buck lead the group onward using the map and coordinates as a guide.