Erica Weez the IX
Erica Weez was the 9th of her line, druid extraordinaire, and looking for the man of her dreams. This winged tiefling dhampyr ran into the Venture Boys after the mysterious disappearance of Mac Lendon and declared she would be joining their crew after becoming instantly enamored with Captain Reynolds. Though a bit put off by her excessive bubbliness, Captain Reynolds nonetheless agreed to give her a trial run on the crew. In combat, Erica summoned lightning and other powerful forces of nature to bring the wrath of mother earth against her enemies. Sadly, Erica was killed and her body disintegrated by Captain Elgar in the final battle against the Argus Pirates. Through her sacrifice, she helped to save Gibby and end the threat of The Argus Pirates once and for all.
Table of Contents
History
History
Joining the Venture II
Erica first met the Venture Boys when N64 nearly crashed into her while testing out his winged boots in the streets of Allisyos. Seeing the near-collision, Althea asked if Erica was alright and the two struck up a conversation. Erica's eccentric personality caught Althea a bit off-guard until Erica was distracted by Captain Reynolds and Xaeyruudh walking down the street in their direction. Erica was instantly smitten with Reynolds, who politely introduced himself to the best of his ability despite also being caught off-guard by Erica's quirks. She offered to join his ship using her skills as a cook to help out (and as a way to get closer to the good captain). Reynolds was somewhat hesitant but accepted the offer given that the Venture II still needed a bigger crew (not helped by Mac's mysterious disappearance).
Secret of the Porvenir
After taking a little R&R in Allisyos, the party set out for the town of Fidanza for their next job. Xaeyruudh had heard a shipping company was looking for someone to recover one of their vessels captured by pirates. Arriving in town, Erica accompanied Althea and Vinnie to meet the merchant while the rest of the crew resupplied the Venture II. There they met Lady Candelaria Sonavella, daughter of the Sonavella family and prominent member of the equally prominent Sonavella Shipping Co. Lady Sonavella explained pirates had seized a ship carrying precious family heirlooms along with its usual cargo. The ship in question, the Porvenir, had somehow become stuck in a cove normally blocked by rocks and coral. She'd already sent one group of mercenaries after it, but they retreated after the Porvenir fired on them.
Lady Sonavella offered a hefty sum to board the ship and investigate its status with additional payment for each heirloom and member of the crew recovered (if any had survived the pirate takeover). The heirlooms were sealed in magical spheres for protection, so she was confident the pirates couldn't have damaged them. Once the party accepted, Lady Sonavella stated she would follow them in her own ship, eager for a status report after the first mercenary group's failure. They set out at dawn the next morning.
The voyage went smoothly until Captain Reynolds discovered they were working for the Sonavellas, enraged that the party had already agreed to a contract with people he described as "sharks in humanoid skin". He angrily locked himself in his cabin to avoid being seen by Lady Sonavella, much to the party's confusion. Despite the lack of detail, Erica and her comrades concluded there must be some sort of bad blood between Captain Reynolds and the Sonavella family. The Venture II eventually arrived at the isle of Fellcay. Since the previous mercenaries approach from sea failed, the party opted to cross the island from its opposite end and approach the Porvenir by land.
Coming to the cove and boarding the Porvenir, Erica was first aboard and found the ship to be deserted. She poked around without finding any clues until Bakris found her, Althea, and N64 after locating the captain's journal. While they were reading it, Vinnie showed up with the ghost of Captain Deze himself.
The ghostly captain was enraged when he learned the Venture Boys were working for Lady Sonavella and was prepared to kill them or be destroyed trying. Althea managed to persuade Deze back to calmness so that he could explain the situation to them instead. Deze informed them how his crew had unknowingly been carrying some monster on the ship that then became the ship before attacking and devouring him and his crew. He also spoke of a traitor onboard who was still alive and his thirst for vengeance against the man. He offered them a reward of gold and jewels for the traitor, who he believed was in the cargo hold.
As they descended deeper into the ship, a telepathic voice bade them come down into the hold to speak to it. It was there they met the heart of the ship, revealed to actually be a massive mimic. The mimic explained its history, how Lady Sonavella orchestrated its creation and put it on a ship to control what form it took and allow it to feed on the crew. It regretted killing the crew but had no more than animal intelligence when it did so. It was only by consuming the crew and their traits that it became self-aware enough to feel ashamed of its actions. They left the creature in peace after it promised to raise its children away from inhabited areas and teach them not to hunt humanoids.
On their way out, they did find and capture the traitor working for Lady Sonavella that Deze wanted dead. The party knocked him out and allowed Deze to strangle the man, despite Althea's failed attempt to convince the ghost otherwise. The ghostly captain paid them for their services before departing to the afterlife with his unfinished business concluded as the party resolved to confront Lady Sonavella, the real monster of this entire event.
Interlude with a Witch
The party returned to the Venture II to find the crew evacuated to the island's shore. Something or someone had been killing crew members in their sleep and the surviving crew feared the ship was cursed. Erica and the rest of the party boarded the Venture II to investigate where Erica noticed something had been getting into the ship's food stores. Hearing a noise from the galley, she saw a well-dressed balding redhead man making a sandwich. She called out to him and the man vanished before her eyes.
Vinnie was able to use this information and a few other clues to deduce that the culprit was likely a night hag, which Althea managed to drive off with a magic sword found on the Porvenir. After dealing with that and receiving payment from Lady Sonavella, the Venture II set sail to Soeurs Noires.
Wizards, an Auction, and Truths Revealed
Arriving in Shiptown, Erica and the rest of the party (plus Gibby) departed for the annual Wizard Swap Meet while Captain Reynolds left to secure an air elemental for his magical cannon. The group split up on arrival and Erica spotted a booth being run by an archfey warlock and their sprite familiar. The sprite excitedly flew up and told Erica she had won a special prize for being the 100th person to visit their booth, presenting a pixie pie with the kicking arms and legs of a still-living pixie sticking out of the sides and muffled screams coming from inside. Erica happily accepted the pie and tucked it into her pack.
Turning in for the night, Erica woke up the next morning to head to a magic item auction with the rest of the Venture Boys. They ran into Captain Reynolds on the way there, who joined them since his business collecting an air elemental was concluded. Erika made sure to sit right next to him as they entered the auction hall. Inside, Captain Reynolds recognized a tiefling that Althea had met the day before seated next to Falzar Sonavella. Erica managed to win both an enchanted tree branch for her druidic magic as well as a necklace of prayer beads for channeling holy magic (which she declared she would use as anal beads). As they left the hall, the sprite from yesterday found Althea and referred to her as "the warrior of legend spoke of by the rabbit clan" before flying off.
The group returned to the Venture II just as the local guards were driving Mathayas and Gyaos off it, the pair having attacked the ship looking for the spelljammer engine in the party's absence. Unable to take direct actions against the perpetrators at this exact time, the group decided to go look for a lost treasure ship belonging to the Sonavellas that Vinnie had overheard something about. It was only then that the group noticed Gibby sniffling and starting to look sick, having spilled a half-finished magic potion on himself earlier when Althea briefly left him unattended.
Sirens, Pirates, & a Sea Serpent
Gibby's sniffles soon turned into a full-blown cold. Each time he sneezed it created some kind of magical side effect for a member of the crew. During Gibby's bout of sneezing, Erica's hair, skin, and eyes briefly turned bright pink before another sneeze returned her to her regular blue. After Vinnie and N64 summoned a sphinx to acquire an item that cured Gibby, the Venture II continued onwards towards the Sorrow Shoals to find the missing treasure ship.
Their first stop was the town of Eishum, the closest settlement to the shoals, to see if they could pick up any information from the locals. Vinnie said there was one place in every town that was guaranteed to have information: the bar. The party found a tavern called the Sailor's Delight and Erica sat down to look over the menu. She noticed the barkeep seemed afraid of Althea for some reason, talking very nervously and keeping his distance. When the barkeep brought out Althea's salad, she noticed the fork was made of iron and chuckled at the barkeep having mistaken Althea for a fey (due to Althea's new rabbit ears & tail).
When Althea approached a ship's crew getting the stink eye from other bar patrons, Erica and the others joined her to ask what that was all about. Captain Molly explained that her all-female crew were the only ones who could fish the rich waters near the Sorrow Shoals because they were the only crew completely immune to the songs of the sirens that lived there. The rest of the party came over and started to negotiate for Captain Molly to take them towards the Shoals, learning she saw the missing treasure ship enter the area fleeing pirates a few days beforehand. They eventually settled on a deal and set out the next morning on Captain Molly's ship, the Crystal Wave.
Captain Molly would go no further than a quarter mile from the Shoals and the party took rowboats in, Erica riding with Vinnie. They were quickly attacked by a group of sirens, which fled after half their number were killed. Soon after, Vinnie's familiar found a siren nest nearby and saw a man in a cage among them. Althea insisted they save the man, despite arguments from Erica and Vinnie that they should leave him since he was either a pirate or one of Sonavella's men.
The Venture Boys snuck up on the sirens and the battle began, this group being led by a more powerful siren queen. Erica used her powerful magic to conjure a storm cloud and repeatedly struck the harpies with lightning strikes, generally managing to hit multiple harpies with each blast. Once the sirens were all dead, the now free man, Todgar, told them how he was a sailor on the missing treasure ship that was grabbed off the deck by a siren. His ship was still fleeing the pirates that had chased them into the Shoals, so they couldn't come back to help him. He was also able to provide the direction he last saw his ship sailing in, giving the party a general direction to head in.
They did come across the treasure ship, but it was half sunk. The pirate ship was also there, temporarily trapped in a small cove barricaded by rocks until the high tide finished coming in. The pirates yelled at the party, getting them to row over just as a sea serpent tried to snatch up one of their rowboats in its jaws. Pirate Captain Ward explained the sea serpent had sunk the ship and was staying underwater to avoid their cannons. He told the party that if they could lure the beast into firing range, they'd kill it together and split the treasure 50/50. Erica, planning to betray the pirates, agreed on the party's behalf. The sea serpent was a powerful draconic opponent, but in the end the party was victorious through a combination of their own efforts and support fire from the pirates.
When Vinnie tried to lie to the pirates to keep most of the treasure, Captain Ward saw through his deception. However, Ward had heard about how Althea had spared a member of the Sea Devils and gave Vinnie a chance to come clean rather than turn the situation to violence. Vinnie very reluctantly agreed since he was unsure they could win another fight after being banged up by the sea serpent. After the pirates left, Vinnie's familiar managed to locate the sea serpent's treasure horde and the party looted gold, jewels, and mithril onto their boats. The lair also contained several magic items on a shrine to @Bahamut, which Erica eagerly grabbed despite Althea's warnings that taking the items could potentially anger a deity. After heading back and giving Captain Molly her cut, Erica and co. boarded the Venture II to find Gibby once again ill.
Death Against the Argus Pirates
This time, Gibby's situation was his own fault. The party returned to find him surrounded by empty candy wrappers while rubbing his swollen tummy. Seeking a cure for his tummy ache, Gibby asked if they could visit the nearby kuo-toa village where he was born to get them to pray for him. They set sail for the island and just as it came into view, they saw beams of light, globs of Gunkers, and trails of smoke coming down from the Jeweled Eye as the Argus Pirates launched a full-scale attack on the island. Seeing that time was of the essence, Erica summoned an air elemental and put it into the Venture II's magic cannon. The crew pointed the cannon behind the ship and fired it repeatedly to propel the ship forward faster, cutting an entire hour off their travel time once the elemental's energy was expended.
Once they got close enough, Gibby teleported all the ship's officers to the beach on the outskirts of the burning village. People were fleeing & hiding as Gunkers swarmed the area looking for them. Erica remained on the beach and used blasts of magic to destroy Gunkers at range before the party saw a running kuo-toa killed and Gibby became transparent a moment later. They realized why the Argus Pirates were here: to kill the kuo-toa and remove the source of Gibby's godly power. The fires from one building turned into an immolith and approached the group as Mathayas, murderer of the kuo-toa, started coming up the street firing spells at them. These foes proved no match for the Venture Boys and were dispatched with fairly minimal effort.
The group then split up; Erica and the other Venture Boys would cut straight through the forest to get to the main kuo-toa village while Gibby, Captain Reynolds, and Xaeyruudh would follow the road around the woods. Halfway to their destination, the group was ambushed by the revenge-seeking Vengeance Coven. Erica first attempted to counterspell Nightwhisper's magic only for the hag to counterspell her counterspell in kind, trigging a wild magic surge that covered the area in grease. In the end the group was victorious against the hags with Vinnie killing two and the third fleeing. After taking a brief moment to bandage their wounds, the group pressed forward.
Standing at the tree line, they saw Gunkers entering the pond leading to the tunnel entrance of the kuo-toa village. Beyond that, on a hillside, was Captain Elgar using his disintegration ray to dig straight down into the village caves. The party split up and went around the pond to surround Captain Elgar and his minions on all sides before attacking. Erica summoned a thundercloud and brought blasts of lightning down on Elgar and Gyaos, though her magic didn't seem to injure the winged dragonborn in any way. This, unfortunately, made Erica a target for Captain Elgar's ire. He blasted her with several powerful magic rays, the final shot containing disintegration magic. It struck Erica in the belly, her eyes went wide, and her entire body turned to dust leaving only her magic items behind.
Circumstances of Death
Disintegrated by Captain Elgar
Children
Aligned Organization
Related Plots
Bell Branch
Elder Sequoia Scale Mail
Necklace of Prayer Beads
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