A Siren's Song - Session Four

General Summary

Last time on A Siren’s Song…
We find the party waking up in the tent camp at The Heart of Jade after escaping from the Lizard folk orgy… that is to say everyone but Zalphid. Feeshi finds him a short distance away retreated within his shell. He was not able to escape the orgy and the site of everything he saw has left him shell-shocked. The party decides to toss him into the well to clean up.
Before too long the scent of roasting meat on the bonfires draws the party. They feast as the lizard-folk begin to awaken from their stupors and clean up from the festival. Our party decides with their mission completed, at least with the brain fog generator destroyed, they can return to their waiting ship as the sails should have been completed by now.
On the walk back, among other discussions, Nabia shows an object that she calls a compass to Zalphid. She explains that this little trinket is how she never gets lost and tries to explain how it works. Zalphid sums it up to magick.
Back at Obsidian Harbor, the party finds their boat with the new green sails as Naiara had promised. They board the ship and start calling for Jerry-Joseph, but they don’t receive an answer. He appears to be missing. The boat is searched from top to bottom, but Jerry/Joseph isn’t found. Zalphid goes so far as to tear apart the stove looking for him. Kodos is perplexed by this and sends Zalphid away as he repairs it.
Nabia, who happened to be the first of the party to return to the top deck, has a finely crafted ebony arrow with silver fletching, a gold-plated hunting point, and gold filigree decoration fall at her feet. Around it is tied a piece of parchment that simply reads, “Do not meddle. You have been warned,” in a very fine, flowing script with a cloud and star emblem.
Zalphid follows up behind Nabia and sees the arrow, asking what it is. Nabia shows him and Zalphid becomes convinced that the Cult is currently in the jungle and they need to track them down now. The rest of the party becomes involved and after a short discussion on whether to track down Jerry/Joseph or the Cult, they decide the best course of action is to ask the locals.
Nabia and Zalphid head off to Naiara’s shop. Along the way, Zalphid interrogates a pair of sea elf hunters about Nabia’s arrow. It’s unlike anything either of them has seen. Continuing to the shop, they find that Naiara hasn’t been there in a couple days. Nabia explains to one of the sea-elf workers that their cook is missing and that she just needed to talk to Naiara. As they walk away, Nabia looks back and catches the sea-elf staring.
Returning to the ship, the party remembers and assumes that their boat would have been under a sort of watch while they were away. Nabia and Zalphid go off and find one of the watchmen and interrogate him to the point of harassment. They ask about whether anyone unauthorized boarded the ship in their absence. This first watchman replies that, no, nothing was reported on his or any of the other watched, but that security isn’t as tight during the working hours and so many workers are on and off the docks. Nabia asks where she can find the other watchmen to which he responds that one of the others is probably sleeping in a nearby shanty and the third is a drunkard and probably passed out in the jungle somewhere.
Frustrated, Nabia and Zalphid head over to the shanty to wake up the other watchman. Groggily and angrily, he answers their questions, which, again, come to the point of harassment. The replies are the same though: nothing reported on any watch.
Zalphid suggests they go talk to the Lizard-folk chieftain. This results in more harassment, and a denial about having seen an arrow like Nabia’s. They tell the chieftain about Jerry/Joseph, much to his surprise, as if there were a human on this island his people would have smelled him immediately, hunted him down and eaten him, as humans are “delicious”. This alarms Nabia as she quietly excuses both herself and Zalphid before they offend the chieftain further.
From here, Zalphid storms over to the lore-master’s abode where he finds Xirax recently returned from the well. Xirax is surprised by Zalphid’s presence as he assumed he’d be hot on the trail of the Cult by now. Zalphid divulges that they’re looking for their human to which Xirax basically restates, with a lick of his lips, what the chieftain said. Zalphid dismisses this and has Nabia show Xirax the ebony arrow. He tells Xirax that he needs to speak with the chieftain about forming a hunting party as this arrow was shot from the tree-line at their ship and that the Cult or their agents are still on the island. Zalphid and Nabia leave stating they have business elsewhere.
After an afternoon without answers, Nabia and Zalphid return to the ship in defeat. The party make the difficult decision to depart Jade Veil Reach for Coral Cove without finding Jerry/Joseph. The party embark and, without Jerry/Joseph, Lalrihyn prepares a meal that consisted of the shark Kodos caught a few nights before. Jerry/Joseph had spent his time storing it properly for the party.
As the party settles in for the night, Nabia and Zalphid take first watch. During the watch, the two spy a light on the starboard horizon, and it’s getting closer. Nabia uses Zalphid’s spyglass to see that it is a large warship, and as it approaches to within a mile, Nabia smells a familiar perfume on the breeze. Closer yet, Nabia can see Naiara near the helm next to a tall, weathered sea-elf. The ship is gaining fast and it appears the crew is making ready the armaments.
Sensing a possible engagement, Zalphid runs belowdecks to wake everyone. That’s when the opposing ship rings its bell. An engagement is imminent. Returning to the top deck with the party, Zalphid enters into a deep focus. Nabia tries to parlay with Naiara and the captain, who turns out to be Aelorin Wavecrest, but to show Nabia her foolishness in trusting her, Naiara calls up Jerry/Joseph from belowdecks and as he nears her, she plunges her longsword through his heart and throws him overboard to his death and the depths.
With Nabia stunned, Aelorin demands that what is his from the captain’s quarters of his boat be returned. Feeshi goes to look in vain. This was nothing more than a distraction as Aelorin orders the cannons to be fired. Before the cannons can fire, though, Zalphid mystically parts the water beneath the warship and the party watch as it drops into the air space fifty feet. The party feels a sense of relief as they think they can now get away, but to their dismay, the warship moves forward, straight into the water as if it were still sailing. This takes the party by surprise and it appears the warship is beginning to surface.
Thinking quickly, Zalphid sprints to the boat railing and jumps overboard hoping that he timed it right to come up somewhere on the bow of the ship as it surfaces. He manages, but just as the forward cannon of the warship breaks the surface, it fires on the smaller boat, chipping away at the corner of the hull near the captain’s quarters. As the other cannons come into range, they two target that same corner of the hull. Luckily, Feeshi had given up his search and returned to the top deck.
After the cannons fire, Zalphid raises the hells on the ship, destroying both powder charges for the mid-ship cannons quickly. This takes out several enemies in the process, including those operating the cannons. He then goes to work on the remaining crew.
Shortly, the larger warship has come alongside the smaller boat and each of our party members valiantly swing to the larger ship to take on their oppressors. Nabia sets a thorny tangle of brambles at the stern of the ship to slow the engaging pirates. Aelorin and Naiara both transport themselves directly in our party’s faces to engage avoiding the damaging brambles.
The fight rages on until Naiara goes down. Shortly after Aelorin also goes down and the remaining pirates, very injured due to the slicing and ripping of flesh at their legs, drop their arms and pledge their loyalty to Nabia to save their own skins. Aelorin and Naiara aren’t killed outright. They are to be interrogated and are taken to the brig.
While Naiara is revived for questioning by Nabia, Zalphid brutally tortures Aelorin, basically turning him inside out, yet somehow keeping him alive. Nabia asks Naiara, “why,” but all Naiara would say is how foolish Nabia was to trust her. She then asks about Malachi to which Naiara answers that she’s heard the name and that he’s a megalomaniac and has delusions of grandeur. With her questions answered, Nabia kills her and steps back.
Kodos, taken aback, knowing there are more questions to ask, revives her. He asks about the Cult of Shadowed Stars, but only gets a “fuck you. I don’t know them.” While Kodos continues questioning Naiara, Feeshi dives in on the torture and somehow spelunks through Naiaras digestive tract. But with his questions answered, Kodos allows Nabia to kill her for good this time.
After Zalphid feels his torture is complete and he’ll get no further answers, he finally kills Aelorin and both bodies are destroyed in one of his “black holes”. He solemnly goes above decks to take watch, practicing some new magicks he had discovered recently on one of the crew.
The rest of the night, although tense, goes by without trouble. The party is heading to Coral Cove once more, and that is where we fall into our respective roles. What would you like to do?

Report Date

23 Oct 2023