12 - 9/25/21 : High Water
In-game date: 7th of Freyrmond, 3521
“I don’t think we’re gonna get THAT thing up the well, guys.” Squiddly
As the Red Spirits saw to their grim task in hunting down Skeemo Weirdbottle, the Rat Catchers attended to a quest of their own; catching a live fish for Yilani as they had been instructed. They chose to descend an abandoned well in the Trades Ward that led to a system of caves they were familiar with, managing to descend to an underground lake that they favored for fishing purposes. Despite the lake’s proximity to Ramrider’s Retreat, the Rat Catchers set up their spot on the lake’s shore and began fishing.
Their initial strategy revolved around Jenks utilizing the magical fishing rod created for them by Reilly, while Nat and Squiddly stood by to hold and ground him when he caught a fish. After a few minutes of waiting, Squiddly became bored with this strategy and decided to coordinate with Nat; she pointed out the locations of fish on the surface of the water, and Squiddly chucked rocks at the called-out locations to agitate the fish into swimming near the fishing hook.
This strategy apparently worked, as Jenks soon got a bite. Nat went over to him and grabbed him to help pull the fish in, but the two were quickly yanked into the lake by a powerful, unseen force on the end of the hook. As they were dragged underwater, Jenks was barely able to make out the shape of a massive shark and determined it to be Obliteros, a giant shark that was often the subject of old wives’ tales told to keep kids from playing at the docks at night.
Back on shore, Squiddly tried to catch the attention of the shark by firing makeshift harpoons at it, hoping to strike it. Although his arrows did not quite hit their mark, they did catch the attention of Obliteros, who lunged upwards out of the water to strike at it. As Obliteros leapt into the air, Nat released her grip on Jenks and fell towards the shark’s head, managing to grab hold of one of the large spikes on his head. Jenks was thrown off during the leap, but managed to cast “Hold Monster” by managing to wrap the line of his magic fishing rod around another of the shark’s head spikes.
As the Nat and Jenks were tugged around on the surface of the water by the aggravated shark, Squiddly bravely leapt from a rock face with kitchen knife drawn and plunged it into the shark, managing to barely pierce the skin. With all three of the Rat Catchers on board, the shark tried to shake them off, but the kids were able to ‘steer’ the shark to the shore and beach him. The collision threw all of them off, and Jenkslanded rather close to the shark’s mouth. Weakly, the shark tried to bite at Jenks, who managed to avoid the bite narrowly by jumping past the teeth into the shark’s mouth!
Within the shark’s mouth, Jenks managed to spy a glimmer of blue light that reflected off of a small blue stone stuck between the shark’s teeth. Deftly, Jenks managed to pry the blue stone free, finding it quite smooth but mucousy to the touch. As he held the stone, Jenks began to hear whispers of strange, garbled speech, followed by a deep voice muttering his name. Satisfied with his spookily magic acquisition, Jenks exited the weakened shark’s mouth triumphantly with his new prize.
Obliteros, an awakened shark capable of speech, pleaded with the children to assist him back into the water before he perished. The children agreed on one condition; Obliteros would have to capture a large fish alive and deliver it to them. Obliteros breathlessly agreed to this condition, and the children helped him in rolling back into the water.
The children pondered the strange blue stone acquired by Jenks as Obliteros hunted in the waters below. Curious about the magical capabilities of their new treasure, Jenks decided to lick it. This caused his vision to blur and flash a variety of colors, before he suddenly grew gills and lost the ability to breathe in open air. Panicking, Jenks rolled into the water, where he could once again breathe, but when trying to speak to his friends, he found his words to be replaced with incomprehensible Deep Speech.
As the children debated how to solve their conundrum, a hooded figure revealed herself to the group. The figure, an elven shaman named Ruven, offered to cure Jenks and pay the children in exchange for the stone.
The children decided that the goal of their quest was to retrieve a fish and not an opal, and that it was an acceptable sacrifice to give it to Ruven as completion of a 'sidequest'. Ruven attempted to heal Jenks with remove curse first, but her failure to do so made it clear that the affliction was not a curse. She then successfully healed Jenks as requested via lesser restoration and paid the kids 25 gold apiece before departing into the water herself.
After Ruven departed, Obliteros repaid his debt by spitting a large catfish onto the shore next to the children, who stuffed it into an undersized bucket filled with water and gave it a few good whacks with a rock to keep it docile. The children returned to the surface and purchased a mermaid-driven gondola ride back home with some of their newfound wealth, planning on a triumphant return to Troll Skull Manor.
Meanwhile, on the ship known as The House, Ruven made her way to Zelem's quarters and presented the blue stone to him. Zelem did not recognize the object, but under the view of detect magic saw that the stone gave off a strange, inky black aura. Zelem declared the strange object to be a lead and instructed Ruven to make contact with 'Nomad', a Devil's Hand plant in the Xanathar Guild, to investigate further.
That night, Jenks had a strange dream in which he waded through a fetid swamp before plummeting into a watery abyss. Within the darkness he saw three glowing lights; one red, one green, and one a brightly shining blue. He heard a low voice call his name before waking…Portraits
The Rat Catchers
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