Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr

Breaking The Broken Concubine (4/4)

Gestion had returned to the residence with details about the council’s plans for the foray to the swamp. There would be two parties, one by land, and one by boat in the swamp. How this split plan made any sense, no one could make heads or tails.

The group rested and plotted the remainder of the day. Through their investigation at Anders’ house, they had discovered the location of The Broken Concubine and were now quite determined to make the pirates pay for their recent assaults. The worm had truly turned. They were also determined to take the fight to the pirates and break them, rather than waiting for their next attack.

The night was dark, past midnight, as the crew rowed their small boat, loaded with giant barrels of pitch, out to sea for their rendezvous with The Broken Concubine. They approached their quarry off the point south of Salt Marsh and kept a great distance, so the ship’s watch would not notice them. They could still see lanterns and some action on deck from afar.

Kozak slipped into the dark sea and came up under the hull of the ship. He used a giant wood drill he’d taken from his uncle’s mill and made a circle of five large holes below the waterline. He could sense that this was quite noisy underwater and began to rush for fear of notifying any local sahuagin again. He raced back like a dolphin to the small boat and told them all was ready.

When they looked back toward the ship, they noticed that there was already a commotion going on, because the ship was already listing heavily from taking on water. With this, they had to speed up their plan.

Kozak dove back underwater to finish his sabotage.

Rain followed, planning to sneak on the ship.

Kozak reached the holes in the hull again and channeled his magical energy to shatter the wood between the holes. “Woosh!” A giant, satisfying crack formed in the hull, and water rushed in.

Rain reached the rear of the ship and began to climb like a shadow creeping at sunset. With the heavy listing and jarring of the ship, it made it very difficult for Rain to climb, and he got stuck halfway up.

With the crew mostly focused on stopping the flooding below decks, Gestion rowed the boat along the ship and began levitating large barrels of pitch up over the decks, dropping them partially on the main deck and partially on the side of the main deck hull.

Finally, Rain silently clambered over the poop deck railing and prepared his bow to take out any crew nearby. Hiding between some barrels he noticed no one nearby.

Howls of commands and chaos on the ship echoed around.

Gestion then unleashed a searing barrage of fiery bolts that lit up the night sky in crimson and lanced down on the pitch, igniting a huge part of the main deck and side of the ship. Just as the blaze began, more pirates poured up from below, drenched from being in the bilges.

From Rain’s vantage, he sighted an eldritch purple glow emanating from some undead abomination as it walked out from below decks. Its garb was a pirate’s captain, with coat and hat, but its body was glowing bones! This must be Bloody Bogle! For a brief moment, the words of the owner of The Empty Nest flitted mockingly across Rain’s mind, “Bloody Bogle has been dead for decades!”

Seeing the fire, Bogle bellowed out commands in a cackle, “What the hells is going on? Is this sabotage?! Put out these fires!”

Just as he uttered these words, Rain let loose two deadly arrows from behind a barrel, which lodged firmly into his target, causing the undead pirate to bellow in pain.

Meanwhile, Kozak had been working his way up the port side of the main deck and was just about to come over the edge to make a thunderous attack on Bogle and his nearby crew, but the ship listed further, shook him loose, and he fell back into the turbulent sea.

Bloody Bogle turned and ran up the stairs toward Rain, one of the grim mates in tow, cutlasses in hand.

Rain was able to release another arrow directly into Bogle’s face, but still, the horrifying thing came at him with even more rage. Rain drew out his scimitar, prepared to defend himself, and was quickly buttressed by the two deadly attackers.

Bogle, wielding two cutlasses, delivered several vicious slash wounds to Rain in the onslaught of attacks.

Rain sensed that he might be outmatched, if luck were not on his side.

Just as Kozak was swimming back to the ship to climb back up, an ancient predator hurtled toward him out of the darkness: a giant shark ripped into him with its massive, hungry maw. Kozak was violently forced back and he reacted by releasing a thunderous blast of power, driving the beast back in a grey shockwave of water and bubbles. Thinking quickly, he tried to shape water nearby and created a column of water that reached up twenty feet above the surface. He planned to swim up it and escape back onto the ship.

In the maelstrom of action, Gestion had found a way up onto the ship and stood resolutely upon the main deck. Waving his hands back and forth, like spreading gravy on a roasted bird, he released a slick magical emanation, coating the decks in slippery goo. This prevented the remaining crew from easily putting out the growing fire, while they all slid around, unable to make progress in any intended direction.

Rain made a diving tumble to get in a better defensive position and take away the advantage from Bogle and his mate. He lashed Bogle with a strong slash of his scimitar, hitting home on his eerie bones, but it was not enough to take him down. Rain despaired the coming reprisals.

The mega-shark drove back in at Kozak, as he thrashed to avoid the attack, and took another vicious bite of the genasi. In his last conscious moment, Kozak released his final wave of thunder that blasted the shark and finally scared off the ancient monster.

Rain dodged as Bogle landed another painful attack, knocking him to the deck unconscious.

Gestion, seeing the battle on the upper deck, released another wave of flaming gouts that tore into Bloody Bogle.

Just at this moment, the ship collapsed into the water and all was darkness of the sea.

Gestion dove off the ship for his boat and managed to get into it.

Those pirates that were able to abandon ship, swam in all directions.

Gestion frantically looked around for his friends and spotted Kozak floating in the water and dragged him back into the boat with terrible effort. He used his medical crafts to stabilize Kozak’s massive wounds. As he rowed around, he then spotted Rain floating at the surface and dragged him in, as well. Taking Rain’s bag of magical berries from his belt, Gestion began administering them to both, reviving them to bare consciousness.

As the two awoke from near death, they both surveyed the wreckage of The Broken Concubine with bleary eyes. It was truly, finally broken. The water lashed around them as they could hear pirates screaming out as sharks attacked them.

As they watched, a purple glow started to emerge out of the sea toward them from the distance near the fallen ship. Bloody Bogle was still coming for them! Kozak leaned up, with barely the strength remaining to stand, and called upon the darkest powers of the storm from deep within his soul. From his hand crackled a dark yellow bolt of pure electric energy that reached out across the distance and struck the surface of the water where Bloody Bogle was emerging. It penetrated deep into the water like a ball of lightning, shocking the undead captain to his final death.

The spent company slowly moved the boat over to the floating remains of Bloody Bogle and took what evidence they would need to prove that he was finally dead.

Investigation of Sharkfin Bridge (2/4)

On the way back to their residence, the group decided to follow-up on another mysterious loose end that had been nagging at them. Every time they crossed the old bridge leading south of town, Rain felt a strange feeling. They speculated that it was some kind of enchantment or perhaps the architecture had some connection to elves, which only Rain could sense, being half-elven. After poking around by moonlight they found some ancient elvish script on the bridge. Rain knowing both elvish and sylvan was able to piece together some of the translation. Gestion did some magical investigation. This bridge had some kind of ancient curse on it, and it was against the sea elves. Kozak culled his memory from childhood growing up around the sea elves. Collectively they pieced together a vision of sea elves fleeing or forced out of this area. With little more to go on, Gestion suggested they talk to some of the more knowledgeable members of the town, like the half-orc gravedigger, who might know more legends and lost lore.

Calling it a night at about 3 AM, the party holed up in their residence for some rest. Rain using the little remaining magic he had left to conjure some more magical healing berries, not knowing what the following day might hold. Gestion set up an alarm system of magical mouths to alert us if any pirates, assassins, or harmless animals approached our doors.

Cat and Mouse (3/4)

After a fitful night’s rest, the party of weary adventurers decided that they needed to get to the bottom of their security problems and began debating various schemes of deep-cover investigations. Rain raised the issue that someone in Salt Marsh had to be working with the pirates, otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone straight to their residence looking for their loot (presumably the electrum bars?). Furthermore, Anders had done two suspicious things in the last fortnight. He had sent them on the first mission to investigate the Sea Ghost, without telling them there was another pirate ship at sea that night called, The Broken Concubine. This had to be more than an oversight. Secondly, when they confided in Anders about the discovery of the Lizard Folk in the marshes, he didn’t hesitate to share this information with the entire council, putting them in a sticky spot with their own crew. Even if he had the best of intentions, something seemed off. Also, the entire group had bad premonitions about his odd butler, Skeren, who definitely seemed to be more than he appeared, and who had an oversized control over Anders’ life. After a solid meal, two plans were put into action. Rain and Kozak would investigate Anders and Gestion would head down to the council hall and ensure that the planning efforts into the swamp went according to our liking.

Rain began by finding an old wheelbarrow with a shovel and some rocks. Using his magic of disguise illusion, he cloaked himself as an average looking, human laborer. Kozak, using his nature magic, also transformed into an everyday cat and hopped up into the wheelbarrow. They rolled their way up to the highland neighborhood near Anders’ house. Rain stopped the barrow a few hundred paces from the house and plunked himself down on the far side of the path with his pipe, taking a load off before preparing to look busy with his shovel in the ditch, if anyone happened by. They had agreed that the emergency code for Rain to come help, was if Kozak would screech loudly in his present cat voice. Kozak wandered off to the residence and noticed the maid working in the yard. He sneaked around while she did the laundry toward the back of the house. At some point, she noticed him and scooped him up in her arms affectionately and began petting him. Kozak the cat purred and acted like the kind of cat to be petted and taken care of, so the maid took him right through the back door and inside the kitchen, plunking him down in front of a bowl of fresh cream. He diligently lapped it up for some time, while listening to the maid chit chat with Anders’ horse-groom and coach master. “It’s not the same as it used to be when the lady was here,” she said. Kozak rambled around the house for a few moments doing some reconnaissance, and even Ander looked up from his maps and papers to greet him kindly, before looking back down to work. He had to hide and recast his transformation again so that it would last. He wandered back into the kitchen, when Skeren, the butler, rushed in the very same back door and began scolding the two, “be ready to show him in through this door to my room. Don’t let him be seen by the master.” He nearly kicked the cat in anger, not appearing to like cats at all. The maid scooped Kozak up again and threw him again out into the back yard. Just near the end of the yard there, within ten paces, was the sea cliff edge. And there were two large wooden spikes from which hung a rope ladder. Kozak scurried behind some grass as a dark figure rose up over the edge, dressed in a black, hooded cloak. The man strode briskly to the door and opened it. Kozak attempted to follow behind him back into the house. Though he did slip in, he was unfortunately spotted by the maid again and tossed back out. He rushed around to the window of the house he knew would be Skeren’s room and perched upon the sill, hoping to hear something of what would transpire. He could not hear much, but he heard a strong conversation and someone being struck violently, then the door opened and slammed again. Kozak rushed around the back and watched in stealth as the pirate climbed back down the rope ladder. After a minute, Skeren emerged and tossed the rope ladder back down into the sea. He wiped a bloody mouth and stomped back into the house. At this point, Kozak had to act or the trail would run cold. He waited for the pirate to reach a small rowboat and saw him start to row out to sea. With a low growl, he quickly sloughed off his feline form, growing quickly back to himself, and jumped off the cliff into the water in the chase. He swam like a dolphin beneath the waves and tracked the small boat as it headed out to sea. He dodged fishing nets, nearly getting trapped once, nearly losing his quarry. Things were getting confusing because there were several other boats, so he risked popping his head above the water to find his man again. Eventually, he tracked it coming up alongside a large ship. It was, in fact, The Broken Concubine, sister ship to The Sea Dog and reputed to be captained by the long-dead, Bloody Bogle! With this confirmation, he headed back with all haste, climbed up the cliff to reunite with Rain. While Kozak had been gone, Anders had passed by in his coach with Skeren, heading to town. So, Rain got impatient and wandered over to check on the house with the pretext of searching for his lost cat. The maid had shown him around, even looking through the stables. He noticed the place where the empty rope ladder had fallen into the sea. Without causing a major scene, Rain was forced to act nonchalant, wait, and hope that Kozak would return. And eventually, after lots of fake digging and pipe smoking for Rain, Kozak did return. They both hustled back to their residence to layout their discoveries to each other and Gestion, while planning their next move.