Up one level
 

Date: 11/14/10

XP Awarded: None

Start: The city of Tashluta, dry season (late Ches), 1369 DR.

 

After some debate, the party decides that an overland journey would take too long and the pirate meet would be over long before they reached Kraken's Cove. Rowing their boat Old Salty is briefly discussed, as well as taking a sailing ship to another port and trekking overland from the other west. Eventually it's agreed that the fastest, safest option is to find a ship to hire.

After a day of searching the Azure District for ship captains for hire, the party has heard laughing refusal after incredulous rejection. The next morning the adventurers head down to the office of Tashluta's harbourmaster where they find Harlo Sinwalla, who has been appointed acting harbourmaster while the Dawn Council debates who will receive a permanent appointment. Flashing his Tower of Tashluta medal, Memnon suggests that the party might be able to put in a good word for him to the Dawn Council if he can direct the party towards a captain that would be willing to carry them to an area near Cape Talath. After a moment of thinking, Harlo tells the party to go to the Blue Parrot tavern and ask for Captain Amella.

Nather leads the group to the Blue Parrot, where they find a slight woman with a thin scar on her right cheeck and fine blonde hair neatly tied back below a black tricorn. She seems to be very drunk when the party arrives, and asks if they have come to take her ship. When she discovers that they want to hire her, the foul-mouthed captain becomes more sober and negotiates a price for carrying them to Kraken's Cove and back, including loitering in Blood Bay for some days if necessary. She seems keen to leave quickly, so the adventurers return to their homes to gather their equipment and return to dock 16 where the small but well-kept pinnace Nightbreeze is moored at the end. The crew of six are finishing preparing the ship for sailing when the party comes aboard and stows their gear in the small, cramped hold. When Captain Amella sees a group of Tashlutan officials and Azure District guard coming down the dock led by the harbourmaster, she gives orders to hurriedly cast off. The ship slowly gains speed as it pulls out of Tashluta's harbour.

Captain Amella's mood quickly changes when the ship catches a seabreeze and glides through the open waters of the Shining Sea, following the coastline west. The cliffs of the Tashtan Coast slide past, topped by scrubby grazing land and the occasional manor house surrounded by plantation fields. Intrigued by the busy crew, Taark tries to observe their work but keeps finding himself being cursed for being in the way. Memnon helps out the crew, having forgot how much he missed being aboard a sailing ship. With the setting sun casts long shadows, Captain Amella anchors the ship off a small rocky beach squeezed between tall, jungle-covered cliffs.

The next days sailing passes uneventfully. The stiflingly hot weather is relieved by the constant breeze behind the Nightbreeze, though it's too hot below deck to stay down there. The green peaks of the Hazur Mountains march steadily closer to the coast as the winds pick up and become more erratic, and stronger currents buffet the ship. Captain Amella handles the ship confidently and skillfully, keeping the crew busy with almost constant adjustments to the course and the trim of the sails. When the sun is almost touching the horizon, the Nightbreeze is anchored within a swampy cove below the jungle-covered peaks of Hazur Mountains. The night air is filled with the raucous cries of swamp wildlife, which soon quiets down as darkness falls.

The next morning the ship cautiously picks its way out into the turbulent waters and slowly sails along the swampy coastline. With crew stationed at the front of the ship watching for the dangerous reefs and submerged wrecks known to litter the area, progress is slow. The water takes on a dark red tinge as the Nightbreeze enters Blood Bay, and the swamps give way to a steadily rising series of seacliffs. Captain Amella anchors the ship off a secluded beach at the bottom of of some short cliffs, saying that the waters ahead are too treacherous to continue but that the walk to Kraken's Cove should only be a couple of hours. The party climbs into Old Salty that's been towed behing the Nightbreeze and row ashore. Hiding the boat behind some palm trees, Nather and Memnon scout a path up the rocks to the top where they pick up a narrow game trail leading along the clifftops.

The adventurers follow the winding path, at times walking along the edge of towering cliffs and at other times wandering through a sun-dappled jungle thick with stinging and biting insects. The sun beats down and soon everyone is drenched in sweat, quickly going through the drinking water they've brought. After an hour of walking, the narrow trail is winding along barren clifftops when a black plume of oily smoke can be seen in the distance ahead. Taark suggests that it must be due to Vanthus' plan to set the pirate ships alight, and the party speeds up the walking pace a bit. Fifteen minutes later the trail swings into the jungle and rounds several large boulders, revealing an open stretch of path littered with dead wildlife.

Parrots, gulls, and snakes lie on the ground, bodies horribly warped and distorted. The skin of some is pierced by dozens of hooked, bony protrusions while others have elongated mouths filled with tiny fangs. Others have shed fur or feathers and sprouted clusters of bristles and long, tangled hair. Ten minutes further into the jungle, the party comes across a mango tree holding a flock of deformed parrots, viciously tearing at each other. The plume of smoke is much nearer now, and ten minutes later only one more jungle-covered headland separates the party from the source.

As the party picks their way along the top of a cliff with a 40-foot sheer drop, a group of deformed monkeys is seen fighting in the nearby undergrowth. One shrieks when it spies the adventurers, and soon six are charging at the party through the undergrowth. Taark steps up to the edge of the undergrowth and takes up a defensive stance, readying his warhammer. The monkeys show no fear and run right up to the party, launching themselves ferociously at the adventurers. One creature with grey, bonelessly flopping arms bites Laurrens on the hand, and the wound soon turned red and inflamed.

Azaad discovers that his enchantments don't seem to affect the creatures, and shifts to his crossbow. The warriors also find the creatures resistant to weapon damage - the exception is Memnon's enchanted doru. What's more, the monkeys continue fighting even after suffering grievous wounds that would have dropped another creature, eventually dying in one last aggressive spasm. When Memnon drives a spear through one's head, it's body liquifies and runs, turning into a pool of vile green acid that splashes on him.

After a long and bloody battle, the party destroys the last of the monkeys. The tail is covered in pools of green acid, but one of the monkey's bodies has survived. Memnon and Azaad investigate and find that it must have been a normal monkey before undergoing some type of terrible transformation. Laurrens finishes bandaging a few wounds, and the group proceed down the game trail more cautiously.

Ten minutes later, the party rounds the last headland and find themselves looking down into a sheltered cove below. An inferno rages atop the water, and several ships including a two-masted caravel, a sizeable frigate, a long barge, and what might have once been a schooner are all ablaze. Further out, a three-masted caravel is anchored and has escaped the fire, for now. A shiny slick on the surface of the water itself burns as well, creating a wall of wood and flame. The heat rises in searing sheets, and the roar of the flaming maelstrom mixed with the crash of the surf masks any other sounds that might be coming up from below. Through periodic gaps in the smoke, movement on the beach is visible - something still lives in the inferno below. A rickety wooden staircase hangs off the cliffside, descending through thick smoke to the beach.

Memnon peels off his breastplate and dives from the clifftop into the churning waves below, swimming out to the three-masted caravel. As he climbs up the side, he notes the ship's name: The Sea Wyvern. The ship seems to be deserted, though the deck bears several signs of a violent struggle. Gouges in the wood, splatters of blood, and discarded weapons lie about. Near the captain's cabin, a long bloody smear marks where a body must have been dragged over the side of the ship. The deck is dry, and there are no other signs of boarding. Memnon heads below deck to search for any survivors.

Meanwhile, Taark and Tilan have found that the swaying wooden walkway doesn't seem like it can support the weight of more than a couple people at a time. Nather waits until Taark has reached the beach before he starts down the walkway, and once Tilan is at the bottom, Azaad follows. Laurrens shouts a warning, seeing that the burning caravel has broken free from it's mooring and is being driven by the pounding surf onto the rocks below the walkway. Azaad turns and scrambles back to the top of the walkway while Nather tries to run down the last thirty feet to the beach. The unsteady walkway sways wildly under his feet as he runs, slowing him down enough that he isn't able to reach the bottom before the ship lurches onto the jagged rocks below the stairs.

A shudder ripples through the walkway as the central portion collapses onto the flaming ship below. Nather manages to find handholds on the rock face to hang from as the boards fall away below his feet, but the surface is too smooth for him to crawl down to the beach. Taking a deep breath, Nather leaps from the cliff face and executes a graceful dive safely into the churning waters. A minute later, his dripping form emerges from the sea as he struggles up the pebble beach to join Taark and Tilan who have set up a defensive perimeter. So far they haven't seen any sign of life.

Up at the top of the cliffs, Azaad and Laurrens spread out to search for an alternative way down. After hacking through the thick jungle for a bit, Laurrens finds a suitable spot for anchoring a grappling hook and rope to the beach below. By the time they've rejoined the other members of the party, Memnon has concluded his search of the ship and found no survivors or even bodies. In the captain's cabin he did find some valuable nautical charts, which he carefully stowed in his waterproof map case before swimming back to the pebble beach to rejoin the others.

The wide pebble beach separating the burning waters of the cove from the cliffs is strewn with swaths of blood and ragged body parts. Broken crates and bamboo cages litter the area, blood and bits of bone sprayed across bolts of silk and cracked barrels of ambergris seeping into the course, rocky sand. A number of mangled corpses, each stripped nearly clean of flesh and bones cracked open, lie about the beach. The casualties are staggering, with a quick count putting the dead at nearly twenty. At the base of the cliff is a ten-foot wide cave, while several planks provide a crude bridge across a tide pool to a second, smaller cave entrance. From the cavern entrance comes a cacophony of shrieks, howls, maniacal laughter and the clanging of metal on metal. Nearby, a beached ship is deeply embedded in the sand with a doorway cut through the hull leading into the darkened hull. On the far side, a burning patch of oil is being steadily driven nearer the ship's hull by the surf.

As the adventurers move down the beach looking for survivors, a flash of motion inside the beached ship catches Nather's keen eye. He shouts a warning as three gibbering menaces leap from hiding and charge with screams in broken dwarven. Although they may once have been dwarves, their stout bodies have been warped in horrible ways. The spine of one has twisted so that it's bent over to run on four clawed hands and feet, while another has a horrid cluster of waving, hooked tentacles protruding from its shoulders. Each has a ruined chain shirt draped over their misshapen body, and still carry a fine dwarven waraxe. Tilan and Taark move up to battle the first two, while Memnon and Laurrens drop back to handle the third that leapt at Nather from the ship's hold. The party soon discovers these creatures share the same resistance to mind-affecting spells as the savage monkeys previously encountered, and their bodies are also highly resistant to damage from the party's weapons (apart from Memnon's enchanted doru). A short but violent battle ensues, with the creatures dissolving upon their deaths into acidic green goo.

After the fight, the party enters the beached ship before it catches fire. The hold is full of broken bamboo cages of all sizes, most of which are shattered or burst from the inside. More blood and gore coat the sandy floor, but there is no sign of life. Out on the beach, the party finds that the stacks of merchandise have all been damaged by the fire, the seawater, or the conflict. No other living creatures are on the beach, so the party prepares to enter the mouth of the large cavern. The smooth, wet walls of stone rise to a stalactite-covered ceiling about ten feet overhead. The floor is covered in gritty, blood-soaked sand, and the caverns are lit be a series of cheap hooded lanterns hanging from hooks in the wall. The noise makes it difficult to be heard, though the echoes make it impossible to tell whether it's coming from the left or right passage that split off just inside the entrance.

Choosing the left, Taark and Tilan take the lead as the passage narrows before entering a much larger cave that must have once served as a mess hall. Several large tables lie in ruins, and against the far wall, dozens of barrels have been smashed to splinters. Bodies lie throughout the cavern in various stages of dismemberment and consumption - it's hard to count the total dead due to the state of the corpses, but at least six people recently met a gory end in this cave. At one of the remaining intact tables, three misshapen pirates bank their cutlery and howl while in a kitchen in the back of the cave a fourth wields an oversized cleaver on another body. Upon spotting the party, the savages upturn the table and rush forward crying "Bloodsacks! Drink!"

The experienced warriors drop back into the narrow passageway and take up defensive stances as the creatures rush to get at them, fighting amongst themselves to squeeze through. Tilan and Taark calmly cut down the creatures, gradually dropping back so Memnon can bring his doru into play to help. As each is destroyed and dissolves, a large pool of acidic green slime forms in the passage. Finally the last is killed, leaving only an acid-filled passage. Memnon leaps over to investigate the kitchen, but as he does a blurry form drops from the ceiling to attack him with a razor-sharp blade.

As it lands, the party can see that it's a small creature looking like a cross between a long-limbed monkey and a blood-and-gore soaked raccoon with a membrance of diseased skin stretching between its arms and legs. Writhing, boneless fingers grasp a wickedly gleaming kukri and sizzling drool dribbles from its fanged, misshapen mouth. It screeches "Come to me, meatbags! Just give me a mouthful of your tasty pink flesh!" and motions towards the party. Memnon's offense keeps it off balance long enough for the other party members to leap across the pool of acid to help him in the fight, and soon the creature is killed and reduced to a thick, green slim.

A narrow crevice leads from the mess hall and the party squeezes through. It opens into a much larger, taller cavern criss-crossed by lines of rope hung high on the walls. Hanging from the ropes are dozens of bolts of once-fine brocaded silk, making it difficult to judge the dimensions of the chamber. It seems that other passages lead off from it, but the stirring of the silk curtains tips off the party that something is silently moving through the room towards them. Azaad uses magic to pull down the silks, creating a small opening on one side of the room. Taark moves into it, warhammer at the ready, to face whatever is stalking the party.

A moment later the silk curtains part to reveal a nightmarish monstrosity. A lean, long-legged bipedal creature with an elongated maw and wicked-looking claws on its feet cautiously steps forward, it's brightly coloured hide spattered with gory bits of flesh. Its back writhes with wiggling tentacles, several of which weep pus and leave a disgusting trail of yellowish smears on the silk sheets. Looming over Taark, it lowers its head as it rushes forward to snap at him, inflicting a grievous wound. The adventurers moves forward to help their comrade, but are forced to cautiously maneuver around the enormous beast's whipping tail. Taark is forced to retreat to deal with his deadly wounds, and Laurrens follows him in order to apply his healing magic. Nather slips back into the tunnel to approach from another direction, while Tilan has attracted the creature's attention. Luckily he manages to avoid the massive jaws, but the wicked claws tear through his armor and seriously wound him. Memnon works his way around to the other side of the creature and gets some good hits in with his doru, but when the creature spins and viciously bites him, he's also badly wounded.

By now Taark has managed to get himself back into some kind of shape for battle and casts a spell to enchant his warhammer. Moving through the hanging sheets, he finds the body of another lizard-like creature similar to the one the party is fighting. Laurrens focuses his healing attentions on Tilan while working his way around to support Memnon, and Nather leaps out from hiding to jam his daggers into the pus-covered back of the creature. He probably saves Memnon's life, but the creature now focuses it's attacks on him instead, and he's very quickly in bad shape. Azaad followed Nather around and uses a spell to magically enlarge Memnon. Taark rejoins the battle, and the adventurers entrap the creature within a circle of their weapons. Supported by Laurrens healing, Memnon manages to stay in the battle long enough to inflict several critical wounds on the creature, and eventually it's weakened enough for Taark to deal the death blow with his enchanted warhammer. The massive body collapses to the floor and quickly liquifies into a large pool of sizzling, spattering green acid.

The party doesn't stop to rest, but instead rushes forward through the tunnels in search of additional enemies to confront before their limited battle magics wear off. Laurrens heals the party as they travel. Passing down one darkened tunnel, the group find a side passage barricaded by a pile of shelves and tables. Continuing on, the adventurers find the source of the metal clanging on metal - dozens of five-foot wide iron cages are built into the walls of the cave. Some are empty, while others contain the partially eaten remains of dead men and women. Yet most horrible are those cages that contain thrashing, wailing figures. Each of these seems more deformed than the last, twisting legs, writhing arms, vestigial heads, and jaws agape with too many teeth are all on display as the mad prisoners howl and slobber and throw themselves against the walls of their cages in a cacophonous attempt to break free.

After determining that all the normal prisoners are dead and that only warped creatures remain, the party presses on. Through a short, curving tunnel is a sandy cave that seems to be some kind of trophy hall. The centerpiece of the displays is an enormous reptilian skull, nearly six feet in length, mounted on a wooden display. Other trophies line the walls - nameplates from ships, battered sea chests, mounted heads of sea monsters, and weathered figureheads, each doubtless carrying a sordid history of theft and betrayal. Taking only a cursory glance at the contents, the party rushes onward. A small side passage leads to a small cave that seems to be a storeroom, while another leads to what appears to be a labyrinth of twisting, intersecting passages. Passing these by, Nather leads the party around a corner into another chamber.

The bodies of three strange creatures lie in a mangled heap in the center of the cave, their bodies torn apart and gnawed down to the bone. It's difficult to tell what manner of wolf-like or hyena-like creatures they once were. Spiked collars lie empty beside the decapitated bodies, chains running from each to iron hooks in the walls. As Nather takes all this in, he hears a gurgling growl from a dark corner of the room and spies four monstrously warped canines eyeing him hungrily. Springing forward to take advantage of their momentary surprise, he stabs one with his daggers and badly wounds it. Behind him, Tilan moves to the far side of the room before they can react and engages one in the back corner. Taark moves aside to make room for the lumbering Memnon who is still enlarged. He enters the room and positions himself in a central location where he can strike any of the beasts.

The creature in front of him takes a step back and lets loose a loud screech as it contorts its head, rolling it's diseased skin back to reveal bone and muscle in a frightening display. A wave of magical fear washes over Memnon, but he resists the effects and continues to battle. Backed by the power and reach of Memnon's enlarged spear, the party quickly overcome the beastial creatures and then stop to rest.

Returning to the previous rooms, the group look through the contents of the storerooms and trophy cave more carefully. Memnon finds a leather-bound collection of very old nautical charts that seem like they may be quite valuable. A few of the sea chests also contain some coins and gems, but most of the other objects seem more sentimental than anything else. The party returns to the barricaded passage in the hopes of encountering a survivor. After some debate on how to proceed, but before a conclusion is reached, Memnon forces his way through the barricade.

A musty cavern with a fairly even layer of sand covering the floor has several large pottery urns lining the walls. Within each grows a riot of strange mushrooms, fluted toadstools, phosphorescent molds, greasy-looking fronds of pale lichens, and all manner of unusual fungi. Several large glass terrariums, their walls beaded with condensation, stand against the back wall. One of these is shattered, the loamy soil within spilling out onto the sandy floor near a long but low table heaped with flasks, jars, bottles, and tools. Protruding from under the table are a pair of small boots.

When Laurrens moves up to the body to investigate, a purplish leafy tendril snakes out from under the table and smacks into his breastplace, leaving a sticky trail of residue behind. The adventurers leap into action and rush toward the table, seeking to surround the gnome-sized mushroom. As Nather moves around the table to approach from the rear, he is attacked by a set of tendrils from a second mushroom hidden among the pottery. The party's weapons quickly tear apart the soft flesh of the plant creatures.