After completing the first adventure in the campaign, we decided to rest up, regroup and run around the town completing various chores. Again, I cannot remember the exact order of what we did, but this is the general gist, most likely with bits missed out, encounters in the wrong order, and so on...
Day 5 - Next morning we returned to Saltmarsh in the row boat with all the casks and barrels and reported into the harbour master. We requested an audience with the Council and told the lady councillor about our findings and the truth of the hauntings of the mansion; a magician used a number of light and sound magic tricks to scare the locals into thinking the mansion was haunted so thereby allowing an arms smuggling ring to operate from the house and coves beneath, unimpeded by the forces of law enforcement and away from the prying eyes of the locals.
After a little more rest and recuperation, we paid a visit to a lady with some arcane knowledge, and she was able to tell us, for a fee, what many of the magically imbued items we picked up were. We also had plenty of rare books that we were able to get valued for later sale.
That evening, in agreement with the town council, we headed back to the cove below the mansion with the fully laden row boat (but the weapons in the barrels had been replaced with old bits of ironwork and stones to make up the weight) in order to make contact with the smugglers' ship.
It was around midnight when we espied the first flash from a lantern out at sea. We were unsure how to progress, then we received another single flash. Throwing caution to the wind, we used the sigils from the code sheet we had found in the haunted mansion to respond to the ship's signals. Once we had completed the four sets of coded light flashes, we rowed out to the ship that we would later come to know as The Sea Ghost.
Free map from Reddit
We hove-to alongside the smugglers' vessel and started to help the crew on board to unload the caskets and barrels from the jolly boat. Whilst the crew were busy doing that we managed to quickly board the vessel and take up a position in case we were set upon. Although, at first the crew were wary of us, we assured them that we were new at this game, and they relaxed a little, but not enough to fully trust us.
In danger of being found out if we put a foot wrong we asked the deck hand if we could go grab some grub and grog before we came back to help them with stacking the cargo below decks. We made a note of their numbers on deck, in the crow's nest and below decks and surmised that there must still be a captain and maybe a few other crewmen that we had not seen yet. We headed into the galley as an excuse to explore the ship further (we were tasked with finding the captain's papers and any manifest or details of where the cargo is headed for).
We jammed the doors as we passed through them one by one to stop us being pursued and eventually entered a room containing three lizardfolk asleep on hammocks. We only wanted to question them but things got a little dangerous when one of them leaped down from his hammock. He was quickly dispatched, as was a second one who came to his aid. The third one we managed to tie up without too much fuss, and it was then that we found out that the first lizardman just wanted to go for a pee-pee as he was nervous. We questioned the third lizardman a little more and found out that they were just passengers and that the arms were to be shipped to the lizardmen's lair in order to fight their oppressors.
Leaving the lizardman tied up and gagged, we returned to the deck to see how we could find the captain's cabin and purloin the manifests. We managed to surreptitiously manoeuvre into good fighting positions and then set about slaying the crew as quickly as we could.
The melee that ensued was swift and bloody. My healing abilities were certainly called into use on several occasions as my companions and I took damage from the defending crew. Just as we were getting the upper hand, the crew from the crow's nest and the captain and his two main henchmen joined the fight. This caused us more consternation as we thought that the fight could run away from us, especially as the aftcastle began to fog up and magical rays began to emanate from the upper deck causing us harm.
I decided to try to take out the magic wielder that I surmised was on the upper deck of the aftcastle whilst my valiant comrades fought the captain and his remaining crew. I managed to corner the magician in the mist but he escaped by assuming my guise. This confused my fellow adventurers until "I" started to attack them and turned into the wizard beneath the illusion.
Bolstered by the death of the magician, we renewed our efforts and finally managed to overcome the captain and his crew. Breathing a sigh of relief and calling upon Pelor to soothe my companions' ills we thought we could take a breather, but no such luck. The deck hands in the lower cargo deck were still alive and now there was the smell of smoke coming from below.
Thinking it was the remaining crew that had set the fire, we negotiated with them to leave the hold. We put them into the ship's jolly boat (not the one we arrived on) with a few days' provisions and three barrels of the goods stored below deck on pain of never setting foot on the boat again.
The fire was quickly found and put out without too much damage (just a table that a spilled lantern had fallen over onto), and a recce of the rest of The Sea Ghost had us find a few treasures and what we had come to find - the captain's charts, manifests and other documents. We gathered these up as well as some of the captain's belongings and set about securing the rest of the ship.
Once the ship had been secured, we split the party; half of us (me, Navda the rogue and Gladreth the wizard) returned to Saltmarsh in order too inform the council of what we had found and that we claimed salvage on The Sea Ghost as it was taken in a fair fight, whilst the other half stood guard and tallied the cargo. We reported all of what we had achieved to the councillor we had been liaising with previously and handed over the documents we were sent to recover.
Those of us in the town returned to The Sea Ghost with a complement of sailors and the ship was sailed back into the harbour. The town council and guard clambered aboard to inspect what we had found. As a large proportion of the cargo held the King's seal we were reminded that we could not claim salvage on that as it was crown property. We were also told we could not claim the ship. We were put out by this as we had risked our lives on this venture and it would have been nice to have had a base we could return to and move around in if so required. However, the council were generous and we were richly rewarded for our efforts.
No comments:
Post a Comment