Session 25 - A New Party Meets... And Goes Shopping
16th Oct 2020 - 19:45 - 23:00
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 1. End of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 4
A meeting of minds. Three 'Heroes' from one group - the gnomish bard, Iwee; the dragonborn barbarian, Jaxii and the tiefling paladin, Karoshi - meet up again in Neverwinter and are joined by another unsung 'Hero', the valiant human fighter, Derrick to form a new adventuring group.
The old friends greet each other warmly and catch up on old times. Derrick arrives, with an overt aim to help out his cousin's (Ichabod's) friend Jaxii to find news of her mother, captured by bandits many years ago and is immediately treated with suspicion and contempt by the rest of the group. Even the usually highly critical DM starts to feel sorry for Derrick!
With each member of the group armed with their own knowledge and information about the pirate group who reportedly took Jaxii's mother (called the Radiant Sisters) and an infamous pirate, Captain Bree, who seems to lead, or be high up in, this group. Derrick also offers the group a job to recover some salvage from a wreck in the general direction of the Whale Bone Isles, which would earn the group some decent coin, as well as provide some potentially useful information about the Radiant Sisters and Bree (in exchange for 15% of any loot they may get on the Bree/Radiant Sisters adventure), and the group decides to accept both offers, though with an excessive amount of suspicion towards Derrick's offer!
The group decide to go shopping. Derrick orders, and later collects, some new armour, and discovers that the rusty, old, 'steampunk' goggles that he found in Cragmaw Castle are actually broken, but still functional to some degree, goggles of true seeing. While he is getting these identified, the others peruse the 'student projects' section of the Arcane Academy in Neverwinter, and end up purchasing a singing frog (Iwee), an animated rope (Karoshi) and some pixie dust (Derrick).
The party arrange for berths aboard The Evening Mist, a ship soon bound for the Korinn Archipelago captained by Gildur Ironfist and run by First Mate Hawkeye. They also pay in advance for a short detour to attempt to find the wreck The Emperor of the Waves when they near the Whale Bone Isles. They speak to the harbourmaster, Gordon (whose last name is a mystery), but he is unable to pinpoint the location of the wreckage, but he does show them a useful map pinpointing the recent attacks by Pirate Captain Bree, which seem to be very dispersed around the Sword Coast. On the evening before they are due to depart Neverwinter, they finally decide to ask around and listen out for any rumours relating to the quests that they are planning to undertake, as well as some background on certain people and items that may be of interest to them individually. Comparing what they have all heard later on, between them they gain a lot of knowledge, though are unsure which bits are true and which are false.
As Derrick spends the last day in a bookshop in the Merchant's Quarter, wondering why his new 'friends', who he is trying his best to help in their adventuring, fail to appreciate his qualities, and seem to be treating him exactly like his old 'friends', the rest of the group prepare for the next adventure at sea.
And so we leave our 'heroes' on the morning of departure, making themselves as comfortable as possible aboard The Evening Mist, as it prepares to set sail. They have an accurate position of a recent sighting of The Emperor of the Waves and some knowledge about Bree (who is apparently three different people!) and a bit more insight into the Radiant Sisters. How much of this information our 'Heroes' will actually remember when it matters, remains to be seen…..