Session 26 - Ships, Sickness and Spiders
24th Oct 2020 - 19:45 - 22:40
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 4. End of session: 1489DR Marpenoth 7
4 days at sea took their toll. While Iwee seemed to take to the water with no problems, and spent much of her time singing, dancing and learning how to navigate at sea using the stars and a sextant, the others spent the first day throwing up and feeling rather ill. Luckily, good weather on the journey meant that Jaxii recovered quickly and she spent the rest of the time trying, and failing, to learn how to tie a variety of useful knots. Unfortunately her knots may be as likely to come loose as before. Karoshi took a little while longer to recover from the sea sickness, but recover he did, though his attempt to learn some knot tying also wasn't particularly successful, though he did name his animated rope, Lionel, though Lionel is currently untrained, but very keen to learn. Derrick, meanwhile, continued to fail to impress his new 'friends', by proceeding to vomit and hurl for the entire journey, though he was starting to improve by the fourth day.
On the evening of the fourth day a ship was sighted off the starboard bow. It was the wreck of The Emperor of the Waves! Captain Ironfist, true to his word, had located the ship and promised to wait for a day before having to head off on the rest of his journey.
The party were rowed in a small boat to the side of the wreck and all managed to climb up a grappled rope to reach the deck, as the sailors from The Evening Mist rowed away from the wreckage to wait for the signal to come and collect them again.
As the sun set on the horizon, our group of "Heroes", armed with knowledge of where the captain's cabin was likely to be on this ship, headed for the stern cabin, and Jaxii pushed open the doors, with Derrick close behind.
The cabin was a mess. The ornate wooden furniture had been pushed, or thrown, to the side, much of it broken in the process, and dirt and sludge covered the floor. An altar of sorts had been constructed to the rear of the room, and Karoshi entered to study it and see if he could make out what it was for. He quickly spotted that it was an alter to Lolth, spider queen and revered by the drow. This immediately put Karoshi on high alert, meaning he was not surprised, though the others all were, when spiders began to emerge from the mess in the room and from the holes in the floor and ceiling. A giant spider, a spider-looking humanoid and a large number of small spiders all swarmed around, attacking the "Heroes" in the room.
Reeling from the sudden attack, Jaxii took considerable damage from the three swarms of spiders surging all over her, mainly due to the ettercap managing to restrain her in a web. Karoshi, unsurprised by the attack, took the opportunity to Bless the other three, which, as the fight progressed, proved to be very useful.
When she had recovered from the surprise, Jaxii went into a rage and broke out of the web, managing to maintain her rage as the spider swarms continued to damage her. The giant spider and the ettercap both missed their attacks, and Iwee from the back fired off a healing spell on Jaxii, and used bardic inspiration to good effect over her next few opportunities, to allow the fighters in the group to land some useful hits.
Derrick and Karoshi lashed out at their spider attackers, though Karoshi took a fair amount of damage in the process. Jaxii swung her greatsword to good effect, but the swarms of spiders attacking her were tough to kill. When the ettercap managed to restrain her in a web again, she was looking desperate, with three spider swarms about to attack her again. Iwee, having failed to use Faerie Fire to any useful effect previously, followed that up with Sleep, and managed to put two of the swarms on Jaxii to sleep, saving her from a lot of attacks and giving her breathing space to break out of her web. Derrick then proceeded to go on his killing spree, taking out his giant spider and two spider swarms in quick succession. Karoshi managed to take down the ettercap, and Iwee put her Vicious Mockery to effective use by preventing the last spider swarms from doing damage. Finally, with only the sleeping swarms to go, a stamping spree from Derrick and Jaxii managed to kill the last of the spiders, and the few little arachnids who were left scuttled back into the woodwork. A tough fight, but this group seems to work well together. Many spells were cast, but the group all survived.
Phew!
Hunting around the room, Derrick finds a pouch containing four rubies (worth 30gp each) in the mud beneath the altar. Karoshi pushes over the altar to desecrate the evil worship, whilst Jaxii and Iwee hunt around the broken furniture for a writing desk, and eventually find one. The desk is locked, but is broken open to revel two books. One is a standard ship's ledger, of not much interest, whilst the other is the captains log book.
The log book contains mainly dull entries, but the last one is much more verbose and confusing. After studying it for some time, Jaxii and Iwee break the code. They believe it is telling of the attack on the ship by Bree, and that the captain threw the lockbox (presumably the one they are searching for) down the grate into the cargo hold.
Armed with this knowledge, the party head back on deck to the top grate, and, with a little help from Karoshi, Derrick manages to pull open the rusty grate revealing a corridor on the deck below, with a lower grate beneath this one, and a semi-rotten ladder leading down to that deck. Keen to impress, Derrick climbs down the ladder, which creaks and splinters a little under the weight of him and his heavy armour, and reaches the corridor below. He reaches down and tries to pull up the grate to find… it is rusted shut and won't easily open.
And there we leave our "Heroes", with Derrick on the deck below, and the rest of the party on the top deck looking down, with a single, breaking ladder between the two decks, and Derrick struggling with the grate.