Game-Summaries:10/28/2017 Recollections

Recollections by Sakura

What's one supposed to do when they see a mysterious sign posted on the Quest Board that is obviously not Magistery Business and offers a beach resort plus 600 gold pieces? Yes, you guessed it, every one of our Initiate class that saw the sign went on this so-called "mission."

Prior to officially starting our mission, Rezik, Jeroy and I try to pry some information out of Captain Garvyn of the S.S. Endurance and walk away without no new knowledge - except that this is a special delivery. Must be quite special if they're offering each of us 600 gold for the round trip! Once we're officially on the ship (and quite a massive ship it is, over 100 feet long) the Captain informs us (with quite a derogative phrase) that most of us spell casters will be very helpful in keeping the ship running. Upon further inspection we notice that this is some type of steam boat, however with none of the extra machinery that goes it. I'm no mechanic, but this seems very odd. First Mate Brummet is pretty terse and we learn nothing from him. By far the most talkative of the lot is the ship's cook, Basil. Though again, nothing terribly useful.

Zanna, our group's favourite sneak finds the "special delivery" chest, but is unable to open it. With my new abilities, I was able to detect that the chest is magical and I also detected, by mistake, that the entire ship is magical and the engine room is particularly magical. Very shortly after this discovery most of us get very sea sick due to the extreme speed increases/decreases this ship performs (this ship did in 4 days what most ships take weeks to do).

To get to the mystery of the ship's speed, we inspect the engine room (well, Coin does most of the work as none of us can read the odd script written all over) and he tells us that the Eldrich Runes (Dwarven script, but a different language) tells us how the engine works and that the magic fire of the engine needs gold dust, which we soon discover is in a chest right next to the engine.

This is where things get pretty spoopy. Our first night on the ship and Salvador knocks on our door. Jeroy and I follow him out the door as he seemed to run away when he discovered us, but he completely disappeared as soon as we got to the deck. Not sneaky disappear, but vanished. We chatted with Madz and Silva on deck and they have no idea who Salvador is. Spoopy.

The next day through some conversations with crew members we uncover two odd facts:

1. No one knows Salvador. Spoopy.
2. They've all been on the ship roughly the same amount of time - 15 years. Very Spoopy.

A couple of days into our journey and a vicious looking storm is approaching, so we anchor ship and prepare for the worst. The storm itself was pretty rough, but the real Spoopy things happen the day after. You can't even tell it morning with the overcast and extremely dense fog that surrounds us. I can barely see my own hand in front of me! Using my intuition and my newfound abilities, I surmise that the fog is in fact, not natural. With Pearl's help we clear out some of the fog on the port side. Just in time too, as what appears to be a massive Spoopy Ghost Ship (named Eternal Torture, how fucking ominous is that?) is ramming us! We had enough warning to brace for impact.

What followed was pure chaos and mayhem. Ghouls (not particularly powerful ones) started swarming out ship. Since I prefer to fight with my mind, I decided to retreat to where the Captain was standing so that I might get a better view of what's going on to help direct our group's efforts. Coin goes downstairs and fuel's up the engine and I turn it on because staying here is going to be terrible. Through some herculean effort, we cut off the mast of the Torture and manage to get away.

This is not the end of our Spoopy adventure!

The same night as the attack by the Torture, Madz has gone overboard! Saving him was fairly trivial, but what we learned from this is that there is some magical disguise on our ship that the Torture's ramming process has revealed. We now see that there is another name to the Endurance - Umberlee's Revenge.

Through aggressive and stern talking with the Captain he finally admits to us that he and his entire ship is under a curse which was set upon them shortly after they abandoned a job and threw three bodies overboard, rather than delivering the bodies to their final destination. The bodies belonged to Salvador and two others, his wife and daughter, Madelina and Halystina. Jorg decides to rummage through the Captain's quarters and in the Captain's Log he discovers that Salvador was the first to die in 310, followed by Madelina in 315 and Halystina in 317. Clara, Madelina's second child (but we deduce, not by Salvador, based on the times of their deaths) is survived and raised by a ward.

Our group shortly after encounters Halystina and Madelina. According to Madelina, immaculate conception is the "father" of Clara. Fucking Spoopy. Jorg shortly after learns that the mausoleum for the Stern family (their family name) is actually close to where we are, so we all head to the mausoleum to lay the bodies to rest. We were a bit over-zealous and put the bodies to rest and forgot to have someone monitor the ship! He fucking abandoned us! But he left us all 400 gold each. I suppose he didn't want to get cursed again, but there is now someone on my shit list. I didn't think that I would need to create one and my enemies would be taken care of when they presented themselves, but Captain Garvyn has earned a special place in the hell that I will create. A very spoopy hell.

And thus our adventure is concluded. It took us 12 days to get back to Solace via horseback. We did some more learning and I'll be brief about that. Headmaster of Earth is named Warden (most definitely a Druid, like Pearl it seems) informs us that he doesn't know much about Umberlee, but that she's been known to be around for 15 years (that number again) and is about 30 years old and that it would be possible for her to have created the curse.

We also learned something quite useful. There are permanent Gates (we needed a writ for the use) that connect all the Magistery outposts to Solace. This will be quite useful in the future, I'm sure.

It seems that we will need to make our own trip, and not a vacation leisurely sort of trip, to Kraken's Landing to investigate Umberlee further. I imagine Umberlee and Lolth might have some relation that we're not aware of as of yet.

Right back where we started with quite a bit more gold, significantly more knowledgeable and the start of a shit list.