Session Eleven - Recap

Session Eleven - Recap

The ship left Bloodcove in the morning, sailing back West further from the shore hoping to prey on the more cowardly merchant vessels that preferred to bank on a wide berth and extensive provisions rather than cutting closer to land. They spied one target in the distance after a week, but it was a Chelish merchant marine and the Captain and crew judged that they best let that one pass. They got further and further out, cutting North and West until they were even with the outermost "tip" of the Shackles, though still five days at sea from that point.

As the sun set that night, they caught a sudden glimpse of a ship's profile against the setting sun. It looked like a whaler that sat heavy in the water. With thoughts of plundering blubber and bone, the crew of The Broken Promise turned their heading to pursue. Yet as the sun sank under the horizon, they lost sight of the quarry. That left a bad feeling in Jax particularly, which deepened when he realized the whaler had been sailing against the wind when it was spotted.

The crew grew more discouraged as the next day was heavy with fog, starting shortly after noon. It thickened to the point where they were simply adrift, unable to sail effectively. The crew roamed the deck impatiently, hoping for a break and ability to sail safely. As night fell,they heard the clanking of a rusty ship's bell. The crew ran to the gunwhale and were shocked to see the hulk of a huge whaler loom out of the darkness above them. The boards were pitted and rotten, and they spied the ship's nameplate on the bow: Deathknell. Then as suddenly as it appeared, the ship was gone.

Panic spread through the crew that night and morning, fueled by the name on the ship. Crimson Cogward shared the definitive version of the tale; The Deathknell was supposedly a haunted whaler, crewed by the undead and lead by the ruthless and undying Captain Whalebone Plik. The ship is said to sail the seas to feast on pirate crews, stalking its prey for two days prior to attacking in order to instill fear in their prey. With dull menace in his voice, Cogward said "the fear makes the flesh taste better".

Whalebone Plik, the cursed whaler captain, was said to relentlessly pursue a massive bullhead whale to the point that his crew was ravenous from lack of rations--Plik refused to abandon the pursuit to refresh his stocks. The whale finally turned on them, sinking the ship and killing all the starving men. 

Anticipating the legends to be true, and expecting an attack at sundown, the crew of The Broken Promise prepared themselves for battle. Captain Gilbert hoped that perhaps the crew was simply hungry and that Captain Plik might be placated with a claim of "we got him" and a gesture to the whale skull mounted on their aft (actually Scolvus' strange scroll).

That dusk, with a fine spread laid out on the deck of The Broken Promise, the crew waited in anticipation. As expected, the massive whaler suddenly emerged from the water, and a crew of strange zombies cast boarding grapples. Whalebone Plik himself stood at the helm of The Deathknell, manically clanging the ship's bell and throwing a harpoon which magically returned to his hands after striking targets. As the zombies boarded the ship, the crew had a flicker of hope they would sit and dine. As one of them sank its fangs into the shoulder of a crewman they realized that this would be a fight. Scolvus launched a blast of lightning using his whale skull, burning down a number of the attackers. Sadie attempted to order her newly trained Walrus companion (Petunia) to attack, but the beast refused to engage the spoiling corpses at first.

Captain Gilbert decided to use a silence spell on the deck of The Deathknell, stopping Plik from the incessant clanging that seemed to drive the zombies forward. This sent the undead captain into a rage. He flew forward, his body half incorporeal, and savagely pursued Captain Sullivan. Gilbert was "luckily" knocked out of the way of Captain Plik's ghostly strikes by Petunia who slid through the grease of one of Scolvus' grease spells. Instead, Captain Plik latched his ghostly hand onto Pluck's chest, seeming to squeeze the life out of the bird. At the last moment, Druna was able to bull rush Pluck to safety before the air was drawn entirely from its lungs. Meanwhile, Captain Sullivan cast a curative spell and touched the undead Captain--the positive healing energy inflicting destruction on the unliving form, turning Plik into a pile of ashes and a dropped harpoon.

Jax swung over to the deck of The Deathknell, hoping to find plunder. Instead he found a hold stacked with dead bodies. They all remained lifeless, tho each had the look of the undead crew that had assaulted their ship. Jax turned and pried the ship's bell free from it's post where Plik had been ringing it. He also ran to the front of the ship and wrenched loose the rotten and pitted nameplate of the ship (earning the crew 2 Infamy points).

As suddenly as it came, the fog lifted as The Deathknell sank rapidly under the waves. The crew rested the night and bandaged their wounds, having lost three deckhands to the attack with many others injured (the losses were three green pressed hands from their latest trip to Bloodcove). The next morning they sailed for the nearest island in the South Shackles, Scolvus, unnerved by the ship's bell, recognized it had a magical aura. He studied it the following day, and realized it was enchanted with something similar to a magic jar spell. With a gasp, Scolvus realized it was a phylactery, and that Whalebone Plik was likely to reform and re-awaken if the bell were not destroyed. Bringing it to the deck, Galfire smashed the bell with his Tiberolith greatclub and ended the threat of Whalebone Plik for good.

Sailing for three more days, the crew reached the Southwestern Shackles islands. Soon they saw smoke rising in the sky from the center of a small island. Looked to be cooking fires from a moderate-sized village up in the jungle. Druna transformed herself into a bird and flew to investigate. She found a small village there in the jungle. Notably, in the center of the village was an enormous idol with a fist-sized red gem embedded in its chest. Reporting this to the crew, they began to plot an attack. N'danho taught the crew the word for "surrender" in Mwangi, and the sailors landed with a plan to surround and attack the village to take crew for their ship.

The massive idol, a strange demonic-looking figure, which dominated the center of the village. 

Arriving at the town, the crew found that only the women of the village were present. They were gathered in the center of the town around the idol, performing some sort of ritual. Leading the ceremony was a priestess of some sort, her necklace adorned with feathers and gems. As they watched with horror, the priestess was handed a small baby. She drew forth a cold iron dagger from an alcove in the idol, and in a split second uttered some words and plunged the dagger into the chest of the tiny child. She continued chanting, and at this the crew lost the plan of waiting for the rest of their sailors and instead attacked the murderess.

Captain Gilbert cast a silence spell again, and the priestess looked in horror as she tried to intone words of magical power while holding the child--but the words went unspoken due to the magical interference. Jax began sapping women to knock them unconscious, while Captain Gilbert ran up and attacked the priestess herself. She seemed shocked, silently shouting something at Gilbert while pointing at the baby. He looked down and saw that it was indeed dead with the dagger right in its heart. As the battle ensued, more and more Mwangi tribeswomen were taken with nonlethal force.

Then the silence spell stopped, and everyone recognized the words that the priestess was shouting. Even though they didn't speak the Mwangi dialect, they knew enough to know that she was yelling "No! Oh no!" over and over. There was a strange burning smoke rising from the form of the slain infant in her arms. With a gasp, she threw it at the feet of Captain Gilbert. With a boiling rush, the baby seemed to almost "open". From inside crawled something enormous, so massive and dreadful to not be believed it came from the tiny form. Scolvus quickly recognized it as a Nabasu Demon, a great bat-like being from the Abyss.

Awww, isn't it a cute little baby? Goochie goochie goo. 

The beast suddenly screeched an unholy scream, causing everyone to shudder as if their souls were being torn from them. Two of the village women died instantly from the attack. Then more horribly, one of them started to lurch upward with her body animated with necromantic energy. The crew rushed into battle with the demon and its newly raised ghoul, managing to interrupt it as it tried to summon a second demon. Petunia the Walrus rushed up and managed to gore the demon badly. However, the demon turned its necromantic energy on the great beast, using an enervation spell to slay the walrus outright.

The demon's Abyss-hardened skin left it nearly immune to the strikes of the crew's weapons, but Scolvus' barrage of magic missiles managed to wound the creature. It turned its attacks to him, flinging objects at him with telekinesis magic. While Scolvus protected himself as best he could with castings of mirror image, the rest of the crew started to find their marks, with Captain Sullivan managing to land two critical strikes on the beast and Jax's sneak attacks inflicting pain as well. Finally they overwhelm the creature with small strikes, unable to get past its damage resistance (not realizing that the cold iron dagger in the baby's breast was exactly what they needed to strike true).

As the crew panted and bandaged their wounds after the fight, they looked at their plunder. Most immediately a number of Mwangi women lay unconscious or were held by their crew--including the priestess. It was at the point when they started wondering about where the men were that they got their answer: the sounds of drums in the distance. They looked and saw a column of the Mwangi menfolk, garbed for war and likely returning from some ritual in the mountains, snaking back down toward the village. They had to decide quickly whether they would stay and fight, or flee with their captives. And all the while the sound of the jungle drums grew closer.

And it sure wasn't the dulcet tones of the Morton Gould Orchestra...

Infamy and Disrepute Tracker

Infamy Score: 8
Disrepute: 8

Port Infamy list:
Rickety's Squibbs: 2
Bloodcove: 1