For Those in Peril IN the Sea...

Summary

Scribe Notes

Adventure: For Those in Peril IN the Sea...
GM: Jacqui
Session: Autumn 813wk
Night: Thursday
Location Mangere Bridge
Level: Medium/High
Party:

• Aqualina played by Keith
• Ben played by Ian A.
• Veor played by Bernard
• Serra Angelus played by Big Mike
• Imelio de Juran played by Poul Bowdler
• Vanderhan played by Scott Raymond

Employer: The Gentlefolks Exploratory Society

Summary: The GES have sent a second and a third team into the former Sahuagin lair in an attempt to clear their names from the stigma of releasing the zombie plague in Pasifika. However, they have not returned or reported back. Astrology readings say the team members are being held in some way.

Scribe Notes

1st Fruit

Turns out there's a job down in Pasifika. The employer is from the Gentlefolk's Exploratory Society called Professor Robert Hillenberg (please call me Bob) – a water mage who specializes in the study of sponges. He told us that the Gentlefolks Society was being blamed for unleashing the zombie plague when they were poking around in the sahuagin's abandoned city. Plus some of their members who were exploring in the vicinity were missing. Astrology reading were telling them that they were alive, sort of. That could mean they were undead, paralysed, petrified, in a coma … or other stuff.

My fellow adventurers were:

• Veor – a 6ft tall Nordic looking woman – described as a troll shaman necromantic ice mage.
• Ben Gaul – shapechanger tiger person who also has trollish tendencies.
• VDH – a four armed individual, nearly seven foot high.
• Imelio de Juran - an elven mindmage with a sentient sword called Harry. Imelio said Harry continually talks mentally to him.
• Serra Angelus - female elven earthmage in a semi-permanent alcoholic haze.
• and me – Aqualina – 5ft 1 inch water mage with a weakened willpower to chocolate.

VDH became the Military Scientist, I was the scribe and Veor got to be the party leader, namely cause the rest of us were trying to hide behind her. Professor Bob was taking a ship back to Pasifika although Veor was wondering how they were going to get past all the drow ships in Confederation Bay without being seen. Veor also said that we should get a move on as it wasn't sure how long the missing explorers were going to stay 'alive' so, after some long discussions on various topics, we went to get our greaters and lessers with the instructions to meet at the Lord of the Bat's tower before dawn the next morning.

2nd Fruit

I will admit I'm not a morning person but I did make it on time and we got our bat wings. I was looking at the sheer drop from the platform when Ben pushed me off … did I mention I don't like heights and I'm not a good flier? We flew our way towards the Beth Salem portal in the Sea of Grass and I made a splash landing in the large lake nearby. As I swam to the shore I felt something scrape my leg, probably a fish, but I was feeling rather tired as I made my way to the portal. That was when I remembered there had been reports of undead in that lake.

Through the portals and we walked to the trading post, about twenty miles distant around the coast. The landscape was rather greener than the last time I had been here. Coconut palms were growing between the path and the shore while grasses and flowers had established a foothold on the ground around us. It took us most of the day to get to the trading post.

When we got there, we were able to get a bunkroom for the night then settled back to enjoy a meal. Some of us also partook in their latest invention – something called 'umbrella drinks'. Basically they were alcoholic drinks flavoured with various fruit juices with a little umbrella on top. Not sure where they had got that idea from but VDH was looking a bit sheepish. I did a bit of troubadouring that night then, when we went upstairs Veor drew protective ruins on the floor.

Night was uneventful apart from Ben poking VDH every time he was snoring and VDH ending up sleeping on the floor because the beds were too short for him. I was quite comfortable thank you although I did miss having purring cats snuggling up.

5th Fruit

Veor wanted us to get up towards the last place that the missing explorers were. After some discussions on how to do it, we settled on waveriding around the western edge of Rangiwhero. Veor was also kind enough to make ice surfboards for the trip. It took three casts of Waveriding, and two days, to get up there and we had to avoid the coastal rocks and the large, natural waves that can form along the western beaches.

Veor wanted to visit the pixies that live in the forest that had sprung up near the northern tip in case the explorers had ended up there. So we entered what appeared to be a normal tropical forest and waited just past the boundary. I was sure we were being observed and it wasn't long before we were asked what we were doing here. Between my rudimentary pixie and Veor's elven, we got the message that we wanted to talk to someone. So they flew off to get a pixie who knew Common.

Another pixie, called Prilla, arrived along with her butterfly dragon friend. She told us that the missing explorers, led by a Professor Daniel Rutherford had been here but they had left to look at the sunken city of Atlantis and also the abandoned sahuagin city. The pixies had warned them about the 'scaly ones' but Prof Rutherford was sure they had gone. We shared some food with Prilla and the other pixies then left to scout out the area.

Since there was no idea what we were going to find on the seafloor, I decided to plate up in my eog armour which resulted in a bit of ogling from the male members of the party. The discussion on whether to take a mage created boat or an iceberg out to sea also resulted in one of the strangest conversations I had ever heard.

  Veor – “And when I've finished with my iceberg, I let it go to mate with other ones”
  Aqualina - “I've heard of icebergs carving but that's ridiculous”
  Veor - “Well yeah, where do you think the calves come from?”
  Imelio - “And there's a lot of bumping and grinding as well”

The iceberg was decided on and, once we were roughly ten miles out, we bailed off it, descending quickly to the bottom – some more quickly than others. Ben plummeted to the bottom while I made a more controlled descent. Upon reaching the bottom we proceeded to walk, Veor insisting that swimming might make us more a target.

We soon encountered a broken stretch of coral. The coral heads had broken and, when I stealthed around the area I discovered broken bits of bone, the remains of a skeleton, a spear with Pasifikan markings and a skull. Veor detected a spirit in the area which was tied to the scroll. So she picked up the skull and put it in a bag. I was wondering if this was the remains of one of the warriors I had lost during the attack on the sahuagin city a while back. We also found a haversack with the initials D.R.

Just then we spotted incoming sharks and sahuagin. I was setting up to control the sharks and turn them against the sahuagin when it was realised that both the sahuagin and sharks were undead. So I started waterbolting them. Before they closed on us, I had taken out two sharks and VDH was engaging a sahuagin, Two more sharks and two other sahuagin closed on me and I received a rather nasty spear wound, right through a chink in the armour, that rendered me unconscious.

When I woke up, I was inside an ice construction which sort of resembled a cage, presumably for my protection, and the fight was still going on. Imelio was using healing magic to keep everyone going while Harry, his sword, was off smacking our foes. I got back to sending out water bolts while the others continued hacking at the undead, Fortunately we managed to prevail although it was rather close.

We decided to retreat back to the beach to heal up surrounded by wards.

6th Fruit

Meanwhile, Sierra Angelus, who had elected to go down by Pasifika by the employee's ship, was suddenly visited by Prilla who apported into Sierra's cabin. The idea was for Prilla to 'fly' Sierra onwards to meet with us the following morning. This involved pixie dust and met with some rather unusual resistance from Sierra.

  “Fine!  You snort some first and if you don't die, I'll buy some” - Sierra to Prilla.

After a sprinkling of pixie dust, Sierra's insistance on a pre-flight drink, and Prilla's instruction to 'think happy thoughts', Sierra finally followed Prilla into the air and on towards Pasifika, following the 'second star to the right' and arriving just after dawn at our campsite. She then had to brave Veor's wards, which had no apparent effect on her before joining us for breakfast.

After breakfast we started divinating what we found, including the skull.

 “Let's call the skull Yorick, until we know who it is” - Sierra.

The spirit was trapped within the skull and the haversack was bigger on the inside than the outside – somewhat like mine. It contained standard Guild rations, leather bound books, a spyglass and even a collapsed campting table and a stool. The studs that were in the skeletons were some sort of necromatic relay device and removing them stops the control. According to the journal the zombie disease came from the sahuagin.

Four hours later, it was lunch time and Veor created another iceberg. This time we bailed out closer to the sahuagin city which was located in an undersea crater – probably volcanic. There was a steep dropoff to the floor of the crater and we could see activity in the city.

We ended up circumnavigating the crater looking for an easy way down that would leave us unobserved but ended up dropping down the side. We then found a hovel on the outside of the city and hid in it while we observed using crystal balls. The ground had no aura and there were no fish about either. The 'sahuagin' about were all lesser undead and they were engaged in repetitive patterns.

So I attempted to summon an elemental spy and managed to get Aquee, a rather smart elemental, more like a sprite in someways. Apparently she's got sisters, Aqua, Aqui, Aquo, Aqul and Aquol which led Sierra to speculate whether the family name was Duct. Also she said that one of her sisters had been summoned by a water mage that had engaged in some …. interesting activities. Hmmmm ….

Anyway, before the conversations became even more lewd, I sent Aquee out to look for anything interesting, unexpected and different. When she got back she told us most of it was boring but there was stuff in the central pillar that was different including air pockets. There were also normal sized creatures and big ones, including some with four arms. The crystal ball showed four little ones and one big one guarding the top of the pillar. I then probed downwards with the crystal ball but all I saw was dark.

I dismissed Aquee and summoned a larger, and stronger elemental then headed for the top of the central tower. Looking at the undead sahuagin just below the lip suggested that their teeth and claws seemed longer than normal. None of them had weapons.

So, while the others dived in to engage in combat, Veor and I rained ice and water on them respectively. I sent the elemental in to keep the big one busy while our side meleed the little ones. We soon discovered that these ones had a paralysing touch which automatically stunned which had us worried for a bit but we were able to prevail. Now we had to descend into the darkness of the tower's interior.

Before we did though, Veor created seven zombies from the corpses. The rest of us were frantically searching for restoratives and it was soon discovered that Vanderhan was the only one who had stocked up. Fortunately he had quite a few so those that needed them, scrounged one and we set off again, descending slowly down into the tower with the elemental and the smaller zombies in front.

About 150ft down we hit bottom and our forward ranks impacted on a group of six sahuagin skeletons and two rather large coral golems behind then.

  “You should become a mind mage.  Then you'd be forewarned as well as four armed” - Sierra to Vanderhan.

We waded into them. I was providing covering fire from behind and also considering whether or not I should dismiss this particular elemental and get another one that was more like a Marine – like the one Basalic had got a while back that he called “Sergeant Rock”.

The skeletons were, surprisingly difficult to get down, but since we were basically limited to piercing weapons, being underwater, that may have had something to do with it. Also, Veor observed that the coral golems were regenerating themselves and we hoped that this wasn't a trollskin effect. Fortunately this fear proved to be unfounded when the mass melee around one of them resulted in a pile of coral sand.

At the beginning of the combat, Imelio had managed to backfire himself blind while attempting to put up a Mind Speech. So Veor caused Imelio to be abducted by a couple of zombies to put him where he was most needed. All Imelio had to do was to have an outstretched hand with a prepared healing spell ready for who needed it, including Veor's zombies, to brush against it. My elemental was taking a bit of a battering so I had to take advantage of that.

Finally the fight was down to a mass melee against the last coral golem. Veor struck at it twice, and his second strike, a kick, sent coral sand flying.

I was nearly out of spell fatgue so, again, it was a rush for restoratives and healing potions before we started working our way down the passage in front of us. Doors led off from either side.

Buffs and Mil Sci

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Aqualina	Ben	Vanderhan	Veor	Imelio	Serra
Waterbreathing	20	Waterbreathing, See in Watermage fog	21 hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Water-Proofing	8	Waterproofs Entity	27 hrs	Y	Y	Y	S	Y	Y
Buoyancy	7	Move up down at 19'/s	4 hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Smite	6	D+7 Damage to one melee strike	7 hrs	N	Y*2	Y	N	N	Y
Armour of Earth	14	32% Defence, 1 DR	7.5 hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Strength of Stone (End)	14	+14 End	15 hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Watch Order

Marching Order

Calendar

Autumn 813wk: Fruit (4)
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Lugnasad		1	Guild Meeting	2		3		4		5		6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30		1		2		3		4
Autumn 813wk: Harvest (5)
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14		15	Equinox	16		17		18
	19	Harvest Moon	20		21		22		23		24		25
	26		27		28		29		30		1		2
Autumn 813wk: Vintage (6)
	3		4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17	Blood Moon	18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30	Beerfest