Bohdan clears his head a little. He begins to pull at the bonds, whispering to himself, veins bulging in his temples and forearms. They cuffs begin to creak and a sharp ping precedes their end. He then begins to twist the chain, quietly, and pull the manacles chian and all from the bulked. It snaps, another ping, and a bolt sails through the air. On the other side of the cell, one of the Sandpoint girls follows the glinting bolt and lifts her legs, catching it in her knickers with an amazing feat of dexterity [Dainty girl perception: (1d20+1=15)][Dainty girl's Reflex roll: (1d20+2=22)]. Bohdan: I don't see why you can't take twenty on your STR check while the Deceiver works, you need the action point to bump up your STR bonus.
The Deceiver: You're free, no action points needed, but it takes a while. You're out of the manacles just as girl catches the bolt.
Ryor: You move quickly, the locks are picked. You have time more more locks. The Deceiver looks like he's almost free.
The cell gate creaks terribly every time someone opens it. This worries you. Mooj mutters in his sleep. The howling wind and rolling continues.
You all see Nerius shaking his head.Just the one action point is good. You still feel fuzzy but the hallucinations abate.
I'll wait a while to see what Syd and Jon want to do while you guys work. They should be able to break the manacles by working them like Bohdan.
As you wait for a chance to break your bonds some of you struggle in and out of sleep, but never for long.
Bohdan:
Spoiler:
You dream you are deep underwater facing a kelp bed, but you are not drowning, above you the surface is churning chaos but around you peace. The kelp in front of you gathers, knotting into a face, and as it knots, a torso and arms grow - all twisting and writhing but seemingly solid. The face sways toward you, the knotting kelp whispering and you hear a voice that tears into your mind…. “kill Book”.
The Deceiver:
Spoiler:
You are floating on the surface in a storm, treading water and barely keeping yourself afloat. The winds scream above you. A ship, the very ship you are on is breaking through the swells toward you, and burning. You hear a voice in the shrieking wind… a scream: “kill Book” it begs you, "kill".
The storm persists in whispering its apocalyptic lyric. The groaning of the masts and hull are so constant you no longer notice them. In the middle of the night Mooj is back on shift, carrying a candle, half a day earlier than you expect him - and he looks exhausted, maybe too much so to visit his starboard girls.
But he’s not on the sacks long before he nods off, waking up every now and then when the ship breaks a huge swell. There is another candle, dark and thick, glued to the table in the middle of the hold with melted wax. Other crew members are sleeping in the back on sacks and coils of rope. A few sway in hammocks.
The steel lathe of the crossbow grins and shimmers in the candlelight.
Hagnoose watches you another 2 or 3 hours. When Mannick replaces him Hagnoose complains that his shift was too long. He looks really nervous. Mannick looks like he's on vacation, totally relaxed. He checks over the crossbow. He wears a sword and has a dagger on his hip.
You guys can take 20 on escape and theft skills if nobody is watching. Hagnoose's eyeballs are all over you and he's pointing the crossbow at the cell door. When Mannick comes on you feel the presence of a guys who can't be fooled, his eyes have a way of boring into you.
The storm continues, easing occasionally but never for long. The swells are tremendous. Mooj and Pleione bring some dry bread and cheese to you late in the evening. Sailors come down the stairs to rest in shifts, laying in hammocks at the back or sitting on sacks. The table is useless even bolted to the floor because the chairs have been lashed to the hull to keep them from hurting the animals.
You can hear Zahn and Hagnoose talking in the background. You hear the word "Gozreh" several times, Zahn mentions "8 knots" and "Absalom".
DC 25
Spoiler:
Zahn is giving Hagnoose news about the storm. Navigation is becoming impossible. The sea anchor is weighed but they are still being pushed east at somewhere around 8 knots. They fear the anchor will snap. The winds are too strong for them to try to find their harbor near Absalom. They keep mentioning Gozreh's anger.
The storm does not abate - the ship groans under the strain. The appointed hour for daily poisoning arrives and Book appears flanked by Sujahayak and Righty. The unlock and enter the cell. Righty and Sooj have daggers drawn, and brace themselves against the rocking ship by holding the beams above their heads. Hagnoose kneels outside the stockade and a man you've seen only a few times stands behind, Zahn, the ship's mage.
Book pulls out the slender pipe and jar of yellow powder. Righty will put a knife against the throat of each of the casters in turn while Book administers the poison (let's call it a readied sneak attack, trigger is you struggle).
You hear Book shouting commands and men dashing across the deck above you as men lash down the rigging. Ropes tattoo against creaking hull. Everyone recognizes the bracing vapor that precedes a rain - the smell of Pulsifer's vomit clears - the ships rolling increases steadily.
One of Book's trusted crew members, Mannick, is checking the webbing on the cargo behind Hagnoose.
You feel yourselves shifting against the hull as the ship's rolling becomes more vigorous; The Intractable groans like a shanked mark in a back alley; the hold fills with a portentious cool draught as the next crew member begins his watch at sunrise, his eyes darting around the hold. You can all feel it: something wicked and awesome approaches.
How many has the Deceiver seen? He's been aboard longer.
Kamada has replaced Mooj as the guard?
Yes, Kamada is watching you until sunrise. You guys know him to be responsible, and not insane, like Sujahayak.
If you guys talk numbers, you'll find out that Pulsifer and Bohdan each killed one of these idiots.
The Deceiver:
Spoiler:
From your conversations with Book before coming aboard, and from what you saw on deck, you guess he had 22 or 23 men. All but 6 of them are just bums. But he has a deadly mage, Zahn, and accomplished swordsmen, Mannick, Righty, Sujahayak, and Kamada. The rest are fairly new. Mannick and Righty are his oldest crewmembers.
As the smell of puke spreads through the room, a few of the girls throw up, too.
One of them jokes, "this is a great way to lose weight."
Barrels, crates, sacks. A powerful man could turn a crate into improvised clubs for everyone in about 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Empty a sack and put something heavy in it, and you have a pretty nasty improvised weapon.
Pulsifer, Narlok, Bohdan:
Spoiler:
You've seen some of them fight. A few of them are bums, but some of them, barring outrageous good luck, are just plain deadly and could usually take any of you one on one.
... Also what kind weapons does Mooj wear on his person.
Mooj wears a saber and a dagger. Book has an adamantine rapier. Righty wears a rapier and uses his left hand hook as a weapon. Sujahayak uses a whip and a broadsword. There is a mage named Zahn who seems to carry no weapons. The doctor seems to be unarmed. Others mostly carry rapiers or sabers.
No improvised weapons can be found in the cell.
The girls whisper quietly, on a table in the middle of the hold some of the sailors begin some late night drinking and gambling with some loud cursing and bragging, the game proceeds loudly by candlelight.
Before the lockpicks are done, several hours after Mooj falls asleep, another guard comes and wakes Mooj up and curses at him, some of you have seem him before.
The Deceiver and Narlok begin their work. Each piece can be broken in half and then shaped into a pair of picks. You can scrape them against the chain links or the cuffs, it's a very slow process, by necessity you take 20, but then you don't have anything else to do.
After about 15 minutes of giving the lovelorn sow a good rooting, Mooj sneaks back with a glazed look in his eyes. He picks up the crossbow and smiles at you - a wide rotting picket fence grin.
Making lock-picking tools out of the whale bone is going to take all night, and must be done very surreptitiously. Please describe any strategies you plan to use to keep your work from being discovered.
A Chelaxian corset uses whale bones for rigidity. These strips of bone are strong and flexible, look like long tongue depressors, but are better than wood in that they are soft enough to be filed and carved to modify their shape.
Ryor looks around for something he can perhaps pick his locks with...Perception(Search,spot etc)1d20+5=13
The girl, whose outer clothes have been removed, is wearing very attractive and slimming underwear known as a corset. Her friend has loosened it, and it's engineering is all the more apparent to you.
It contains ribs to keep it from distorting when pulled tight - you've seen them while visiting houses of ill repute.
Noises are coming from the pigs. Mooj guards you every other day but he has never 'disappeared' before.
For anyone who looks the manacles over: they're pretty strong, standard D&D manacles. Escape artist DC 30. +2 for circumstance bonus or reasonable aid. For Nerius, whose manacles are ill fitted, the DC is an easy 20.
Narlok, Bohdan, Syd:
Spoiler:
You can see Mooj sneaking a quickie with the pig. The pig, hanging in a sling used to keep livestock from breaking legs in rolling seas, seems pretty comfortable with it. Mooj has that look on his face, just like the avatar. This is the first time in your week and a half captivity that he has done this, Narlok.
Narlok:
Spoiler:
The manacles look pretty easy to pick. Too bad you don't have some sturdy wire....
Book, Righty and the Doctor leave after he finishes his work.
Sooj remains on guard until the evening comes - you can hear the noise of men working above you and behind Sooj in the aft hold.
Another man comes and replaces Sooj on the watch. After a while the half elf comes with the promised rum: it's bumboo actually, a mixture of strong dark rum, water and sugar.
When you've finished the rum she will fills your bowls with gruel.
It's a heavy repeating crossbow. Narlok has seen them demonstrated before by upscale weapon vendors.
Spoiler:
Crossbow, repeating heavy
cost: 400 gp
small: 1d8
medium: 1d10
crit: 19–20/x2
rnge: 120 ft.
weight: 12 lb.
dam type: P
load: 5 bolts
The repeating crossbow (heavy or light) holds 5 crossbow bolts. As long as it holds bolts, you can reload it by pulling the reloading
lever (a free action). Loading a new case of 5 bolts is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity.
You stoned guys can talk. Heck, I've had PCs with stats that low....
Someone opens the 10' x 10' hold doors to let some light in. You have learned to recognize the thud of men sliding down the ladder across the hold. Three men come toward the cell. Sujahayak hardly moves.
Keys clatter and Book opens the cell door. An old Tian man is with him - some of you have seen him before - he seems to be a doctor. Book and the Doctor enter, Righty stands behind, next to Sujahayak.
Every day Book and a man named Zahn come in and visit the spellcasters: Bohdan, Nerius, and Pulsifer. Gravid uses a smoking pipe with a slender bowl to blow a yellowish powder up their noses. The victims fall unconscious, only to wake up hours later with horrible hallucinations.
Bohdan, Nerius, and Pulsifer are drugged and have ability damage/suppression. Their stats, for simplicity's sake, are INT: 6, WIS: 6, and CHA: 6. For the three of you, if you make a DC 20 Fortitude save you can stay at 8/8/8. Regardless, you are suffering hallucinations, having severe memory problems, and any other symptom you would like to throw in. Playing it is up to you. If at any point they stop giving you the drug for more than 24 hours, your stats will return at (1d4 + CON bonus per hour).
From blackness you awaken. You have been stripped of your possessions except underclothes and shackled to a wall in a small bow hold no doubt bound for hell, or so you wonder. Only a short man can stand up straight down here. You are sitting with arms high. You reckon that you can feed yourself if someone places a bowl in your hands, but you can’t pick anything up off the deck. Your hosts have generously provided you with buckets which you can sit on which double for waste removal when the need arises, although you’ll need help with your clothes to use them. This is done, you find out, by a young half-elf woman who, though beautiful, looks like she has been beaten terribly – she feeds you a foul tasting gruel periodically and gives you water, just enough to keep you from wasting away, and skilfully attends to any wounds you suffered during your capture. When the crew is watching she never talks but you quickly learn from the other prisoners that her name is Pleione.
The smell of sweat, feces, urine and death permeate your cell. Bars of a large, weak cage door in the opening of the forward bulkhead rattle as the ship rolls gently. In the main hold on the port side are sacks and boxes liberated from merchant ships, and a table where crewmen eat, gamble, drink, and stridently display their skill with knives. Some pigs and goats hang in slings murmuring, chuckling, snorting, and crying outside the cell’s gate on the starboard side. Their smell blows into your prison with sea fresh sea air. Sunlight shines down through the open hatch between your cell and the main mast.
A man guards you day and night – he lays on sacks outside the cell gate – other men take his place over the course of the day. An exotic looking crossbow lies on the sack beside him or in his arms if tuning it amuses him. The corsairs who man this ship pass by now and then, and seem more interested in gambling and boasting than talking to any of you, although when they’re drunk they occasionally curse at you or hold a spitting and urinating contest to see who can hit the prisoners through the bow-hold gate.
As hours bleed into days you hear occasional shouting, talk; you hear Book barking out orders and the sounds of rope sliding and wood grinding on wood. The staccato clatter of rigging and slap of sails and webbing signal winds. Swells break against the side of The Intractable; you feel the rocking of the boat, course changes, hear the creaking of timbers as the hull accepts the winds. Every few days an eruption of orders, thunder of boots, and shifting of cargo heralds another raid – then the inevitable cursing, throwing and dragging of cargo into the main hold, and usually another prisoner prodded by knife point or dragged into the small bow hold.
At least you’re not alone. Men are shackled on the port side of the cell and women on the starboard. On the starboard side: 9 delicate and beautiful young girls possibly 12 to 16 years old and 3 women who may be between 18 and 24. On the port side are 9 of you: a drooling white haired man, and unconscious and rambling gnome, an elf with a shaved head (just now sprouting some stubble), a large muscular yellow skinned man, 2 half orcs (one of whom is drooling even worse that the white haired man), and a handsome man who, to your dismay, looks as if he might get up and leave at any time he decides, or maybe he just thought of a joke…
As I said, for the purpose of getting this game rolling, we won’t worry about the sequence in which you were captured. You have all had the chance to get each other’s names, but have not traded any information other than that. Sure, those who were captured first have a better idea what’s going on, and may know the names of some of the pirates, but I don’t think we need to worry about it too much.
Morning - Pharast 12th, 4708 - The Deciever: Fools that the noble class are, it took some time for Book to figure out Cordoba… well, he hasn’t exactly figured him out, but he has some suspicion that the name is a fake and the man may not be a fool. Well, it doesn’t matter now really with him down in the brig. The idiot brought a small fortune onboard, so what did he expect, that Book would entertain him as they went gallivanting across the seas? And there’s another fortune waiting when he sells the Varisian fop down south as a gladiator.
What bothers Book about Cordoba is his smile. Beat him and he smiles, shackle him and he smiles. And not the polite smile that comes with the tip of a hat, no, it’s one Book knows all the better, it’s the burning grin of a sadist about to slip a knife into a struggling victim.
Afternoon - Pharast 12th, 4708 – Nerius : Nerius was almost there. Stowed away on the Plump Strumpet half a day out of Riddleport. Then the boots and the screams, voices speaking in strange accents, crates opened.
To his credit he did put up a fight, but after being locked in a box for more than a day the sensitive eyes of a Gnome take a few minutes to adjust. Of course he wasn’t surprised to be roughed up after his deception, but as his eyes adjusted he realized that he wasn’t discovered by the crew, not the crew of the Strumpet anyway. The real indignity came with the last words he heard before a boot knocked him unconscious: “Hakim’ll love this one, these fellas are great entertainers, a halfling.”
Morning – Pharast 13th, 4708 – Jon: After walking over the northern polar cap of Golarion with his two friends, Jon was elated to have survived frost giants, ice worms, and polar bears and to have finally reached the outer edges of civilization again – if you could call Riddleport civilization. So, in a small purchased boat they sailed south toward the great nations of Avistan. According to their map they were not far from Sandpoint in the Gulf of Varisia when a squall overturned their boat and scattered the friends. Clinging to the trunk that holds all his worldly goods, well his suit of Tian armour anyway, Jon excitedly greeted the foreign faces on the ship that he thought was his salvation… until a cargo hook cracked him in the skull and dragged him onboard, that is.
Things turned all the worse when he woke up shackled in the brig next to a tiny little man, while one of The Intractable’s crew, the one who had made off with Jon’s traditional Tian robes – expensive silken Tian robes – ground out cigar embers on the soles of Jon’s feet.
Early morning – Pharast 14th, 4708 – Pulsifer: The Intractable put down anchor near Sandpoint after sunset on the 13th to rendezvous with two of its more deadly crew, Righty and Joachim, who had insinuated themselves into the peaceful town after riding from Riddleport on horseback weeks before. While in Sandpoint the villains marked four teenage girls for kidnapping and readied themselves to bring the children out to The Intractable before it weighed anchor on the appointed night.
The plan had a flaw; someone was sure to suspect that something was amiss. To say that Righty stands out in a crowd is somewhat of an understatement: maybe it’s the orange hair, or the hairless crater in the back of his skull just big enough for a mind flayer to feed through, or the wandering left eye with a white film over it, or perhaps it’s just the rusty hook where his left hand should be, or the limp. Who knows…. Pulsifer certainly noticed him for the villain that he is, and being either at the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it, Pulsifer found himself wishing he could swing a longsword like he did as a young man. At first, engaging two men dragging some young teenage girls to the beach in sacks went well, mortally so for Joachim, but Righty proved to be far more than just an ordinary villain, and perforated Pulsifer with spectacular swordplay while babbling some of the most insane gibberish Pulsifer has ever heard. Reasoning that Pulsifer owed a life for a life, if Righty can be said to reason, the one handed corsair lugged the would be hero into the boat and (somehow) rowed him out to The Intractable in his own sack, right on top of the unfortunate maidens.
Noon – Pharast 14th, 4708 – Narlok : How was Ryor to know that Red Morty Wex, Captain of the Sealust, had gambled away his protection money? Things were going well, Ryor was sure to get lucky even when the winds changed and brought an icy fog down on the vile at the height of the week’s debauchery.
But from the cold silence erupted screams, steel, heavy boots. Morty’s voice ringing out “I was just bringing it to him; I just need a few more days.”
And the terse, enigmatic reply: “Neec vape haofse cone ledmea! Dizo-tu orgoved tergatan.”
And then Morty’s last words: “Please Righty, take me to B...”
Ryor, approaching, thought maybe he had lucked out, red haired Righty was a serious gimp: limping, one handed, twitchy eye. Quite the surprise it was to find out that Righty was magic with a Rapier. Then the crossbow bolt hit…
Morning – Pharast 15th, 4708 - Syd: A chance to be out on the ocean, and what fishing. The nutrients that leach out into the sea south of the Mushfens keep the waters rich with life, big tasty life. Sure it’s dangerous, but there are enough fishermen for them to look out for each other, and look out they do – and the South Mush fishing grounds attract a certain kind of fisherman, the kind of chap who can wield a spear, the kind of chap who can survive in an eat or be eaten battle between land animal and sea creature on the sea creature’s turf, no less. So what’s to be afraid of?
Syd was making a name for himself aboard The Mudfish, and on his first two days out, too. He had, it seemed, found some old salts who respected him regardless of ancestry, and so that made his destiny all the more tragic. The Intractable, not know for bothering Varisian fishermen, came alongside in broad daylight and helped themselves to some of the prizes down in the icy hold. A fight broke out, as fights are wont to do, but this one saw some serious magic let fly, and before he knew it Syd was on a sinking ship. She was pretty well under… and in bloodied, shark-infested waters. The young man would have been chum had he not grabbed the port webbing of The Intractable as the battle subsided and his ship slipped under.
Things went smashingly after that, meaning Syd isn’t dead and they didn’t torture him. Threw him into shackles in a small bow hold with a bunch of other unfortunates they did, mostly teenage girls, and that’s more or less where his story begins.
A week later…
Morning – Pharast 22nd – Bohdan: Righty, Sujahayak, Kamada, and Tork were making their regular pickup in Cheliax on the north shore of the inner sea. Things were going smoothly, so they should have known it was going to go south just like everything else this trip, and so it did.
Taking down the cleric of Iomedae was no picnic, Bohdan mortally wounded Tork, their cherry fresh duelist recruit from Riddleport who apparently was not the swordsman he claimed. But Righty, Suj, and Kamada are a match for almost any man out there and with a little help from their mates back in the cave, they brought the monstrous man down. Now, the corsairs have something of a chip on their shoulders when it comes to clerics of Iomedae, and so they reckoned selling him into the arenas of Nex would compensate them for their trouble quite well. Why kill a good slave?
And so, the last of our heroes is dragged bloody and unconscious, into the dank stockade of The Intractable.
This is my DM alias: The Goddess of Fate.
.
.
.
.
Players are:
Mr. Shiny
Ian Dai (Fighter 2)
Tobus Neth (Rogue 2)
Arctaris (Rogue or Wiz)
Gentle Giant (Cleric or possible Barbarian)
Radavel
Rad, Rad, Rad. You love the game, don't you. Next time I come to the Philippines let's hook up and play a game.
Again, rules are SRD minus psionics and PRPG (PRPG does not include stuff Jason hasn't tweaked)
Information about game rules are at the top of this page and also posted on my DM alias's "about Pharasma" page, just click on her picture. Her page inlcudes links to the maps of Varisia and Golarion, BTW. The ship you are on is travelling from Riddleport to Qadira, and you guys will have been "picked up" on the way.
Posts
