Seamus will size up the situation, cursing to himself about the cramped quarters and the highly flammable wood everywhere. Like lightin' a tindertwig inside a jar of alchemist's fire.... before drawing an elixir from his belt and downing it in one gulp.
Seamus prepares to use his bombs in a more precise manner.
Round 5:
Initiative order
Haftor
Enemy
Jarrek
Seamus
Trianne
Svarog
Frustrated, the dwarf winds up again and swings, hitting the girallon with a mighty blow that lays it out on the deck.
Coxswain Hallrex, who has been engaged in getting the other crew members to safety, thumps a closed fist against her chest. "Well done! Jarrek, here you go. Have at!" She tosses the bard a skinning knife.
Svarog grunted as Jarrek caught the knife. "A fine cloak. But why was it on this barge?"
Good question Svarog, a better question is why was Bloodtusk checkin' 'is pockets b'fore comin' down 'ere? the gnome shares quietly, suspiciously eyeing the good captain for signs of malfeasance.
Captain Bloodtusk makes his way down to the rowing deck. Everyone who's down there can see through the shattered aft wall, where a stout cage stands open. From the smell, the girallon had apparently been kept in the cage for some time, although it appears that the floor was kept at least somewhat clean. The half-orc shakes his head. "Well, that's a few thousand gold pieces shot to hell. No blame, though--once it was out of the cage, it had to die. Thank you all for saving the crew...again." He hisses an orcish obscenity under his breath. "The trip is usually a little quieter than this. Well, we should make the border station in Lastwall by the end of the day. They don't have much, but it's better than shipboard rations."
Trianne shared a slight, knowing nod with Seamus as the gnome had caught the unusual behavior above decks. It did not bode well.
She slung her wand and scooped up her everburning torch as she moved closer to examine the creature. "A girallon," she said in disbelief. She fetched a vial out and drew a knife, wanting to pull a sample of blood before Jarrek got too far along with his skinning.
She stood and examined the vial before seating it in her belt pouch. Then she deftly moved toward the cage, eyeing the door as she approached. She fully expected to find no sign of damage around the locking mechanism. On the contrary, she would not have been at all surprised to see the key still seated in the lock.
Trianne's inspection reveals that the lock is apparently undamaged, and there is no key to be seen.
Haftor stares at the Captain for a long moment, ensuring that he's retained his composure. He finally steps up into the orc-blood's personal space, jaw clenched, and growls in a low voice, "See here, Bloodtusk. We are not fools, and we don't give a good gods-damn about the flippin' grub in Lastwall. Sort yer crew out, now, or by Torag's flamin' tongs we'll sort 'em out for yeh."
The burly dwarf is gripping his stone hammer tightly, the fur and blood still dripping from it onto the decking. He does not exude patience.
Trianne slipped back into the main area of the lower decks and glided up to stand equidistant between Haftor and Bloodtusk. She shielded most of the light from the torch in her hand for their benefit.
"Captain," she said respectfully and glanced at Haftor to emphasize the point that they were still aboard this orc's floating kingdom. "We have further business ahead, and I believe what is most upsetting here, is that by all perceptions, this creature was released to do whatever damage it would."
She caught Bloodtusk's eye and continued, "To us, to your crew, or to you. Now I would expect some animosity between orc- and dwarf-kind, for they are all hot blooded. But for such wealth to be wasted and your life threatened so?"
"That action, I imagine, would require some sort of consequence to maintain authority," she said.
"Hmph." Jarrek nods and crosses his arms. "How'd it get out, captain?" The big half-orc gives Bloodtusk a steady look, not yet trying to actively intimidate the other orc-blooded man but not quite not, either.
Svarog glowered, arms crossed in the mirror image of Jarrek, though since that was close to his usual expression it might not have had as much impact.
Captain Bloodtusk’s been on deck whole time I been takin’ readings. Lay off ‘im, let’s quiet down about the whole thing jus’ a bit, an’ think our way through this. Cap’n is a missin the key to the hold where this thing was held. An’ someone on ‘is crew filched the key to let it go. So, Capn, who’d do that on ya? the very small gnome starts loudly a d quickly changes his tone to bring the situation down to a manageable level.
Haftor nods. "And someone sawed through the rail so I'd be crocodile chow as well. I ain't accusing the Captain of anything except losing control of 'is crew.
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The captain makes it plain that he wants to discuss this out of earshot of the crew. While they work to repair the wall under the coxswain’s watchful eye (and abrasive tongue), Captain Bloodtusk informs you that 1) the cage’s lock only has a single key, which is still in his possession; and 2) as far as he knows, none of the crew members know how to pick locks. Seamus examines the lock and determines that it has been picked, though—the scratches aren’t what would be produced by the use of a duplicate key.
Incidentally, the girallon was on board in the first place because Captain Bloodtusk hoped to sell it to the gladiatorial arena in Urgir. It was kept drugged for the voyage, which explains why its combat abilities weren’t quite up to their normal lethality. It should, however, have been mostly unconscious even if the cage was open.
Interrogation of the crew confirms Bloodtusk’s recollection about their skills with locks. To the best of the party’s ability to tell, their denials of the skill are honest, as are their denials of having opened the cage. However, one of them—a fellow named Gashnakh—rouses the party’s suspicions; he seems to be trying to hide something. After further questioning, you’re able to determine that he was assigned to drug the girallon’s food that morning, but held onto the sedative instead. His rationale for doing so—a future practical joke—seems thin but heartfelt. Haftor, concerned about what had happened to him earlier, asks Gashnakh about tampering with the railing. The half-orc admits to that, too, but tries to pass it off as another practical joke on one of the other crew members gone awry. Again, this justification seems sincere.
Once he’s admitted to this, he volunteers that there’s a stowaway on board, hiding in the smuggler’s compartments below. He claims that as far as he knew she was harmless (and quite pleasant to him), but after the girallon got out he’s reconsidering that opinion. After healing up, the party heads down to confront her. She is, however, nowhere to be found. Svarog finds evidence that someone was there not long before, though.
There aren't enough people on board to allow the captain to imprison or execute Gashnakh, so instead he's given twenty lashes, assigned permanently to the oars, put on bread and water, has his pay docked, and is chained up during the nights. The next few days pass largely uneventfully, except for having to kill a band of orc raiders at the Lastwall border fort and get the boat past a trio of merrows who've dammed the river.
Can ye describe this scallywag who stowed away? Was she tall? thin? fair? Missin' an eye? Or even what she called herself? the gnome asks Gashnakh, trying to secure a description in case she crosses the party's path again. Other than that, the alchemist is content to continue reading the depth soundings. When confronted with combat in the few instances, he carefully readies bombs and sets to blowing things up with glee.
Gashnakh describes a tall, slender human woman with longish brown hair. She typically wore a chain shirt.
Trianne wasn’t pleased that an agent had been targeting them. She had hoped it was just racial animosity, but these events spoke to something more calculating. Simplest among them would have been an opportunistic thief who realized the value of Haftor’s weapon. Much more damaging was the notion that she was dispatched from someone who had contact with the party.
“I didn’t study it today,” she said to Jarrek and Seamus. “Can either of you scour her hiding space here for residual traces of magic?”
She then moved to make sure the exit from this hidey-hole was largely obstructed and motioned for Svarog to join her. Likely the stowaway was long gone, but if she were still here and just invisible…
Haftor looks up at Trianne when she suggests searching for residual magic. "Hrm. Good thought. Worth the attempt, I'd say." The methodical dwarf casts the spell to detect magic several times, ensuring that he's covered the entire area where the stowaway was hiding.
Haftor detects one magical aura, which Seamus eventually identifies as an alarm trap. There are no other sources of magic remaining in the smuggler's compartment or the bilge.
Jarrek nods. "That's what I see, too."
"Well, now we know how this vile enchantress made her escape. Fat lot of good it does us. We still have more questions than answers."
The next few days are relatively uneventful, and the keelboat eventually reaches the edge of the Ghostlight Marsh. Silvermane's directions tell of a stone marker by the side of the river, indicating where the party should disembark and enter the marsh. Finding the marker is a trivial undertaking for as perceptive a party as this one.
The five of you are rowing for shore when Svarog feels an all-too-familiar itch on the back of his neck. There is something wrong. Then he spots them: there is a band of orcs hidden in ambush a short ways from the water's edge.
Whatcha think? Should we make friends? Like talk wit' them an' see what they want? Seamus tries to act nonchalantly, bringing his mutagen into his hand and preparing to drink it if necessary.
Jarrek continues to row like nothing has changed. "Wanna wait til we're closer to shore before we let them know we spotted 'em? I don't like the idea of letting a bunch of bushwackers take potshots at us while we're sitting in this skiff."
"If they wanted to talk, they wouldn't be setting up an ambush, would they." Haftor answers Seamus as he casts a Blessing. His hammer begins to emit acrid fumes as he tries to act nonchalant.
Unsurprisingly, Svarog sided with Haftor, but he did make an attempt to continue to look unalarmed as they approached the bank. He took his bow off his shoulder as though to keep it dry when crossing the distance to shore.
"Orcs only want war. When I tell you they're about to attack, we attack first," he growled quietly, glancing sidelong to see if they were all in agreement. "Can you keep us a bit upstream, Jarrek? No need to give them an easy job of it."
Jarrek snorted. "Neither of you are wrong but we're sitting out in the open like a bunch of piglets in a pen." He muttered a spell under his breath, invoking his arcane power to protect himself against enemies.
Trianne blinked away sweat as she rethreaded one of the armpit seams on the cloak she was creating. Running a forearm over her forehead to pull away a few stray hairs, she smeared a thin streak of the unguent that was serving to bind the leathers almost invisibly. She whispered a few words into the craft and nodded as the seam took better hold this time.
The barge swayed beneath her, and she occasionally had to wait for a bustling group of sailors to squeeze by, but the work continued nonetheless. She never slept well if she was idle. Adjusting her tool to function as an awl, she created the holes and threaded the special piece of thong she had gotten to serve as closure for this project. She finished the tie-off and the last words of magic sealed the energy within.
Holding the new cloak up in one hand and her shield cloak in the other, she half-smiled and nodded. Seems like it would do nicely.
***
“Try and keep one of them alive, hm?” Trianne said quietly into an unspoken moment. “I’d like to know if our spy hired them.”
Another obstacle in their path all too coincidentally. Did this mean the woman knew where they were headed? More and more, Trianne didn’t like the notion of what was unfolding. Then she burst out into loud, merry laughter.
“Oh, that was a good one!” she said openly and gave Jarrek a one-handed shove. “Tell us another!”
Trianne did not allot a great deal of time to mirth or merriment, not with the path she had walked. Rarely did the hair break free from her considerable braids, only when a wash was in order. There was always so much work to be done. So much to do. Whenever she did relax and allow herself some leisure, she was an affable and delightful conversationalist who balanced her best features well.
Less so when she forced herself into that role. To her though, the efforts to deflect their pre-ambush planning seemed as natural as could be expected in the current circumstances, but to the trained eye of a predator…
There is no sign of movement from the orcs.
When a consensus had been reached, Svarog nodded minutely - and swung up his bow to take a shot.
Seamus nods sagely at his companions advice, and downs his mutagen, preparing for combat.
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Trianne’s features tightened as Svarog fired into the waiting ambush. Her ability to reshape the world around her was severely limited to a relatively close proximity. None of her magics would be able to reach the orcs just yet, so she instead focused on protection. She uttered a few swift words and transformed the air in front of her into a superthick layer, though its creation was only visible momentarily before the magical shield realigned itself with reality.
That will be enough to get the boat to shore.
Round 1:
Initiative order
Trianne
Tark
Seamus
Orcs
Jarrek
Mel
Svarog
Haftor
Trianne eyed Haftor and the powerful hammer that hung at his side. She murmured to herself in thought at the possibility of the weapon resized. She smiled, thinking it would look so much better being larger.
Stepping into the shallows, she said, “Step lively, Haftor. I’m going to enlarge you when you clear the boat.”
She swung her crossbow around and readied it to use in the upcoming volleys. She then waited until Haftor got clear of the boat before engaging her magics.