Zandomir shakes his head at Filbert. "No. I realize a conversation, or even an ambush, over the water would be difficult at best. My idea is to ambush them on foot. We have to make port at night. I assume they do so as well. After we set anchor, we approach their ship on foot. Then we confront them as to their intentions. If they're at all interested in talking, I think that's our best chance."
Overhearing Zandomir's words, Skywin tells you, "The sight of that red sail is upsetting the crew. Some of them have been spouting superstitious nonsense, wild tales like it's the boat of the dead or something. I don't believe that for a second but you do sometimes get pirates usually closer to the river kingdoms mind. Their boat is more suited for open water than ours so they don't need to come ashore, but they probably do. Strange things tend to happen to boats that spend the night in the open lake. Bits of it are very very deep and there's that bell. The bell that tolls in the deepest part of the lake. Proper freaky."
Listening to Captain Freeling's comments on the red sailed ship, Filbert looks back at Zandomir.
"Still want to talk to them? Sounds like we'd be better off lobbing a couple of barrels of oil and a few flaming arrows their way. Pirates <ughh>" Filbert spits over the rail.
"Captain, a bell tolls under the water in the middle of the lake?"
Zandomir frowns. "Sounds like it's more rumors than hard facts that make the sailors fear the boat. I would rather not murder innocent people... or even those who just have questionable motives. I'm not suggesting we approach them waving a white flag or anything, just that we give them a chance to explain themselves."
"If it's all the same to you, I think having a couple of barrels of oil on hand would still be a good idea." Filbert concedes not wanting to draw this into an argument.
Skywin replies at once to Filbert, "Yeah that's towards the Isle of Dread which is roughly in the center of the lake. From what I heard it used to be bigger but a long time ago something terrible happened and a whole town sank beneath the waves. Hope you don't want to go near there since that's nearly a weak in the wrong direction from here..."
Zandomir chuckles a bit at Filbert's latest remark. "Of course. I plan to have my bow in hand with an arrow notched. I would like to think I'm not that naive."
Hope you don't want to go near there since that's nearly a week in the wrong direction from here
"Hmmmm, that is a bit of a haul, I'll need to check with Zarine and Agrippa"
Filbert finds the others and tells them what Captain Freeling said about the isle and the dread bell....
"So how goes the research, need another two weeks?"
With all of the research that was going on Momijii found herself at loose ends. Studying wasn't her thing really in fact it was as far from it as she could get. Instead of studying she spent time helping the crew with their work and practicing her various kata.
As they began to discuss what to do about the Red Sailed ship Momijii was unsure. It didn't seem to be hurting anything back there but conversely it was making the crew nervous. It was making her nervous too if she were honest about it. Zandomir's desire to speak to them was admirable, and likely useful, but not practical. Filbert's desire to simply burn them all with oil barrels was vicious and sneaky, and not at all honorable. "I don't think we can easily talk to them Zandomir-san, but I don't know if we can actually do it unless they attack us."
Momijii turned her gaze to Filbert then and said, "I don't think that barrels of oil are the answer either. It would be dishonorable for one and it would also be of questionable use. They might well see it coming and simply avoid it or it could provoke them to attack. neither end would be a good one."
Zandomir scratches his head at Momijii's words. Her concerns were reasonable, but what alternatives did they have?
"Momijii, I know what I'm asking isn't a perfect solution, perhaps not even the best one, but unless we can divine the thoughts of those on the red sailed ship, talking to them is our only way to discern their true motives. At the very least, we have to do something. I'm not comfortable letting them follow us all the way to Cassomir. Does anyone have a different proposal than Filbert and I have offered?"
Zarine moves on to research the next thing.
* Green stone idol of a water lizard
* Night hag ambassador’s heartstone
* Captain’s tricorne
* Red webbed foot
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Agrippa assists Zarine in the research, he uses his own copious notes to chime in on avenues of research and inquiry.
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Lizzie's pretty much making sure nobody goes dehydrated during researching, not being a scholarly type herself.
#3 Fail
With Heinrich's eager assistance Zarine was able to make major inroads into the research. Their first assignment was to research the Green stone idol of a water lizard. Lowls' notes suggested he made extensive use of a religious text The Festival of the Snake, a historical drama The Forgotten Servants and bizarre little tome called The Illusion of the Weeping Ones which seemed to be somebody's idea of a joke containing utter rhyming nonsense, written backwards and sometimes in spirals. It took a couple of days to get going but several obscure rhymes in the Festival of the Snake reveal the The water lizard referenced is no mere animal, rather it is a representation of Bokrug, one of the unimaginably powerful Great Old Ones.
The Illusion of the Weeping Ones turns out to be written in code and is an index of sorts for forbidden knowledge encoded seemingly innocently in other tomes. The Forgotten Servants turns out to be a horrid treatise collating rumors of the Great Old Ones, it asserts that Bokrug lives in a vast, unnamed lake in the Dreamlands. A race of alien creatures founded the city of Ib on the shores of the lake and worshiped Bokrug there. An idol of green stone was central to their rites.
A pamphlet referenced by a passage in the Illusion of the Weeping One contains a quasi-historical dissertation relating how Ib was destroyed by proud and warlike humans disgusted by the aliens’ bizarre rites and unusual physiognomy. The victorious humans were from a city called Sarnath. After destroying Ib, the folk of Sarnath carried away a strange green idol and housed it in one of their temples. The idol disappeared from the temple soon thereafter. Another days work revealed a phrase that attunes the Dreamlands excursion occult ritual to dreaming Sarnath where green stone slumbers fitfully...
Technically harder, but Zarine and Heinrich made a number of brilliant an lucky connections while researching into the history of the Night hag ambassador’s heartstone. Various 'uplifting' tomes where involved in this research including a travelogue about a petitioner's journey to be judged by Pharasma called Atop the Valley’s Soul. A short but rather risque novel called The Falling Silk which turned out to full of double and triple entendres and then a Azemodian evangelical text called In Admiration of Keeping Pacts. A scrolled note in the marginalia of The Falling Silk revealed that it's main protagonist was actually a night hag rather than a voluptuous princess... This revelation made the pair of you feel rather ill, especially considering the acts various eligible bachelors had hoodwinked into performing. A later note in In Admiration of Keeping Pacts reveals that Lowls determined the hag in question was an ambassador and soul-trader named Quaveandra. He was able to tease out the details of such a heartstone.
Furthermore Lowls discovered that Quaveandra’s heartstone retains its magic for 1 month out of her possession, rather than 1 day. Atop the Valley’s Soul contained a register of extraplanar diplomats, and it lists Quaveandra as an ambassador to the city of Dylath-Leen, a grim city of basalt and one of the Dreamlands’ most notorious havens for vice. A different note in the margins directed to a diary of a fallen paladin brimming with spiteful rumors. Supposedly Quaveandra has an unnecessarily large retinue of retainers and an insufferably imperious manner. Finally the proper phrase needed to attune the Dreamlands excursion occult ritual to reach the ambassador in Dylath-Leen is discovered a mere three days after they started looking.
The next target was researching a Captain’s tricorn, how hard could that be?
it involved reading a scholarly monograph Emotions of the Past, all four hundred pages of it, written in tiny fussy handwriting. The nameless author preferred unnecessarily flowery run on sentences, and self referential passages, making this quite the chore to dissect. The Shadow’s Ship was rather different, a rollicking account of a pirate's personal vendetta spanning half the world and several planes against their shadowy nemesis. Finally they had to endure the Voyage of the Rainbow Servant, which was a frankly weird stream of consciousness account of various test subjects who had been administered dangerous (i.e. semi-lethal) doses of various hallucinogens. From these rantings they where able to determine the tricorne belongs not to a human pirate, but to a denizen of Leng named Captain Vadrack. Vadrack’s longship, the Bloodwind, is a slave ship—although the slaves Vadrack acquires are usually never seen again...
A tattered registry stuffed into the back of The Shadow’s Ship indicates that the Bloodwind most often sails the rivers and seas of the Dreamlands, but it can cross into other planes, perhaps as many as four or five in one day. Captain Vadrack is relentless in pursuit of his victims, chasing them across the planes if necessary. Apparently Captain Vadrack’s longship is made of dark wood with distinctive red-colored sails, the description of which sounds eerily familiar. From all of this Heinrich reckoned he worked out the proper phrase to direct the ritual to take them near Bloodwind, provided it was night of the full moon.
Researching the Webbed Foot was painstaking work, involving taking nearly four days. The texts indicated by Lowl's notes included Curses of the Black Lake written by a pompous try-hard know it all who spent the best part of three hundred pages explaining what a fantastic scholar they where, going as far as to write alternate pages in Necril. One of the other books was from the later second millennia Groteous nihilist school called Men and Vultures: Denizens of the Darkened Depths and Dead Skies. A finer book to slit your wrists to has never been written, it's essential thesis is that man is little more than a vulture pecking at the rotting remains of a decadent and dying society. The latter part of the book covers in exquisitely awful detail what exactly will happen when the moon inevitably crashes into Golorion, ending all life and rendering everything in the meantime pointless. And for light bedtime reading was Shards of Sight written in Necril, seemingly by a mad man. Neither Agrppa nor Zarine slept well after reading about one man's aesthetic quest to understand the nature of reality by gouging his eyes out with a broken mirror.
Anyway from these august texts they uncovered the following truths: Referenced in a lavishly illustrated bestiary they identified rare creatures
called wamps, bizarre aberrations with multiple legs ending in webbed feet. Although wamps are generally a pale gray color, the skin of their feet is a dark red. Curses of the Black Lake referenced a medical journal describing rare diseases. It listed corpsepox, ghoul fever, and zombie rot as diseases
that carrion-eating wamps can inflict with their bites. The reader is advised to avoid cemeteries and necropolises, where wamps sometimes congregate in large numbers. Cross referencing this with hallucinations and automatic writing from Shards of Sight reveals an unholy phrase that can be used to focus the Dreamlands excursion ritual to reach the Ceramic Necropolis.
The research took all told took the entirety of the Lake Encarthan portion of the journey to perform. On several occasions a foraging party was sent ashore to hunt for ducks, and pick fruit from abandoned orchards where they could. For nearly a week the Red sails of the pursuing longboat had been absent, and the spirits of the crew had lifted.
Excitedly Skywin told you that evening, "We'll enter the Glass River tomorrow! Progress! We'll be making our way past the Elven Kingdom, too bad they don't like outsiders. I'd much rather deal with them than the Zealots, oh well. Anyway after a week or so we'll pass through the Wilewood - that's a proper backwater and no mistake. Hardly anyone there but a few strange inbred mountain men. Once we're through that we'll be onto Kallas lake and the mighty Sellen!"
At that moment the mate shouted, "Capn! It's back." The happy mood was smashed in an instant for there brooding on the horizon was a blood red sail...
Filbert listens intently as Agrippa and Zarine explain what they've discovered. Gulping a bit when the black ship and red sails are mentioned.
"Still want to talk with them Zandomir, perhaps the captain'll let you borrow his tricorn. Not sure the oil barrels will help if they can cross planes at will."
Later on deck
Filbert leans against the rail as Captain Freeling talks about the next stretch of their trip, the absence of the trailing ship allowing him to relax and enjoy the scenery.
At the mates cry, Filbert jumps upward to one of the lower booms to get a clear view.
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Zandomir lets out a sigh after Zarine and Heinrich reveal information that almost certainly refers to the ship that's been dogging them. So much for trying to come up with a peaceful solution.
"It seems we may be able to obtain one of the required items without actually venturing into the Dreamlands. The fewer times we have to go there, the better."
Zan studies the red sailed ship closely when it reappears, trying to learn as much as he can about it.
Filbert raises his eyes to study the distant ship
Filbert and Zamdomir both clearly see the red sailed ship on the far horizon but as they watch the distinctive sails slowly sink back below the horizon before disappearing entirely.
"Well that's unnerving..." remarked Skywin before shrugging, "I guess there' nothing to be done about it. Tomorrow will tell if they follow us into the River Glass." The last was said brightly as if she believed they might not, her eyes however told the lie of this. Everyone expected red sails on the horizon or behind the last bend to dog their passage south.
Zandomir shakes his head as the ship disappears. "I still think we should set an ambush and try to deal with them now. Better to do it while we're still on open water and have more options. Once we enter the River, we only have one way to go that won't lead us right into their arms. Better to fight them on our terms rather than theirs."
Taking a rare break from studying, Zarine comes up on deck and notices the ship everyone has been talking about. She shares the information she learned in her research about the ship with red sails.
She also offers her opinion that the situation reminds her of a cat toying with a mouse, prolonging the suffering before eventually coming in for the kill.
She agrees with Zandomir about the ambush because he is her friend, but she has no idea how to accomplish such a thing.
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Filbert remains silent for a time before offering his opinion.
"I agree with both of you, if they are toying with us and really wish to attack, they should do so just before we reach the river, out here they have the most maneuverability, but we have the most options out on the lake. They'll likely attack in a way to push us into the river, where their greater speed will allow them to overtake us easily."
"Captain, will we be pulling up along shore tonight, and do you perhaps have some lengths of chain? Thinking if they do pursue us we could foul the rudder or mess up the sails
Overhearing the conversation, Skywin suggests, "If you want to set an ambush, wait until we're a few days down the River Glass. There's a couple of good tight meanders I'm thinking of that can hide you from view and which will force them to come within a few feet of the tree lined banks. Or there's only so many places it's safe to anchor at night, surely they've got to stop somewhere. Most of the riverbank is treacherous but there are some areas with good paths on the northern bank for horse drawn barges. It would be feasible for you to disembark and find where they've moored."
Zan nods in thanks to Zarine for supporting him.
Then he nods to Skywin. "If you think that's the best place for an ambush, then I'll bow to your expertise. I don't know how long the red sailed ship will wait before attacking, so perhaps we should make haste to these meanders you mentioned."
Looking determined Skywin replies, "I'll do what I can but this bucket was never intended to be fast on the open waters, still they'll be hard pressed to follow us down the river. They have a deeper keel so we can go places they can't, and we're more nimble around bends."
"I'll do what I can to keep them from getting too close to our aft quarter cap'n" Filbert quips from where he remains above on the boom.
Later when amongst the others
"So when do we go back and where will we go?" he ask looking back and forth between Agrippa and Zarine.
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In response to Filbert, Zarine thinks for a moment and then says ...
Let's go to the Viscount's gala in Celephais. Sounds like a very dangerous party, but still a party. And isn't that where the store guy said we could pick up some emeralds or something? I wouldn't mind a little dream loot to get us through the dream world... although I am not sure what happens to treasure you get in a dream. I wonder if it would manifest itself here as well in some altered form.
Zandomir shifts uncomfortably as the conversation turns to retrieving items from the Dreamlands. "The gala seems like as good a place to start as any. I'm just hesitant to return to the Dreamlands at all till the red sailed ship is dealt with. Perhaps... perhaps we should deal with that first? Maybe travel to Bloodwind? I don't like the idea of being killed while we sleep. I'm sure Winter and the others would try to protect us, but I would feel better knowing there aren't people actively looking to harm us in this world. As it is, I'm sure there will be enough people that want us dead in the Dreamlands.
"Zarine, we haven't seen any sign of Lizzie's fancy blade, so I think we have to assume the gear we acquire in the Dreamlands stays in the Dreamlands, unless we can discover some sort of occult ritual to transfer things from one to the other."
Oh, I didn't mean for us to go back any sooner than that. I was just answering Filbert's question about where... the party seems like a good place to start. And you're probably right about the gear. Maybe it will be useful there at least though, if we manage to pick up some dream emeralds. ... You know, that is another thing I should research. How do you make transactions in the dream world. It is bound to come up, unless they just have jewels lying around.
Agrippa was idly leafing through several minor folios retrieved from Lowls's study when a yellowed and folded note which had been stuck in there fell out.
Sir I must apologize for the tardiness of this letter and it's brevity. At long last we caught up with The Bloodwind, I'll spare you the details but it involved repeated plane shifting; the Vessel is simply too fast on the prime material plane. Naltalia nearly gave herself an aneurysm casting it so much, and was unable to join the assault. Just as well, because our information was wrong. Captain Vadrack is a pseudonym, the real captain appears to be a Denizien of Leng. We managed to inconvenience this Denizien (you can't truly kill them as such) but not before half of the team where chopped to pieces. Such swordplay, I have never seen the like. We managed to obtain the letter but the crew are chasing us, it won't be long until the captain reforms and them I and Jonsey are done for. We have forwarded the item by dead drop, would that we could go that way too. Ah they are closing in. It has been an honor.
M.
"Hmmm.. a party huh, guess I'll have to wear the purple hat, it makes me so dashing, if a bit short of stature. Exactly how to we get the viscount's signet ring, won't he be wearing it?" Filbert ask as he thinks about what they can gain at the gala.
"Perhaps we can win the ring somehow. Whatever odd traditions that merchant was talking about might also give us an opportunity. I suppose once we've taken the temperature of the room we might could just ask the Viscount for the ring, though it will almost certainly not be that easy. Some decisions we'll just have to be prepared to make on the spot."
Yep, we will have to play it by ear in all of these situations. The books don't really tell how to get things... only where they can likely be found.
Reaching out mentally, Filbert filches Zarine's scarf from around her shoulders and brings it to hand where he begins to compare it to his purple hat, going so far as to tie it around hit new hat unless she notices.
when the discussion turns back to the ambush. Filbert offers "I could attack the from great range allowing anyone who is closing to have a brief moment of surprise, when they ar ready to attack"
Zarine notices her scarf leaving her shoulders and is momentarily worried, reaching for her bow, but when she sees that it is just Filbert, she shrugs off her pack and pulls out another colorful scarf, wearing it instead.
She smiles. Looks good on you Filbert.
According to Lowls' notes a trio of dubious tomes where required to research that most essential subject: Ghoul Royalty. The first was, if you could believe it, a ghoulish medical text written in Necril: The Codex of Three Prescriptions. Next was the Manual of Silence a folio concerned with the creation of extraplaner undead. The final disreputable book was an extremely dry psychology text called The Unified Manual of Understanding written by somebody who apparently hated readers because everything was written assuming you already were an expert in the subject.
According to the Manual of Silence, ghouls of the Dreamlands are far more social—though no less wicked—than their bestial kin in the waking world. They have rich histories and large communities led by royalty. The Codex of Three Prescriptions had as an aside a discourse on the dread Plateau of Leng, and among other things it explains that a more powerful form of ghoul inhabits regions where the Dreamlands connects to Leng. These Leng ghouls are shrewder than their lesser kin.
Finally a particularly obtuse passage in The Unified Manual of Understanding described (but only if you already where an expert in such things) the proper phrase that to use the Dreamlands excursion occult ritual to reach what passes for a ghoulish royal palace within which no doubt a royal skull might be 'obtained'...
Momijii continued to help around the ship while the others did their research but when it came to further discussion of ambushing the trailing ship and their coming excursions into the Dreamlands she became involved once more. "As far as our explorations of the Dreamlands it seems to me that one place is as good as another to start."
Momijii looked then in the general direction of where the trailing ship would be and said, "As for the ship trailing us, I'm still of two minds about what to do, it hasn't attacked us which implies they don't intend to but the fact they are following us is just as easily a sign of ill intent." She sighed as she shook her head and said, "I don't like ambushing enemies, it is dishonorable, but I think it is necessary since we don't know what we are up against. The river sounds like the best chance to ambush them either by turning around when they can't detect us or sneaking aboard from the shore after dark."
"Well, looks we've got quite the task ahead of us. If i were ever suffering from bleeching, i'd be immediately restored now."
The Bloodwind is a most dangerous prize. We should consider armed conflict with them only as a last resort. Agrippa warns
There are too many stories of her over the years to imagine anything other than a very prepared and dangerous crew.