Zed quickly flicks though his abilities in a mental checklist, then looks on grimly. "I have little to help. I'm willing to fly over if needed."
Vala's already finished the spell on Hazel by the time Zed volunteers and she shakes her head, "Sorry, Zed. I've only got the one." Then nodding at Hazel, she looks toward the struggling boat. "Let's go, sweetheart!" And without waiting for another moment, Vala shoots off through the cutting wind toward the beleaguered sailor.
As soon as she gets to the deck, she shouts over the wind to the man, "HOW CAN WE HELP?!"
Vala takes to flight, trying to keep a narrow profile to the buffeting wind. It tears at her dress but she makes good headway, zig zagging through the gusts and cutting as a ship might. A few moments later Hazel joins her, having had difficulty than the ageing lady. She alternates climbing into the wind and then tucking down to dive and finds she makes good progress with that strategy. After a few wind-swept, rain-drenched moments, both touch down on the prow of the ship.
A sole sailer is on board, he rushes back and forth between the large tarp-covered objects to the tiller and the sail, trying to control both. He doesn't even seem to notice you at first as he desperately, and pointlessly, wipes the rain off his thick spectacles only for them to get immediately beaded a second later.
"Oh dear... oh dear. Damn and blast it all and this bloody weather too!" he mumbles to himself.
The man is an aged human. He wears a leather apron smock bearing unidentifiable stains and burns and a set of goggles with multicoloured lenses pulled up on his forehead. His white hair is spikey from the wind and water and stands up in tangles in all directions. He has an almost manic look, with red-rimmed, sleep deprived eyes. His skin has a greyish hue and an odd, veiny appearance along his neck and hands.
He looks up and sees you and blurts out;
"Who.. what are you doing here? Look if you want to sell me something now is not a good time! Oh wait... you're here to help?"
The small ship bucks and rocks beneath your feet. The old man continues to rush about but begins shouting things like "...man the main sail... direct lateral movement to the swell of the caps... ride the waves at obtuse angles... blast those fishermen!"
Vala listens to the strange, bespectacled man’s instructions briefly then sets to work with Hazel trying to figure out how to accomplish what he needs.
"No, no, no! Bring that tiller to bear young lady! Heave, that's it. I won't have my work destroyed because of those damned fishermen!" the old man roars, trying to wipe rain off his glasses.
Realizing the relationship between the tiller and the rudder now after her mistake, Vala pats Hazel’s hand and smiles encouragingly despite the roaring wind and rain, ”Come on, Hazel! We can do this!”
Zed watches quietly from the shore. They're trying to help land the boat. I hope their generosity doesn't bring them to harm. He continues to watch helplessly.
"Yes.... yes! I must protect my equipment!" the man shouts. "Good, good. Now you've got it! This storm won't get the best of me! W-well... us!"
Vala shouts instruction to Hazel and the stranger who between them wrestle the vessel under control. After a nervous few moments, they manage to miraculously guide the vessel into the quay, wincing as the hull scrapes loudly and sickening along the side.
The swell is far less viscous in the shallow water and the vessel is saved.
Finally, after the excitement is over, the man turns to you;
"Thank you, thank you, thank you! Those blasted fishermen abandoned me when the wind picked up. Good thing you came along when you did."
"It's a cold thing to leave an old man to suffer the storm alone", Vermundr chimes in as the fisherman tells his tale. "Nicely done Hazel."
"Aye, first breath of wind and they jumped ship, swam to the quay and left me there. Glad I insisted on not paying until my experiments were complete." he mutters. "I've been looking into hydrodynamics and and subaqueous exploration." he says proudly, though somewhat cryptically.
"You folks headed to Illmarsh? Must be, ain't nothing else down this road. Don't know why the place is getting so popular." he shrugs
Zed perks up for a moment at experiments. "Hydro...subaqueous...do you speak of underwater travel?" He asks.
"Well that's the theory, yes." the man says, seeming not to bat an eyelid at Zed's pallid demeanour. "Horace Croon. I've been conducting experiments out there by the Tern Rocks." he points to a barely noticeable line of black rocks, like the edge of a massif, some distance out in the bay.
"I always use this quay, used to be an old smuggling dock, very isolated see, a good spot to land a boat without anyone noticing. There used to be all sorts of smuggling going on years ago, anything to avoid the import tax."
"And you are...?" he asks of all of you.
Horace's demeanor and manner of speech, now that the crisis has passed, brings a small mournful smile to the edge of Vala's lips. She offers a curt but respectful nod, "Valavastra Cross. I'm glad for your sake we came along when we did." She gives Hazel's hand an affirming squeeze. "And I'm sorry to hear the locals treated you so poorly. I don't suppose that bodes particularly well for strangers like us either."
"Oh it wasn't the locals, I am one of the locals." Croon says. "These were fishermen I hired off the lake. Joke's on them anyway, that's their vessel but if they think they are getting it back now they're in for a shock. Terrible way to treat people, especially ones that pay you!"
"But you're right enough about strangers in Illmarsh, it's not the kind of place you go for a holiday. Very local place for very local people. Can't imagine what business you have there, meeting up with that other fella I suppose, the one in black." he says, but doesn't press the point, merely continuing ramblings about the fishermen and his experiments.
It is clear that the man is prone to meandering monologues and picking out the sense in it all is something of a challenge.
"Nothin' at all. Saw him from out there a coupla days ago that's all." he says, pointing back out toward the lake. "But Illmarsh doesn't get many visitors so anyone coming down that road is news. That's the reason I noticed him."
"But please, don't let me keep you from your friend. I have work to do anyway and this rain ain't letting up. The road to Illmarsh ain't good, I'd get a move on afore it's washed away. You really do have my thanks for the boat though."
"I build a great many things and occasionally one works!" he bursts into gales of laughter. "I think my current problem is with the bow plane. You might know it as a fairwater plane, that's the one on the sail. Fairwater planes do not pitch the ship up or down; they cause the ship to rise or sink on a level plane as they are operated, you follow?" his explanation makes even less sense.
"So essentially what I am working on is a means to sink and raise the vessel beneath the surface but maintain integrity under the pressure and the ability to continually pump air into the capsule."
Vala chuckles softly as Hazel and Croon start to drift down a rabbit hole of mechanical engineering, but her smirk turns wistful and sad as she realizes conversations like this have become the exception in their lives when they should have been the norm. Jonathan, it seems, had taken even more from them than she’d thought.
When the opportunity presents itself, she adds, ”I don’t suppose you could direct us to a place in Illmarsh that offers decent beds and some privacy? The last place we stayed proved to be something of a disaster.”
Constantin waits back at the shore through all of this, hand keeping his hat on his head in the face of the whipping wind, squinting out at the boat as the ladies get it under control.
"Nice place? Nope." Croon says. "But Whislter's is the only place. Haha. Oh well, I hope you catch up with your friend, he's most likely there, I need to get this boat battened down until I can try my experiment again."
He turns and heads back onto the deck of the bobbing vessel.
You set off once again on the road and find that Horace was not wrong in his assumption that it would be difficult to pass. The rain pools in large puddles along the road and before long even this gives way to little more than a muddy track.
After around half an hour you notice a carriage in the road, struggling along, digging muddy ruts as it goes. Even with the horses walking you soon catch up just as you pass a faded old sign that reads "Baytown", though this monicker has long since been struck out and replaced with dark letters that now reads "Illmarsh."
The carriage is a rickety old thing that creaks and groans with every turn of the partially spoked wheels. The carriage is open-roofed, little more than a wagon in truth and within there are only three passengers - dark, unkempt men of sullen visage and somewhat youthful cast.
Illmarsh appears to be a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke rises and the vast huddle of sagging roofs and peaked gables conveys the idea of wormy decay. As you approach along the now descending road you see that many roofs have wholly caved in.
The signs of dilapidation are worst close to the waterfront, though in the midst of that tangle of buildings you can just about make out the white belfry of a fairly well preserved brick structure which looks like a small factory or perhaps large workhouse. The harbour, long clogged with sand, is enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater; on which you can see the minute forms of a few seated fishermen, and at whose end were what looked like the foundations of a bygone lighthouse.
Besides the carriage, you see no-one else on the road, but presently begin to pass deserted farms in varying stages of ruin on the outskirts of town. Then you notice a few inhabited houses with rags stuffed in the broken windows and shells and dead fish lying about the littered yards. Once or twice you see listless-looking people working in barren gardens or digging clams on the fishy-smelling beach below, and groups of dirty children playing around weed-grown doorsteps. Somehow these people seem more disquieting than the dismal buildings, as almost every one had certain facial peculiarities.
Eventually the carriage stops beside the road and it's passengers clumsily shamble out and begin walking up the street in a silent, furtive fashion. The driver also disembarks, and you note that he is a thin, stoop-shouldered man, dressed in shabby blue cotton clothes and wearing a frayed cap. Though you would put him at around thirty or perhaps thirty-five, the odd, expressionless face with its watery, slightly bulging eyes makes it all the more difficult to guess. He has thick lips and, like Horace Croon, coarse-pored, greyish cheeks seem almost beardless except for some sparse yellow hairs that straggle and curl in irregular patches. Again like Croon, his hands are large and heavily veined.
Finally, he carries on him a distinct and powerful stench, of fish and filth - one that you soon become familiar with as uniquely that of Illmarsh.
Zed slogs through the mud with a grim set to his face. Not the first time nor the last he has been through such a slog, and often through worse mediums...but it never really gets easier. It's still disgusting and exhausting.
He looks between the dilapidating buildings and the struggling carriage. Like metaphors for each other. He muses to himself as he moves in. And the oddities of the locals may keep me from being much of an object to stare at. Although I suspect being a stranger will cover that regardless.
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Constantin holds his long coat close, keeping his hat on with one hand, and does his best to stay behind Hazel and look like a gentleman of some means but not too many airs.
Vala nods in agreement with Hazel, "Dismal indeed. I've neither seen nor read of any place that lay beneath a pall of dour gloom as heavy as this. Goodness." She tuts and shakes her head in disbelief, but then smiles sweetly at the coach driver as Hazel catches his attention.
HP: 57/57
Negative Energy Resist 5
AC: 14 (10 T / 14 FF)
CMD: 16
F/R/W: +7/+4/+13 (+2 vs death effects, energy drain, negative energy, & necromancy)
Monstrous Insight used: 0/7
Healing Hex targets:
Current Wandering Spirit: Waves
Prepared spells
Orisons (4) | DC 15: dancing lights, disrupt undead, identify, read magic
Level 1 spells (4+2+1*) | DC 17: inflict light wounds [ ], know the enemy* [ ], magic missile [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ], produce flame (CL7) [ ]
Level 2 spells (4+1+1*) | DC 18: bull's strength [ ], spiritual weapon [ ] [ ] [ ], tongues* [ ]
Level 3 spells (3+1+1*) | DC 19: fly [X], lightning bolt [ ] [ ], water breathing* [ ], spiritual weapon (toppling) [ ]
Level 4 spells (2+1+1*) | DC 20: ball lightning [ ], legend lore* [ ], greater magic weapon [ ], spiritual ally [ ]
Level 5 spells (1+1+1*) | DC 21: dispel evil [ ], lightning arc [ ], contact other plane* [ ]
Ongoing Effects
Water Sight: scry with 1-ft diameter pool of water
Vermundr wrinkles his nose but says nothing about Illmarsh's stench. They were guests for at least a short time and it was bad luck to speak ill of one's hosts.
Zelda, on the other hand, shares none of her master's manners and buzzes a little higher from the ground as if the town's aroma were contagious.
Constantin holds his long coat close, keeping his hat on with one hand, and does his best to stay behind Hazel and look like a gentleman of some means but not too many airs.
"And I thought Feldgrau was dismal," Hazel can't help but mutter as she looks around. "But this almost seems worse somehow even though there's still people living here."
Still need to find some shelter for the night though.
"Hello there!" Hazel calls out to the carriage drive as he disembarks. "We've come a long ways and need rooms for the night. A man we met on the road told us that we'd be wanting the Whistler for that. Which way do we need to go to find it?"
[dice=Diplomacy]1d20 + 10
The man turns slowly around and lays mismatched, slightly bulging eyes on Hazel. His face is thickly lined for a young man and with a slow and deliberate motion, he simply points own the road.
The Forest of Veils extends for miles inland from Avalon Bay along the Destach River, but in the immediate vicinity of Illmarsh it is a swampy woodland known as the Soddentimbers. The ground is firm enough that pines and hardwoods are able to grow thickly, but many bogs and pools occupy the forest floor beneath their boughs making the terrain uncertain and treacherous.
You plod along the east road until you reach the town proper. The first building you see is a three-story structure and appears to be the largest in town. It doesn't look much like an inn so for now you continue past.
Lying at the centre of town, just east of the wharves, is the town square. With the rain hardly abating you are unsurprised to see few people on the streets making their way here and there with a slow, deliberate motion. A bronze statue stands upon a plinth at the centre of the square depicting a sea captain wearing a rain slicker standing at the ship's wheel and staring steely-eyed at a coming storm. It's plaque reads, "Cassius Undiomede, First Lord of Illmarsh."
This once fine two-story structure appears to be the town's only Inn and it's warped boards and missing shingles show it's age and surrender to the elements. The sign above the door depicts a thin man with a tall hat japing around and playing some kind of long flute-like instrument. With a knot forming in the pit of your stomach, you realise the man in the sign looks very much like someone you have met before... the Piper of Illmarsh.
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Constantin pauses to take in the statue of Cassius Undiomede for several minutes. Finally he says enigmatically, "You found something under the waves, didn't you, captain."
When he finally reaches the Whistler's Place he says to the team, "Does anyone else have a bad feeling about staying at a place named for one of the prisoners we had to fight back at the start of all of this?"
Vala doesn't turn her steely gaze from the sign as she shrugs in reply, "He can't hurt us anymore, Constantin. Though it does add an air of bleak determinism to all of our misery, doesn't it?" She sighs softly through her nose and brings two fingers up slowly to her lips, touching where she felt the bite of the piper's flute down within Harrowstone. Shaking her head, she turns to the others. "This appears to be our only real option for lodging, unless we have any other ideas?"
"He can't hurt us anymore, Constantin."
"And if he can, it's kind of my job to put an end to that."
Unfamiliar with the struggle Constantin and Vala are eluding to, Vermundr grunts and moves to try the front door.
"Prisoners? Was this another battle with the Way?" he asks.
Kazamir is quiet, but seemingly at ease as they make their way through town. He walks along calmly, nodding slightly and politely at the sparse company on the streets. Only after travelling with him for these months is it obvious that the investigator is cataloging every sight, every sound, every - judging from the occasional flare of his nostrils - smell of their surroundings.
He stops with his friends in front of their dubious lodgings, his lips thinning ever so slightly at the figure depicted there.
"Well, it wasn't likely that we were all going to sleep well anyway," he mutters.
Though I'll be checking under the bed for stirges...
You tie the horses to a beam outside the inn and enter the building.
The inn is as run down as the rest of the town, with a dingy bar that runs half the length of the far wall and half a dozen tables seemingly made from upturned barrels and planks of wood nailed together.
The tap room is surprisingly busy, almost exclusively with stoop-shouldered men who drag their feet as they shuffle between the bar and their tables. Each carry that smell of the sea that leads you to believe they are wharf workers or fishermen. A dozen pairs of eyes fall on you as you enter and the weight of their glares is matched by the density of silence that suddenly fills the bar.
The innkeeper is a man with a prodigious belly and jowls that wobble as he moves or reaches for glasses. He too, watches you with a plain level of suspicion.