Annika finds herself growing slightly more uneasy as they trek into the island looking for shelter. "Does this island seem unusually barren to anyone else? There's just... nothing here. I haven't even heard bird cries. It's creepy."
Staying near the capitan but nodding, "Stay safe please."
Glancing at Annika, "Hadn't noticed in the mad dash."
Marcus blinked at Annika's words. "You know... now that you mention it, yeah. I haven't noticed any kinds of critters at all. That's pretty strange."
Marcus busied himself setting up their camp. First order of business was a comfortable place for the captain. Then a campfire just outside the cave using a shape and material that would minimize smoke.
"We need to inventory our supplies. What were we able to grab from the ship?"
The few sailors with the group do their best to get the captain comfortable, taking a few bedrolls they took from the ship and leaving him close to the fire. The man is still horribly pale and his breath only comes in short gasps; it's hard to say whether he'll survive even after treatment.
"We weren't able to grab much from the ship," one of the sailors says, gesturing to their meager supplies. Two of them had been carrying a crate full of what seems to be food, while others are carrying some basic camping supplies. "Most of what we took went with the colonists, but we don't know where they are right now. We might have enough food here for two days between the lot of us. Not all of us are going to sleep comfortably tonight, either." The sailor looks out of the cave, the sky slowly darkening as clouds roll in. The sun has now dipped below the horizon, and night is beginning to settle. Off in the distance, a faint roll of thunder echoes. "At least we'll all be dry in here."
"Alright. I'm going to go shopping." Marcus sighed. It had been a long day, and it was looking like it was going to be a long night.
He dropped his pack and pulled out a waterproof sack with a wooden case inside it. He pulled the case out and passed it to Garrick. "Here's the alchemical supplies I brought. See what you can do with them."
Then he emptied his backpack, stacking his supplies and bed kit against a wall. He stuffed the empty sack into the backpack along with a hammock, and shouldered it. "If anyone has any empty sacks, I could use them. Janus, I'm going to need your help. Annika, if you want to come watch our backs, you can. or you can stay here and stay dry. Your choice."
"I can handle a little rain. And someone has to go looking for the colonists. They're doomed if the Aspis agents catch up to them before we can get them somewhere safe."
Janus climbs back to his feet, slings his club behind him, and moves over to stand beside Marcus, "Shopping, eh? And you need me to, what, carry the heavy things?" Only the rattle of his drum sounding a little like a chuckle or snicker gives away the joke.
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Marcus nodded. "That's the plan."
He looked at the drum. "I'm really going to need you not to give us any background music on this trip though."
We're going to the beach where Aspis had their supplies offloaded. (If they've already moved them all we'll follow the tracks to wherever the new supply drop is)
I can steal things with TK at a range of 30 feet. Since it will be Dim or Dark lighting conditions (Unfavorable or terrible conditions), and the fact that there's a -1 penalty to Sight based perception checks for every 10 feet of distance, I'm fairly sure I can get close enough to swipe things without being seen.
So, I'll be 30 feet away from what I'm swiping, and Annika will be 30 feet behind me with a bag. Janus will be further back than that with tarp and the backpack. I'll pass things I steal to Annika. When Annika's bag gets full she'll run it back to Janus and swap it for the pack, then return to her position 30 feet behind me. Janus will empty the full bag onto the tarp. Rinse repeat for as long as it takes.
The risk is that Aspis will see what I'm moving around with my brain (which should be my Slight of Hand against their Perception). Hopefully the dark and distance will work in my favor with that too.
So basically, I'm going to swipe everything I can get my hands on from the Aspis camp, focusing on food first, and pile it all on to the tarp so Janus can haul it back to base camp. Then I'm going to counter-track to hide that we were there.
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When the others mention the lack of animals, Garrick's eyes go wide as he turns around increasingly nervous, his body twitching slightly "Sure as hell is strange and even surer I don't want nothing to do with whatever's the cause... Fricking magical things, hate them man..."
But his eyes brighten and his body relaxes at the sight of the reagents, chemicals and assorted materials. "Is it... Is it my birthday already? The size of the bomb I could make... Enough to blow them all basterds back to thrice-damned Cheliax ... No. Not the time... We need to focus on surviving... Soon, maybe... But not now..." whispers the grenadier, caressing the materials like a mother would do with her baby.
"Sleep is for the weak anyway, I'll stay awake making anti-toxins and such. Maybe a couple bottled fires just in case there are feys around..." he adds, the last part accompanied with a nervous laugh that soon dies as he starts working.
Janus nods to Marcus, "Sneaky then, eh? I will bring her along just in case sneaking fails. She will be quiet though unless we need her."
"Try not to die or get caught." Settling in next to the captain.
"I grew up in Riddleport. I know better than to do something silly like getting caught."
Smiling at Annika, "The sentiment still stands. We cannot afford to lose even one person right now."
Skulking off into the darkness, both Annika and Janus follow Marcus as he heads toward the beach to scavenge what he can from the Aspis supplies. While finding the location is trivial for the former bandit, the trek itself takes nearly another hour. When they arrive, many of the crates have been moved—likely to wherever they've made their base of operations—but about half a dozen remain sitting on the beach, guarded by Aspis thugs. A few carry torches, but the rest sit around a campfire on the beach. The closest of them stands about fifteen feet from the crates with his back turned, holding his torch limply in his hand. Marcus heads out of the cover of the treeline to move closer to the crates, until he can wrap the thin strands of aether around the boards and begin to slowly move them toward himself. While standing exposed on the beach, Marcus remains well out of the light of the torches, and provided he works slowly it seems unlikely the guards will notice.
Janus crouches in the dark, eyes peering into the night for any threat.
No stranger to creeping around after dark, Annika stays low and quiet, keeping a lookout for any watchmen.
Marcus crouches low and begins slowly dragging the first crate through the sand and back toward Annika and Janus. Despite being exposed and out in the open, Marcus successfully steals two crates and sends them back to the others. As they finish opening the crates and packing the food into their bags, Marcus begins to again lift another crate gently off the sand and toward the tree line. However, this time as he does so, something seems to catch the attention of the nearest Aspis grunt. He turns his head and notices the crate creeping away, and raises his torch as he approaches for a better look. "Hey, hey! What's going on over there?" The grunt shouts as he draws a knife from his belt, and a few of the others seem to be alerted by his call. "Who's there? Where'd you put the other crates?"
The man does not, however, seem to notice Marcus standing far enough out of the range of his torch. If they start to search the area it will only be a matter of time until they spot him, but for the moment he still has the benefit of stealth. Janus and Annika are far enough back that fading away back into the jungle would be simple enough, once they've finished packing up the rest of the food they've managed to steal. The Aspis thugs are still restricted to the beach, at least for now.
Gallidren will stand guard at the cave.
Marcus backed up deeper into the night, twiddling his fingers.
In the sand, just outside the range of the Aspis guard's lights, footsteps appeared in the sand. He quickly traced them towards the water, making them look like they faded and had been washed away by the surf.
Let them draw their own conclusions.
Marcus fades away into the jungle, using his powers to carve fake footprints into the sand as he leaves, and as he leaves the scene he and the others hear the Aspis goons shouting about the footprints before fanning out in that direction to search for their thief. Meanwhile, Marcus and the others find it easy to abscond with the goods they've managed to pilfer. While they have a long night ahead of them to get back they've definitely gotten enough food for at least a few days.
Back at the camp, Gallidren is keeping watch over the camp while Garrick continues making his alchemical supplies. While he doesn't see anything outside, he does hear an odd noise from the captain's resting place. When he heads over to investigate, he notices something even stranger; the unconscious man's cloak seemed to be rustling on its own, with not so much as a gust of wind passing through the cave. The captain himself seems eerily still, making the movement of the cloak even more confusing.
Gallidren examines the cloak for a second and then carefully takes it off the captain. He will also check that the captain is still breathing and doesn't appear to be suffering at all.
Gallidren takes hold of the cloak and removes it from the captain, and for a moment he feels as if it has a mind of its own. It almost shudders as he removes it and sets it to the side, but afterward it lies entirely still. When he checks to make sure the captain is breathing, he finds the man's chest is entirely still. More alarming, however, is when he touches the captain's skin; he checks to feel if the captain is still warm when his fingers sink unnaturally into the man's flesh. Captain's Gallifrey's skin warps around his fingertips and retracts several inches as Gallidren isn't expecting the lack of resistance. When he pulls his hand back the captain's flesh once against billows outward, resuming its normal shape. Unlike normal skin, Gallidren notes the man's flesh has a texture somewhere between rubber and cured leather.
Annika helps haul the crates of supplies back to camp through the darkness. At the very least the Aspis goons won't be coming after them for a while. Unfortunately, little has changed by the time they get back. She watches as Gallidren examines the poor captain, but her breath catches in her throat as he touches his skin and a strangled choking sound emerges from her lips. "What?" she finally manages.
"What the hell?" Marcus choked out. As a total loss, he waited for someone who might have some idea of what they'd just seen to speak up.
Marcus and the others return just in time to witness Gallidren's disturbing discovery, watching as the elf's fingers seem to warp the man's flesh like gelatin. A few seconds later, the captain's skin takes on a muddy hue and begins to warp and stretch, until the body no longer bears more than a passing resemblance to the man you thought laid in your camp. The body now resembles a hunched humanoid with thick forearms and crimson red skin. Its hands end in sets of thick claws, and its head resembles a ball of amorphous flesh with no face to be seen; the only hint of bodily functions is a disturbing, mosquito-like proboscis that juts out near where one might expect a mouth. As the creature's body expands, it rips open the captain's clothes leaving its smooth, formless body completely exposed. Its entire body, despite the reddish color, looks almost like a crude pile of clay. As the sailors stand there in stunned silence, the body almost seems to deflate and collapse further into itself, until it lies flat against the stone.
Janus simply stares, an ever more revolted and disturbed expression on his face.
What little color was left in Annika's face drains away as something in the back of her mind nags at her. "He's a faceless stalker," she manages after a few moments. "They're shapeshifters and known to be infiltrators for monstrous aboleths. Some people even think they had something to do with the fall of Azlant..." Her head spins. "Have we been played this entire time?"
Marcus had seen and heard all he needed to. With the revelation that the captain was some kind of ancient assassin of a mythical lost empire, he rolled his spear off his shoulder and walked forward to finish the job the poison had started.
Janus remains silent, but his fingers begin softly tapping a decidedly irritated rhythm on his drum.
Staying with the captain for a short time before beginning to pace. Trying to settle his emotions.
Staring at Gallidren and the captian, "Why?"
Pulling out his sword, "That is possible but would be weird."
"Hold on just a moment," Annika says, holding out a hand to Marcus. "Maybe we should keep him alive longer. If he recovers enough to talk, maybe we can question him. I don't like this, but I like not knowing what's going on even less."
"You know more about this than I do, but if he's some kind of Azlanti spy... thing, I don't think we can trust anything he might say." Marcus had dealt with assassins and con artists all his life. The idea of any of them with the power to impersonate other people made his blood run cold.
"His species is older than Azlant's fall, but he's probably not. I don't think stalkers are immortal or anything like that. But I want to know why he was spying on us. If he was at all. He might have just been using the expedition for something entirely unrelated."
"Alright. We still have the problem of waking him... it... up in the first place."
"Anyone have rope? I didn't think to grab any off the ship."
Annika wordlessly pulls out her cord of rope and tosses it over to Marcus. "They're incredibly slippery, so we should keep him under heavy guard even if he is tied up."
Marcus trussed up the not-captain as only a telekinetic woodsman can. Normally he would have been confident in his abilities. This time, he just nodded to Annika. "No argument here."
"Can these things read minds?"
It had been a hell of a day. The escape from the ship, covering trails through the woods, getting settled into their makeshift shelter, trekking across the sand to steal two crates of goods, marching back with it all, and then finding out the captain was some kind of monster.
Marcus prided himself on being tough. There weren't many people who could keep up with him. He once kept up with a team of dwarven trappers who only slept every three days because it was more efficient. He once out-drank a Shoanti who was almost as big as Janus.
Now though, Marcus was tired. His whole life revolved around keeping his focus. Bad things happened when he let his willpower waver. He decided it was time to rest. Sleep was safe.
He gave the camp one last once over, checked in with Garrick to see how he'd set up their makeshift lab, and said "I'll take mid watch."
He crawled into his bedroll, pulled the hood of his cloak over his eyes to block out the firelight, and was asleep in moments.
Janus looks at the fleshy sack that had been the captain, "Would it not be simpler to put it out of our misery?"
Despite their unnerving discovery, the group eventually succumbs to exhaustion and sets watches for the night, watching over their new prisoner until dawn breaks. Those on the watch will notice, however, that the creature never stirs so much as an inch; it's likely that the monster returned to its true form after finally perishing from the poison crossbow bolts it had been struck with. The night mostly passes uneventfully, with no sign of the Aspis crew or any sort of native life. The utter lack of sound other than the slight breeze and the crackling of the burning wood is, for lack of a better word, unsettling.
Annika liked to think of herself as a fairly light sleeper. So when she hears a rustling sound, her eyes snap open and one hand snaps to her blade. After the last day or so, she feels justified in being willing to jump for her sword so quickly. Then she sees the shadowy cloak lifting away and disappearing into the distance.
Marcus slept on.
"Everyone up and at 'em!" Annika calls out as the shadowy thing takes off. "The captain's cloak is doing something!"
Gallidren stirs, but does not wake.
Though he is awake and on watch, Janus is unaware of any disturbance until the cloak suddenly flies out of the mouth of the cave. He surges to his feet, huge club coming into his grasp, but the dark shape is lost in the night before he can react, "What in all the nine hells was that thing?"
Opening one eye and sure enough the half elf is up. "Damn."
Standing up and looking around, "Where is it?"
"It just flew away in that direction," Annika says, pointing into the darkness. "I'm guessing the captain is done for."
Marcus sat up, his spear leaping to his hand. He squinted into the night sky, waited for a few minutes, then laid back down. They weren't being attacked. That was good enough for him.
"We can bury it in the morning." he grunted as he closed his eyes.