Lorenz stares at the body in shock. He'd expected death to be waiting here on the ship somewhere but still...there was something particularly wrenching about the first mate's still form.
"Does..." his voice broke and he paused, clearing his throat. "Can anyone tell what happened to him? Who, or what might have killed him?" His eyes were frozen on the short sword still clutched in the man's still hand.
"O-oh," Douena wails at the sight of the first mate. "He was nice."
Approaching gingerly to examine him, she says, "It looks like he was stung by one of those bug things -- maybe the one we saw the three of you fighting on the rocks -- but," she leans forward, "he was attacked before that. Not enough to kill him, but enough to weaken him so he couldn't fight the sea bug off," she finishes angrily. "Someone cut him with a blade -- a rapier, I think." She sits back on her heels sadly. "He got stung and ran in here to get away from the scorpion, and he died in here all alone from the poison."
Lorenz shook his head sadly. "A sorry death for a good man. Urza's right. We should gather these supplies together. We're bound to need them."
"We're taking him too and giving him a proper burial," Douena says firmly. "He was nice, and he travelled, and he found his way by the stars: That makes him one of Desna's own, in my book."
"We're taking him too and giving him a proper burial," Douena says firmly. "He was nice, and he travelled, and he found his way by the stars: That makes him one of Desna's own, in my book."
Lorenz frowns worriedly. "Don't sailors like to be buried at sea? And who's going to carry him? We have a great deal to carry between us as it is, and we haven't finished the search yet either."
He begins to turn away and then pauses. "By the way, there's a locked drawer in the Captain's cabin. Anyone who has skills with that sort of thing might want to take a look."
"I'll carry him out when we leave. We'll determine how to bury him later."
With a glare at Lorenz and a beatific smile for Makoa, Douena is directed to the captain's cabin and the locked drawer. Once again, she unrolls her packet of tools and arranges her odd assortment of items. With another quick prayer to Desna for luck , she sets to work on the lock.
Lorenz ignores the gnome's glare and nods to Makoa. "Shall we check the larder? I can't imagine there's much more than the makings for soup but whatever we can find will be useful until we can confirm where we are and figure out how to get to Eleder."
Without waiting for a response, Lorenz heads to the larder.
Still stricken, Mahjik manages a smile of gratitude towards Douena. Then: "Wise man would hold his anger - but I cannot. His presence here tells how he was betrayed as much as we were; but more than us, he resisted and paid for it with his life. I will not have that will be denied by death; judgment will be brought to his murderers."
Mahjik examines Alton's shortsword to see if there are traces of blood.
"Do any of you remember who on board wielded a rapier?"
Makoa sits the first mate up and takes the sword from his hand, leaving it at his side.
"You did well, you don't need to weild this anymore good sailor."
Makoa will close the door after the last person leaves so the body will not be found by scavengers that might find their way on the ship.
Douena struggles at the lock for a couple minutes and finally gets it open. Inside, she finds a bottle of fine brandy, a wooden model of the Jenivere, and a small coffer containing a sizable number of gold coins. There is also a long leather satchel that contains a dozen bottles of liquid, possibly potions or some sort of alchemical concoctions.
----
In the deck below, Mahjik examines Alton's sword and does find some traces of blood on it. The only people he or any of the others can recalling having a rapier were Captain Kovack and Sasha.
The larder is across from the supply room. When you enter it, you discover the body of Rambar Terillo, the ship's cook, slumped against a wall. The majority of the ship's food stores were kept in the cargo hold, which is now entirely gone, but you do find enough preserved rations here in the larder to supply a single person with food for 24 days. Obviously, that won't last a group quite so long, but it's something.
Lorenz stares at the cooks body for a long moment and then looks to the others. "I didn't expect that. Who would kill the cook? His food wasn't that bad. Of course, maybe he poisoned us and someone like Alton caught him at it?"
"Anyone still on the ship when it wrecked.. is dead."
"I saw bites like this on one of.. my young brothers once, poor thing.. a snake bit him. The same has happened to our former cook."
1d20+1
Wrinkling his nose, Lorenz bent down to look a little closer at the body.
"The cook too? Other than Makao and Urza, Alton, the cook, and the captain - how many crew members worked the Jenivere? What happened to the others? The same fate as these - or were they working with the others?"
Mahjik finds bite marks on the cook's neck and shoulders, but he can't identify what made them .
Douena enters the larder, floating a wooden model of the Jenivere in the air in front of her and making a whooshing noise like waves gliding past. Spying the cook, she stops in mid-whoosh. "Why are there dead people in every room here?" she complains.
Watching Mahjik examine the bite marks, Lorenz leaned closer. Had he ever seen anything like that before?
"Hmmm. I can almost place it. Does that look like a bat bite to you?" Lorenz shows Douena the bites.
"Bites on the neck? Isn't that vampires?" Aakif looks a bit worried and starts digging through his gear for something.
Douena notices the weapon Lorenz is carrying at his belt. "Or maybe it's puncture wounds from a rapier?" she accuses wildly.
"Oh please. We are not going to start this now are we. I mean, it's not even been two hours yet. These men died protecting their ship. That's all we need to know right now. Let's gather everything. We need to be getting out of here." Urza looks at the remains of the cook and sighs. "And we leave them here. They're already dead. I'm more concerned with the living right now."
And a burial at sea is appropriate.
In what time remains, Mahjik carries the cook's body over to Alton's, giving both of them what looks like a restful post. Being unaccustomed to the religious ways here, he only stands next to them bringing to mind the joys they had experienced together; hoping that these would be enough to help the men find peace and move on in their afterlife.
Once everything is gathered and Mahjik has the bodies arranged, Urza joins him in silent reverie.
Lorenz watches the arrangement of the bodies of first mate and cook with comflicted emotions. Then he got back to work aiding in gathering all the supplies they were able to recover onto the deck of the ship and only after everything was prepared did he look to speak, his face betraying his discomfort.
"I believe that these men do deserve their burial at sea; all the stories say that's how it's done for men of the sea after all. But...I don't think we can afford to give up the question of determining the matter of their deaths quite yet. Whatever has happened to us...whoever is responsible for moving us to the beach...we need to know as much as we can about what has happened. Otherwise we might as well try exploring the island with our eyes closed."
He paused, struggling to think of the right thing to do and the right way to present it. "If none of us can discern what caused those wounds on the cook's neck and shoulders, I think we should see if we can find someone who can. That footlocker contains a holy symbol of some sort, right? Is it possible that the manacled man...Jask...is a cleric of some sort? Might he be able to tell us more? I think we should bring the cook's body with us, much as I hate to do so, to at least try. Otherwise, their deaths may very well be for nothing."
He tries to meet each of the other's eyes. "That's what I think we should do."
"That's fine. But everyone first carries their fair share of the load of necessary supplies. Then you and whomever can carry them too. Be careful not to spoil any of the food."
"If we bring the cook, we bring the first mate," Douena pipes up. "Leaving them in a wreck on the rocks isn't a real burial at sea anyway; it's just abandoning them." She tucks the model ship under her arm. "By the way, there's a bunch of money and some sort of bag full of potions or something in the captain's cabin."
"If we bring the cook, we bring the first mate," Douena pipes up. "Leaving them in a wreck on the rocks isn't a real burial at sea anyway; it's just abandoning them." She tucks the model ship under her arm. "By the way, there's a bunch of money and some sort of bag full of potions or something in the captain's cabin."
Lorenz looks at Douena, opens his mouth to say something, and then shuts it again. With a sigh, he goes into the captain's cabin and gathers all the potions and money and things Douena found in the locked drawer. The satchel he places over his shoulder, he puts the small money chest into a sack, and carefully wraps the bottle of brandy before putting it into the sack with the maps.
"If we've checked what there is to check, we should leave. The tide waits for no man and all that." Urza packs away all that he is to carry preparing to leave.
You gather together everything you've found and carefully make your way back across the rocks to the cliff. Getting everything up the cliff isn't too difficult as it's only 10 feet up from the rocks here. Once a couple of people have climbed up using the rope, others can pass the larger objects (and bodies) up to them before climbing up themselves. The tide is just starting to come in as you get the last of everything onto the ledge. The last people up the rope can feel a bit of water washing over the top of the rock.
You pull up the rope make your way quickly to the other end of the ledge where you repeat the process in reverse. The shore at the bottom here is starting to become shallow water, but you are able to avoid getting anything wet that shouldn't be wet.
Douena waits at the bottom of the rope while Lorenz switches it with the old hemp one. "Should we hide the brandy?" she asks hesitantly. "If Aerys sees it, she'll want to drink it all up, and all that will mean is that we won't have the brandy anymore and she'll still have the shakes and be miserable to everyone, just a day or two later."
Before descending from the cliff, Lorenz untied the short length of coarse hemp rope that had been removed from the wreckage of the rowboat and carried it over to where his silk rope waited. He untied and coiled his silk rope, shoved it into one of his sacks and then secured the hemp rope in its place. Only then did he descend after the others.
"I was thinking about that brandy. I can't decide if we should consider doling it out slowly, or save it for other reasons. On the other hand, I'm all for getting on her good side. Either way, I've got it wrapped with some old canvas and tucked away here." He patted one of his sacks. "We can keep it safe and out of her sight if we want."
"Well then," he said cheerfully to the others. "Let's get back to the others. Hopefully they weren't eaten by anything." He began the slow trek across the sand to where the others waited.
You make your way back to the beach where you woke up. The water level is slowly rising while you travel, so you spend much of the time wading in shallow water. Once the tide has come in fully, there will be no route back to the Jenivere other than swimming. Chances are, it will also be dislodged from the rocks at that time and then that will be the final end of the Jenivere.
Gelik is pacing back and forth when you reach the beach. He looks up as you approach, and actually seems to relax a little. Ishirou is standing over the equipment pile. He bows his head slightly at your return. Aerys is sitting on the beach, staring at the sand and doesn't seem to notice you at first. Or if she does, she doesn't acknowledge it. Jask, on the other hand, smiles broadly.
Most notable, however, is Sasha who is leading a horse with her across the beach. She heads straight to the group and to Aakif in particular. "Look what I found wandering the rocks on the east side of the cove! Since I highly doubt that horses are indigenous to this gods-forsaken place, I presume this must be yours. Must have swum for shore. Got pretty lucky with all those rocks out there. Only a couple of scrapes and bruises that should heal soon enough."
Lowering the equipment that he had been carrying to the ground, Lorenz stretched with a moan. "That horse is actually a welcome sight after all we've seen." He leaves the horse to Aakif, however, and returns to where his pack is waiting on the sand. He returns the rope to it, as well as tucking the sack with the maps, log and bottle of brandy into it. Only once the sack is placed in the pack does he remove the maps and the log, leaving the brandy within.
He holds up the maps so that everyone can see them. "Any of you capable of reading these? It'd be nice to figure out for sure where we are."
The captain log he holds on to. Sitting down on the sand, legs stretched out in front of him, he opens the log to the end and begins to read, moving backwards from the latest entry.
"I certainly can!"
Gelik marches over and takes the maps from Lorenz. He spreads them out on the ground in front of him and proceeds to peer at them intently, circling around them to look at them from different angles. "Now, let's see here..." he mutters quietly. "I wonder... Hmmm... Yes... It would seem that we have shipwrecked on the island of Smuggler's Shiv. Smuggler's Shiv...now where have I heard of that before?"
The captain log he holds on to. Sitting down on the sand, legs stretched out in front of him, he opens the log to the end and begins to read, moving backwards from the latest entry.
The Captain’s Log
An examination of this log reveals that the Jenivere’s captain seemed to be suffering from some sort of madness that grew over the course of the ship’s final voyage. Earlier entries from previous voyages are precise in recording progress and events along the way, as are entries from the first two-thirds of this last trip. Yet as one reads further, the more recent the entries get, the less common they become — in some cases, several days are missing entries. What entries do appear are strangely short, focusing more and more on one of the passengers — the Varisian scholar Ieana, with whom the captain seems to have become obsessed. Several entries are nothing more than poorly written love poems to Ieana, while others bemoan Captain Kovack’s inability to please her or catch her attention. Near the end, the entries begin to take on a more ominous tone with the captain starting to complain that other members of the crew are eyeing “his Ieana.” In particular, he suspects his first mate is in love with her, and writes several times about how he wishes Alton would just “have an accident.” The final entry is perhaps the most disturbing, for in it the captain writes of how he’s changed course for Smuggler’s Shiv at Ieana’s request. He hopes that the two of them can make a home on the remote island, but also notes that the crew are growing increasingly agitated at the ship’s new course. The captain muses that “something may need to be done about the crew” if their suspicions get any worse.
"Smuggler's Shiv?" Jask says, a look of concern on his face. "I know of it. Did you by any chance find keys to my manacles or any of my equipment?"
The more Lorenz reads, the more disturbed he becomes. Finally, he snaps the journal shut. "By Cayden's sword! It was the captain! And that woman...Ieana. Somehow she bewitched the man."
Hearing Jask's question, Lorenz looked away from the journal. "As a matter of fact, we may have. Are you a cleric, perchance?"
He reached into his pouch where the keys lay waiting and took hold of them, waiting for Jask's answer.
Mahjik looks unusually solemn. "We found a great many things; most of them questions. Allow me to begin with the most important discovery. As you can see we found the first mate and the cook. Both killed but what looks like some sort of treachery. We have trouble identifying the bite marks on the cook - but Alton survived on the ship for a long time until poison took him away. If we could've been faster! It is my hope that someone among you can still find out more; every clue revealed secures our future better."
Towards Jask specifically, "We have found keys, maybe one of them will unlock your shackles."
And to everybody, "There were also food rations, enough to cover for a few days. But we should be careful to ration these reserves and try to become self-supporting as soon as possible."
Jask looks over to Lorenz. "Will my answer determine whether you use those keys? he asks. Before Lorenz can answer, he continues, "It does not matter. I will answer anyway. Yes, I am a cleric of Nethys, the All-Seeing Eye, god of magic. I hope this will not be held against me."