Shortly before the Free Captains’ Regatta, the Salty Flagon took a ship which yielded among its plunder a locked chest full of papers. Curious and slightly bored, Captain Pierce Jerrell, his first mate Rory Ferguson (Gray Fergie), and his wizard Eldon Zamborini looked them over and determined that these were the notes of one Brevis Danby, who considered himself a hunter of treasures and collector of exotic magic items. Apparently he had headed out on a collecting expedition into the Shackles and met his end before he could locate even one of the items on his list. The guide he had hired had packed up the man’s effects and sent them to his family, only to have them intercepted by Jerrell and his crew.
Captain Jerrell was highly intrigued by this find. Some of the treasures had been rumored for years, while others were completely unknown to him. Yet this outsider had managed to collect information on them and to some degree sort fact from rumor. Not all the information in the notes was easily accessible; they were written in various languages, including some in what seemed to be nonsense symbols which Pierce took to be some type of cipher. Starting with what seemed to be the doomed man’s strongest lead, he resolved to go to Port Peril to look for a man who had a map.
Jerrell reasoned that the captain in question (Jerevan Hart) was likely to be in Port Peril before or after the Regatta, so that would be the easiest place to locate him. During the trip Jerrell and his assistants sorted through the material as best they could, then resolved to try to find people in Port Peril to translate some of the mysterious notes. Pierce did not find his quarry in town before the Regatta, so the Salty Flagon traveled with the rest of the onlookers out to watch the race and cheer on the Osprey,the ship of the Captain's current lady. Back in Port Peril, Pierce discovered the Elenore (the ship he was hunting) had arrived in time for the celebration held in honor of the Osprey, which had won the Regatta.
After the Osprey (and with it Mistress Lilabeth, the Captain's ladyfriend) had left Port Peril to claim their winner's prize, Captain Jerrell made it a point to casually meet Captain Hart. Over the course of a few days they socialized, and finally Jerrell managed to get the man to put up the map as stakes in a game of chance. Pierce won, and is now ready to head out to find the first of the treasures which before were only rumor. He thinks it would be an excellent challenge to locate all the items on the collector’s list. Some of them might be valuable, and some he might like to keep himself, but it would certainly gain some great bragging rights in the company of the Free Captains to have achieved such a thing.
Unexpectedly, in acquiring the map Captain Jerrell has also acquired an enemy. Lilabeth has a disturbing dream, which she interprets to mean that Pierce is in immediate danger of his life. She gets the Osprey’s wizard Zarec to teleport her to Port Peril, where she gets together with Jerrell, arriving in time to ward off any harm to him at that moment. Deciding someone needs to protect him from the danger which he insists on discounting, Lilabeth joins the Salty Flagon. This is going to startle the crew a little, because they’ve seen Lilabeth on board sometimes as the Captain’s current lady but they are unaware of her martial prowess.
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This campaign is a spin-off from an on-going in-person "Skull and Shackles" campaign.
