"Yes, reefclaws. They're kind of like a lobster-eel and they get pretty big, about as big as us halflings. I hear their claws make for some good eating when boiled or steamed, but I've never had the desire to put myself at that much risk for a luxury dinner."
"Well, if in our travels, we come across them and more importantly, they cross us, then perhaps we can bring you some of the meat. You have been most kind to us."
Alara's stomach growls.
"Speaking of meat..."
She rubs her belly. "Man, I'm hungry."
Piper is about to write something...
But then his stomach growls.
He silently chuckles, his face red in embarrassment.
Sharrd asks Walthus. "If we do find some snakes, should we try and capture them for you?"
Walthus is quick to respond to Sharrd's question, "Oh, goodness no. Best to let them be. If they come to my house, they come to my house. The door's open to them and I invite them. But I don't go out of my way to disturb them. That just upsets them and they're likely to bite you for it."
Walthus has plenty of fish for all, you can partake and share if you have anything to contribute to the meal. The halfling puts on a reasonably good table for someone who professes to want to live alone (and seems to mean it considering how remote his home is).
Alara eagerly gobbles up her fish dinner. During her meal, she asks the group: "So, where should we go after resting up?"
"If the goblins were a problem...and the undead dealt with a good bit of that problem, then it is logical that the undead are now a problem that needs to be solved. Besides, perhaps they have some of the goblin heads that we might return, since by our logic previously, if we kill the killer, we handled the problem"
At Ash's words, Piper pauses in his meal, nods and writes: 'I agree. Though I do not think that skeletons would take the heads of goblins. So, we have to find those shipwrecks and stop the undead. Maybe get rid of the Sandpoint Devil, if we have the time afterwards. Unfortunately, all of that will require us to move through the marsh.' He gives a visible shudder at that thought.
Sharrd enjoy's Walthus' meal and helps clean up afterwards. "Do you mind if I store some of this gear here?" he asks Walthus. "I don't relish lugging it through the swamp.
"Oh, feel free to store whatever you want here. It will remain safe with me.
As far as moving through the marsh, that can be difficult. The goblins may have some trails, though, that may make it easier. I think that wreck closest to the goblin village should be accessible mostly via land. I don't believe there are any Soggy River channels you'd have to cross at any rate, maybe just a few rills or so. And there's an old fisherman's trail that's not too far from the other wreck and that other marking. That looks like it's part of the southern border cliffs, so it may be a cave of some sort."
Alara dabs at her mouth with a napkin.
"It sounds like we won't need to swim. That's certainly a plus for me, at least."
"I believe it is a plus to most of us, Alara," Ash says with a soft smile.
Piper breathes a sigh of relief, happy in the knowledge that they wouldn't have to swim.
Sharrd doesn't mind swimming or getting dirty. But he does leave the sack of 11 goblin ears in Walthus' shack, replacing it with a sky rocket. Alara, how much of this backpack is really necessary? he asks nicely
Alara takes her satchel back, setting it down on the floor. After sorting through it, she picks out a wooden holy symbol of Desna and puts it around her neck.
She also sets her shortbow & arrows down with it. "We can leave it here if Walthus won't mind looking after it." She says, fingering one of her new shuriken.
Piper just waits patiently.
A second night at Walthus's shack settles in, dark and riot with all of the nighttime noise of the marsh nocturnal wildlife croaking and chirping the night away. It's still a pretty peaceful atmosphere, though, and remains undisturbed by any threats detectable by the night sentries.
Walthus again puts together a decent breakfast of eggs, bacon, and bread to send you off in the morning with bellies as full as you want them.
Where to first? Walthus's guidance suggests that the closer wreck on the map could be reached via a return trip to the Licktoad village. Alternatively, it appears a longer loop on the outer road and path will get you onto a older trail that closes in on the further of the two wrecks.
As Alara skips down the stairs from the guest room, something seems different about her. Almost as if her steps are incredibly light, and she could float off.
She is hardly making a sound, and she doesn't seem to realize it.
"So, where to first?"
Bowing graciously to Walthus before they depart, "Thank you, good sir. We will see you again, be sure of it."
Looking to his companions, "If we seek the problems, we should head to the village and go from there, since we know that is where the undead struck already..."
Piper's downstairs enjoying the breakfast that Walthus made. Hearing Alara speak behind him, Piper jumps and turns around, his eyes wide in shock. 'Where did she come from?'
At her question, Piper signs to her: 'I think we should investigate the closer wreck.' To the others, he writes the suggestion on his board.
Alara arches an eyebrow at Piper, not quite understanding why he's so startled.
"Er... sorry, I didn't mean to make you jump like that." She says, signing as well.
"I thought everyone heard me coming downstairs, didn't they?" She asks, confused.
Ash is right. Let's backtrack those undead suckers back to whatever ship they come from." To Alara's question, he just shakes his head. "Cats make more noise, Alara."
Piper just shakes his head. He signs: 'It's all right, Alara. Just startled me a bit. No. I didn't hear you. It's like you floated on in here.'
Alara's confusion worsens. She looks down at her feet, then over to a tree. She jogs over to the tree and back again.
This time, she's listening for her footsteps.
She can hear them just fine... but she does notice how quiet they are.
"Wow..." Is all that she can say.
"Come to think of it, ever since last night, I feel lighter on my feet. Like I can run faster & jump higher than before." She thinks aloud.
"Well it seems we are ready, so let us head out to the closest marking on the map."
The trip back to the goblin village takes relatively little effort and time since the group is beginning to know the way so well. Once there, it takes only a few moments to discern a number of trails radiating out from the village. They are, for the most part constrained by the major channel of the Soggy River that runs just south of the village so they're easy to find and follow.
One, marked on the map in red, heads off in the direction of the first mark on the map. But Masamune is also able discern another curious one that seems to head directly down to the river channel (in magenta). This second one is made up of medium-sized boots and possibly bone feet and it heads both out of the channel to the village and back to the channel from the village. It seems you have also found the route the skeletons took to and from the raid on the village…
The hike along the trail to the marked location doesn't take too long, maybe a half hour of trudging through the soggy ground and occasional retrieval of boots sucked off by unexpected sinkholes of mud. Anticipation builds as you start to be able to hear the distant sound of the bay's waves. But once you get there, if you expected to find something really spectacular, it's hard not to be disappointed.
There are the remains of a burnt wooden structure - and one relatively recently burned at that since the burn scar on the surrounding grass and other vegetation has not been overgrown yet. The shape is clearly that of a ship with many of the beams making up its main structure still in place but thoroughly ruined. With the damage done, it's hard to identify exactly what kind of ship it was, but it wasn't particularly large. It maybe measured only about 70 feet from bow to stern. Part of its remains sit in a salty water pool while the rest sit up on drier land.
The whole site is surrounded by parts of a crudely fashioned wooden fence as if someone had marked the wreck as their territory. Much of the fence appears to have been knocked down with some of the timbers roughly scattered about. Just inside the fence on the near side appears to be the rotting remains of a large creature. Rot and carrion animals have taken their toll but it appears to have once been a horse.
Alara whistles at the sight of the wreck. "Wow. This one's seen much better days." She says, taking a look around. She readies her nunchaku in case any skeletons are still lingering about.
Piper walks forward, taking out his flute.
"Let's not waste too much time here. Who knows where those skeletons may be lurking."
Masamune begins to move forward keeping his weapon at the ready.
So far, there seem to be no threats around the first wreck, living or undead. Alara notices that enough of the decorative fittings survived to find the name of the vessel. Written in Tien, it indicates the ship was named Kaijitsu Star.
As far as other interesting finds, you find the remains of two more creatures of significance - in this case both burned in the fire that consumed the shipwreck. One is a small humanoid skeleton - probably goblin judging by the shape of the head - and another smallish animal - possibly a dog.
"Kaijitsu...that's odd. This must be the vessel that brought Ameiko's family here..."
"Kaijitsu Star..."
At the mention of Ameiko, Alara turns to Ash. "This was Ameiko-san's ship? Huh..."
"It bears her family name..."
"Probably not her ship because as far as I know she only owns that shop. Maybe this was a relative of hers?"
There are some things that you do know about the Kaijitsus - thanks to a variety of knowledge skills among you (chiefly, Know (local) and Know (History)).
The Kaijitsu family was involved in the founding of Sandpoint (along with the Valdemars, Scarnettis, and Deverins) about 50 years ago. Ameiko's grandfather Rokuro Kaijitsu, a successful glassmaker in Magnimar, set up the Sandpoint Glassworks to make use of the excellent natural resources for glass in the area. Ameiko's father, Lonjiku, in turn, ran the glassworks until just a few years ago when all hell broke loose and goblins infiltrated the factory and murdered pretty much everyone within, including Lonjiku.
Rokuro Kaijitsu is the first known Kaijitsu in the region, having come to the city of Magnimar from points unknown with a wife an a few more extended relatives. Rumor has it that the Kaijitsus are exiles from Minkai because of some kind of criminality or other great dishonor and reached the continent of Avistan by traveling over the Crown of the World. That may all be fanciful since rumor also has it that they were very closed about the family history.
Piper is awed by the sight of the ship. His shock grows at the fact that this is part of Ameiko's family's legacy. He writes: 'Maybe we should bring something from the site to her. To show her that this is here.' He carefully ventures inside the shipwreck.
Sharrd is also excited about the possibility of finding some keepsake for Ameiko. He follows Piper on board.
Alara touches the hairpin still in her hair, her eyes still darting about.
Wait... Kaijitsu... weren't they the family that fled Minkai for some reason? Dishonor or some such? And Rokuro...
She puzzles over this while looking around the wreck.
...in fact, she puzzles over it so much that she stares at her feet the whole time and misses much.
The area around the ship shows evidence of a fight of some sort. There appear to be scorch marks of small, fiery explosions. There are a couple of broken dogslicers scattered about. All of that, having survived to be found by you, must be relatively recent with no time for the marsh vegetation to have grown up around it.
As far as anything else of value, there's a lot of charred debris. Maybe some of the wood was nicely carved at one point. Piper does find one object, smudged badly by soot but partly intact. It appears to be jade and silver - a lantern made to look like a coiled dragon. It will need some maintenance to be worth its full value, but that may range up to about 100 gp or so.
While others have concentrated on the ship, William has been getting a look around the rest of the fenced in area.
"I'm no expert on goblins, but it looks to me like this fence was about as likely to be goblin-made as anything else. So that's probably the work of the goblin cannibal that Walthus mentioned. Looks like maybe the other goblins finally took care their cannibal problem.
I don't see any sign of graves or turned up earth, so I don't think the skeletons came from here."
"While we are here...this is very interesting. We could look in the ship and make sure that they dealt with the cannibal. After all, if he was run out and not killed, he had to be stronger than the average goblin..."
Masamune seeing that they are going to take some time here decides to thoroughly search the ship and the area around the ship.
"Well he might have some magical gear, but I have no clue how to identify such things."
"I can look for them, at the very least." With that said, Ash casts Detect Magic and looks around slowly.
Piper picks up the lantern and turns it in his hand. He then holds up to the lantern to the others so they can get a closer look.
Alara, finally looking up, takes a look at the dragon lantern. She whistles.
"Think Ameiko-san would like this? It needs a polish, but I think it'll make for a nice souvenir!"
"I bet Ameiko would love it." Sharrd says. He says a word in draconic and makes a rubbing motion.
Sharrd's attention is firmly set on the latern and the soot starts to come off. As he cleans it he asks. "Can I be the one who presents it?"
Piper strokes his chin. He then takes Sharrd's hand and leads him to the carving of the ship's name. He writes: 'Why not give her the name carving from the ship? It's part of her legacy, after all.'
Sharrd starts to look over the nameplate of the ship, trying to figure out a way to remove it without splintering it.
"If you want the nameplate, mind if I try taking it off?" Alara asks, walking over and drawing her dagger. She slides it between the wood of the ship and the nameplate, and begins to work it back and forth, trying to pry it loose.