The citizens of Bonjo Tombo do not seem particularly interested in making a good impression on visitors.
We sailed south from Senghor. With the winds behind us, we reached our destination in about a day and a half. Along the way, some of the crew exchanged tales about the Isle of Bonjo Tombo – none of them made the place seem welcoming. Valanthe contributed a legend (of quite recent origin) that the volcano would explode shortly after a great pirate captain left the island.
When we arrived at the island, the peak of its volcano was glowing and dark mists hung low over the jungle. Some of us rowed to the island. As we approached, Valanthe shouted out to the people on the beach. “Greetings! We come in peace!”
The six locals charged at us, wielding blowguns and spiked clubs. When we finally managed to defeat them, we decided to follow the two who had escaped through the jungle. (We briefly considered taking our boat up the river. Then Valanthe spotted dire crocodiles in the water. “I didn’t summon those!” said Bit.)
Tek Tek found a path through the jungle and Slink disarmed traps along the way. We reached a village and stealthily observed it for a while. The locals had a number of prisoners, and eventually a group of the locals took some of the prisoners out of the village along a path leading higher up the mountainside. We followed and prepared an ambush.
The battle that followed was somewhat confusing – it involved earth elementals, grease, a rat swarm, a summoned dretch and its stinking cloud, a large sphere of water, frost, several lightning bolts and a leopard. Finally we prevailed and rescued the (perhaps slightly baffled) prisoners. One of them - a man named Chato Atua - said that he knew the way up the mountain. He also said that he wanted to get back to his own people and lead a mission to rescue his companions who were still captive in the village. Valanthe offered to help.
We continued to climb the mountainside. We crossed the river via a bridge of water that Dharak sang into solidity.
In the evening, we set up camp in a part of the jungle that seemed possibly relatively less dangerous (at least it was well away from the river and its dire crocodiles). But before dawn, our camp was attacked by a stealthy shambling mound.
We had to cover Tek Tek in grease to help her escape from the plant-creature’s constricting vines (Tek Tek was not impressed). Several earth elementals and many rays of frost later, we managed to defeat the mound.
Later that morning, we reached a cave in the mountain. On the black volcanic sand in front of the cave entrance was an upturned boat, badly damaged. Inside the cave, we found a skeleton half-buried in sand, and Slink noticed a pressure plate that was presumably the trigger for some kind of trap. Dharak used prestidigitation to change the colour of the sand, marking out the area with signs of warning (in case we needed to run back that way quickly).
We explored one tunnel. Dharak cast light on a pebble to help Jonas and Tek Tek see in the darkness. Soon we encountered a serpentine creature with batlike wings and glowing eyes. Dharak identified it as an ‘Eye-killer’, and he remembered that it was supposed to be able to absorb natural or magical light and emit it in the form of dangerous rays from its eyes. When Dharak announced this, I created an illusion of a red velvet stage curtain between us and the creature, hanging not quite all the way to the ground so that it blocked eye contact but still allowed us to see the coils of the creature's body. Jonas turned into a bat and Tek Tek swallowed the glowing pebble. We backed away and found a different tunnel to explore. (Along the way, Tek Tek experimented with the effect of opening and closing her beak while the lit pebble was lodged in her crop.)
Slink noticed another trap, which we avoided, and we reached a large irregular chamber with a pool of water at one side. For some reason, Jonas-as-bat seemed to dislike the pool, so we avoided that too. Slink then found a secret door at a convenient distance from the pool.
The secret door led to another chamber. This one contained an altar and an inhuman statue grasping an ornate ship’s wheel in its clawed hands. Although the wheel had a magical aura, it did not seem nearly powerful enough to be the Wheel of Chaos we were seeking. Dharak used magic to translate some infernal writing into a request for “that which sets a pirate free” to be placed on the altar.
Our first thought was ‘the wind’ - Dharak tried blowing over the altar, but this had no effect. Since there were traces of bloodstains on the altar, Tek Tek tried putting a few drops of her blood on it. The statue moved very slightly, but this didn’t seem to be enough. Our next idea was water – we tried fresh water and then a cup full of brackish water (obtained carefully, with the aid of mage hand, from the pool in the previous chamber) – but neither of these made any difference. So then we placed a rope tried into a noose on the altar. The statue loosened its grasp on the wheel, allowing it to be turned (Jonas expressed battish dislike of this solution to the riddle).
More infernal writing appeared, and Dharak translated. Slink mentioned that he had spotted five secret doors in the room. We worked out that we could select a door to open by how we turned the wheel. The infernal writing suggested that one of these doors would lead us to the object of our search. However, the verses were vague. Our discussion of history and pirate lore yielded no hints.
“Who sets up something like this?” we asked ourselves. The most probable answer: someone who hates pirates and wants to make them suffer by forcing them to stand around thinking instead of leaping into bold action.
Tek Tek cast augury twice to seek advice for the doors that seemed most promising to us. The answer in both cases was “woe”. (We began to discuss the odds that the person-who-hated-pirates also wanted to make pirates run very fast away from lava.)
We opened the next least unpromising door and found a short tunnel containing a wheel (without any impressive magical aura) and what looked liked an arrow trap. We closed that door quickly.
We chose another door and opened it with trepidation - we were half-expecting to find an unhappy and undead maiden. We were confronted by a spectral image of a young woman.
The spectral woman was surrounded by an aura of fear, which caused Dharak to flee from the room. My attempts to harm the undead creature with electricity failed completely. Fortunately, Tek Tek could infuse her warhammer with the ability to disrupt undead.
Slink had summoned Bit and Valanthe, who now ran into the room ... just after Tek Tek struck a second time and the spectral woman disappeared. “So what’s the problem?” Valanthe asked.
We searched the coffin in the alcove that the spectral woman had emerged from, and we found a gold locket engraved with a message from a “Lord K”.
We chose another door to open. This one led to a tunnel that curved away from us. Slink went ahead to search stealthily. He found an area with eighteen graves. Beyond them was an underground river, and in the middle of the river was an island.
When we arrived, I cast fly on Valanthe, and Bit summoned air elementals. Valanthe and the elementals flew across to the island, where they found some treasure, including a large ship’s wheel. Valanthe picked up the wheel and flew back. The air elementals started gathering some of the rest of the treasure, and wights emerged from the graves.
We ran back through the tunnel and into the room with all the secret doors. We had a theory that the sixth position of the wheel would flood the room with lava. Perhaps we could turn the wheel and flee the room just before the lava arrived, thereby leading the pursuing wights into a fiery trap. Dharak decided to try.
He turned the wheel, looked somewhat concerned, then quickly let go of the wheel. “This seems like a bad idea.”
Bit used her carpentry and other crafting skills to force the door closed and jam it, moments before the wights reached us.
We carried the wheel and the other treasure outside. Dharak explained that some kind of force had attempted to pull him away from the room, and he had only just managed to resist it. He had an intuitive sense that the force would have transported him into the heart of the volcano.
Tek Tek took a sand bath.
We examined the wheel that Valanthe had brought back from the island in the underground river. Its magic aura was convincingly powerful - this was probably the Wheel of Chaos we had been searching for. However, Valanthe remembered that there were two doors we hadn’t opened yet - we had avoided them because of the results of Tek Tek’s augury spells. “Do we trust auguries?” Valanthe asked. “This is our chance to prove our daring and defy fate!”
Tek Tek was unimpressed.
But we went back through the tunnels to the room with the doors. One of the remaining doors led into a tunnel that appeared to be trapped - it looked as though a large block of stone could fall to close off the tunnel, and there were also small openings in the walls. Bit summoned earth elementals to stand beneath the block and try to hold it up if it fell. Dharak and Valanthe went ahead to investigate. They found a room that looked like a lavishly decorated captain’s cabin, with a gold-plated ship’s wheel attached to the wall. “Gold-plated?” said Valanthe. “Really? We don’t need this - it’s gaudy.”
“I think something’s happened to our captain,” Dharak said quietly.
Valanthe collected the other valuables, and she and Dharak returned to the main room. Then Dharak summoned an unseen servant to fetch the gold-plated wheel. The block crashed down onto the earth elementals, who struggled to hold it up from the floor. Water poured into the tunnel, flooding the room beyond. The gold-plated wheel approached us, pushed slowly through the swirling water by an unseen force.
Once we had this wheel in our possession, we left the room. Bit sent air elementals to trigger the spear trap we had found earlier. Then we opened the remaining door. A spectral, irritable ship’s captain emerged from an alcove and attacked. By this time, Tek Tek had reluctantly left her sand bath to rejoin us. She helped us destroy the spectre.
In the alcove, we found various magic items including a pair of boots.
“MAGIC BOOTS!” Bit noted with some degree of enthusiasm.
After we collected all these additional pieces of treasure, we went back outside to where Jonas was waiting for us. Jonas started to explain something to Valanthe.
“WE FOUND BOOTS!” Bit mentioned. “THEY’RE MAGIC! AND PRETTY!”
“Sorry,” said Valanthe. “I can’t hear you over the gnome.”
We started walking back into the jungle. Bit was apparently disappointed that the volcano had not yet erupted, and she tried stamping her foot and saying “Boom!” in an attempt to trigger something. Just as Jonas was finally managing to explain that he had found a folding boat among the treasure, we were ambushed by aggressive monkey-like creatures.
We were able to defeat the monkey-like creatures fairly easily, but we still decided to avoid the rest of the jungle and test the folding boat by travelling down the river. We kept a careful watch for dire crocodiles.
We only just managed to escape from some dire crocodiles.
The monkey-like creatures and the dire crocodiles caused us to wonder whether the Wheel of Chaos was drawing trouble to us. Perhaps this was just normal, day-to-day life on this island. However, most of the crew agreed that it would be best not to attach the Wheel to any ship we’re travelling on.
But we have two ships, and it occurs to me that we therefore have scope for some interesting experiments...
On an island in a river in a tunnel past a door
in an island in an ocean filled with islands famed in lore,
on a heap of other treasure there’s a wheel that is The Wheel,
but some doors have not been opened - is there something left to steal?
Turn a wheel to find some tunnels, and some wheels that have been trapped,
and a portal to the lava, and a ghost who can’t be zapped.
(Pirates won’t be safe and sound while there’s plunder underground.)
As we were rowing back to our ships, we were attacked by surprisingly aggressive sea urchins, which were destined to become our dinner. But during the combat, Valanthe had been pierced by one of the urchins’ spines. Soon afterwards, the skin around the injury began to darken. “The black spot!” Valanthe said in alarm.
“That’s a very boring colour,” said Bit. “Why are you doing that?”
Dharak had heard of these urchins and warned Valanthe that their poison would make it difficult for her to swim and hold her breath.
“We need to test this,” Valanthe said.
Bit started tying a rope around Valanthe’s waist but got distracted halfway through the task.
“What are you doing?” Dharak asked.
Valanthe jumped overboard. “It’s important to know wheth... blub... blub...”
Dharak dived into the water to rescue Valanthe. He pulled her back into the rowing-boat and asked her some mostly rhetorical questions about her behaviour.
“I like having Valanthe as captain!” Bit noted. “It’s exciting!”
We finally made it back to the ships. Tek Tek had a serious conversation with Sandara and reported that the crew had no magic available to cure Valanthe of the poison.
We placed the Wheel of Chaos in a rowing-boat tied behind the Plunderstruck, with lanterns arranged around the Wheel so that the crew on watch could see it. The next day, I travelled in the rowing-boat and experimented with the Wheel’s ability to control winds, while The Pointy End (aka the Unfinished Business aka The Black Stiletto aka The Control) sailed nearby. By altering the direction of the prevailing winds, we were able to speed up our return journey to Senghor considerably.
On the second day, someone spotted the reflection of something in the water. Dharak sang a melody to smooth out the waves, and now that we had a clear view, the glint looked like gold. We decided to investigate. Bit sent Slink down - he returned after a while with a gold coin in his mouth. According to Bit, Slink had seen more coins in the wreck of a ship.
Since Valanthe was still under the effect of the urchin’s poison, I cast air bubble and touch of the sea on her. We tied ropes around the waists of Valanthe and Dharak so we could pull them up if necessary, and Dharak cast message so we could communicate easily.
I remained on board, and it was not entirely clear to me what was happening after Valanthe and Dharak dived into the ocean. It seemed that Valanthe was being attacked, and so Bit summoned water elementals.
Through the message spell, Dharak sent us an explanation: “My friend Mr Tentacles the Crab told me to go into the wreck.” I decided it was time to get Dharak back onto the ship.
This was surprisingly difficult. When we finally pulled him to the surface, he seemed to choke when he tried to breathe air. At one place (within Dharak’s reach), the rope had been cut nearly all the way through. I called for the crew to bring across a barrel of drinking water.
Bit summoned more water elementals.
We hauled Dharak onto the deck and into the barrel so he could breathe.
Then we pulled Valanthe back. She had been injured by a tentacled creature - her skin had changed to a clear shiny membrane where she had been struck. It seemed that Valanthe’s cutlass and Bit’s waves of water elementals had driven a strange tentacled creature away. “It was a thing!” Bit explained. “A huge not-crab thing!”
She drew a sketch of the creature, and I recognised it as an aboleth. I knew that these beings had the ability to create illusions (for example, images of crabs and coins), and they could also dominate the minds of other creatures.
When Bit summoned Slink back, he dived into the water and started swimming south. “Slink?” Bit asked plaintively.
Dharak raised his head above the water in the barrel. “My friend says we should go south. We should go south.”
Sandara cast protection from evil on him. This lasted long enough for Dharak to express his dislike of being dominated and to advise us on the best ways to keep him from swimming south. The effect that made him choke on air soon wore off, but he started trying to persuade us to go south again.
Valanthe went back into the water and collected together the entire hoard that we had gained from our encounter with the aboleth: two gold coins and a pearl.
Whenever Bit summoned Slink, he stayed with her briefly, but soon dived into the ocean and began swimming south again. Dharak spent the rest of our journey to Senghor manacled in the brig.
Despite all the fascinating things that had happened to us recently, the crew decided we should sell the Wheel of Chaos as soon as possible. When we reached Senghor, Valanthe found someone to cure her of the various afflictions she had acquired during our journey from the island. Then she took the Wheel and set out to meet the merchant who had commissioned us to find it. On the docks, the harbour master and some accompanying officials started to approach Valanthe, but they seemed to get distracted by something and they walked in another direction. “But... but...” said Valanthe. “This wheel is a double-edged sword.”
We found the merchant, who examined the Wheel and was keen to purchase it from us. We warned him to take care, as the Wheel did indeed seem to attract trouble.
“Why would someone like you want something like this?” sobbed Bit, still inconsolable over Slink’s absence. “I’m confused... your shoes are wrong...”
Once we had sold the Wheel of Chaos, we dispersed through the town to go shopping, recruiting and tale-spinning. I collected rumours of other mysteries and wonders in the region. There were stories of a fog-shrouded ship whose bell was the signal for disaster, and of a man who constructed a suit of armour that allowed him to walk on the sea-floor. The next day, I heard a more outlandish rumour - apparently, a blue-skinned gnome had bought the entire top shelf at a local tavern, and she had spent the night summoning a succession of lantern archons and trying to get them drunk with her. However, Bit seemed fine in the morning, so this story was clearly a fiction.
We decided to return to Tidewater Rock and find out whether the expedition’s increased renown would be enough to persuade Lady Agarta to form an alliance with us. Bit was overjoyed when Slink finally freed himself from the mental control of the aboleth and stopped trying to swim south.
During the journey, the crew made a brief detour to raid a coastal village and free some slaves (and steal things).
One evening, the lookouts spotted a whaling ship, sitting low in the water amid a thin fog. Valanthe gave orders to pursue it, but we lost sight of it among the mists and shadows. Soon afterwards, the air became clear, but there was no sign of the whalers.
The next evening, we saw another unseasonable fog and heard the muffled tolling of a bell. The fog cleared and our two ships were alone on the ocean.
Late on the following day, another fog appeared. From it, a rotting ship with tattered sails emerged and bore down on us. A bell tolled.
It seemed that the other ship was trying to ram us. Dharak was at the wheel and turned The Pointy End aside just in time. The two ships scraped alongside each other, and the crew of the other ship threw grappling hooks across. We could just read the discoloured nameplate: the rotting ship was called The Death Knell.
“It looks like you’re a bit late for assistance,” Valanthe shouted, “but we’re coming aboard anyway!”
Some boarding happened in both directions. Tek Tek flew to the other ship, Valanthe leapt gracefully over, and several brine zombies lumbered onto The Pointy End. It seemed that the crew and the captain of the rotting ship had all died some time ago.
We attacked the zombies with cutlasses, earth elementals, hammers and frost. Tek Tek was harpooned by the undead captain. “You will join me in my eternal torment,” the captain said while a ghostly hand reached towards Tek Tek.
“Rack off!” said Tek Tek. A blow from her warhammer finally destroyed the undead captain.
The Death Knell began to sink. We cut Tek Tek free from the harpoon, which had been tied to the Death Knell’s mast, and we also hurried to sever all the grapple lines before the Death Knell dragged The Pointy End down. Dharak and some water elementals went to search the hold quickly for plunder (they also found lots of skulls belowdecks, but they left these behind). I flew across to take the ship’s bell. I wrapped rags around its clapper before bringing it on to The Pointy End.
With its aura of necromancy and its rare provenance, the bell may make a useful gift if we find someone we want to impress...
Our expedition stopped by Rickety’s. “You’re alive!” was how Rickety greeted us.
Bit related some of our recent adventures to him. “They were all dead! And that was before we got to them!”
Once we were on land, Valanthe and Dharak repaid an earlier debt to Rickety and also purchased more weapons for the Plunderstruck. There was some discussion about ordering magic sails.
Then Valanthe showed the Death Knell’s bell to Rickety, who turned slightly pale. “That’s... interesting. Please leave it on your ship.”
According to the local druid, the weather had continued to be dry. There had been a little bit of rain, but the monsoon had not reached the area.
As we were preparing to leave, Rickety advised us to avoid the Shackles. “You’re still minnows.”
On the way to Tidewater Rock, we studied the bell more closely. After some discussion of legends and arcane lore with a newly knowledgeable Slink, Dharak said something about the destruction of the bell being the only way to ensure that the Death Knell and its crew would never return. But we still wanted to know what the bell actually did, so we performed an experiment. In a small rowing-boat, we set up the bell above a few dead rats supplied by Tek Tek. Bit summoned water elementals to push the boat away from our ships and ring the bell. Nothing happened. The sombre tone of the bell seemed out of place in the daylight, however, so we repeated the experiment in the evening. Again, nothing happened.
For some reason, a few of the crew were starting to look at us a bit strangely.
We sailed onwards and arrived at Tidewater Rock.
“I... don’t think we’ll be needing any hostages this time,” said one of the guards when he saw Bit.
Bit had prepared some food to share with the people of Tidewater Rock. “It’s not explosive,” she explained. “But still fun!”
We climbed up complicated ladders and twisting staircases to a tower room where we met with Lady Agasta, who said she had heard about some of our recent exploits.
“What you may not have heard,” Valanthe began, “is-”
“We found a ghost ship,” said Bit, “and Tek Tek got harpooned to a mast, and we found lots of skulls, and then it sank.”
Dharak told the tale in more detail.
Valanthe and Agasta then discussed the possibility of an alliance. Agasta made an offer. “We can arrange a Shackles marriage for a year.”
Valanthe accepted.
“It’s a wedding!” said Bit. “I need to get back to the ship!”
“Watch that step!” Agasta said.
“Aaaaaahhh...” said Bit. We heard the sound of a gnome bouncing.
Valanthe and Agasta discussed more details of the alliance. Valanthe would be able to use the title of ‘Lord of Tidewater Rock’, and Agasta offered her a dowry of two items of great value: a buccaneer’s breastplate and a farglass. Valanthe gave her the deep platinum necklace from the sahuagin prince, and she suggested that Sandara could perform the ceremony. Agasta agreed, and it seemed that the ceremony would be held immediately. I flew down to our ship to fetch Bit.
I found her surrounded by sketches of shoes. “Now?” she said. “But that’s not possible... I need to...”
“Bit, the ceremony is about to start,” I said.
“But but but...”
I knew that Bit would not want to miss the ceremony, so I deduced that she was under the influence of some mind-controlling force - probably a delayed effect of the aboleth’s power over Slink. So I gently grappled Bit to the floor and then carried her back to the tower.
Bit began decorating the room for the ceremony. I joined in, using minor image to create a feature wall with a picture of an island. I added palm trees, clouds and a sea monster, then ran out of ideas. “Bit,” I said, “can you help me out here?”
“I think it should be a bit more romantic,” suggested Bit.
So I added a second sea monster.
Many of the inhabitants of Tidewater Rock crowded into the room to watch as Sandara performed the ceremony according to the old Shackles Law. Then Bit summoned a lantern archon, who changed colour in time to Dharak’s wedding songs. Bit’s unfolding, colour-changing entrees were served, and the party continued into the night.
“If everything goes well,” Valanthe said, “should we plan another marriage in a year?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” replied Lady Agasta.
The next day, Valanthe was testing her new armour (by walking on water) when we spotted a Chelish ship sailing in the distance. We waited for it to pass Tidewater Rock, and then we set out, sailing in stealthy pursuit (so that our connection with Tidewater Rock wouldn’t become obvious too quickly).
When we finally approached and attacked with a sleet storm, an aqueous orb and various elementals, the Chelish ship surrendered quickly. It was carrying slaves. We freed the slaves, bound the slavers and offered them all an opportunity to join our crew. There were some volunteers from both groups. (After a few moments of reflection, we decided it would probably be best to assign the former slaves and former slavers to different ships.)
We put the other slavers into a large rowing-boat with supplies, and let them find their own way to safety. I believe that the current plan is for the Plunderstruck to drop the remaining former slaves off at the coast north of Bloodcove (for some reason, Valanthe and the other officers were reluctant to go to Bloodcove itself), while The Pointy End takes the captured slave-ship to Senghor where we may be able to sell it.
On board The Pointy End, we started sailing towards the coast, where there happened to be a recently abandoned town that the freed slaves might be able to live in.
As that day drew to a close, mists began to rise around our ship. “Hark!” said Dharak. “Do you hear something clanging below?” He hurried down the stairs, and Bit followed.
Any clanging was drowned out by the sound of wood scraping against wood. The Pointy End tilted sideways as the rotting masts of another ship emerged from the water just next to us. A familiar hollow voice spoke from below decks. “I’ve come back for me bell.”
Once the Deathknell had resurfaced, its dead crew began swinging across to our ship. Valanthe drew her cutlass and faced the boarders. Bit ran back up on deck. “Dharak’s being killed! I left earth elementals!”
I cast sleet storm to slow down as many zombies as possible, and then I went below decks to try to help Dharak. The captain of the Deathknell stood there, ringing the bell of his ship. He was flanked by earth elementals and was facing Dharak, who seemed to be having trouble breathing. In an attempt to divert the undead captain’s incorporeal attacks from Dharak, I created an illusion of Valanthe nearby.
Shortly afterwards, Valanthe arrived. She and the earth elementals managed to strike the undead captain down, and he dispersed into some sort of gas. When we went back up on deck, we found that the zombies had stopped moving and the Deathknell had sunk back beneath the waves again.
Valanthe decided that it was time to destroy the bell.
She found a sledgehammer that someone had left behind on our ship, and she hit the bell until it finally broke. Its magical aura was now gone. Bit collected the pieces, and the next day she began turning them into a sculpture of a whirlpool with a tiny wooden model of a ship caught in the middle of it.
Some of our crew didn’t seem to appreciate the artistic merits of Bit’s creation. “No good will come of this,” several of them muttered.
“That’s not our ship, it’s the Deathknell!” Bit explained.
The sailors did not seem completely reassured.
When we arrived at the coast, we sailed a short distance up a river to the town we had raided not long ago. It was still abandoned, and we suggested it to the rescued slaves as a place where they could disembark and perhaps settle. The former slaves seemed happy with this prospect.
Then someone noticed the masts of a ship that had just arrived in the cove where the river met the ocean. Some of our crew went stealthily back to the cove, and they saw a huge Chelish warship armed with cannon. It appeared to be fitted out as a pirate-hunter, and it was called the Dominator.
Her new magical spyglass allowed Valanthe to overhear a conversation on board the warship - its officers were planning to send marines upriver in the morning to investigate the abandoned town.
We would not be able to hide our ship, and there was little chance that we could sail past the Dominator unobserved, even under cover of darkness. Fishguts suggested a different approach - he had heard tales of escape by sabotage.
We waited until nightfall. Then Dharak and Valanthe swam out to the Dominator to jam its rudder while Slink sneaked on board to cut the tiller lines. Slink also tried to track down the Dominator’s gunpowder stores. The main storeroom was too heavily guarded, but he did locate some smaller barrels on the gun deck.
Keeping a close watch on the former slavers in our crew (given that they might have a few residual sympathies with Chelish pirate-hunters), we let The Pointy End drift downriver with its sails furled. A few water elementals slowly pushed us out into the cove. However, someone on board the Dominator must still have heard a soft splash or creak.
There were shouts of “Pirates!” followed by orders to give pursuit. Valanthe signalled for our sails to be dropped. We saw the Dominator’s wheel spinning freely in the hands of its helmsman.
“You seem to be in need of assistance!” Valanthe shouted. “We’re not coming aboard!”
To give the Dominator’s crew something else to occupy their attention, Bit summoned three fire elementals and told them how to reach the Dominator’s gun deck. The fire elementals looked at Bit, then looked down at the dark water, then looked back at Bit.
That was when Bit realised her fire elementals could not fly.
I cast fly on one fire elemental (ouch!) and Dharak cast water walk on another. These two elementals carried the third across the water to the warship. There were some shouts of alarm. Just before we sailed out of sight, we saw a brief flare of light from the gun deck of the Dominator.
As we travelled southwards, Dharak worked on some new tales and songs of our exploits, which we think the people of Senghor may particularly appreciate...
Initially, we did not receive quite the welcome we were hoping for when we arrived in Senghor. The Plunderstruck and the Chelish slave-ship we had captured were outside the port, and there were three militia vessels nearby with ballistae trained on our ships. Valanthe and Dharak took a rowing-boat across and spoke to the militia. They soon resolved the situation - apparently, there had been rumours that we were now allied with Chelish slavers. The Senghor authorities did insist that we refit the Chelish ship before trying to sell it to someone in the city.
While Bit planned renovations and redecoration, Dharak and Valanthe spent more time in the city spinning tales, recruiting and buying supplies for Tidewater Rock. Once our business in Senghor was completed, we continued to follow the coastline. We stopped at Crown’s End (a town that seemed to be just an overgrown tavern) for more reputation-building and recruitment, and then at Eleder (where I visited the university and presented a talk about various observations I had made concerning weather anomalies in the region).
We sailed northwards again, first to pick up magical sails we had ordered from Rickety, and then to deliver the supplies to Tidewater.
The usually alert sentries of Tidewater Rock seemed distracted when we arrived, and we found there was a commotion around a wounded goatherd. We offered healing and asked what had happened. It seemed that there had been a raid by sahuagin.
“We’ve never had a problem with sahuagin before,” Lady Agasta said when we spoke with her. Valanthe speculated that the sahuagin had used some sort of magic to track the deep platinum necklace here.
We investigated the site of the attack. While we were rowing back to the keep, we were attacked by eight sahuagin.
“Keep one alive!” Valanthe said. She leapt out of our boat to fight while walking on water.
I used a couple of merciful fireballs to subdue the sahuagin who was trying to attack Bit. At the end of the combat, we bound the one surviving sahuagin and took him into the keep.
Valanthe interrogated the prisoner. “You are in the thrall of Commodore Valanthe Blackwood, Lord of Tidewater Rock, Master of the Exploding Volcano and Prince-Killer,” she said, and held up the deep platinum necklace. “Are you looking for this?”
The sahuagin readily admitted to being part of a group of raiders who had been sent to avenge the death of their prince. But our attempts to persuade or trick him into revealing the location of his people’s underwater settlement were fruitless. We sent the Plunderstruck to Senghor to purchase scrolls of detect thoughts and seek thoughts, and while we waited we kept a careful watch for more sahuagin raiders (and Valanthe pondered whether it would be possible to hide the deep platinum necklace somewhere on board the Dominator).
A few days passed. On a moonless misty night, our watchers spotted a sleek ship approaching the harbour of Tidewater Rock. The ship was called the Thresher, and it was flying a pirate flag.
A few of us had heard of the Thresher - it was known for the cruelty of its raids, and it was captained by a sorcerer named Isabella Locke. Longboats surrounded by obscuring mists approached from the Thresher, and we prepared to defend the keep.
Someone within the mist cast aqueous orbs at the keep’s ballistae, missing Valanthe but catching several others of our crew including Tek Tek. Tek Tek managed to escape and flew down from the battlements. The longboats emerged from the mists and we saw the sorcerer on one of them, sending a lightning bolt towards the front door of the keep.
The longboats had already been damaged by ballista shots, and now we were attacking their crews with merciful fireballs and squid. The sorcerer decided to escape into the water.
Somehow, this combat ended with Tek Tek flying while grappling a no-longer-invisible sorcerer while I followed below, attacking the sorcerer with lightning flashes. When we finally subdued her, we flew back to the keep (past a pit and some earth elementals that Bit had contributed). Valanthe had opened the front door and was engaged in friendly conversation with those pirates from the longboats who had made it to the shore. They had evidently decided to surrender - perhaps because of the capture of their captain, and perhaps because the Thresher had fled, taken by its second-in-command.
Keeping her tied up, we revived the sorcerer. But she refused to answer our questions and ended up poisoning herself with some unknown substance hidden in a false tooth. Her crew were more talkative and revealed that Isabella Locke had been allied with the sahuagin - she had planned the attack on Tidewater Rock as part of their ongoing attempts to get revenge against us. One of the crew even said that he knew the rough location of the undersea settlement where the sahuagin lived.
Isabella Locke had many tattoos. Some were magical, and one was an amateurish chart that included islands, symbols and verses. This seemed to lead the way to the hidden treasure of a notorious deceased pirate captain named Cyrus Wolf. There were legends that the treasure was guarded by a giant sea monster from the depths ... or perhaps from below the depths.
Valanthe decided that we would first hunt down the Thresher and then explore the islands depicted on Isabella Locke’s map. Using a splinter collected by Dharak, we tracked the Thresher ... and it led us to a small archipelago that we believed to be the one on the map.
The Thresher attempted, not particularly successfully, to ambush us. Its crew was depleted and we captured it easily. We then turned our attention to ‘Mancatcher Cove’, the supposed location of Cyrus Wolf’s treasure.
From our discussions with the captured crew of the Thresher, we had established that the sahuagin settlement was somewhere in the vicinity of these islands, so we kept a careful watch that night and only sailed towards Mancatcher Cove a short time before dawn. Slink went ahead and The Pointy End followed.
The cove was almost completely encircled by steep cliffs draped with vines. In the dim light, we could not make out any signs like those on Isabella Locke’s map.
Slink warned Bit that shark-riding sahuagin were approaching our ship. Moments later, one of the vines swung towards us, grabbed Valanthe and started pulling her upwards.
Tek Tek and I flew up to help. We saw that Valanthe was being dragged towards a large maw hidden among the vegetation that covered the cliffs. Other vines were also moving and attacking members of our crew - it seemed that these vines were all part of the same plant creature. I worked out that it was probably a canopy creeper and would be vulnerable to cold. Tek Tek attacked the canopy creeper with an icy broadsword and I cast a few frost falls into its maw. Meanwhile, Valanthe managed to cut herself free and catch hold of the end of the vine just in time to stop herself falling.
After Tek Tek killed the giant plant, she healed Valanthe and took her back down to The Pointy End, where we discovered that some of the shark-riding sahuagin were attempting to damage the rudder. “That’s our job!” Bit protested, and summoned dolphins to help drive the sahuagin away from our ship.
We defeated the sahuagin raiders, waited and watched. The first light of the rising sun marked out patterns on the cliffs that had not been apparent before, creating the outline of an enormous skull.
Some of us climbed up to the cave that formed the right eye-socket (after a brief debate about whether we should aim for the ‘right’ one from our point of view or the skull’s), where we found a huge old tree-root reaching into the cavern from above. Part of the root was twisted into a shape like a bearded, crowned man. Inspired by the verses from the map, we started digging.
Instead of a treasure chest, we eventually found a way down into a water-filled cave system. Slink went ahead and learned that sahuagin and sharks inhabited the tunnels - this was presumably the sahuagin settlement. He also spotted a locathah prisoner.
We began by exploring a chamber that was above the water level - we guessed this was where Isabella Locke slept when she visited the sahuagin (the severed head kept in a jar beneath the bed suggested she had been the type to bear an occasional grudge).
I cast water breathing on all of our group who needed it, and then we descended into the submerged caverns, where we found (and fought) various combinations of sharks, sahuagin and sharks ridden by sahuagin. Along the way, we released and healed the locathah prisoner. We told her that once we had confronted the remaining dangers here, we would help her to escape with her eggs.
We continued through the sahuagin settlement and fought more sahuagin and sharks. At one point, we realised that Bit was no longer with us. We heard her voice from a nearby cave. “Hi again! I’m harmless!” After the rest of us fought a thirteen-foot-tall sahuagin, Valanthe went to find Bit.
I heard Bit’s voice again: “This is my angry look! Go away!”
I chose not to ask my companions what was going on.
After we fought more sharks, Valanthe noticed that the deep platinum necklace she wore was beginning to tug her subtly towards one of the cavern walls. With help from Slink, we tracked down a hidden doorway. We explored a few more tunnels and found an opening out to the cove, and then we returned to the hidden doorway.
It led us to a room with an unusually large shark, and then to a throne room containing a sahuagin with an unusually large number of arms. The sahuagin king began to speak. “So you dare to challenge me in my-”
“I think we met your son,” Valanthe said, holding up the deep platinum necklace. “Do you want your necklace back? Then... come and get it.”
A battle ensued.
During the course of the combat, Tek Tek and Valanthe were both struck by the king’s trident, and parts of their bodies began to transform into coral, hindering their movements. But with the aid of Bit’s water elementals, we eventually defeated the king.
The water elementals also helped me to prise open a storage space beneath the throne. There, we found another deep platinum necklace, a gold-plated conch shell, and a tunnel to an iron chest and an intriguing stone box sealed with lead.