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Becky's thrown for a loop by the appearance of a (seemingly) live person still dwelling within the wreckage. Like Braxton, her mind immediately comes to the conclusion that the fellow is a ghost or other undead...but what kind?
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Ku'Hania vows to herself to make a point of learning the language of the Azlanti Ancient tongue. For some reason, leaving translation in the hands of Braxton rubs her the wrong way, though she couldn't explain why.
Like the others, she is baffled by the man's appearance. If not a ghost, he would have to be over a thousand years old.
Becky and the gang take a closer look at the sailor as he continues to speak and even takes a few steps towards the group. His steps appear sluggish and slowed by something, but you can't see any reason for it. Any obvious reason, at least.
The man swings his arm around the deck, seemingly motioning towards something. Becky takes a closer look at the man and suddenly things click into place: he's a draugr, an undead sometimes formed when a sailor drowns at sea. As he approaches closer that fact becomes even more evident, the stench of decaying undeath and rotting soaked flesh wafting out from his body.
Strangely, it appears as if he does not realize he is undead, nor that water trails behind each of his footsteps, nor even that his flesh is rotting and has fallen away in multiple places.
This is all so strange.
"Are you speaking of the seven-armed beast? Yes, a nasty one, but we've dealt with it now. The carpenters will set us right soon enough, I expect. What's your name and station, sailor? Come to think of it, give me a rundown on our entire situation. The ship, location, heading, cargo. Too many so-called sailors these days don't know the first thing about the ship they're serving on, happy to mindlessly throw themselves at any task as long as they get their rum and biscuit ration at the end of the day. Prove me wrong, sailor. "
As Braxtin speaks with the strange waterlogged sailor, Ku'Hania studies him, tilting her head to the side as she notices something odd.
"The water trailing behind him is evaporating right after he moves, magic that's keeping the air bubble there is also effect it." she says quietly.
Braxton wonders if their skin is going to dry out if they stay down here.
Becky lets Braxton do the talking, taking a cautious step back from the approaching undead, furiously trying to recall how best to deal with such undead.
2. DR 5/bludgeoning or slashing
3. Resist fire 10
4. No specific weaknesses
"Seven-armed beast? We didn't see what it was, just a dark shape swimming around in the water before...before it bit a hole in our ship."
The man stares at Braxton suspiciously, hand dropping towards his belt, where a long-rusted sword sits sheathed at his waist.
"You're not the captain, are you?" he says accusingly, pointing a rotting finger towards the swashbuckler. "What are you doing here?"
"Of course I'm the captain, and you are doing nothing to allay my qualms with modern sailors, sailor." Ghosts are stupid, right?
The 'man' drops the hand that was reaching for his sword and scrutinizes Braxton for a second longer before nodding and speaking again.
"Ah, my regrets captain. Of course, of course." he quickly gets out, holding his hands up apologetically. "Must've gotten knocked in the head when that beast knocked us around earlier, eh? Either way, I can give you some info on our situation."
He leans up awkwardly against one of the many crates hanging around in the bottom deck, his undead body not lending itself well to such a precise human movement. Regardless, he doesn't seem to notice anything being askew.
"The ship is in pretty bad shape, as you can see. We managed to drive off the sea beast but she did some good damage on the way out. Crew morale is not that great, you'll need to put together quite a speech to get them back on your side, if it's possible at all." he takes a second, visibly thinking over his next words. "Our destination...I can't remember. Cargo? I know we have some, you see the crates here. But I don't remember what it was either." the draugr looks around, seemingly confused by its surroundings.
"Is there anything you all want to ask him? He doesn't seem to remember much..." Braxton asks the others before continuing in Azlanti. "Very good sailor, uh, Bob. Let's take stock of our cargo and provisions before moving on. Since we're down here already."
After casting a message spell to aid in quietly translating the undead sailor's words for Ankha and Ku'Halia, Becky casts detect magic to help scan the hold for magical goodies.
Braxton's search of the cargo hold (aided by Becky's magic) reveals a significant amount of non-interesting things that can barely be described as 'loot' of any kind: crates of generic scientific equipment and boxes upon boxes of fresh-looking parchment. Becky's magic spell, however, uncovers the true treasure of the cargo hold: a firm steel chest hidden under a stack of crates towards the back of the large area.
"Bob" the draugr stares off into the distance as soon as you aren't actively talking to him, seemingly lost in whatever delusion holds its mind in an iron-tight grip.
Becky silently examines the chest before checking for traps and trying to pick any lock.
Ku'Hania keeps a close watch on the draugr, ready for any hostile action toward Becky or any of them.
The chest cracks open easily under Becky's delicate attention, but unfortunately there is no great Azlanti treasure. Just a handful of trinkets: an ornately carved wooden box containing strange square coins made of platinum (worth 220 gp) that might be of special interest to historians and collectors, a well-preserved oakwood case that holds two wands, three waterproof lacquered bone tubes that each hold three scrolls, and a small white pearl on a small length of rope.
The dragur seems to have disappeared into whatever delusion it's suffering from entirely, not reacting at all to any of your interest in his actions.
"Hmm." Braxton holds up the pearl rope device to Ku'Hania's pale throat. "Looks like it matches you, and the simplicity fits." He says with a wink.
Braxton is pretty sure the wands are toothpicks.
Ku'Hania takes the pearl suspended from the rope, holding it up and studying it as she feels for magic of any type.
Ankha can’t see the auras on the magical items like Braxton and Ku’Hania can, but she has no shortage of suggestions on what they might be based on a physical examination and what the spellcasters tell her.
With Ankha's help, Braxton is able to identify the second wand as a wand of Silent Image (CL 5) with 17 charges left. The first wand eludes him yet, but as Ku'Hania takes a look at the pearl, she notices small runes etched into the surface of the shiny orb. A surge of understanding floods through her as she intuitively knows what the pearl does and how to use it.
The pearl is a Bubble Vault. The three scrolls are of identify, lesser restoration, and comprehend languages.
With the matter of the chest settled, you get the feeling that isn't exactly the 'famed Azlanti treasure' the water elemental told you about and that if you want to find it you should probably push farther into the sunken ship.
"Very well, sailor Bob! Let us continue our survey of the damage. Things seem to be in hand here." Braxton is ready to move on, eager to find a more substantial treasure.
“Ooh, you should take these, since you’re the wand expert.” Ankha eagerly shoves the two wands at Becky. “You probably already know what the first one does too.”
With a glimmer in her eye, she points at two of the three scrolls. “And after we return to the colony, maybe I could borrow those two scrolls for a few hours? I’ve got an idea for mixing up some extracts that would mimic the way they heal and identify, but I’d like to check with Alba first.”
She gives Braxton an awkward sailor’s salute. “Aye, aye captain! Lead the way!”
Becky examines the mystery wand while absently following the others deeper into the shipwreck.
Becky identifies the other wand as a wand of unseen servant with 24 charges remaining.
The next step in investigating the strange, sunken but not flooded ship is the pair of stairs leading up to the deck above. The rest of the lower deck is full of mundane and unexciting cargo, useful if you need a bit to eat or some rope but not much else.
The next deck above the first appears to be the middle deck, with doors to cabins on the front and back walls. A few sets of tables and chairs occupy most of the space on this deck, with a handful of people spread throughout. Most are sitting in chairs but some are slowly drifting between the tables with plates of food or drinks; not serving, but instead observing the games of cards and dice being played at the tables.
And yet, something isn't right here either. The people are too slow, and even the quickest glance towards any of them can tell you why: they're zombies too. Not full fledged draugr like the one down below, but actual honest-to-whichever-god-you-worship zombies. They don't seem to take much notice of you, continuing upon whatever slow drifting actions they were taking before you got here.
Another set of stairs on the other side of the deck leads up to yet another deck above.
"It strikes me," Braxton says, "That it would be unusual and cruel to leave these poor wretches in this dismal, undead state. We should seek a way to free them from this. Ideally without violence. Solve their unfinished business and all that. Let's, ah, try and find the real captain, or their cabin. I bet answers lie there." The captain isn't sure what he was expecting when he came to this ship, but it wasn't this. But if they can save the undead it will have been worth the trip. "Stay close, Becks. Try not to... jostle any of them."
“Ooh, this is so weird!” Ankha exclaims in an excited whisper. “I’ve never heard of undead acting like this before. And it’s like they don’t even notice we’re here—they’re acting like zombies!” She pauses, her brow wrinkled in thought. “Though I guess that part makes sense.”
The alchemist quickly loses interest in the zombies’ slow, drifting activities; after a few moments, she heads towards the cabins at the front and tries opening one of the doors. “Let’s see if there’s anything on this deck before we go up further.”
Ankha heads over to one of the doors and notices that none of the zombies even look her way as she pushes her way through them. In fact several of them move out of her way seemingly almost subconsciously, as if they knew she were there but couldn't see her.
The door opens easily enough, revealing a sparsely decorated bunk room with a simple enough bed for a higher-ranking sailor above the rabble that would sleep in the lowest bunk you all just left. A quick look over the room doesn't reveal anything of note immediately, but there is a small simple chest against the wall opposite of the bed.
Ankha opens the chest and takes the coins (for purely archival purposes, of course) and shows the holy symbol to the others. “Ooh, you don’t think this is a holy symbol for what’s her name? The one the talking statues worshipped? Acavna, was it? Is there any magic on it?”
Ku' Hania warily moves through the space, her eyes watching the odd drowned zombies, expecting an attack at any moment, though none comes. She follows Ankha into the room, noting the chest and the unusual medallion.
"I have no idea who that would represent." she replies, once again shifting her vision into the magical spectrum with a bit of concentration.
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Becky is in the process of reaching out toward one of the wandering zombies, her index finger extended and ready to poke one of the undead, when Braxton gives his warning about not jostling the former crew. She slowly retracts her arm and then puts both her hands behind her back, perhaps not quite trusting her inquisitive nature to remain repressed for long.
When she sees the holy symbol Ankha's found, Becky gets excited, takes a deep breath, and then starts verbally rambling on, sharing her insights.
"Ooh! No--that's not Acavna's holy symbol; this one belongs to Elion, the Azlanti god dedicated to peace and prosperity, with an eye toward the gathering of information and knowledge about, well--everything! My kind of god! Oh yeah--he was also known to be a Goody-Goody fellow, kind of but not-so-much like me!"
The Know-It-All then casts detect magic, hoping to learn even more about the compass/holy symbol and/or anything else that might be stashed in this area of the sunken ship.
The compass holy symbol doesn't act as an actual compass, as it's intricately carved out of one single lump of gold. It does, however, allow the wearer to cast Know Direction three times per day as a spell-like ability. Obviously useful for followers of Elion, but also a powerful boon for any sailor!
The other cabin next to this one isn't locked either, but contains nothing of note upon first inspection beyond the two bunks and a scattering of personal items.
Ku' Hania moves into the room, pausing for a moment and leaning closer to the beds in the room before stepping back with a somewhat disgusted look on her face. "It looks like there's bits of flesh on the beds...as if they've been sleeping in them...which I'm pretty sure isn't a normal thing for undead to be doing."
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“That’s a-maz-ing!” Ankha beams at Becky’s wealth of knowledge about the magical holy symbol. “How do you know so much?!”
But the alchemist’s interest in the compass is nothing compared to what Ku’Hania finds in the next cabin. “Ooh,” Ankha bustles into the room, completely oblivious to the half-elf’s disgust. She pulls out a glass vial and eagerly scrapes bits of rotten flesh into it. “Maybe they’ve been sleeping in the beds because they’re actually alive and just look undead? Which would mean they’ve been alive for centuries.” Her eyes glow with unbridled excitement as she corks the vial. “I can’t wait to run some tests on this. I wonder if there’s more in the other cabins?”
The last remaining door opens easily, no lockpicking required, and swings open to reveal what looks like the ship's galley. Various meats hang from hooks or lay on cutting boards, ranging from salted meat obviously drawn from the lower deck's food reservoir to freshly-caught fish ready for filleting. Various sacks of dried goods and ingredients lay strewn about the place, and a handful of barrels of what looks to be ale or the like lay on the floor in tied bundles.
Not too much of interest beyond any specific food items you might take a fancy with, outside of a singular well-carved large chef's knife embedded into the cutting board next a particularly large fresh swordfish. The knife is actually a dagger, and is magical upon a Detect Magic application.
Ankha ignores the chef’s knife, walking right past it to inspect the fresh swordfish. “Ooh, this is amazing! Did the zombies just catch this? I’ve never heard of zombie fishermen before. They seem too slow and out of it to catch anything. Or …” Her eyes grow large as she squeaks with excitement. “… maybe it’s been magically preserved! Fresh fish for eternity?!” Leaning over, she carefully sniffs the fish and then tastes a tiny piece, trying to unravel this puzzle.
Unfortunately for Ankha’s dreams of zombie fishermen, it seems as if that isn’t the case (Thai time). The fish does appear to be magically preserved by some spell or another, although it isn’t entirely clear how that’s being accomplished, nor how old this specific swordfish actually is.
"So that's what a whole swordfish looks like before it's cut into fillets for cooking," Becky comments. "It's supposed to be really tasty!" she tells Ankha. Her beaming face darkens a bit as she adds, "When it's cooked, anyhow. I'm not so sure about when it's eaten raw."
Noting the magical emanation coming from the dagger, the 111-pound weakling tries to pull the weapon out of the cutting board. "Ta-da! Magical dagger!"
“Hmm …” Ankha muses when Becky declares that the dagger is magical, “… strange that you detect magic on the knife but not the fish, even though it’s definitely being preserved by some kind of spell. Actually, this whole place is in some sort of stasis, isn’t it? Everything inside the ship looks like it might have when it sunk.” She glances at the barrels and then looks at Braxton. “Has the ale in those barrels been preserved too? I wonder what Azlanti beer tastes like?”
Should Becky (or anyone else) try to determine the dagger’s magical properties in more detail, Ankha would of course do her very best to help.
"My mom would totally forbid me to drink beer...even for science or history," Becky comments. Somehow, the teen's thirst for more knowledge about the dagger wins out over her thirst for beer and/or being rebellious.
Ku' Hania simply smiles at the exchange, as Haplo crawls down off of her leg and across the floor, easily climbing the table to take a few bites of the fish.
The dagger is actually the galleyblade of the mariner, a +1 dagger with two interesting qualities: three times a day as a move action the wielder can give themselves freedom of movement for a single round against water-based impairments. In addition, the wielder has a constant +5 to profession (cook) rolls when dealing with seafood of any type.
The rest of the galley has nothing of note so that just leaves the stairs up to the next deck, after another unsettling walk through the zombie infested crew quarters, that is.
It quickly becomes clear that the deck above is actually the top deck, as you emerge into an even stranger space than below. Lit entirely by lanterns and dark otherwise, the weird air bubble protecting the ship you saw down below continues all the way up to a few inches beyond the top edge of the ships' masts, encircling the entire ship in a protective shell of magic. But even stranger still are the figures standing on the deck: nearly a dozen shambling figures milling about on deck.
The closest eight sailor zombies (for that's what they are) are slowly performing tasks you'd expect sailors to do: tying ropes, raising and lowering sails, reloading and unloading ballista, the works. At the far end of the ship from the party, behind the wheel, is quite the impressive figure. You can tell even from here that he is also undead, as he looks like the dragur in the bottom deck, but his immaculate plumed tricorn marks him out as the captain.
The draugr captain is motioning his arms around at his crew and shambling back and forth in front of his wheel, commanding them in grunts and groans to do his bidding. As he takes a step out from behind the wheel and into your line of sight where you can see his lower torso, a strange sight greets your eyes. Protruding from the draugr's stomach is the front half of a bizarre artifact: lengths of brass metal intertwine with blue-green glass engraved with golden runes to form the contraption. The zombies don't seem to particularly care about you, although you see the draugr beginning to turn his attention towards you.
“Ooh …” Ankha points at the artifact embedded in the draugr’s stomach “… is that where all the weird magic is coming from?” She squints, trying to get a better look. “Have any of you ever seen anything like it before? I wonder if we could reprogram it like the clockwork spy? Maybe it could be tweaked to preserve humans from aging so fast!” Looking eager to get her hands on the object, the fighter literally drools with excitement.
"I bet I could figure out how it works...if I could get my grubby little mitts on it!"
"Hmm. Do you thin that's what's keeping these souls here?"
Ku'Hania warily studies the zombie crew, and looks to the edges of the strange air bubble, considering the possible results should tampering with whatever was embedded in the captain undo the effect.
It's a bit too early and you're a bit too far away to really see what it is or can do, but it certainly fits the bill for what you'd expect a time-altering artifact to be. The draugr captain seems to finally notice the party, unfortunately, pulling a strange-looking curved sword and waving to his soldiers before commanding them (in Azlnati but assuming translation from here on out).
"We've got stowaways boys, get em!"
Init:
19- Becky, Ankha, and Braxton
15- Ku'Hania
6- captain
1- zombies
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“Ooh, I think we’re in for a fight! Brace yourselves!” Ankha steps protectively in front of Ku’Hania and unleashes a wide sweeping slash at the nearest zombie, then holds her fauchard at the ready, prepared to attack any undead who venture within reach of her polearm.
With hostilities now inevitable, Becky starts blabbering all she knows about draugrs and zombies, infusing magic into her erudite words. "Use slashing weapons," the teen bard shouts. "Be careful around the captain--draugrs stink so bad they'll make you sick! And don't try using fire on him! And we're not stowaways; we're more like futuristic pirates, here to claim your magical treasures!"
She then takes a few tentative steps to the north while drawing her cold iron dagger. "Slash...slash...slash...," she quietly reminds herself, having become used to jabbing (usually ineffectually) with her rapier.
Appreciating Ankha's protective stance, Ku'Hania begins a shamanic chant, reaching out to draw on the moisture and cold of the vast ocean all around them at the edge of the strange barrier, drawing it in and focusing it to the center of the deck, as ice encrusts the deck's surface, radiating supernatural cold and making it hard for the strange zombies to maintain their balance, and substantially slowing thier advance.
"Don't listen to this imposter, boys! I am the real captain!" Braxton uses his silver tongue to -without a doubt - confuse the enemy!