I apologize in advance for any grammar mistakes. Auto-correct on my mobile devices is my bane with all the unique words we get to use when playing. I'll correct them as I see them or when they are pointed out if I keep missing them!
Players:
Artemis Entreri [Character Sheet] - Half High Elf/Half Aasimar Rogue
Our adventurers have been hired by Lord Crumplebottom, the head of a family of old wealth, to investigate an issue encountered on his new investments - a series of uncharted islands at the edge of civilization. The reason he was selecting adventurers for this task was because he was also forcing his son Archibald to go, as senior Crumplebottom was sick of his free-loading adult child, and he didn't want to have his hired guard be bothered by those shenaningans.
Character and World creation. We had time for a short session afterwards.
Our party is onboard the "Frivolous Decanter" as they sail for the new worlds. They have been hired by a senior Lord Crumplebottom to investigate an issue that has happened on the main island and to help the colonization efforts continue. They were able to freely explore the ship except for Archibald, who with an arguement with his father (Lord Crumplebottom) about his free-loading, was forced on this voyage and subjected to remain in the brig for the duration of the travel.
They arrived at the outpost on the main island, New Bikabutei, which was located on a marshy area next to dry land with a series of raised wooden platforms of buildings and empty spaces connected by raised wooden walkways, which was all surrounded by a tall wooden fort walls. The waters were deep enough here at the docks of the outpost for full-sized ships to harbor. Right outside the walls is where the first dry land was, with a doored-ramp leading down, and the path lead immediately into a dense forest.
Artemis recognized their contact right away; Big Blue was a small goblin with pale blue skin and a gruff human-sounding voice which set him apart from his green-skinned brothers. He filled in the party on the initial details. About a mile along the path into the woods was a construction site where they were building a lumber mill and processing building. The crew there was attacked and only the foreman survived, making it back to New Bikabutei. He was currently in the outpost's infirmary recovering. The party was do what they need to at the outpost and then start by investigating the construction site and report back their findings.
Exploring the outpost, Artemis discovered Thieves' markings on the blacksmith that it was a point of contact for the guild in this area. Grunt and Gimmeck also found Dorothea's open-air, 4-seat sidewalk pub. Gimmeck couldn't hold his ale, and Grunt downed two "Dragon's Breath" shot! Dorothea was impressed and Grunt carried his friend to their campsite platform near the outpost's wall near the gate inland.
The day was ending and the party decided to rest for the night and head out at first light.
Our adventurers slept peacefully for their first night in the outpost. At dawn they first went to visit the surviving foreman in the infirmary.
At the front desk they met a proud older woman named Glenda, who was in charge of managing the facility and its supplies and documents. She mostly replied in grunts until the conversation became interesting as the minotaur joined in to negotiate access to the patient they wanted to see. After arranging a "meeting" btwn her and the minotaur they were allowed to visit the foreman at the end of the hall of the first floor of the building.
The foreman was heavily sedated with medication and spells. The majority of his body was covered with a thick layer of clean bandages. He appeared human, that one eye may be damaged or missing because the socket was covered and sunken, and that chunks of flesh seemed to missing in many locations over each appendage and torso. Grunt and Artemis inspected his wounds carefully under the bandages and found small, circular jaws made the bite marks and there were lots of claw marks and scratches everywhere. It also seemed necrosis and infections had begin to start in some wounds, and they oozed a thick silvery metallic liquid. There wasn't much else to discover on his person or in the room, so the party left to go investigate the scene of the attack.
Stepping outside the outpost, the party was immediately surrounded by sights and sounds of the dense forest. It was a mile walk on this hot and muggy morning to reach the construction site. Thankfully the walk passed uneventful.
The construction site was a large circular clearing, with the cleared brush forming a built up vegetation wall so that the exits to it were a "Y" shape, with the bottom going back to the outpost. There was a large, half-complete building in the center that was going to be the lumber mill. Near the side entrance was a small shack that served as the foreman's office. The place was a massacre, over a dozen bodies of humans, eleven, dwarves, and even the work animals were laying all over the site, bloated and decaying in the sun. All of them shared the same bite and claw marks that were seen on the foreman. Inside the shack, Grunt found a metal lockbox, and took it outside to look at in the sun. Artemis found a drawer in the desk with a false bottom after Grunt left. He found a letter inside and was able to successfully pop the wax seal without ruining it. The letter was addressed to a "Darwin" and in very elegant handwriting proceeded to berate him for something. Artemis stashed the letter on his person and went outside to help Grunt open the box.
With Artemis successfully popping the lock, Grunt pulled a strange glass bottle out of the box. Other than that, the box was empty. The vial was shaped like a large octahedron, holding up to 20 ounces or so max it looked like. The glass shimmered like an oil slick and was sealed with a wax-covered cork. Inside was a thick silvery metallic liquid that moved slowly. Everyone took a turn looking at the bottle, but when Archibald held it he viewed an image in his mind of a large curvy woman, with a snake body below her waist, and a head full of smaller snakes for hair smiling at him. Not willing to open the bottle, Grunt stashed it away for now.
Searching the rest of the site didn't yield anything more. Archibald did find a set of small footprints leading out the top left of the "Y" however. The party went to investigate.
Following the trail, it led them about 600-700 feet away from the construction site before the footprints disappeared into the thick underbrush and weren't able to be followed anymore. Looking up revealed their targets, as they jumped down onto the party!
Six goblins jumped down from the trees, and with some scratches and thankfully no bites, the party was able to defeat them all. They checked to make sure the location was safe now as the bodies of the dead goblins began to write and then crawl into the underbrush strangely and rapidly! The party managed to capture one while the rest escaped. Alotta used one of her ropes to restrain the creature to a tree for the party to investigate. It looked like it was decaying, and the fresh wounds inflicted by the party was oozing the same thick silvery liquid that was spotted on the victims at the construction site and on the foreman. It didn't make sense how this creature was still alive. It was snarling and gnashing its teeth at the party when Artmeis decided they needed to torch this creature to hopefully effectively destroy it. He lit a torch and as soon as the flames came near the entire goblin-thing ignited like dry tinder. It screamed until its lungs became ash and the body quickly burned up. Grunt was able to collect in a vial pieces of its blood that "melted" together to create small hard balls of blood and the silvery liquid turned metal.
The party rushed back to the construction site, Artemis suffering mild exhaustion from carrying the torch in the already hot jungle. However when they arrived, every single corpse that had been there before was now gone without traces. Realizing that this might also be happening to the foreman back at the outpost, Artemis doused his torch, and the whole party booked it back to New Bikabutei to make sure the worst wasn't happening.
Rushing through town to the infirmary, the party arrived to see their worst fears come true. The foreman was attempting to attack Glenda, while being restrained by the doctor and two nurses. Glenda looked fine, but the other two were covered in bite marks and scratches from their patient. With quick thinking, Alotta skewered the patient and held him up in the air so he couldn't move or attack anyone. Artemis swooped in to light the foreman on fire, and Grunt pulled Glenda out of the way and pushed the doctor and nurses away too. The foreman did not look awake, and still heavily reeked of medicine and magic meant to keep him asleep and numb. Alotta carried the foreman outside where Archibald attempted to dissolve him with acid to hopefully remove all the potential harm if the body was to hit the water in the outpost. Inside, Grunt convinced Glenda to get the guards to help while Artemis practically forced the other staff to have their wounds cauterized to try to prevent them from suffering the same fate.
Glenda returned with three guards and Grunt explained to them everything that had happened. He convinced them to leave one guard to watch the staff and to jail anyone who looked like they might be "turning" and that wall guards should be on higher alert because of the missing bodies. They were able to wrap up there without further issues.
The party returned to their camp platform for the night and planned to give their report to Big Blue the next morning.
Archibald's player was unable to make it, so I ran his character for the session.
The next morning the party woke and found Big Blue chatting away at the Blacksmith's shop. In full, gruesome detail, Grunt reported to Big Blue all about what they've encountered so far almost making the poor goblin lose his breakfast. Artemis also followed up asking if he knew anyone named "Darwin," to which Big Blue clued them in as that was main person in charge of the outpost, but they he had left a few days prior to the adventurer's arrival on an expedition with a group of guards along the east shore of the main island and was expected to return in a few days. He was researching a statue found in a cove around the bend/out of sight of the outpost. After finishing their report with Big Blue, the party decided their next course of action would be to follow up on Darwin, hoping that he wasn't dead, and if this statue held any clue as to what was happening.
Leaving the outpost again, they followed the shore east until hitting a bend that put the outpost out of site. Shortly after, they came upon the cove suddenly - it was hidden well by the surround trees at the entrance. Inside was a very shallow "lake" at most 4-5 feet deep at the center. At the far in-land-most side was the top half of a statue that they could see, but they weren't close enough to get any good view of it from the entrance. The party continued on the shore that they were on, but not long before Archibald discovered something large gliding in the water. Suddenly they were attacked by not one, but two 20 foot long anaconda snakes. Archibald panicked being one of the first attacked and rushed back to the treeline chucking fireballs at the closest snake. Alotta struggled with the other as it kept trying to grapple and wrap her up like a bad rope night, falling off, and then grappling again - I guess it's a good thing to always be covered in a good oil..
Eventually the part was able to defeat the pair of giant snakes and was rewarded with two 15'x2' suitable snake skins, and over 20lbs of meat they could cook/salt and preserve. Inside the stomachs were myriad bones and partially digested trinkets of goblins and other creatures, as well as an oddly preserved silk rope - which Alotta later learned was a rope of entanglement!
The statue was at least 18 feet tall, four feet of it was part of the pedastal and the rest was of a busty, curvy, powerful-looking woman with a medusa-like head full of snakes, and her own mouth having fangs as well. A long robe supported with her legs everything up in the stone. Archibald claimed she looked very similar to the vision he had when viewing the vial of silver liquid for the first time. Investigating the statue, Artemis cleared away the immediate brush and was able to find a secret hatch in the back and open it. Inside was a used leather satchel containing a map and a journal of one Darwin Feld. He closed the hatch quickly and showed the items to the rest of the party. While he was doing that though, Archibald was able to discern some, but not all, of the gith-like symbols and writings on the bottom of the statue, and took a charcoal rubbing of the entirety to study later.
The map showed all five islands and had several markers showing where the outpost was, where this statue was, and a bunch of other "interest" sites that looked like Darwin had planned on visiting. His journal seemed to cover his entire experience with the island, starting with when he was hired to manage the settlement, and ending just before he left on this expedition - stating that he was leaving his journal behind here at the statue in case anything should happen to him. He didn't allude as to what potential things might happen to him however.. Archibald was given the journal to study and hold on to. The map went to Shara since she was their best navigator in the party.
Looking at the sun above, it was still before noon for the day. They could either head back to the outpost, but they didn't need to restock on anything, or they could head to the closest interest spot on the map where Darwin probably went to first and then be back by or after dark to the outpost. The party decided on the later and went into the woods. It was about a half-mile trek through dense, path-less foliage before they arrived at the first mark.
In the clearing there were four concentric stone rings, each one about two-feet thick, and each inner circle about six inches deeper than the next outer layer. At the very center was a hole shaped like the bottom of a mysterious flask that Grunt happened to be carrying, and the resemblance was not lost. He and Archibald investigated while other's grabbed more charcoal rubbings of all the similar markings on each circle for Archibald to study later. There was no immediate danger that anyone could see.
After discussing and with a resounding agreement of, "For Science!", Grunt decided to pour a few drops of the silver liquid into the hole on the center layer. Immediately after doing so, a low tremor shook the entire clearing, obviously felt by anyone standing on the ground. After another quick discussion with Archibald and the rest of the party, Grunt again shouted, "FOR SCIENCE!" and proceeded to dump the entirety of the contents of the flask into the hole. A much stronger earthquake shook the area, causing everyone except Alotta to fall prone, and the 3 inner rings sunk slightly into the ground. The liquid in the hole at the center was starting to vanish as it drained away. Grunt tried to save it when another earthquake hit and the inner circle fell through into a giant chasm below. Archibald escaped away from the stone rings as the second ring fell. Grunt scrambled and made it out before the third fell. A giant "well" now was where the inner three stone circles were and a great slithering could be heard echoing out of it. Grunt braved lighting a torch and dropping it down. He saw a gigantic creature coming up, his torch passing by at least three coils as it slithered around the walls climbing. "RUN!" He screamed, and the whole party bolted back towards the statue.
A terrible multi-voice scream pierced the air as the creature came up out of the stone well, out of sight of the party who was now dashing through the foliage in escape. Artemis and Shara made it back to the statue first, followed by Shara, then Archibald, and finally Grunt. The creature's screams could be heard periodically and thankfully sounded like it was travelling away from them, but more importantly, away from where the outpost was. They were able to catch their breaths for a moment.
"WHAT was that creature??" Artemis demanded, "and WHY did you think it was a good idea to pour that liquid there?" "For science..." Grunt and Archibald replied. "We need to warn the guards and outpost there's a greater danger now out in the forest. What are we going to tell them?" Artemis asked. "That we released the big titty snake lady.." Archibald half-joked. "No," Grunt stated. "We tell them Darwin did it. That we arrived just as he was pouring that liquid, we saw the beast coming, but ran for safety. We didn't see what happened to Darwin, but he did it!" "You want to lie to the guards?" Alotta asked. "What are they going to do to us if we tell them that I did it???" Grunt was adamant. "No, we tell them Darwin did it. You have his bag there? We'll keep the stuff we found in it, and put the empty flask in there as evidence."
Eventually the whole party agreed to this and they started quickly back to the outpost to warn them.
Arriving at the entrance, they were met by two very scared young guards who asked them about what happened. Immediately Grunt blurted out their story and the guards became terrified. One stayed there shakily at the gate, while the other escorted the party to the Captain of the guard at the HQ near the docks.
The Captain asked a lot of questions about the party, why they were there, what they were doing, what happened in the forest just a bit ago, and what they saw with Darwin. The party gave him the satchel with the empty flask and the Captain and everyone believed their story. They showed him the journal (but not the map) they found as well at the statue and the Captain said for the party to go back to their campsite platform and wait for his researcher to come help them decipher Darwin's journal and the rubbings they had gathered.
The party headed back to their campsite and rested/waited.
So, what race/class are the characters? By context I'm guessing Artemis is a rogue and, with a last name like Ironhoof, Grunt might be "the minotaur" you referenced at one point but that doesn't really say much.
Yes, great guess on both! I'm hoping to finish typing that background post and last night's session log later today. Session last night ran late and today has been full of activities.
Version 1 - Overview Map of Islands for this campaign, as per Darwin Feld's map. Version 2 - Updated 08/07/21 (Session #4) by party - main island cave exit from underground ruins. Version 3 (current) - Updated 08/27/21 (Session #6) by party - found ancient embroidered map and copied it to their map.
The next morning the party awoke and were in the middle of breakfast when the captain's researcher arrived. Landing softly, the small barn owl colored aarakocra perched atop the front arch of Grunt's tent and introduced herself to the minotaur as he was grilling a piece of snake meat they had gathered previously. Grunt returned the introduction and offered a piece of the cooked flesh. She accepted gratefully. "My name is Cax'Andra. I'm here on behalf of our captain to assist in any way I can with your endeavors here on the islands."
Introductions were made with the rest of the adventuring party as they gathered for the meal and Archibald reluctantly let Cax'Andra borrow the journal and the rubbings they had made from the statue and stone circles. The language was mostly yaun-ti, she agreed with Archibald, but also somehow different. It was a language they shared and the words that Archibald didn't know, Cax'Andra was able to fill in for most of them. The statue translated to a story about a snake woman goddess who the yuan-ti had "saved", and they in return offered lavish gifts and sacrifices. The stone circles translated to some kind of "monster prison" where sacrifices of those who had "sinned" were thrown in to feed it.
The party agreed that they needed to find where Darwin was and what his fate was. Darwin had marked a few ruins they could explore as they searched for him. Looking at the map, they asked Cax'Andra if she had seen any of these locations on the map. While she could fly around the island, she hadn't explored much other than where she was ordered because of her responsibilities at the fort. She had seen the ruins directly north-west of the construction site though, and had seen a passing view of the statue the party had seen before, but not the stone circles. The party decided to visit that closest set of ruins north-west of the construction site first, and then they'd go east to the stone circle where Darwin was last "seen", and then north from there to another set of ruins.
Setting out for the ruins past the construction site was uneventful. The construction site itself was still empty like they had last seen it and no trace of any of those corpses again. They took the right path this time now of the two paths available, and it was able to lead them halfway to the ruins. Cax'Andra flew above the tree tops and reported back to help lead the party to the ruins the rest of the way.
The ruins were of a small temple it looked like. The main section of the building was a large stone-walled building with a stepped-pyramid on top that had three layers. The corner closest to them was broken across the roof and half the walls like an upside down pyramid was sliced off. Stone debris littered the inside of the temple room and around the outside. The sunshine lit up the room well. Shara climbed up on top of the roof to take a look. Cax'Andra flew up and joined her. The backside of the temple had a t-shaped hallway leading off it to three separate rooms, each with slim tall windows but no other entrances.
Inside the main room, the party investigated the rows of stone pews and a small raised pulpit with a stone table. Nothing of value was found. A wooden door was closed and led to the hallway, but was unfortunately rusted shut. Grunt, with assistance, was able to break the door open and clear away the debris for a clear entryway.
The room on the right was a small prayer room for solitary practice it looked like, and offered nothing but the solace of being able to pray quietly and by oneself. The room on the left was similar, but had various scrolls - all of which crumbled upon attempted to be touched.
The room at the end was covered on the inside with thick vines and vegetation. As the party began to investigate in this room, they were suddenly attacked by a group of Twig and Vine Blights and a Wood Woad. Cax'Andra attempted to help the party defend themselves but was immediately knocked unconscious by the Woad. With fire and a tense fight, the party was able to defeat the sentient plants and clear them away. However, they discovered that these creatures were also bleeding the silver liquid and Artemis quickly took his torch to everything in the room to destroy the "infection". They were able to restore Cax'Andra to consciousness and she apologized profusely for her inability to help. Grunt offered her to perch on his shoulders once they were outside. There wasn't anything of value found in the room after this and the party pressed on to the next location.
Heading east, the party had an uneventful hike to the stone circles. The two inner-most were still missing and below was a very deep pit. The creature that had escaped was no where in sight or sound and the pit sounded like it was empty. After discussing how to explore the pit below, they agreed that Cax'Andra could fly down first and report back how deep it was and whether or not it was safe. With a shaky breath, she spread her wings like a parachute and carefully glided down into the hole as best she could. After a few minutes, she returned back up to let them know it was very deep, but safe. Tying a few of their ropes together, they were able to fasten it to a sturdy tree nearby and lower themselves into the pit. Approximately 100 feet deep or so, they stepped onto the bottom which was covered in a thin layer of thousands of bones of varying sizes and in various states of brokenness. The pit was shaped like a round-bottom flask, a sphere at the bottom with a neck leading up to the surface. The walls were rough and pitted with claw marks from the monstrous creature that used to live in there. The only thing found of interest at the bottom of this pit was a gigantic snake skin shedding from the creature, which the party collected. They then carefully climbed back out of the pit and collected their ropes. There wasn't anything of Darwin or his whereabouts that they could find here, so they left the area for the next set of ruins.
Heading north, they found a small village for the ruins. There was a large building at the end of the path, and on either side of the path were two home-like buildings. All of the wooden/thatch roofs were gone, but the stone walls stood. The entered on the houses end of the path and the house on the immediate right was larger than the others. They investigated this one first and it looked like a "gathering hall" where meals were shared and main collaboration took place. All of the stores in the pantry were beyond decayed and all the wood crumbled under any slight pressure. Nothing of value was found here.
The first home on the left looked like it may have belonged to a scribe or priest potentially. Archibald was able to find one scroll that wouldn't disintegrate immediately and was able to transcribe into his journal of a story of the yuan-ti arriving on the island and how they were saved by a snake-haired goddess. The remaining two side homes had trinkets of the families who used to live there that the party was able to recover and take with them. The main building at the end of the path looked more like a leader's home and the interior reinforced that. More trinkets were found here.
The day was coming near the end now. The party told Cax'Andra to return to the fort and give a report back to the captain of their progress for the day. The party was going to rest in the gathering hall room for the night and Cax'Andra would return to them in the morning. She left, flying above the tree tops. The party continued to explore the ruins outside to see if they missed anything. Going past the leadership building, Grunt had a sudden thought that he saw Artemis taking something from this building and he absolutely knew Artemis wasn't being 100% forthright with it. There was definitely something they were missing. Grunt went back to confront Artemis about it in the middle of the path. Artemis had no idea what Grunt was talking about, but the minotaur was getting angry. Suddenly, Alotta also knew Artemis was hiding something too and demanded that Artemis share the treasure that he had pocketed! The three of them were arguing when Archibald joined in saying that Artemis stole his pants too! Shara had a strange shiver pass over her, and shook her head to clear it. "What are you guys going on about? Artemis wouldn't hide anything from us.." The other three were adamant that he was infact hiding something though, but of what they couldn't agree. They were in the heat of the argument as Artemis was attempting to defend himself from friends who were quickly turning foe, when all of a sudden Artemis' eyes glazed for a second and then he bolted for the tree line outside the ruins. The party quickly took chase!
Artemis deftly dodged and weaved between the trees running in a random direction away from the ruins. He wasn't looking behind him, but dead ahead like his life depended on him running as fast as he could. Grunt, Archibald, and Alotta were quick on his heels as best they could, and Shara followed behind befuddled by her friend's recent actions. Grunt was able to cast a magical darkness around Artemis, where he plowed into a tree and the party was able to finally catch him. Just as they were about to beat Artemis very badly, they all snapped out of their trances and Archibald realized that they had all been under a Suggestion spell. Quickly they looked around them to see who or what had ensorcelled them. It wasn't very long they could search before they had to mad dash back to the ruins as best they could, because the gigantic snake creature that had been released from the pit was seen and heard to be travelling and crashing in the brush quickly in their direction. Panicking, the party was quickly split because of their various ability to navigate the trees, but were all able to make it back to the ruins in time to hunker down inside the gathering hall and doused all their lights. The night became incredibly oppressive as the party tried their best to quiet their breathing. The creature slithered just outside the ruins, slowing briefly before rushing off back into the forest heading east.
The party remained in the gathering hall building for the remainder of the night without further events. They had no idea of who had casted upon them and saw no more of the gigantic monster aside from the infrequent multi-voiced screeches it let out way off in the distance.
In the morning, Cax'Andra returned to the slightly stressed party. They were wary of her at first because they had a fleeting thought that she might have been casting on them, but her report to them back from the captain pushed that out of their minds. The party quickly made their way back to the statue in the cove, and from there back to the fort along the shore. They wanted to recoup themselves in a safe place and think of their next steps.
The party spent a night at their campsite inside the fort. Looking at Darwin's map, they decided to explore more of this main island where Darwin had marked ruins that he could see when he first sailed around the islands to make this map originally. They decided to visit the northern-most ruins first, and they wanted to rent a boat they could use to go around the island rather than having to trek across the island where though could potentially encounter the giant snake again.
Visiting the port, they went to the harbor master's shack at the northwest end of the piers. He was a small, older, balding-man sitting behind a desk at an open "customer" window that took up most of the one-wall facing towards where he could see all the boats docked. He didn't look up at the party approached, but did respond once asked about renting a boat to explore the islands. He looked over the party, "We have a small dhow you could borrow. Normally we use it for transport between the larger ships that can't dock and the pier, but we don't have one due to port here for a few days." He hands a writ of passage and rent to Archibald for a two-day pass to use the Sassy Lass, a peeling blue-painted dhow with a yellow patchwork sail. The party thanked him and went to the opposite end of the piers to set off. They did not hire a hand to help them sail it because Archibald demanded that he was fine enough to get them where they needed to go. The harbor master sighed silently as they walked away and pulled out a form to prefill as much as he could a form for a lost vessel..
With a bit of effort, Archibald was able to sail the adventuring party around the east coast of the main island and into the first channel between the main island and the large island to the northeast. With greater effort, he was able to beach the dhow about a half mile away they had originally intended. With much grumblings, they buried the anchor on the beach and began the walk to the ruins in the middle of the north side of the island. Once they reached the beach in front of the ruins, they could see up the smooth grassy slope to see a rather large stone city surround a ziggurat in the exact center. All the paths led to the large stone structure in the center.
Exploring the city, all of the homes and buildings had standing stone walls, but were missing their roofs like the small ruins from before. They looked like they were wooden/thatched roofs as well and over the years of weather and decomposition had completely broken down. Nothing of any value was found in any of the homes that they explored, no trinkets of any kind either. The place may have been looted or maybe everything they had before was lost to the effects of time.
The ziggurat was four-sided and diagonal to the rest of the city, so the corners faced down the four main paths leading to it. There was a stone arch entrance on each of the four flat faces that led inside. Inside was dark and was lined with stone pews all facing a central matching diamond dias with a large stone table in the center on top. There was no light inside, but Grunt cast Dancing Lights to help illuminate the area. Investigating the pews and altar, they didn't find anything of value.
The stone table had been carved out slightly to form a large shallow bowl in the center. There were four small hole in the rust-colored stone that looked like it would drain away liquids. "For science!" Archibald stated triumphantly before slicing his hand to drop blood onto the table. It drained down one of the four holes quickly and disappeared, leaving only the shiny red trail behind. Nothing happened after this. Interested, Grunt decided to try to pour a vial of the silver liquid he had collected from previous encounters of infected creatures. It slid easily over the stained stone surface and also disappeared down one of the four draining holes. They waited a moment, but nothing else happened. Archibald's magic quill helped transcribed all the markings around the stone table into his journal and he tried to speak the words aloud that he was able to decipher. He was mid-sentence when Archibald found a strange stone square symbol on the table that looked separated from the rest of the table and pushed it in. It raised the table up five feet, revealing a tight spiral staircase leading down underneath the temple.
Having found nothing else in this temple area, the party decided to head down. Grunt was incredibly hesitant to go down, because of his size, he wasn't sure if he could fit well. The drainage holes continued down through the bottom of the table and they could see the last few drops of blood and silver liquid drip off the bottom of the table and down the center of the staircase down to the bottom (falling liquids did not hit any of the steps). Shara was going to stay at the top with Grunt so he wouldn't be by himself, but the rest of the party was able to convince him to come down.
The staircase went deep underground and led to a small room below with a path leading off each side of the room. There were unlit torches in sconces in each corner and Artemis made to light each one he could see. At the bottom of the stairs was a stone basin with a deep well that collected the falling blood and silver liquid from before. Artemis dunked his torch into the little bit of liquid there to burn it away. Even with darkvision, no one was able to see the end of each path. The party went down the north path first.
The end of this path ended in a large, rectangular room. Chains hung down from the ceiling in regular intervals. The east wall had several saint andrew's crosses. The west side dropped into a pit 20 feet below. The top of the pit was lined with metal spikes to prevent whatever was down there from climbing out. From the end, they could only see a small area that had a dark pool that went under the wall. Two stone doors were closed along the north wall. Seeing no immediate danger, Artemis lit the torch sconces in this room the party investigated. There wasn't anything to find in this room besides the rust like stains left on the floors and walls. The water in the pool below was still and smelled stagnant. Opening the first door by finding another button to press, they found a smaller personal torture room with a central stone table. It had the same kind of drainage holes in it and was stained with use. Along the walls were unusable and rusted or decayed instruments of nefarious purposes. There was a drawer built into the table, but with a very decayed set of torturer's tools that Archibald kept in hopes of restoring it somehow.. The second door seemed broken though, and Grunt was able to brute force it with Artemis' help, breaking the top half of the stone door off, but stubbing his toes in the process. Inside was a small, personal altar. Along the north wall was a stone sculpture of the snake-haired goddess again with jewels for eyes. Artemis immediately began to pry the jewels out while Grunt searched the rest of the room. With great effort, he was able to release the spherical stones and a veneer of stone/clay fell off them revealing shining, faceted gems. Archibald identified them as both Ioun stones - one of small intelligence, the other of history. He kept the intelligence one and Grunt took the other.
Finding nothing else, they went to leave this room at the end of the path, when they were taken upon three yuan-ti broodguards and two yuan-ti purebloods. It was a harrowing fight, with them almost losing Archibald and Artemis, but the party was able to defeat the snake people in the end. Alotta did an amazing maneuver using her rope of entanglement on one of the purebloods while stunning the other, allowing the rest of the party to pick off the broodguards more easily and save their friends, who were a breath away from death's door each.
Following the rule of left walls in a dungeon/maze, the party walked back to the central room and went to the next path on their left. This path led to a set of stairs that led further into the ground and back to the "center" which was a replica of the buildings above ground. The ziggurat main room and every other building and abode was copied down here, just carved out of stone instead of built with them. Here however they round remains; remains of families, individuals, pets, all decayed skeletal remains. All seemingly ritualistically sacrificed. They had no trinkets, no valuables, no personal items, and threads leftover from their simple clothes. Each room had its own small stone altar basin. The party did not stay long here and quickly returned to the central room with the staircase.
Following the next path to the left, it took them to an underground river, flowing strongly with no dock or boats. It didn't appear very deep, shallow on the edges and maybe six feet at most in the middle. Archibald died his hand in and it smelled of the salt water from above ground and deduced it must have an entrance somewhere along the shore. The party argued for a moment and decided to investigate the last path before they investigated the river.
Taking their last left turn, the final of the four paths led for a short while and ended abruptly at a large stone door, very elaborately decorated of the snake woman they've seen quite a few times now. The bottom of the mural was jumbled up like a sliding puzzle however, and with quite a bit of frustration, the party was able to reassemble the correct image. Doing so revealed a small hand hole at the center bottom. Artemis decided to be the one to reach in, and having grasped a small lever handle, pretended to scream! The party freaked for a moment and in a panic, Grunt grabbed his ankles and pulled him away from the door. Artemis had a strong hand on the lever and pulled it out as Grunt pulled him out. The lever clicked at a stopping point and Artemis was forced to let it go as Grunt continued to pull him away. They all laughed after the fact as the door began to slide up into the ceiling revealing a large square room.
From the ceiling hung three rusted metal braziers. Along each side wall was a large statue of the yuan-ti broodguards holding up the ceiling. At the far end was a large stone pool filled with a dark, solid liquid. Artemis lit the braziers above. Grunt sent his dancing lights into the liquid only to find them to disappear completely just a few inches in. Without thinking, Archibald dipped his hands into the dark liquid and came away dripping slightly coagulated blood. He put bloody handprints on Alotta's body to wipe it off (inside joke), and then remembered that he had sliced his hand earlier and this probably wasn't a good idea.. Grunt and Artemis noted that this blood was also tinted with the silvery liquid! Archibald quickly casted acid onto the floor and attempted to cauterize his own wounds. He would be unable to use his hands for a while because of this, but as a scribe wizard, he wasn't fazed much though. Artemis didn't put his hand to the torch because of the use of acid. Hopefully it was enough, and hopefully he wouldn't have the same fate as the foreman. They didn't dwell on this and investigated the rest of the room. The entire floor was stained from old blood, all the way up to the small step that was the path back to the staircase. The party was considering taking a short rest here when the blood pool began to boil. Startled, they backed up to the path. Artemis was the last in line and saw a giant bulbous blob rise up from the pool and spill blood all over the floor, making it shine slick under the fire lights. Thick, glooping sounds came from this creature as a myriad of micro tentacles reached out to pull it along the floor. The party quickly "noped" out of there and ran out of the ruins, lowered the stone table back down and hid the stairs, and went back to where they had beached their boat.
With another heated discussion about whether to camp on the beach or to anchor away from shore and sleep in the boat, they settled on the beach there and took turns taking watch. It was thankfully an uneventful night and everyone was able to recover fully.
The next morning after some quick food, the party decided to continue investigating the same ruins. They wanted to know more about the blood blob creature, if it was hiding anything, and where the underground river started and ended. Blob thing first.
The adventurers were easily able to make their way back to the bloody room. The floor was now sticky from the drying blood and the pool incredibly drained, with barely an inch remaining at the bottom. This revealed a small tunnel the party could travel crouched, or crawling in the case of the larger minotaur. There was no sign of the blob creature anywhere. Artemis led the party into the tunnel, which climbed up for a long ways. It eventually opened up into a smaller pool in a room at the very top of the ziggurat! From up here there were able to look down upon the entire temple below, but it was too dark for anyone below to see them up there. At the far end of the room they found a mundane priest necklace in a small alcove. It was shaped in the image of the snake woman again. With no other exit they could find, they went back down the tunnel to the bloody room, wondering where that blob creature could be, and went to the underground river.
Here again they had another tense argument about whether going upstream or downstream first. Artemis wanted to go upstream to see what fed this river, hoping it was the ocean above ground and they could sail down this. Pretty much everyone else wanted to go downstream to see where it led. A compromise was reached where Cax'Andra would fly upstream and report back where the entrance was and then regroup with them downstream. Both groups set off.
Heading downstream was easier because they were going with the flow. It was no longer high tide as well, so the current didn't seem as strong as last they saw. They got almost two miles before Cax'Andra regrouped and told them the entrance was at the base of the cliff underneath the other ruins they were going to investigate. It was about another mile when they reached the end of downstream.
The river stopped abruptly at a large cavern and plummeted over 100 feet below to a large pool. The entire cavern was lit up by blue-green bioluminescent algae that covered the walls and ceiling. There was a small slick path to the right of the waterfall that led to the bottom of the cavern and a carved stone entry way. Archibald, being the super smart person that he was, decided to take the quick route and jump off the waterfall. Cax'Andra flew down safely, while Alotta and Shara made it safely down the slick path. Artemis and Grunt slipped off and came away a little bruised from their fall into the water. They surfaced from the water, while Archibald did not.
Archibald managed to not panic the first time he felt something large brush past his leg, but still swam faster to reach the surface. His planned jump sent him deeper into the water at the base of the waterfall than the others, but he knew he could hold his breath for a while. He began to panic though when something thick wrapped around his ankle and pulled him back under just before he could reach the surface. He then felt a solid whack and went unconscious. The rest of the party was confused why he hadn't surfaced yet when Artemis and Grunt already had. That's when Grunt noticed the tentacles pulling their headstrong ally down into the depths. The party rushed into action, no hesitation to attempt a rescue for misguided fool. Cax'Andra deftly flew up, conjured a shadow blade, and dove down to stab the tentacle. Alotta cast enlarge on herself and was able to get in range to use the rope of entanglement to wrap around Archibald's body, and began to pull. The others made brave attempts, but didn't hurt the creature. Feeling the pain of the attacks that landed, a large eye rose up from the depths trying to save the prey it caught, and panicking itself, bit and ripped off Archibald's right leg at the knee. The water quickly turned red as the monstrous beast retreated into the depths of the pool and the party went to shore to resuscitate and patch the wound. Archibald barely survived and was still unconscious from the pain of his severed nerve endings.
The carved entrance was beautiful. More similar statues and carved columns held up a stone roof. Atop the roof was a massive stone bust carved into the wall of the snake lady, her hands outstretched holding a magnificent oral the size of a dinner table. Artemis was instantly and completely enamored and deftly climbed up and attempted to free the gigantic goldmine of a gem from the statue's grip. Warning the party to move, which they did, with great effort Artemis broke one of the hands and both it and the gem fell to the stone and sand shore below. The cavern shook as it created a slightly new shore line. There was no way Artemis' bag of holding would be able to hold this entire thing, so he reluctantly agreed with the party helping him chip off whatever he could fit, which was about two large watermelon-sized chunks and various chips. Glutton satiated and set aside, they investigated the doors carved into the stone.
The door were beautiful and as intricate as anything they had seen thus far. Instead of all pictographs telling a story, there were written words along the bottom half this time. Any attempt to wake Archibald resulted his screaming and passing out again from pain, so they had Cax'Andra speak aloud. As she spoke the last word, the doors began to open inward, revealing a room so lavishly carved. Gems and gold inlaid every carving and mosaic. The statues in each corner were so vividly painted and preserved they looked almost alive (but they for sure were just stone). There was no treasure hoard or loot aside from a single pedestal in the center of the floor with a stone broodguard claw holding a beautiful flask similar to the first one they had found at the construction site. This one was also filled with the silver liquid and the cork was topped with a gold cap. Cax'Andra stopped Grunt from taking it immediately, pointing out the writing on the pedestal. She read the inscription out loud to try to explain the potential trap, but in reading them, the claw released its grip on the flask and Grunt took it.
Time seemed to stop for a moment for Grunt. He found himself in a overgrown jungle temple, surrounded by hundreds of yuan-ti bowed in prayer to the snake goddess. Grunt stared directly at her, the snakes for hair, her legs long. She stood 15 tall easily and kneeled in front of the entranced minotaur. One large, long hand reaching to caress his scalp, claws just barely scraping his skin. "I know you Grunt Ironhoof." Her voice whispered out her split-tongued mouth with sharp fangs and teeth. Her eyes were so luminous a green that they glowed. "You have something of mine.." the words caressed and shivered him at the same time. "I WILL find you..." She traced a single claw down his jaw bow and nicked him near his chin. He was pushed back from the event and fell backwards, back into his own body, back off away from the pedestal to land on the cold stone floor. Artemis took a moment away from his stealing gems from the walls to ask Grunt if he was good. Grunt brushed it off as slippery floor. It would take weeks probably to fully loot all the gems in this room, and as they debated it, hissing sounds began to fill the room. They decided not to stay any longer, and with great effort made it back up the slick side trail and back up the river, through the temple ruins and back to their boat.
Shara navigated the boat now with Artemis' assistance, since Archibald was still passed out. They're it back to the fort safely and quickly took Archibald to the infirmary for better treatment for his leg. Glenda was there and explained they were short on staff and could work on Archibald but it wouldn't be pretty probably. The doctor and two nurses from before were showing the same symptoms as the foreman before and had been moved to the jail for holding. Archibald was treated and the party decided to also put him in a jail cell for now because of his potential same infection. Cax'Andra left to deliver a report to the captain and the party settled back at their campsite.
The next morning Artemis visits the doctor and the doctor isn’t very keen on giving him any answers. Artemis threatens to test the doctor physically to find out what he wants to know and the doctor calls for the guards. A guard shows up and Artemis tries to get the guard to go away so he can “continue.” The guard doesn’t leave, but Artemis does give up and leaves back to the campsite.
After discussing with the rest of the party, Grunt decides to go and talk to the doctor himself and try diplomacy – which does succeed. He learns more from the doctor about the silver infection – that it only spreads from contact where the liquid enters the body through abrasions or cuts. That he feels the infection spreading through his body like a frost that he can’t shake off. Grunt asks him about possibly creating a cure with “pure extract” of the silver liquid. The doctor is amazing that Grunt has this at all, but is quickly cut off from the minotaur, “Don’t ask how we got it.” Grunt tells the doctor that he’ll talk to the captain to see what they can do to accommodate him with laboratory equipment to work on creating something to reduce or turn back the infection.
Artemis fails to sneak around, so Grunt and the Guards sees him and invites him with to talk to the captain. They are greeted by a desk-duty guard who checks if the captain is available as Grunt lets her know about a potential cure. She comes back and leads them to go talk with the captain. They share the plan of getting the doctor back to the infirmary to work in the laboratory. The captain reminds them that the safety of this outpost and the safety of the people here are his main responsibility. That the idea of a cure in case anyone else became infected would be amazing, but he would prefer the doctor continue working from his jail cell. He can have Cax’Andra help retrieve laboratory instruments and any other tools the doctor will need. Grunt assists as well and also requests a peg leg be created by the blacksmith for Archibald and gives him one of their rubies retrieved from the caves.
Back at the campsite, Artemis asks what their next steps were. The captain had mentioned that there were no sightings or further attacks to the outpost, so they could search the area outside the outpost for any signs or markings of the goblins, any of the corpses from the construction site, the giant snake creature, or anything else pertaining to the silver infections. They do find dried, decayed pieces of goblins and a human and an elf, but none of it was “alive” or reacting to anything. Artemis torches all of these as they don’t want them. The pieces light immediately and turn to ash quickly. In the last section they were investigating they do find a “living” and broken elvan corpse. Alotta sees a hand laying under the brush and uses her Rope of Entanglement to grab the hand and pull, and it begins to writhe. The corpse crawls in on stubs of arms and legs slowly after them, Shara pins it to the ground with an arrow and Artemis quickly puts it to the torch as well and it disintegrates to ash. They carry the “undead” writhing hand back to the outpost to give to the doctor.
It’s after the evening mealtime when they return to the prison and the makeshift laboratory in the doctor’s cell. Grunt and Cax’Andra have been finding and delivering instruments and the guards delivered a first set of live rats for experimenting on for a potential cure. Archibald finally awakes. He now talks with a pirate accent believing he was “blessed by the kraken gods” to be the next Dread Pirate Archie! Archibald, Cax’Andra, and the doctor have begun to work their hypotheses on the silver liquid they now call “cursed snake oil.” After dismissing all attempts for Archibald to suggest they test on the doctor, they learn that the snake oil reacts negatively to fire (obviously from all the burning that Artemis did previously), from lightning (because it generates heat to burn with), and surprisingly psychic damage. After further discussion, Grunt and the doctor agree on a hypothesis of a “hive mind” because the victims don’t have to be alive, but the snake oil does require a fluid locomotion – so fresher dead or “alive” victims work better for it, and the more decayed just seem to fall apart or too dry and breaking to have the flesh work properly – and also because the silver infected seem to work together without any communication.
Settling the doctor, Archibald, and Cax’Andra to work together on the experiments, the rest of the party decides to investigate the other set of ruins at the top of the cliff that they meant to previously (but hadn’t been able to because of needing to bring Archibald back to be taken care of). Grunt and Cax’Andra agreed to have her come check on them in two days at the landing site near the first ruins to see how they were doing. To save them trouble in travel, they hired someone to direct the boat for them and sailed effortlessly to the destination. Although, the hired ship pilot didn’t think the adventurers would be alive for him to come pick up in 2 days..
With some great survival instincts, Shara led the party up the forested cliffside to the top of the cliffs on the west side of the island. The view was amazing from the edge of the ruins up there, as the larger area around them was mainly grasses and taller grasses closer to the forest’s edge. The sun was beginning to lower in the sky and the beautiful hues were starting to come through the sparse clouds. There was a main “business” like section lining the main road leading straight back from the cliffs edge. No buildings were close to the edge, but there was a somewhat broken stone barrier path that could be safely walked on along the cliff edge. At the end of the business path was a larger building that looked like it might have been home to leadership. All along the outside of the main buildings were smaller residential homes. All these buildings were stone-walled, and the roofs had long since fell in and decayed, leaving them open to the skies.
Exploring the business buildings, they found two mysterious matching carved stones in one that seemed to be like a fine jeweler’s store. Everything was so rusted or indistinguishable. All the rest and the south residential side of the village held small trinkets or personal effects of stone that held very little value.
Night was almost upon them at this point, and they rested in a house at the edge of the village nearby the cliff. A small section of a second floor remained and worked nicely as a lookout point for whomever was on watch. The night had a full moon on a clear sky that was also as gorgeous as the sunset view was – the galaxy splayed out above them like a gigantic glittering tapestry. Taking some time to sit with the stones that they had found, Grunt thought they were magical and tried to "attune" with them as they wound down for the night. After concentrating on them for so long, looking at the details of the carvings that looked similar to all the snake goddess carvings they had seen previously, he was able to ascertain that these were sending stones, and the key word to activate them was "nuntiusss" - or "message" in the yuan-ti/snake hybrid language they've been seeing all over the island.
Shara took the first watch, being the only full elven and not requiring much sleep – it passed by uneventfully.
Artemis took the second watch, and it wasn’t long before he had the sudden urge to go to sleep, that everything was fine, and they were safe. Against his better judgement, he dozed off. It wasn’t much longer before the small snores of Artemis and a strange rustling outside woke up Shara, who quickly woke up the others and climbed up to Artemis to wake him. Grunt suddenly felt the urge to go back to sleep as well and laid back down, much to Alotta’s surprise. Shara successfully woke up Artemis and fired at a yuan-ti, a snake-headed humanoid, at the window below them. Alotta, alerted by the arrow, used her fire rune on the creature and restrained it to the spot it stood. Another yuan-ti jumped in a window nearer her and attacked her instead of Grunt sleeping there.
They were able to take down the restrained yuan-ti with a little difficulty, and the other in a panic, shape changed into a boa constrictor and attempted to escape. The snake escaped out of her rope of entanglement once but didn’t get far when captured again by the rope, where it was quickly run through by several blades and a well-placed arrow. The body reverted to its yuan-ti form upon death.
They left the bodies where they laid overnight, for fear of greater creatures that went bump in the night. Grunt took the third watch, which passed uneventfully. Alotta took the last and spaced out too much watching the sun rise. By the time everyone was awake, the bodies were gone.
Letter to Darwin found in the Foreman's shack at the construction site [Session 1]:
Darwin,
You fool.. What did you think you were going to accomplish.. A life's work? Is this to get her back? It's not worth throwing your life away. Those islands are dangerous and Crumplebottom is naive to invest in them. I hope you don't really believe they were not previously discovered? You're probably not going to listen to me, and I'll not allow myself to be the cause of your death. You're a grown man and should have know better.. I was hoping I had taught you better..
Be safe, please. Come back home. I'll talk to your father to have him change his mind about your inheritance. We'll talk and get this sorted and you can help in the business again.
Enclosed is a writing I received from the college's historians about the island. Please consider their words if you're not going to heed mine.
Warmest regards, Madam Feld of .... ........ ...
[enclosed writings was missing from letter when found by our adventurer's]
Checking in with Archibald in New Bikibutei’s jail cells, he was adamant on refusing to assist the doctor unless he was guaranteed out of his cell prior. No compromise was made at this time.
The rest of the party explores the ruins at the top of the cliff on the main island, and in the main building they found an embroidered map in a secret hole on the second story. Finding not much else of value, they return to the shore where the boat was expecting them. "All of these ruins and no bodies..." Grunt pondered. They safely were able to return to the city and went to visit Archibald.
Archibald was still very defiant in not wanting to help unless he was released. So the party went to go speak with the Captain of the Guard to try to convince him to release Archibald into their custody so they could continue trying to create a cure. The captain agrees, reluctantly, impressing upon the party the clear goal was the protection of the city and its inhabitants, that if Archibald, or any of the party for that matter, impeded his goal, they would be quickly and severely dealt with. They understand his terms and have Archibald released so that he can help the doctor finally.
Back in the jail cells, Archibald, the doctor, and the party all brainstorm various ways to make a potential antidote or cure for the silver infection. Recalling their previous experiences, they decide to try to congeal psychic damage acid splash (courtesy of Archibald’s skills as a Wizard of the Scribe) and combine it with the silver liquid. It seems to do the trick, and they go about making a dozen “psychic ointments” and begin taking doses between those currently infected.
The party then heads out to go to the next set of ruins on the island, but before they can leave the city the main gate comes under attack by more than a dozen corpses that seemed to match those that they had “lost” from the construction site when they first arrived. Losing the two gate guards, the party barely manages to contain the attack, and with a lot of fire destroys the corpses, and the remains of a few that had exploded practically in their faces. They decide a quick trip back to the doctor in the jail cells to make more psychic ointments should be done first.
While making the additional ointments, Grunt decides that he’s going to try to secretly tamper with the few he directly handled, pouring more of the pure silver liquid into the ointment jars. Previously, while everyone was recovering from the attack at the main gate, Grunt had snuck off for a moment to be by himself. He was suffering from an internal turmoil because it seemed that he was infatuated with the Snake Goddess and had begun to secretly pray to her. He decided then to purposefully infect himself by drinking some of the pure silver liquid in the fancy glass bottle in the hopes of being closer to her, and thus began to enthrall himself to her.
No one else in the party noticed Grunt was no longer staying his normal self. Thankfully though, Archibald did notice Grunt pouring more than the recommended silver liquid in the ointment jars and was able to rectify the potentially bad batch. Off in the other corner of the jail cells on this special ward, the two nurses didn’t look like the ointment was going to work on them. They hadn’t turned yet, but their condition wasn’t seeing the immediate improvement that the doctor and Archibald had.
After reviewing the party’s newly updated map, they decide to head to the central island of the five, and to stop at one of the underwater ruins on the way there. To make sailing easier, they hire someone to navigate the boat for them.
Aloatta can hold her breath for an insanely long time, being an Air Genasi, so she and Artemis, who uses the borrowed diving gear, both dive into the water and sink down to the underwater ruins. Exploring was slow-going, but they were able to safely navigate the ruins and found a rusted-shut long box, and a smaller square box. They evaded the giant eels in the room containing the smaller box, one of which nearly electrified Artemis, and make it back to the surface successfully.
At the surface they were able to open the rusted boxes, revealing a Moon Blade named Earl that claimed Shara as its master, and a Robe of Serpents which was claimed by the minotaur. They then continued their voyage to the central island.
Arriving at the central island, they navigate into the small cove safe from the wind and capricious waters. The island is extremely overgrown, but they do manage to spot a worn set of steep steps carved into the cliff face. Climbing carefully, Artemis clears the growth away and they're able to climb up to the top safely.
Entering the thick jungle at the top of the cliff, they are hit by an pungent stench of decay. Looking up, hanging from limbs of trees they see dozens of goblin corpses in various states of decay, but thankfully not any fresh, the silver infected clear in the dried blood clinging to their clothing and flesh. Finding no immediate danger, and needing to continue their journey, the party presses forward into the jungle, after a quick aerial view from Cax'Andra to make sure they would head in the correct direction.
Not getting terribly far into the jungle, Grunt is overcome by a vision of a beautiful oasis where the Snake Goddess was waiting in front of him, and rushes headlong ahead attempt to reach the tranquil respite. Share and Aloatta notice Grunt beginning to froth at the mouth and attempt to slow him. Aloatta’s rope of entanglement fails to hold the beast, and Grunt breaks into a 4-legged sprint rushing through and breaking any foliage in his path. The whole party is in full pursuit of him and Artemis finally manages to catch up and tackle Grunt. Aloatta takes over leading the party through the more and more dense jungle until “night falls” because the trees are so thick. They light torches to help see.
Aloatta leads the party forward and saves herself from falling into a spike pit trap by grabbing onto a strong branch. Artemis pulls her back from the brink and they decide how to cross as the pit trap extends quite a ways to the left and right. Across from them still north they start to see light coming through the trees ahead. Artemis jumps across, Grunt fells a tree, and they all make it across safely – Artemis uses a rope for a hand rail for everyone and they retrieve it via mage hand. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Archibald tells Artemis while watching his attempt to jump.
They come upon a small clearing with a broken tree. Inside the stump is a large crack and, in the crack, lays a shimmery/glimmering egg that is very warm to the touch. The roots of the trees are ever-burning and magical. Artemis gives his hooded lantern to grunt and he converts it into a holder for the egg taking some of the burning roots to place in the bottom to keep it warm.
Cax’Andra flies up to let them know if they’re continuing along the correct way. A large creature flies above, blocking out the sunlight for a brief moment and is gone. Cax’Andra rushes back, almost crashing back into the ground, and passes out before letting them know what she saw, but did let them know the correct direction. Artemis leads them now and they make it safely to another clearing arriving at the first ruins.
It is 12 stone houses in a circle around a stone dais. These stone houses look much like all the others they have seen so far in their journey across the islands – only walls remaining, roofs have all collapsed, but the stones are much more elaborately carved here. They find mundane ritual accoutrements of the snake goddess and Artemis gives Grunt the only passable one he finds.
Investigating the stone dias, Archibald and Cax’Andra realize that there’s 4 sets of circles of runes carved intot he stone each depicting a different ritual based on the season. Archibald records each of these in his book with his magic quill and deciphers the summer ritual.
The summer ritual deciphered:
“The summer ritual includes chanting to the goddess, providing gifts of meats and sacrifices of the flesh. A soul must be "released" in the center of the "ritual" so that they can benefit the goddess. If a pure enough soul is offered, the goddess herself may appear. Those chanting must be bare-clad and covered in the blood of their offerings and marked with the bloody ash of the sacrificial fire.”
Finding nothing else of value at the ruins, Artemis leads the party to the temple ruins marked on their map. The trees stop cleanly at the end of a large valley. In the bottom of the valley is a large stepped pyramid with an elaborate pillar rising above the top.
Grunt casts ray of frost to make a “slide” and falls on his butt at the bottom. The rest make it down safely – Archibald and Artemis decide they would rather just walk down safely. They climb up the temple to the top of the stairs. Artemis sees the creature briefly beyond the treetops and Archibald confirms the creature to be potentially be a Minokawa.
What Archibald realizes about the creature:
The creature is likely a minokawa, but not the large as an island one - which was probably exagerrated over time. The dragon-like bird is all black and produces a magickal heat from its body that can be seen from its feathers in flight. It has silvery-black skin and beaks, and its eyes are like deep black reflecting pools. In mythology it was known to cause eclipses by eating the sun or moon - which escaped when the other was attempted to be eaten. It was claimed to also cause meteors to fall from its open mouth that broke off the sun. But everything has been lost to legend and myth and no one alive in centuries has seen the creature, if it was even real to begin with. The legends say the bird has great powers and is mortal enemies with dragons and snakes.
The party argues over the eggs for a few minutes, some wanting to return it to where they found it, and others wanting to keep it for the party’s pet or to potentially sell it. Unable to come to a consensus, they head into the temple and continue to carry the egg. Artemis lights a torch and its dark except for the sun lighting up a central pedestal with another offering basin in the middle. It’s just like the one they had seen before and Artemis quickly finds the hidden lever to open the hatch.
At the bottom of the secret stairs, the group finds them in a large half-rounded room with several doors. Deciphering the runes on each door, they are in this order from left to right – Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Earth, Water, Fire.
Starting with the central Air door, they come into a large prayer room with rows of pews infront of a rounded stage area with a large snake statue on display. In attempting to investigate the room, they find a strong wind prevents them from going on the stage. Grunt prays to the statue and is allowed passage and with the help of his goddess finds a key at the back of the statue. Everyone else is pushed back by the wind. Artemis attempts throws his grappling hook and it flies back and hits him in the face. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Artemis again tells Artemis.
Next going through the Earth door on the left, Artemis spots a pit fall trap before they hit it and they wisely choose to not continue that way.
Trying the right Earth door, it is a rough stone and dirt path for about 50 feet with no apparent traps that ends in a locked door. Artemis unlocks it with his thieves’ tools and gets hit in the face by a magic trap on the lock. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Archibald again says to Artemis.
Inside is dirt floor, rough cut walls, very plain space with a plain sarcophagus in the center. They open it and find a mummified body with ceramic jars that seemed to contain the humanoid’s internal organs. They try to close it after Archibald warns them what it seems to be after he found deep claw marks on the inside of the lid, but it’s too late and the cursed vampire comes out and attacks!
Grunt and Archibald (incredibly unlucky) become charmed from the vampire’s bite. Grunt twin casts a thunder bolt upon the undead’s orders, almost killing Cax’Andra in his attempt to kill Artemis. The rest of the party defeats the vampire, releasing their friends from the charm, and Grunt realizes what his spells hit. “Oh god, what have I done...” He rushes trying to save Cax’Andra and prays to his goddess because the outlook is incredibly grim. His prayer is granted, a sick slithering feeling coming over his body, traveling down his arms and reviving the small owlfolk, but at a great cost he realizes from the laughter echoing in his skull, and he now owes for the life saved.
The party takes a long rest in this room, barricading the door for safety.
Artemis investigates everyone as they sleep. Everyone seems fine, Archibald is recovering nicely from his silver infection, Cax’Andra is beat the hell up and has a gnarly lightning scar across her chest and neck, creeping up onto the side of her face. The only one who seems suspicious is Grunt because of the way he had to pray to save Cax’Andra. Archibald ritually casts water breathing on all the party members. Artemis leads the party out and down the water pathway.
It leads to a 1ft deep water swamped room with pillar columns along the sides and a diamond shaped platform at the far end with a chest on it. Grunt casts dancing light and illuminates the area and below the water. Artemis goes to collect the chest and becomes entranced by the “spirits of the river Styx” hidden in the underwater holes. Grunt collects a wooden puzzle from inside the chest and Shara pulls Artemis away from the trance.
They go to the water on the opposite side and it’s an illusion room that looks exactly the same. Looking up instead of down, Artemis who is on a rope leash, triggers it, and the water on the ceiling collapses down, pinning Artemis to the floor. The rest of the party retrieves him via the rope.
They head to the fire rune hallway on the right. At the end is a stepped room, 5 foot drops btwn each level and a pool of lava at the bottom of each step. Archibald auguries and learns that stepping on the fire rune tiles are safe. Artemis jumps safely to the bottom where a large 2-door stone door is carved into the wall. He’s unable to open it himself. Aloatta joins him and is able to open the door. Artemis jumps back up to the middle level. Opening the door, the fires in the room go out, leaving the area illuminated only by the lava. A giant black claw grabs the door and opens it, it’s other giant claw grabs the other door and opens it, and a pig-face balor roars its face in to the room. Artemis loses his boots and takes damage himself from accidentally touching the lava while trying to escape. Aloatta escapes easily with the help of her rope. The party retreats successfully with the screams and roars of the balor who cannot follow.
They travel down the other fire path and it leads to a room containing another vial phylactery. Grunt takes it and they find nothing else of value in the room. Archibald convinces Grunt to give him one of the vials, and gives him the half-full one. Archibald immediately smashes the vial, and the liquid seeps between the cracks. Grunt and Cax’Andra collapse unconscious for 10 seconds – they receive a vision from the Snake Goddess that she’s in pain from the vial being destroyed, and lashes out at Grunt and Cax’Andra dealing them psychic damage. While unconscious, Archibald forces a vial of the anti-venom down their throats. Archibald takes one willingly just in case.. They awaken, Archibald attempts to take the other vials, and the party begins to fight.
I checked in with the players at the table at this point to make sure everyone was okay with the infighting about to happen and that no one was going to have issues from roleplaying through this. Everyone agreed this was party of the story and how it was culminating so far they knew what was coming, and we continued.
Aloatta attempts to bind Grunt with her rope and fails. Shara puts hunter’s mark on Grunt and attempts to shoot the bag containing the other vials, knocking it off his shoulder. She shoots again and slices the bottom of the bag open, spilling the contents of the bag on the floor. Cax’Andra, defending Grunt, casts Toll the Dead on Aloatta and retreats, evading the opportunity attack. Artemis runs up to Grunt and attempts to run him through, dealing a great deal of damage with his sneak attack. Archibald casts magic missile on Grunt, almost defeating him, except for Grunt’s Strength of the Grave saving him. Archibald steps on the first vial he can see in the pile, crushing it and spilling the contents over the other items spilled from the bag (this vial was a not-pure, mixed vial). Grunt twin spells lightning bolt, hitting Archibald and Artemis, hurting them a lot, then attempts to gore Artemis and fails. Aloatta uses non-lethal damage to knock Grunt unconscious, and destroys the last vial – which knocks Cax’Andra unconscious briefly again from another vision from the Snake Goddess. The two are then tied up expertly with Aloatta's skills. The following items are lost from Grunts pack as they are covered in the silver liquid from the broken vials – bedroll, clothes, dagger, arcane focus, rations, tinderbox, snake meat. The party takes a short rest and then starts to head back. They levitate the two captors down the cliff’s edge safely and the party makes it back to the boat where Grunt finally is conscious again as they sail back to the city.
They continue to attempt to solve the wooden puzzle box they found before without success. Arriving back at New Bikibutei, they get weird looks from the dock workers as they drag two bound party members offboard– Aloatta remarks “They like it..” and they continue to to their camp unbothered. Archibald smashes the last vial hidden in Grunt's belongings, sending Cax’Andra and Grunt into their unconscious visions again where the Snake Goddess writhes in pain and lashes out at them with psychic damage. While they’re unconscious, Archibald forces another anti-venom down each of their throats – however, unbeknowst to him and the rest of the party, this has no effect because Cax’Andra is “reborn” from the Snake Goddess and is enthralled, and Grunt was voluntarilly enthralled.
Player Character Death Trigger Warning:
Artemis volunteers to take Cax’Andra to the jail because the party was done questioning her, but not Grunt yet. On the way though, out of sight/sound of the party, he takes a detour to a secret part of the town instead. He gives Cax’Andra a quick apology, explaining that he knows she’s never going to recover from the effect of the Snake Goddess and he was giving her a mercy, and then slices the aarakocra’s throat. She fades slowly as the blood spills from her body, and only once she’s confirmed dead does Artemis leave to make a request of the thieves’ guild to help make the body disappear, costing him all of his current coins to do so. He then disappears himself for a few days to lay low. While Artemis is gone, Grunt has not come conscious from the vision yet and starts convulsing from the attacks of the Snake Goddess in the vision. The party watches helplessly as he succumbs to the psychic damage and passes. They hold a funeral pyre for him later that day.
The remaining party members ask around town about Cax’Andra and Artemis after discovering that they never made it to the jailhouse. A few days later, gossip starts from the dock about a body having washed ashore. The party is requested to come to the guard station to help identify the body, since they had been asking about missing persons. They manage to identify the featherless, badly fish-eaten corpse of Cax’Andra. Aloatta gasps and cries out that Darwin was behind this, pointing out what looks like knife wounds, and that Artemis is still missing and was likely done for too. Her exclamation, and the previous history of “Darwin causing the snake attacks on the town”, the guards believe the story, and a wanted persons poster is posted all over town with a 1000gp reward for the capture of or successful knowledge of Darwin’s location. Artemis comes out of hiding having seen this. He heads out into the woods and dirties himself, and badly hurting himself to make him look like he was captured and tortured and finally escaped. He’s found on the shore as well and rushed to the hospital for treatment.
While in hiding, Artemis finally received a buyer for their giant opal still hanging out in his bag of holding. Unfortunately, he missed their first meeting while he was "missing", but thankfully Big Blue was able to reschedule it. Unfortunately the buyer’s were super pissed about having to spend extra days in New Bikibutei, and upon seeing the opal was real and far larger than advertised, they decided to murder Artemis and steal all his belongings instead – which they were successful with. Artemis’ body was never found.
During these days as well, a new ship finally comes into port, unloading new doctor’s, nurses, construction workers, and other townsfolk to help with the advancement of colonizing these islands. The previous doctor miraculously survives from the anti-venom treatments, while the two nurses did not.
The remaining party relaxed for a few days in town, recovering from their recent adventures and mishaps, and recruited new folks to join their party to fill the voids of their missing friends, Grunt, Cax'Andra, and Artemis.
Started: 06/18/21
Milestone leveling.
I apologize in advance for any grammar mistakes. Auto-correct on my mobile devices is my bane with all the unique words we get to use when playing. I'll correct them as I see them or when they are pointed out if I keep missing them!
Players:
Background:
Our adventurers have been hired by Lord Crumplebottom, the head of a family of old wealth, to investigate an issue encountered on his new investments - a series of uncharted islands at the edge of civilization. The reason he was selecting adventurers for this task was because he was also forcing his son Archibald to go, as senior Crumplebottom was sick of his free-loading adult child, and he didn't want to have his hired guard be bothered by those shenaningans.
Campaign Resources:
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Session 0 - 06/18/21
Character and World creation. We had time for a short session afterwards.
Our party is onboard the "Frivolous Decanter" as they sail for the new worlds. They have been hired by a senior Lord Crumplebottom to investigate an issue that has happened on the main island and to help the colonization efforts continue. They were able to freely explore the ship except for Archibald, who with an arguement with his father (Lord Crumplebottom) about his free-loading, was forced on this voyage and subjected to remain in the brig for the duration of the travel.
They arrived at the outpost on the main island, New Bikabutei, which was located on a marshy area next to dry land with a series of raised wooden platforms of buildings and empty spaces connected by raised wooden walkways, which was all surrounded by a tall wooden fort walls. The waters were deep enough here at the docks of the outpost for full-sized ships to harbor. Right outside the walls is where the first dry land was, with a doored-ramp leading down, and the path lead immediately into a dense forest.
Artemis recognized their contact right away; Big Blue was a small goblin with pale blue skin and a gruff human-sounding voice which set him apart from his green-skinned brothers. He filled in the party on the initial details. About a mile along the path into the woods was a construction site where they were building a lumber mill and processing building. The crew there was attacked and only the foreman survived, making it back to New Bikabutei. He was currently in the outpost's infirmary recovering. The party was do what they need to at the outpost and then start by investigating the construction site and report back their findings.
Exploring the outpost, Artemis discovered Thieves' markings on the blacksmith that it was a point of contact for the guild in this area. Grunt and Gimmeck also found Dorothea's open-air, 4-seat sidewalk pub. Gimmeck couldn't hold his ale, and Grunt downed two "Dragon's Breath" shot! Dorothea was impressed and Grunt carried his friend to their campsite platform near the outpost's wall near the gate inland.
The day was ending and the party decided to rest for the night and head out at first light.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Session 1 - 07/09/21
Our adventurers slept peacefully for their first night in the outpost. At dawn they first went to visit the surviving foreman in the infirmary.
At the front desk they met a proud older woman named Glenda, who was in charge of managing the facility and its supplies and documents. She mostly replied in grunts until the conversation became interesting as the minotaur joined in to negotiate access to the patient they wanted to see. After arranging a "meeting" btwn her and the minotaur they were allowed to visit the foreman at the end of the hall of the first floor of the building.
The foreman was heavily sedated with medication and spells. The majority of his body was covered with a thick layer of clean bandages. He appeared human, that one eye may be damaged or missing because the socket was covered and sunken, and that chunks of flesh seemed to missing in many locations over each appendage and torso. Grunt and Artemis inspected his wounds carefully under the bandages and found small, circular jaws made the bite marks and there were lots of claw marks and scratches everywhere. It also seemed necrosis and infections had begin to start in some wounds, and they oozed a thick silvery metallic liquid. There wasn't much else to discover on his person or in the room, so the party left to go investigate the scene of the attack.
Stepping outside the outpost, the party was immediately surrounded by sights and sounds of the dense forest. It was a mile walk on this hot and muggy morning to reach the construction site. Thankfully the walk passed uneventful.
The construction site was a large circular clearing, with the cleared brush forming a built up vegetation wall so that the exits to it were a "Y" shape, with the bottom going back to the outpost. There was a large, half-complete building in the center that was going to be the lumber mill. Near the side entrance was a small shack that served as the foreman's office. The place was a massacre, over a dozen bodies of humans, eleven, dwarves, and even the work animals were laying all over the site, bloated and decaying in the sun. All of them shared the same bite and claw marks that were seen on the foreman. Inside the shack, Grunt found a metal lockbox, and took it outside to look at in the sun. Artemis found a drawer in the desk with a false bottom after Grunt left. He found a letter inside and was able to successfully pop the wax seal without ruining it. The letter was addressed to a "Darwin" and in very elegant handwriting proceeded to berate him for something. Artemis stashed the letter on his person and went outside to help Grunt open the box.
With Artemis successfully popping the lock, Grunt pulled a strange glass bottle out of the box. Other than that, the box was empty. The vial was shaped like a large octahedron, holding up to 20 ounces or so max it looked like. The glass shimmered like an oil slick and was sealed with a wax-covered cork. Inside was a thick silvery metallic liquid that moved slowly. Everyone took a turn looking at the bottle, but when Archibald held it he viewed an image in his mind of a large curvy woman, with a snake body below her waist, and a head full of smaller snakes for hair smiling at him. Not willing to open the bottle, Grunt stashed it away for now.
Searching the rest of the site didn't yield anything more. Archibald did find a set of small footprints leading out the top left of the "Y" however. The party went to investigate.
Following the trail, it led them about 600-700 feet away from the construction site before the footprints disappeared into the thick underbrush and weren't able to be followed anymore. Looking up revealed their targets, as they jumped down onto the party!
Six goblins jumped down from the trees, and with some scratches and thankfully no bites, the party was able to defeat them all. They checked to make sure the location was safe now as the bodies of the dead goblins began to write and then crawl into the underbrush strangely and rapidly! The party managed to capture one while the rest escaped. Alotta used one of her ropes to restrain the creature to a tree for the party to investigate. It looked like it was decaying, and the fresh wounds inflicted by the party was oozing the same thick silvery liquid that was spotted on the victims at the construction site and on the foreman. It didn't make sense how this creature was still alive. It was snarling and gnashing its teeth at the party when Artmeis decided they needed to torch this creature to hopefully effectively destroy it. He lit a torch and as soon as the flames came near the entire goblin-thing ignited like dry tinder. It screamed until its lungs became ash and the body quickly burned up. Grunt was able to collect in a vial pieces of its blood that "melted" together to create small hard balls of blood and the silvery liquid turned metal.
The party rushed back to the construction site, Artemis suffering mild exhaustion from carrying the torch in the already hot jungle. However when they arrived, every single corpse that had been there before was now gone without traces. Realizing that this might also be happening to the foreman back at the outpost, Artemis doused his torch, and the whole party booked it back to New Bikabutei to make sure the worst wasn't happening.
Rushing through town to the infirmary, the party arrived to see their worst fears come true. The foreman was attempting to attack Glenda, while being restrained by the doctor and two nurses. Glenda looked fine, but the other two were covered in bite marks and scratches from their patient. With quick thinking, Alotta skewered the patient and held him up in the air so he couldn't move or attack anyone. Artemis swooped in to light the foreman on fire, and Grunt pulled Glenda out of the way and pushed the doctor and nurses away too. The foreman did not look awake, and still heavily reeked of medicine and magic meant to keep him asleep and numb. Alotta carried the foreman outside where Archibald attempted to dissolve him with acid to hopefully remove all the potential harm if the body was to hit the water in the outpost. Inside, Grunt convinced Glenda to get the guards to help while Artemis practically forced the other staff to have their wounds cauterized to try to prevent them from suffering the same fate.
Glenda returned with three guards and Grunt explained to them everything that had happened. He convinced them to leave one guard to watch the staff and to jail anyone who looked like they might be "turning" and that wall guards should be on higher alert because of the missing bodies. They were able to wrap up there without further issues.
The party returned to their camp platform for the night and planned to give their report to Big Blue the next morning.
Party leveled to 2.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Session 2 - 07/16/21
Archibald's player was unable to make it, so I ran his character for the session.
The next morning the party woke and found Big Blue chatting away at the Blacksmith's shop. In full, gruesome detail, Grunt reported to Big Blue all about what they've encountered so far almost making the poor goblin lose his breakfast. Artemis also followed up asking if he knew anyone named "Darwin," to which Big Blue clued them in as that was main person in charge of the outpost, but they he had left a few days prior to the adventurer's arrival on an expedition with a group of guards along the east shore of the main island and was expected to return in a few days. He was researching a statue found in a cove around the bend/out of sight of the outpost. After finishing their report with Big Blue, the party decided their next course of action would be to follow up on Darwin, hoping that he wasn't dead, and if this statue held any clue as to what was happening.
Leaving the outpost again, they followed the shore east until hitting a bend that put the outpost out of site. Shortly after, they came upon the cove suddenly - it was hidden well by the surround trees at the entrance. Inside was a very shallow "lake" at most 4-5 feet deep at the center. At the far in-land-most side was the top half of a statue that they could see, but they weren't close enough to get any good view of it from the entrance. The party continued on the shore that they were on, but not long before Archibald discovered something large gliding in the water. Suddenly they were attacked by not one, but two 20 foot long anaconda snakes. Archibald panicked being one of the first attacked and rushed back to the treeline chucking fireballs at the closest snake. Alotta struggled with the other as it kept trying to grapple and wrap her up like a bad rope night, falling off, and then grappling again - I guess it's a good thing to always be covered in a good oil..
Eventually the part was able to defeat the pair of giant snakes and was rewarded with two 15'x2' suitable snake skins, and over 20lbs of meat they could cook/salt and preserve. Inside the stomachs were myriad bones and partially digested trinkets of goblins and other creatures, as well as an oddly preserved silk rope - which Alotta later learned was a rope of entanglement!
The statue was at least 18 feet tall, four feet of it was part of the pedastal and the rest was of a busty, curvy, powerful-looking woman with a medusa-like head full of snakes, and her own mouth having fangs as well. A long robe supported with her legs everything up in the stone. Archibald claimed she looked very similar to the vision he had when viewing the vial of silver liquid for the first time. Investigating the statue, Artemis cleared away the immediate brush and was able to find a secret hatch in the back and open it. Inside was a used leather satchel containing a map and a journal of one Darwin Feld. He closed the hatch quickly and showed the items to the rest of the party. While he was doing that though, Archibald was able to discern some, but not all, of the gith-like symbols and writings on the bottom of the statue, and took a charcoal rubbing of the entirety to study later.
The map showed all five islands and had several markers showing where the outpost was, where this statue was, and a bunch of other "interest" sites that looked like Darwin had planned on visiting. His journal seemed to cover his entire experience with the island, starting with when he was hired to manage the settlement, and ending just before he left on this expedition - stating that he was leaving his journal behind here at the statue in case anything should happen to him. He didn't allude as to what potential things might happen to him however.. Archibald was given the journal to study and hold on to. The map went to Shara since she was their best navigator in the party.
Looking at the sun above, it was still before noon for the day. They could either head back to the outpost, but they didn't need to restock on anything, or they could head to the closest interest spot on the map where Darwin probably went to first and then be back by or after dark to the outpost. The party decided on the later and went into the woods. It was about a half-mile trek through dense, path-less foliage before they arrived at the first mark.
In the clearing there were four concentric stone rings, each one about two-feet thick, and each inner circle about six inches deeper than the next outer layer. At the very center was a hole shaped like the bottom of a mysterious flask that Grunt happened to be carrying, and the resemblance was not lost. He and Archibald investigated while other's grabbed more charcoal rubbings of all the similar markings on each circle for Archibald to study later. There was no immediate danger that anyone could see.
After discussing and with a resounding agreement of, "For Science!", Grunt decided to pour a few drops of the silver liquid into the hole on the center layer. Immediately after doing so, a low tremor shook the entire clearing, obviously felt by anyone standing on the ground. After another quick discussion with Archibald and the rest of the party, Grunt again shouted, "FOR SCIENCE!" and proceeded to dump the entirety of the contents of the flask into the hole. A much stronger earthquake shook the area, causing everyone except Alotta to fall prone, and the 3 inner rings sunk slightly into the ground. The liquid in the hole at the center was starting to vanish as it drained away. Grunt tried to save it when another earthquake hit and the inner circle fell through into a giant chasm below. Archibald escaped away from the stone rings as the second ring fell. Grunt scrambled and made it out before the third fell. A giant "well" now was where the inner three stone circles were and a great slithering could be heard echoing out of it. Grunt braved lighting a torch and dropping it down. He saw a gigantic creature coming up, his torch passing by at least three coils as it slithered around the walls climbing. "RUN!" He screamed, and the whole party bolted back towards the statue.
A terrible multi-voice scream pierced the air as the creature came up out of the stone well, out of sight of the party who was now dashing through the foliage in escape. Artemis and Shara made it back to the statue first, followed by Shara, then Archibald, and finally Grunt. The creature's screams could be heard periodically and thankfully sounded like it was travelling away from them, but more importantly, away from where the outpost was. They were able to catch their breaths for a moment.
"WHAT was that creature??" Artemis demanded, "and WHY did you think it was a good idea to pour that liquid there?"
"For science..." Grunt and Archibald replied.
"We need to warn the guards and outpost there's a greater danger now out in the forest. What are we going to tell them?" Artemis asked.
"That we released the big titty snake lady.." Archibald half-joked.
"No," Grunt stated. "We tell them Darwin did it. That we arrived just as he was pouring that liquid, we saw the beast coming, but ran for safety. We didn't see what happened to Darwin, but he did it!"
"You want to lie to the guards?" Alotta asked.
"What are they going to do to us if we tell them that I did it???" Grunt was adamant. "No, we tell them Darwin did it. You have his bag there? We'll keep the stuff we found in it, and put the empty flask in there as evidence."
Eventually the whole party agreed to this and they started quickly back to the outpost to warn them.
Arriving at the entrance, they were met by two very scared young guards who asked them about what happened. Immediately Grunt blurted out their story and the guards became terrified. One stayed there shakily at the gate, while the other escorted the party to the Captain of the guard at the HQ near the docks.
The Captain asked a lot of questions about the party, why they were there, what they were doing, what happened in the forest just a bit ago, and what they saw with Darwin. The party gave him the satchel with the empty flask and the Captain and everyone believed their story. They showed him the journal (but not the map) they found as well at the statue and the Captain said for the party to go back to their campsite platform and wait for his researcher to come help them decipher Darwin's journal and the rubbings they had gathered.
The party headed back to their campsite and rested/waited.
Party leveled to 3.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
So, what race/class are the characters? By context I'm guessing Artemis is a rogue and, with a last name like Ironhoof, Grunt might be "the minotaur" you referenced at one point but that doesn't really say much.
Yes, great guess on both! I'm hoping to finish typing that background post and last night's session log later today. Session last night ran late and today has been full of activities.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Log is caught up! I'll continue to edit first post with links to visual resources as they're added and with any other info as needed.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Version 1 - Overview Map of Islands for this campaign, as per Darwin Feld's map.
Version 2 - Updated 08/07/21 (Session #4) by party - main island cave exit from underground ruins.
Version 3 (current) - Updated 08/27/21 (Session #6) by party - found ancient embroidered map and copied it to their map.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Session 3 - 07/23/21
The next morning the party awoke and were in the middle of breakfast when the captain's researcher arrived. Landing softly, the small barn owl colored aarakocra perched atop the front arch of Grunt's tent and introduced herself to the minotaur as he was grilling a piece of snake meat they had gathered previously. Grunt returned the introduction and offered a piece of the cooked flesh. She accepted gratefully. "My name is Cax'Andra. I'm here on behalf of our captain to assist in any way I can with your endeavors here on the islands."
Introductions were made with the rest of the adventuring party as they gathered for the meal and Archibald reluctantly let Cax'Andra borrow the journal and the rubbings they had made from the statue and stone circles. The language was mostly yaun-ti, she agreed with Archibald, but also somehow different. It was a language they shared and the words that Archibald didn't know, Cax'Andra was able to fill in for most of them. The statue translated to a story about a snake woman goddess who the yuan-ti had "saved", and they in return offered lavish gifts and sacrifices. The stone circles translated to some kind of "monster prison" where sacrifices of those who had "sinned" were thrown in to feed it.
The party agreed that they needed to find where Darwin was and what his fate was. Darwin had marked a few ruins they could explore as they searched for him. Looking at the map, they asked Cax'Andra if she had seen any of these locations on the map. While she could fly around the island, she hadn't explored much other than where she was ordered because of her responsibilities at the fort. She had seen the ruins directly north-west of the construction site though, and had seen a passing view of the statue the party had seen before, but not the stone circles. The party decided to visit that closest set of ruins north-west of the construction site first, and then they'd go east to the stone circle where Darwin was last "seen", and then north from there to another set of ruins.
Setting out for the ruins past the construction site was uneventful. The construction site itself was still empty like they had last seen it and no trace of any of those corpses again. They took the right path this time now of the two paths available, and it was able to lead them halfway to the ruins. Cax'Andra flew above the tree tops and reported back to help lead the party to the ruins the rest of the way.
The ruins were of a small temple it looked like. The main section of the building was a large stone-walled building with a stepped-pyramid on top that had three layers. The corner closest to them was broken across the roof and half the walls like an upside down pyramid was sliced off. Stone debris littered the inside of the temple room and around the outside. The sunshine lit up the room well. Shara climbed up on top of the roof to take a look. Cax'Andra flew up and joined her. The backside of the temple had a t-shaped hallway leading off it to three separate rooms, each with slim tall windows but no other entrances.
Inside the main room, the party investigated the rows of stone pews and a small raised pulpit with a stone table. Nothing of value was found. A wooden door was closed and led to the hallway, but was unfortunately rusted shut. Grunt, with assistance, was able to break the door open and clear away the debris for a clear entryway.
The room on the right was a small prayer room for solitary practice it looked like, and offered nothing but the solace of being able to pray quietly and by oneself. The room on the left was similar, but had various scrolls - all of which crumbled upon attempted to be touched.
The room at the end was covered on the inside with thick vines and vegetation. As the party began to investigate in this room, they were suddenly attacked by a group of Twig and Vine Blights and a Wood Woad. Cax'Andra attempted to help the party defend themselves but was immediately knocked unconscious by the Woad. With fire and a tense fight, the party was able to defeat the sentient plants and clear them away. However, they discovered that these creatures were also bleeding the silver liquid and Artemis quickly took his torch to everything in the room to destroy the "infection". They were able to restore Cax'Andra to consciousness and she apologized profusely for her inability to help. Grunt offered her to perch on his shoulders once they were outside. There wasn't anything of value found in the room after this and the party pressed on to the next location.
Heading east, the party had an uneventful hike to the stone circles. The two inner-most were still missing and below was a very deep pit. The creature that had escaped was no where in sight or sound and the pit sounded like it was empty. After discussing how to explore the pit below, they agreed that Cax'Andra could fly down first and report back how deep it was and whether or not it was safe. With a shaky breath, she spread her wings like a parachute and carefully glided down into the hole as best she could. After a few minutes, she returned back up to let them know it was very deep, but safe. Tying a few of their ropes together, they were able to fasten it to a sturdy tree nearby and lower themselves into the pit. Approximately 100 feet deep or so, they stepped onto the bottom which was covered in a thin layer of thousands of bones of varying sizes and in various states of brokenness. The pit was shaped like a round-bottom flask, a sphere at the bottom with a neck leading up to the surface. The walls were rough and pitted with claw marks from the monstrous creature that used to live in there. The only thing found of interest at the bottom of this pit was a gigantic snake skin shedding from the creature, which the party collected. They then carefully climbed back out of the pit and collected their ropes. There wasn't anything of Darwin or his whereabouts that they could find here, so they left the area for the next set of ruins.
Heading north, they found a small village for the ruins. There was a large building at the end of the path, and on either side of the path were two home-like buildings. All of the wooden/thatch roofs were gone, but the stone walls stood. The entered on the houses end of the path and the house on the immediate right was larger than the others. They investigated this one first and it looked like a "gathering hall" where meals were shared and main collaboration took place. All of the stores in the pantry were beyond decayed and all the wood crumbled under any slight pressure. Nothing of value was found here.
The first home on the left looked like it may have belonged to a scribe or priest potentially. Archibald was able to find one scroll that wouldn't disintegrate immediately and was able to transcribe into his journal of a story of the yuan-ti arriving on the island and how they were saved by a snake-haired goddess. The remaining two side homes had trinkets of the families who used to live there that the party was able to recover and take with them. The main building at the end of the path looked more like a leader's home and the interior reinforced that. More trinkets were found here.
The day was coming near the end now. The party told Cax'Andra to return to the fort and give a report back to the captain of their progress for the day. The party was going to rest in the gathering hall room for the night and Cax'Andra would return to them in the morning. She left, flying above the tree tops. The party continued to explore the ruins outside to see if they missed anything. Going past the leadership building, Grunt had a sudden thought that he saw Artemis taking something from this building and he absolutely knew Artemis wasn't being 100% forthright with it. There was definitely something they were missing. Grunt went back to confront Artemis about it in the middle of the path. Artemis had no idea what Grunt was talking about, but the minotaur was getting angry. Suddenly, Alotta also knew Artemis was hiding something too and demanded that Artemis share the treasure that he had pocketed! The three of them were arguing when Archibald joined in saying that Artemis stole his pants too! Shara had a strange shiver pass over her, and shook her head to clear it. "What are you guys going on about? Artemis wouldn't hide anything from us.." The other three were adamant that he was infact hiding something though, but of what they couldn't agree. They were in the heat of the argument as Artemis was attempting to defend himself from friends who were quickly turning foe, when all of a sudden Artemis' eyes glazed for a second and then he bolted for the tree line outside the ruins. The party quickly took chase!
Artemis deftly dodged and weaved between the trees running in a random direction away from the ruins. He wasn't looking behind him, but dead ahead like his life depended on him running as fast as he could. Grunt, Archibald, and Alotta were quick on his heels as best they could, and Shara followed behind befuddled by her friend's recent actions. Grunt was able to cast a magical darkness around Artemis, where he plowed into a tree and the party was able to finally catch him. Just as they were about to beat Artemis very badly, they all snapped out of their trances and Archibald realized that they had all been under a Suggestion spell. Quickly they looked around them to see who or what had ensorcelled them. It wasn't very long they could search before they had to mad dash back to the ruins as best they could, because the gigantic snake creature that had been released from the pit was seen and heard to be travelling and crashing in the brush quickly in their direction. Panicking, the party was quickly split because of their various ability to navigate the trees, but were all able to make it back to the ruins in time to hunker down inside the gathering hall and doused all their lights. The night became incredibly oppressive as the party tried their best to quiet their breathing. The creature slithered just outside the ruins, slowing briefly before rushing off back into the forest heading east.
The party remained in the gathering hall building for the remainder of the night without further events. They had no idea of who had casted upon them and saw no more of the gigantic monster aside from the infrequent multi-voiced screeches it let out way off in the distance.
In the morning, Cax'Andra returned to the slightly stressed party. They were wary of her at first because they had a fleeting thought that she might have been casting on them, but her report to them back from the captain pushed that out of their minds. The party quickly made their way back to the statue in the cove, and from there back to the fort along the shore. They wanted to recoup themselves in a safe place and think of their next steps.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Session 4 - 08/07/21
The party spent a night at their campsite inside the fort. Looking at Darwin's map, they decided to explore more of this main island where Darwin had marked ruins that he could see when he first sailed around the islands to make this map originally. They decided to visit the northern-most ruins first, and they wanted to rent a boat they could use to go around the island rather than having to trek across the island where though could potentially encounter the giant snake again.
Visiting the port, they went to the harbor master's shack at the northwest end of the piers. He was a small, older, balding-man sitting behind a desk at an open "customer" window that took up most of the one-wall facing towards where he could see all the boats docked. He didn't look up at the party approached, but did respond once asked about renting a boat to explore the islands. He looked over the party, "We have a small dhow you could borrow. Normally we use it for transport between the larger ships that can't dock and the pier, but we don't have one due to port here for a few days." He hands a writ of passage and rent to Archibald for a two-day pass to use the Sassy Lass, a peeling blue-painted dhow with a yellow patchwork sail. The party thanked him and went to the opposite end of the piers to set off. They did not hire a hand to help them sail it because Archibald demanded that he was fine enough to get them where they needed to go. The harbor master sighed silently as they walked away and pulled out a form to prefill as much as he could a form for a lost vessel..
With a bit of effort, Archibald was able to sail the adventuring party around the east coast of the main island and into the first channel between the main island and the large island to the northeast. With greater effort, he was able to beach the dhow about a half mile away they had originally intended. With much grumblings, they buried the anchor on the beach and began the walk to the ruins in the middle of the north side of the island. Once they reached the beach in front of the ruins, they could see up the smooth grassy slope to see a rather large stone city surround a ziggurat in the exact center. All the paths led to the large stone structure in the center.
Exploring the city, all of the homes and buildings had standing stone walls, but were missing their roofs like the small ruins from before. They looked like they were wooden/thatched roofs as well and over the years of weather and decomposition had completely broken down. Nothing of any value was found in any of the homes that they explored, no trinkets of any kind either. The place may have been looted or maybe everything they had before was lost to the effects of time.
The ziggurat was four-sided and diagonal to the rest of the city, so the corners faced down the four main paths leading to it. There was a stone arch entrance on each of the four flat faces that led inside. Inside was dark and was lined with stone pews all facing a central matching diamond dias with a large stone table in the center on top. There was no light inside, but Grunt cast Dancing Lights to help illuminate the area. Investigating the pews and altar, they didn't find anything of value.
The stone table had been carved out slightly to form a large shallow bowl in the center. There were four small hole in the rust-colored stone that looked like it would drain away liquids. "For science!" Archibald stated triumphantly before slicing his hand to drop blood onto the table. It drained down one of the four holes quickly and disappeared, leaving only the shiny red trail behind. Nothing happened after this. Interested, Grunt decided to try to pour a vial of the silver liquid he had collected from previous encounters of infected creatures. It slid easily over the stained stone surface and also disappeared down one of the four draining holes. They waited a moment, but nothing else happened. Archibald's magic quill helped transcribed all the markings around the stone table into his journal and he tried to speak the words aloud that he was able to decipher. He was mid-sentence when Archibald found a strange stone square symbol on the table that looked separated from the rest of the table and pushed it in. It raised the table up five feet, revealing a tight spiral staircase leading down underneath the temple.
Having found nothing else in this temple area, the party decided to head down. Grunt was incredibly hesitant to go down, because of his size, he wasn't sure if he could fit well. The drainage holes continued down through the bottom of the table and they could see the last few drops of blood and silver liquid drip off the bottom of the table and down the center of the staircase down to the bottom (falling liquids did not hit any of the steps). Shara was going to stay at the top with Grunt so he wouldn't be by himself, but the rest of the party was able to convince him to come down.
The staircase went deep underground and led to a small room below with a path leading off each side of the room. There were unlit torches in sconces in each corner and Artemis made to light each one he could see. At the bottom of the stairs was a stone basin with a deep well that collected the falling blood and silver liquid from before. Artemis dunked his torch into the little bit of liquid there to burn it away. Even with darkvision, no one was able to see the end of each path. The party went down the north path first.
The end of this path ended in a large, rectangular room. Chains hung down from the ceiling in regular intervals. The east wall had several saint andrew's crosses. The west side dropped into a pit 20 feet below. The top of the pit was lined with metal spikes to prevent whatever was down there from climbing out. From the end, they could only see a small area that had a dark pool that went under the wall. Two stone doors were closed along the north wall. Seeing no immediate danger, Artemis lit the torch sconces in this room the party investigated. There wasn't anything to find in this room besides the rust like stains left on the floors and walls. The water in the pool below was still and smelled stagnant. Opening the first door by finding another button to press, they found a smaller personal torture room with a central stone table. It had the same kind of drainage holes in it and was stained with use. Along the walls were unusable and rusted or decayed instruments of nefarious purposes. There was a drawer built into the table, but with a very decayed set of torturer's tools that Archibald kept in hopes of restoring it somehow.. The second door seemed broken though, and Grunt was able to brute force it with Artemis' help, breaking the top half of the stone door off, but stubbing his toes in the process. Inside was a small, personal altar. Along the north wall was a stone sculpture of the snake-haired goddess again with jewels for eyes. Artemis immediately began to pry the jewels out while Grunt searched the rest of the room. With great effort, he was able to release the spherical stones and a veneer of stone/clay fell off them revealing shining, faceted gems. Archibald identified them as both Ioun stones - one of small intelligence, the other of history. He kept the intelligence one and Grunt took the other.
Finding nothing else, they went to leave this room at the end of the path, when they were taken upon three yuan-ti broodguards and two yuan-ti purebloods. It was a harrowing fight, with them almost losing Archibald and Artemis, but the party was able to defeat the snake people in the end. Alotta did an amazing maneuver using her rope of entanglement on one of the purebloods while stunning the other, allowing the rest of the party to pick off the broodguards more easily and save their friends, who were a breath away from death's door each.
Following the rule of left walls in a dungeon/maze, the party walked back to the central room and went to the next path on their left. This path led to a set of stairs that led further into the ground and back to the "center" which was a replica of the buildings above ground. The ziggurat main room and every other building and abode was copied down here, just carved out of stone instead of built with them. Here however they round remains; remains of families, individuals, pets, all decayed skeletal remains. All seemingly ritualistically sacrificed. They had no trinkets, no valuables, no personal items, and threads leftover from their simple clothes. Each room had its own small stone altar basin. The party did not stay long here and quickly returned to the central room with the staircase.
Following the next path to the left, it took them to an underground river, flowing strongly with no dock or boats. It didn't appear very deep, shallow on the edges and maybe six feet at most in the middle. Archibald died his hand in and it smelled of the salt water from above ground and deduced it must have an entrance somewhere along the shore. The party argued for a moment and decided to investigate the last path before they investigated the river.
Taking their last left turn, the final of the four paths led for a short while and ended abruptly at a large stone door, very elaborately decorated of the snake woman they've seen quite a few times now. The bottom of the mural was jumbled up like a sliding puzzle however, and with quite a bit of frustration, the party was able to reassemble the correct image. Doing so revealed a small hand hole at the center bottom. Artemis decided to be the one to reach in, and having grasped a small lever handle, pretended to scream! The party freaked for a moment and in a panic, Grunt grabbed his ankles and pulled him away from the door. Artemis had a strong hand on the lever and pulled it out as Grunt pulled him out. The lever clicked at a stopping point and Artemis was forced to let it go as Grunt continued to pull him away. They all laughed after the fact as the door began to slide up into the ceiling revealing a large square room.
From the ceiling hung three rusted metal braziers. Along each side wall was a large statue of the yuan-ti broodguards holding up the ceiling. At the far end was a large stone pool filled with a dark, solid liquid. Artemis lit the braziers above. Grunt sent his dancing lights into the liquid only to find them to disappear completely just a few inches in. Without thinking, Archibald dipped his hands into the dark liquid and came away dripping slightly coagulated blood. He put bloody handprints on Alotta's body to wipe it off (inside joke), and then remembered that he had sliced his hand earlier and this probably wasn't a good idea.. Grunt and Artemis noted that this blood was also tinted with the silvery liquid! Archibald quickly casted acid onto the floor and attempted to cauterize his own wounds. He would be unable to use his hands for a while because of this, but as a scribe wizard, he wasn't fazed much though. Artemis didn't put his hand to the torch because of the use of acid. Hopefully it was enough, and hopefully he wouldn't have the same fate as the foreman. They didn't dwell on this and investigated the rest of the room. The entire floor was stained from old blood, all the way up to the small step that was the path back to the staircase. The party was considering taking a short rest here when the blood pool began to boil. Startled, they backed up to the path. Artemis was the last in line and saw a giant bulbous blob rise up from the pool and spill blood all over the floor, making it shine slick under the fire lights. Thick, glooping sounds came from this creature as a myriad of micro tentacles reached out to pull it along the floor. The party quickly "noped" out of there and ran out of the ruins, lowered the stone table back down and hid the stairs, and went back to where they had beached their boat.
With another heated discussion about whether to camp on the beach or to anchor away from shore and sleep in the boat, they settled on the beach there and took turns taking watch. It was thankfully an uneventful night and everyone was able to recover fully.
The next morning after some quick food, the party decided to continue investigating the same ruins. They wanted to know more about the blood blob creature, if it was hiding anything, and where the underground river started and ended. Blob thing first.
The adventurers were easily able to make their way back to the bloody room. The floor was now sticky from the drying blood and the pool incredibly drained, with barely an inch remaining at the bottom. This revealed a small tunnel the party could travel crouched, or crawling in the case of the larger minotaur. There was no sign of the blob creature anywhere. Artemis led the party into the tunnel, which climbed up for a long ways. It eventually opened up into a smaller pool in a room at the very top of the ziggurat! From up here there were able to look down upon the entire temple below, but it was too dark for anyone below to see them up there. At the far end of the room they found a mundane priest necklace in a small alcove. It was shaped in the image of the snake woman again. With no other exit they could find, they went back down the tunnel to the bloody room, wondering where that blob creature could be, and went to the underground river.
Here again they had another tense argument about whether going upstream or downstream first. Artemis wanted to go upstream to see what fed this river, hoping it was the ocean above ground and they could sail down this. Pretty much everyone else wanted to go downstream to see where it led. A compromise was reached where Cax'Andra would fly upstream and report back where the entrance was and then regroup with them downstream. Both groups set off.
Heading downstream was easier because they were going with the flow. It was no longer high tide as well, so the current didn't seem as strong as last they saw. They got almost two miles before Cax'Andra regrouped and told them the entrance was at the base of the cliff underneath the other ruins they were going to investigate. It was about another mile when they reached the end of downstream.
The river stopped abruptly at a large cavern and plummeted over 100 feet below to a large pool. The entire cavern was lit up by blue-green bioluminescent algae that covered the walls and ceiling. There was a small slick path to the right of the waterfall that led to the bottom of the cavern and a carved stone entry way. Archibald, being the super smart person that he was, decided to take the quick route and jump off the waterfall. Cax'Andra flew down safely, while Alotta and Shara made it safely down the slick path. Artemis and Grunt slipped off and came away a little bruised from their fall into the water. They surfaced from the water, while Archibald did not.
Archibald managed to not panic the first time he felt something large brush past his leg, but still swam faster to reach the surface. His planned jump sent him deeper into the water at the base of the waterfall than the others, but he knew he could hold his breath for a while. He began to panic though when something thick wrapped around his ankle and pulled him back under just before he could reach the surface. He then felt a solid whack and went unconscious. The rest of the party was confused why he hadn't surfaced yet when Artemis and Grunt already had. That's when Grunt noticed the tentacles pulling their headstrong ally down into the depths. The party rushed into action, no hesitation to attempt a rescue for misguided fool. Cax'Andra deftly flew up, conjured a shadow blade, and dove down to stab the tentacle. Alotta cast enlarge on herself and was able to get in range to use the rope of entanglement to wrap around Archibald's body, and began to pull. The others made brave attempts, but didn't hurt the creature. Feeling the pain of the attacks that landed, a large eye rose up from the depths trying to save the prey it caught, and panicking itself, bit and ripped off Archibald's right leg at the knee. The water quickly turned red as the monstrous beast retreated into the depths of the pool and the party went to shore to resuscitate and patch the wound. Archibald barely survived and was still unconscious from the pain of his severed nerve endings.
The carved entrance was beautiful. More similar statues and carved columns held up a stone roof. Atop the roof was a massive stone bust carved into the wall of the snake lady, her hands outstretched holding a magnificent oral the size of a dinner table. Artemis was instantly and completely enamored and deftly climbed up and attempted to free the gigantic goldmine of a gem from the statue's grip. Warning the party to move, which they did, with great effort Artemis broke one of the hands and both it and the gem fell to the stone and sand shore below. The cavern shook as it created a slightly new shore line. There was no way Artemis' bag of holding would be able to hold this entire thing, so he reluctantly agreed with the party helping him chip off whatever he could fit, which was about two large watermelon-sized chunks and various chips. Glutton satiated and set aside, they investigated the doors carved into the stone.
The door were beautiful and as intricate as anything they had seen thus far. Instead of all pictographs telling a story, there were written words along the bottom half this time. Any attempt to wake Archibald resulted his screaming and passing out again from pain, so they had Cax'Andra speak aloud. As she spoke the last word, the doors began to open inward, revealing a room so lavishly carved. Gems and gold inlaid every carving and mosaic. The statues in each corner were so vividly painted and preserved they looked almost alive (but they for sure were just stone). There was no treasure hoard or loot aside from a single pedestal in the center of the floor with a stone broodguard claw holding a beautiful flask similar to the first one they had found at the construction site. This one was also filled with the silver liquid and the cork was topped with a gold cap. Cax'Andra stopped Grunt from taking it immediately, pointing out the writing on the pedestal. She read the inscription out loud to try to explain the potential trap, but in reading them, the claw released its grip on the flask and Grunt took it.
Time seemed to stop for a moment for Grunt. He found himself in a overgrown jungle temple, surrounded by hundreds of yuan-ti bowed in prayer to the snake goddess. Grunt stared directly at her, the snakes for hair, her legs long. She stood 15 tall easily and kneeled in front of the entranced minotaur. One large, long hand reaching to caress his scalp, claws just barely scraping his skin. "I know you Grunt Ironhoof." Her voice whispered out her split-tongued mouth with sharp fangs and teeth. Her eyes were so luminous a green that they glowed. "You have something of mine.." the words caressed and shivered him at the same time. "I WILL find you..." She traced a single claw down his jaw bow and nicked him near his chin. He was pushed back from the event and fell backwards, back into his own body, back off away from the pedestal to land on the cold stone floor. Artemis took a moment away from his stealing gems from the walls to ask Grunt if he was good. Grunt brushed it off as slippery floor. It would take weeks probably to fully loot all the gems in this room, and as they debated it, hissing sounds began to fill the room. They decided not to stay any longer, and with great effort made it back up the slick side trail and back up the river, through the temple ruins and back to their boat.
Shara navigated the boat now with Artemis' assistance, since Archibald was still passed out. They're it back to the fort safely and quickly took Archibald to the infirmary for better treatment for his leg. Glenda was there and explained they were short on staff and could work on Archibald but it wouldn't be pretty probably. The doctor and two nurses from before were showing the same symptoms as the foreman before and had been moved to the jail for holding. Archibald was treated and the party decided to also put him in a jail cell for now because of his potential same infection. Cax'Andra left to deliver a report to the captain and the party settled back at their campsite.
Party leveled to 4.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
08/14/21 Session 5
The next morning Artemis visits the doctor and the doctor isn’t very keen on giving him any answers. Artemis threatens to test the doctor physically to find out what he wants to know and the doctor calls for the guards. A guard shows up and Artemis tries to get the guard to go away so he can “continue.” The guard doesn’t leave, but Artemis does give up and leaves back to the campsite.
After discussing with the rest of the party, Grunt decides to go and talk to the doctor himself and try diplomacy – which does succeed. He learns more from the doctor about the silver infection – that it only spreads from contact where the liquid enters the body through abrasions or cuts. That he feels the infection spreading through his body like a frost that he can’t shake off. Grunt asks him about possibly creating a cure with “pure extract” of the silver liquid. The doctor is amazing that Grunt has this at all, but is quickly cut off from the minotaur, “Don’t ask how we got it.” Grunt tells the doctor that he’ll talk to the captain to see what they can do to accommodate him with laboratory equipment to work on creating something to reduce or turn back the infection.
Artemis fails to sneak around, so Grunt and the Guards sees him and invites him with to talk to the captain. They are greeted by a desk-duty guard who checks if the captain is available as Grunt lets her know about a potential cure. She comes back and leads them to go talk with the captain. They share the plan of getting the doctor back to the infirmary to work in the laboratory. The captain reminds them that the safety of this outpost and the safety of the people here are his main responsibility. That the idea of a cure in case anyone else became infected would be amazing, but he would prefer the doctor continue working from his jail cell. He can have Cax’Andra help retrieve laboratory instruments and any other tools the doctor will need. Grunt assists as well and also requests a peg leg be created by the blacksmith for Archibald and gives him one of their rubies retrieved from the caves.
Back at the campsite, Artemis asks what their next steps were. The captain had mentioned that there were no sightings or further attacks to the outpost, so they could search the area outside the outpost for any signs or markings of the goblins, any of the corpses from the construction site, the giant snake creature, or anything else pertaining to the silver infections. They do find dried, decayed pieces of goblins and a human and an elf, but none of it was “alive” or reacting to anything. Artemis torches all of these as they don’t want them. The pieces light immediately and turn to ash quickly. In the last section they were investigating they do find a “living” and broken elvan corpse. Alotta sees a hand laying under the brush and uses her Rope of Entanglement to grab the hand and pull, and it begins to writhe. The corpse crawls in on stubs of arms and legs slowly after them, Shara pins it to the ground with an arrow and Artemis quickly puts it to the torch as well and it disintegrates to ash. They carry the “undead” writhing hand back to the outpost to give to the doctor.
It’s after the evening mealtime when they return to the prison and the makeshift laboratory in the doctor’s cell. Grunt and Cax’Andra have been finding and delivering instruments and the guards delivered a first set of live rats for experimenting on for a potential cure. Archibald finally awakes. He now talks with a pirate accent believing he was “blessed by the kraken gods” to be the next Dread Pirate Archie! Archibald, Cax’Andra, and the doctor have begun to work their hypotheses on the silver liquid they now call “cursed snake oil.” After dismissing all attempts for Archibald to suggest they test on the doctor, they learn that the snake oil reacts negatively to fire (obviously from all the burning that Artemis did previously), from lightning (because it generates heat to burn with), and surprisingly psychic damage. After further discussion, Grunt and the doctor agree on a hypothesis of a “hive mind” because the victims don’t have to be alive, but the snake oil does require a fluid locomotion – so fresher dead or “alive” victims work better for it, and the more decayed just seem to fall apart or too dry and breaking to have the flesh work properly – and also because the silver infected seem to work together without any communication.
Settling the doctor, Archibald, and Cax’Andra to work together on the experiments, the rest of the party decides to investigate the other set of ruins at the top of the cliff that they meant to previously (but hadn’t been able to because of needing to bring Archibald back to be taken care of). Grunt and Cax’Andra agreed to have her come check on them in two days at the landing site near the first ruins to see how they were doing. To save them trouble in travel, they hired someone to direct the boat for them and sailed effortlessly to the destination. Although, the hired ship pilot didn’t think the adventurers would be alive for him to come pick up in 2 days..
With some great survival instincts, Shara led the party up the forested cliffside to the top of the cliffs on the west side of the island. The view was amazing from the edge of the ruins up there, as the larger area around them was mainly grasses and taller grasses closer to the forest’s edge. The sun was beginning to lower in the sky and the beautiful hues were starting to come through the sparse clouds. There was a main “business” like section lining the main road leading straight back from the cliffs edge. No buildings were close to the edge, but there was a somewhat broken stone barrier path that could be safely walked on along the cliff edge. At the end of the business path was a larger building that looked like it might have been home to leadership. All along the outside of the main buildings were smaller residential homes. All these buildings were stone-walled, and the roofs had long since fell in and decayed, leaving them open to the skies.
Exploring the business buildings, they found two mysterious matching carved stones in one that seemed to be like a fine jeweler’s store. Everything was so rusted or indistinguishable. All the rest and the south residential side of the village held small trinkets or personal effects of stone that held very little value.
Night was almost upon them at this point, and they rested in a house at the edge of the village nearby the cliff. A small section of a second floor remained and worked nicely as a lookout point for whomever was on watch. The night had a full moon on a clear sky that was also as gorgeous as the sunset view was – the galaxy splayed out above them like a gigantic glittering tapestry. Taking some time to sit with the stones that they had found, Grunt thought they were magical and tried to "attune" with them as they wound down for the night. After concentrating on them for so long, looking at the details of the carvings that looked similar to all the snake goddess carvings they had seen previously, he was able to ascertain that these were sending stones, and the key word to activate them was "nuntiusss" - or "message" in the yuan-ti/snake hybrid language they've been seeing all over the island.
Shara took the first watch, being the only full elven and not requiring much sleep – it passed by uneventfully.
Artemis took the second watch, and it wasn’t long before he had the sudden urge to go to sleep, that everything was fine, and they were safe. Against his better judgement, he dozed off. It wasn’t much longer before the small snores of Artemis and a strange rustling outside woke up Shara, who quickly woke up the others and climbed up to Artemis to wake him. Grunt suddenly felt the urge to go back to sleep as well and laid back down, much to Alotta’s surprise. Shara successfully woke up Artemis and fired at a yuan-ti, a snake-headed humanoid, at the window below them. Alotta, alerted by the arrow, used her fire rune on the creature and restrained it to the spot it stood. Another yuan-ti jumped in a window nearer her and attacked her instead of Grunt sleeping there.
They were able to take down the restrained yuan-ti with a little difficulty, and the other in a panic, shape changed into a boa constrictor and attempted to escape. The snake escaped out of her rope of entanglement once but didn’t get far when captured again by the rope, where it was quickly run through by several blades and a well-placed arrow. The body reverted to its yuan-ti form upon death.
They left the bodies where they laid overnight, for fear of greater creatures that went bump in the night. Grunt took the third watch, which passed uneventfully. Alotta took the last and spaced out too much watching the sun rise. By the time everyone was awake, the bodies were gone.
The party was contemplating their next move..
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
Letter to Darwin found in the Foreman's shack at the construction site [Session 1]:
Darwin,
You fool.. What did you think you were going to accomplish.. A life's work? Is this to get her back? It's not worth throwing your life away. Those islands are dangerous and Crumplebottom is naive to invest in them. I hope you don't really believe they were not previously discovered? You're probably not going to listen to me, and I'll not allow myself to be the cause of your death. You're a grown man and should have know better.. I was hoping I had taught you better..
Be safe, please. Come back home. I'll talk to your father to have him change his mind about your inheritance. We'll talk and get this sorted and you can help in the business again.
Enclosed is a writing I received from the college's historians about the island. Please consider their words if you're not going to heed mine.
Warmest regards,
Madam Feld of ....
........
...
[enclosed writings was missing from letter when found by our adventurer's]
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
08/27/21 Session 6
Checking in with Archibald in New Bikibutei’s jail cells, he was adamant on refusing to assist the doctor unless he was guaranteed out of his cell prior. No compromise was made at this time.
The rest of the party explores the ruins at the top of the cliff on the main island, and in the main building they found an embroidered map in a secret hole on the second story. Finding not much else of value, they return to the shore where the boat was expecting them. "All of these ruins and no bodies..." Grunt pondered. They safely were able to return to the city and went to visit Archibald.
Archibald was still very defiant in not wanting to help unless he was released. So the party went to go speak with the Captain of the Guard to try to convince him to release Archibald into their custody so they could continue trying to create a cure. The captain agrees, reluctantly, impressing upon the party the clear goal was the protection of the city and its inhabitants, that if Archibald, or any of the party for that matter, impeded his goal, they would be quickly and severely dealt with. They understand his terms and have Archibald released so that he can help the doctor finally.
Back in the jail cells, Archibald, the doctor, and the party all brainstorm various ways to make a potential antidote or cure for the silver infection. Recalling their previous experiences, they decide to try to congeal psychic damage acid splash (courtesy of Archibald’s skills as a Wizard of the Scribe) and combine it with the silver liquid. It seems to do the trick, and they go about making a dozen “psychic ointments” and begin taking doses between those currently infected.
The party then heads out to go to the next set of ruins on the island, but before they can leave the city the main gate comes under attack by more than a dozen corpses that seemed to match those that they had “lost” from the construction site when they first arrived. Losing the two gate guards, the party barely manages to contain the attack, and with a lot of fire destroys the corpses, and the remains of a few that had exploded practically in their faces. They decide a quick trip back to the doctor in the jail cells to make more psychic ointments should be done first.
While making the additional ointments, Grunt decides that he’s going to try to secretly tamper with the few he directly handled, pouring more of the pure silver liquid into the ointment jars. Previously, while everyone was recovering from the attack at the main gate, Grunt had snuck off for a moment to be by himself. He was suffering from an internal turmoil because it seemed that he was infatuated with the Snake Goddess and had begun to secretly pray to her. He decided then to purposefully infect himself by drinking some of the pure silver liquid in the fancy glass bottle in the hopes of being closer to her, and thus began to enthrall himself to her.
No one else in the party noticed Grunt was no longer staying his normal self. Thankfully though, Archibald did notice Grunt pouring more than the recommended silver liquid in the ointment jars and was able to rectify the potentially bad batch. Off in the other corner of the jail cells on this special ward, the two nurses didn’t look like the ointment was going to work on them. They hadn’t turned yet, but their condition wasn’t seeing the immediate improvement that the doctor and Archibald had.
After reviewing the party’s newly updated map, they decide to head to the central island of the five, and to stop at one of the underwater ruins on the way there. To make sailing easier, they hire someone to navigate the boat for them.
Aloatta can hold her breath for an insanely long time, being an Air Genasi, so she and Artemis, who uses the borrowed diving gear, both dive into the water and sink down to the underwater ruins. Exploring was slow-going, but they were able to safely navigate the ruins and found a rusted-shut long box, and a smaller square box. They evaded the giant eels in the room containing the smaller box, one of which nearly electrified Artemis, and make it back to the surface successfully.
At the surface they were able to open the rusted boxes, revealing a Moon Blade named Earl that claimed Shara as its master, and a Robe of Serpents which was claimed by the minotaur. They then continued their voyage to the central island.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
09/03/21 Session 7
Arriving at the central island, they navigate into the small cove safe from the wind and capricious waters. The island is extremely overgrown, but they do manage to spot a worn set of steep steps carved into the cliff face. Climbing carefully, Artemis clears the growth away and they're able to climb up to the top safely.
Entering the thick jungle at the top of the cliff, they are hit by an pungent stench of decay. Looking up, hanging from limbs of trees they see dozens of goblin corpses in various states of decay, but thankfully not any fresh, the silver infected clear in the dried blood clinging to their clothing and flesh. Finding no immediate danger, and needing to continue their journey, the party presses forward into the jungle, after a quick aerial view from Cax'Andra to make sure they would head in the correct direction.
Not getting terribly far into the jungle, Grunt is overcome by a vision of a beautiful oasis where the Snake Goddess was waiting in front of him, and rushes headlong ahead attempt to reach the tranquil respite. Share and Aloatta notice Grunt beginning to froth at the mouth and attempt to slow him. Aloatta’s rope of entanglement fails to hold the beast, and Grunt breaks into a 4-legged sprint rushing through and breaking any foliage in his path. The whole party is in full pursuit of him and Artemis finally manages to catch up and tackle Grunt. Aloatta takes over leading the party through the more and more dense jungle until “night falls” because the trees are so thick. They light torches to help see.
Aloatta leads the party forward and saves herself from falling into a spike pit trap by grabbing onto a strong branch. Artemis pulls her back from the brink and they decide how to cross as the pit trap extends quite a ways to the left and right. Across from them still north they start to see light coming through the trees ahead. Artemis jumps across, Grunt fells a tree, and they all make it across safely – Artemis uses a rope for a hand rail for everyone and they retrieve it via mage hand. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Archibald tells Artemis while watching his attempt to jump.
They come upon a small clearing with a broken tree. Inside the stump is a large crack and, in the crack, lays a shimmery/glimmering egg that is very warm to the touch. The roots of the trees are ever-burning and magical. Artemis gives his hooded lantern to grunt and he converts it into a holder for the egg taking some of the burning roots to place in the bottom to keep it warm.
Cax’Andra flies up to let them know if they’re continuing along the correct way. A large creature flies above, blocking out the sunlight for a brief moment and is gone. Cax’Andra rushes back, almost crashing back into the ground, and passes out before letting them know what she saw, but did let them know the correct direction.
Artemis leads them now and they make it safely to another clearing arriving at the first ruins.
It is 12 stone houses in a circle around a stone dais. These stone houses look much like all the others they have seen so far in their journey across the islands – only walls remaining, roofs have all collapsed, but the stones are much more elaborately carved here. They find mundane ritual accoutrements of the snake goddess and Artemis gives Grunt the only passable one he finds.
Investigating the stone dias, Archibald and Cax’Andra realize that there’s 4 sets of circles of runes carved intot he stone each depicting a different ritual based on the season. Archibald records each of these in his book with his magic quill and deciphers the summer ritual.
The summer ritual deciphered:
“The summer ritual includes chanting to the goddess, providing gifts of meats and sacrifices of the flesh. A soul must be "released" in the center of the "ritual" so that they can benefit the goddess. If a pure enough soul is offered, the goddess herself may appear. Those chanting must be bare-clad and covered in the blood of their offerings and marked with the bloody ash of the sacrificial fire.”
Finding nothing else of value at the ruins, Artemis leads the party to the temple ruins marked on their map. The trees stop cleanly at the end of a large valley. In the bottom of the valley is a large stepped pyramid with an elaborate pillar rising above the top.
Grunt casts ray of frost to make a “slide” and falls on his butt at the bottom. The rest make it down safely – Archibald and Artemis decide they would rather just walk down safely.
They climb up the temple to the top of the stairs. Artemis sees the creature briefly beyond the treetops and Archibald confirms the creature to be potentially be a Minokawa.
What Archibald realizes about the creature:
The creature is likely a minokawa, but not the large as an island one - which was probably exagerrated over time. The dragon-like bird is all black and produces a magickal heat from its body that can be seen from its feathers in flight. It has silvery-black skin and beaks, and its eyes are like deep black reflecting pools. In mythology it was known to cause eclipses by eating the sun or moon - which escaped when the other was attempted to be eaten. It was claimed to also cause meteors to fall from its open mouth that broke off the sun. But everything has been lost to legend and myth and no one alive in centuries has seen the creature, if it was even real to begin with. The legends say the bird has great powers and is mortal enemies with dragons and snakes.
The party argues over the eggs for a few minutes, some wanting to return it to where they found it, and others wanting to keep it for the party’s pet or to potentially sell it. Unable to come to a consensus, they head into the temple and continue to carry the egg. Artemis lights a torch and its dark except for the sun lighting up a central pedestal with another offering basin in the middle. It’s just like the one they had seen before and Artemis quickly finds the hidden lever to open the hatch.
At the bottom of the secret stairs, the group finds them in a large half-rounded room with several doors. Deciphering the runes on each door, they are in this order from left to right – Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Earth, Water, Fire.
Starting with the central Air door, they come into a large prayer room with rows of pews infront of a rounded stage area with a large snake statue on display. In attempting to investigate the room, they find a strong wind prevents them from going on the stage. Grunt prays to the statue and is allowed passage and with the help of his goddess finds a key at the back of the statue. Everyone else is pushed back by the wind. Artemis attempts throws his grappling hook and it flies back and hits him in the face. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Artemis again tells Artemis.
Next going through the Earth door on the left, Artemis spots a pit fall trap before they hit it and they wisely choose to not continue that way.
Trying the right Earth door, it is a rough stone and dirt path for about 50 feet with no apparent traps that ends in a locked door. Artemis unlocks it with his thieves’ tools and gets hit in the face by a magic trap on the lock. “You are the worst rogue I’ve ever seen,” Archibald again says to Artemis.
Inside is dirt floor, rough cut walls, very plain space with a plain sarcophagus in the center. They open it and find a mummified body with ceramic jars that seemed to contain the humanoid’s internal organs. They try to close it after Archibald warns them what it seems to be after he found deep claw marks on the inside of the lid, but it’s too late and the cursed vampire comes out and attacks!
Grunt and Archibald (incredibly unlucky) become charmed from the vampire’s bite. Grunt twin casts a thunder bolt upon the undead’s orders, almost killing Cax’Andra in his attempt to kill Artemis. The rest of the party defeats the vampire, releasing their friends from the charm, and Grunt realizes what his spells hit. “Oh god, what have I done...” He rushes trying to save Cax’Andra and prays to his goddess because the outlook is incredibly grim. His prayer is granted, a sick slithering feeling coming over his body, traveling down his arms and reviving the small owlfolk, but at a great cost he realizes from the laughter echoing in his skull, and he now owes for the life saved.
The party takes a long rest in this room, barricading the door for safety.
Party levels to 5.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward
10/01/21 Session 8
Artemis investigates everyone as they sleep. Everyone seems fine, Archibald is recovering nicely from his silver infection, Cax’Andra is beat the hell up and has a gnarly lightning scar across her chest and neck, creeping up onto the side of her face. The only one who seems suspicious is Grunt because of the way he had to pray to save Cax’Andra. Archibald ritually casts water breathing on all the party members. Artemis leads the party out and down the water pathway.
It leads to a 1ft deep water swamped room with pillar columns along the sides and a diamond shaped platform at the far end with a chest on it. Grunt casts dancing light and illuminates the area and below the water. Artemis goes to collect the chest and becomes entranced by the “spirits of the river Styx” hidden in the underwater holes. Grunt collects a wooden puzzle from inside the chest and Shara pulls Artemis away from the trance.
They go to the water on the opposite side and it’s an illusion room that looks exactly the same. Looking up instead of down, Artemis who is on a rope leash, triggers it, and the water on the ceiling collapses down, pinning Artemis to the floor. The rest of the party retrieves him via the rope.
They head to the fire rune hallway on the right. At the end is a stepped room, 5 foot drops btwn each level and a pool of lava at the bottom of each step. Archibald auguries and learns that stepping on the fire rune tiles are safe. Artemis jumps safely to the bottom where a large 2-door stone door is carved into the wall. He’s unable to open it himself. Aloatta joins him and is able to open the door. Artemis jumps back up to the middle level. Opening the door, the fires in the room go out, leaving the area illuminated only by the lava. A giant black claw grabs the door and opens it, it’s other giant claw grabs the other door and opens it, and a pig-face balor roars its face in to the room. Artemis loses his boots and takes damage himself from accidentally touching the lava while trying to escape. Aloatta escapes easily with the help of her rope. The party retreats successfully with the screams and roars of the balor who cannot follow.
They travel down the other fire path and it leads to a room containing another vial phylactery. Grunt takes it and they find nothing else of value in the room. Archibald convinces Grunt to give him one of the vials, and gives him the half-full one. Archibald immediately smashes the vial, and the liquid seeps between the cracks. Grunt and Cax’Andra collapse unconscious for 10 seconds – they receive a vision from the Snake Goddess that she’s in pain from the vial being destroyed, and lashes out at Grunt and Cax’Andra dealing them psychic damage. While unconscious, Archibald forces a vial of the anti-venom down their throats. Archibald takes one willingly just in case.. They awaken, Archibald attempts to take the other vials, and the party begins to fight.
I checked in with the players at the table at this point to make sure everyone was okay with the infighting about to happen and that no one was going to have issues from roleplaying through this. Everyone agreed this was party of the story and how it was culminating so far they knew what was coming, and we continued.
Aloatta attempts to bind Grunt with her rope and fails. Shara puts hunter’s mark on Grunt and attempts to shoot the bag containing the other vials, knocking it off his shoulder. She shoots again and slices the bottom of the bag open, spilling the contents of the bag on the floor. Cax’Andra, defending Grunt, casts Toll the Dead on Aloatta and retreats, evading the opportunity attack. Artemis runs up to Grunt and attempts to run him through, dealing a great deal of damage with his sneak attack. Archibald casts magic missile on Grunt, almost defeating him, except for Grunt’s Strength of the Grave saving him. Archibald steps on the first vial he can see in the pile, crushing it and spilling the contents over the other items spilled from the bag (this vial was a not-pure, mixed vial). Grunt twin spells lightning bolt, hitting Archibald and Artemis, hurting them a lot, then attempts to gore Artemis and fails. Aloatta uses non-lethal damage to knock Grunt unconscious, and destroys the last vial – which knocks Cax’Andra unconscious briefly again from another vision from the Snake Goddess. The two are then tied up expertly with Aloatta's skills. The following items are lost from Grunts pack as they are covered in the silver liquid from the broken vials – bedroll, clothes, dagger, arcane focus, rations, tinderbox, snake meat. The party takes a short rest and then starts to head back. They levitate the two captors down the cliff’s edge safely and the party makes it back to the boat where Grunt finally is conscious again as they sail back to the city.
They continue to attempt to solve the wooden puzzle box they found before without success. Arriving back at New Bikibutei, they get weird looks from the dock workers as they drag two bound party members offboard– Aloatta remarks “They like it..” and they continue to to their camp unbothered. Archibald smashes the last vial hidden in Grunt's belongings, sending Cax’Andra and Grunt into their unconscious visions again where the Snake Goddess writhes in pain and lashes out at them with psychic damage. While they’re unconscious, Archibald forces another anti-venom down each of their throats – however, unbeknowst to him and the rest of the party, this has no effect because Cax’Andra is “reborn” from the Snake Goddess and is enthralled, and Grunt was voluntarilly enthralled.
Player Character Death Trigger Warning:
Artemis volunteers to take Cax’Andra to the jail because the party was done questioning her, but not Grunt yet. On the way though, out of sight/sound of the party, he takes a detour to a secret part of the town instead. He gives Cax’Andra a quick apology, explaining that he knows she’s never going to recover from the effect of the Snake Goddess and he was giving her a mercy, and then slices the aarakocra’s throat. She fades slowly as the blood spills from her body, and only once she’s confirmed dead does Artemis leave to make a request of the thieves’ guild to help make the body disappear, costing him all of his current coins to do so. He then disappears himself for a few days to lay low.
While Artemis is gone, Grunt has not come conscious from the vision yet and starts convulsing from the attacks of the Snake Goddess in the vision. The party watches helplessly as he succumbs to the psychic damage and passes. They hold a funeral pyre for him later that day.
The remaining party members ask around town about Cax’Andra and Artemis after discovering that they never made it to the jailhouse. A few days later, gossip starts from the dock about a body having washed ashore. The party is requested to come to the guard station to help identify the body, since they had been asking about missing persons. They manage to identify the featherless, badly fish-eaten corpse of Cax’Andra. Aloatta gasps and cries out that Darwin was behind this, pointing out what looks like knife wounds, and that Artemis is still missing and was likely done for too. Her exclamation, and the previous history of “Darwin causing the snake attacks on the town”, the guards believe the story, and a wanted persons poster is posted all over town with a 1000gp reward for the capture of or successful knowledge of Darwin’s location. Artemis comes out of hiding having seen this. He heads out into the woods and dirties himself, and badly hurting himself to make him look like he was captured and tortured and finally escaped. He’s found on the shore as well and rushed to the hospital for treatment.
While in hiding, Artemis finally received a buyer for their giant opal still hanging out in his bag of holding. Unfortunately, he missed their first meeting while he was "missing", but thankfully Big Blue was able to reschedule it. Unfortunately the buyer’s were super pissed about having to spend extra days in New Bikibutei, and upon seeing the opal was real and far larger than advertised, they decided to murder Artemis and steal all his belongings instead – which they were successful with. Artemis’ body was never found.
During these days as well, a new ship finally comes into port, unloading new doctor’s, nurses, construction workers, and other townsfolk to help with the advancement of colonizing these islands. The previous doctor miraculously survives from the anti-venom treatments, while the two nurses did not.
The remaining party relaxed for a few days in town, recovering from their recent adventures and mishaps, and recruited new folks to join their party to fill the voids of their missing friends, Grunt, Cax'Andra, and Artemis.
Party levels to 6.
Family Traditions [Campaign Log] COMPLETED
Cursed Islands [Campaign Log] IN-PROGRESS
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.William Arthur Ward