At Peri’s question, Gerrard says, “I think Mistress Boko’s suggestion is a best first step—let her do the initial scouting in an aquatic form. Based on what she learns, we can plan further, possibly with her magic to aid our stealth.” The young noble nods at Boko appreciatively.
“For fighting versus fleeing if we are spotted, I think that will be a judgement call,” he adds to Qivys’ statements, “A lone sentry with no warning device might be worth the risk if he is guarding an area we need to search and we can take him out quickly without raising an alarm, but we should flee from most groups of any sea devils or any with a signal horn or such, lest the whole population be roused against us.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
"So a reconnaissance ahead of the reconnaissance?" he grins. "I won't argue; be good to have an idea what we're lookin' at."
"Here's an idea for the first step of our plan: while Boko's takin' a tour around the island, we row straight over to land, well short of the river. Then we go overland to that little clump of trees, there." He points out a distinctive group of trees not far from the river's mouth. "Should be fairly dry land, and we can hole up there for the day and get some sleep. Boko can meet us there and let us know what we're up against. Think you'll recognize those trees?" he asks Boko.
Qivys give Peri an odd look then turns to look around a bit.
Once they board the rowboat Qivys will take the oars (assuming they re positioned in a central location instead all about) and will start rowing once folks have boarded.
As Boko drops over the side and into the icy water, the rest of the party clambers into the rowboat that Tom helped hoist into the water.
Qivys begins to row the boat toward the desolate shoreline. It's grim and quiet. A few birds wheel in the air far to the north. There is no activity visible on the sahuagin's distant isle.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
Boko nods at the trees, and says, "I will take a look. I will not plan to take long. I can stay in one form for about two hours. If I am spotted or they take interest in me, I will try to flee in the opposite direction from the shore and boat, and then either hide in a reef, wildshape into an octopus, and attempt to dissuade them. I will try to find out if they are keeping watch, if there are traps or hazards laid anywhere, and what it looks like there. Oceanus, you are welcome to join me but I do think this is better for a solo, animal scout. If the entrance seems unoccupied, I can swim close and take a look, though no more than a shark would. Regardless, I will return to the shore and meet up with you again. If anyone has boons to help me keep my senses sharp, or any inspiration to offer, I will take it before I depart."
Otherwise, she drops into the water from the boat and shapes into a reef shark. With 50 ft movement, she makes a normal, curious approach of the fortress, for a shark. Alert for anything notable.
He let's the others formulate the plan of attack. Whatever they decide, he'll no doubt have to save their behinds again.
It's then that Boko asks for assistance. Like she's the only one that needs help. With a huff he turns to her. "Seems I can help with both" then under his breathe "as usual". He fans his deck of cards. "Draw a card. If I can guess what it is you can have your blessing, albeit a time sensitive one." He waits for Boko to draw, then knowing his cards as he does he will name the card she has. The trick provides her with a reminder that sometimes the simplest idea works the best. He turns and heads towards the row boat. "Guess now as good a time..." With a grunt he heaves himself over the gunwale and into the row boat.
”I can only wish you good fortune, Mistress Boko. Your plan sounds wise to me, though I wish we had a way to communicate while you are scouting. Be safe,” says Gerrard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
Boko swims off, now in shark form. The water is deep, visibility poor. (Deeper than 20 feet below the surface, the water is heavily obscured without the aid of a light source. Fortunately, Shark-Boko has 30' blindsight.)
The others row ashore. They make landfall and pull up their little boat on a black, narrow, rocky beach covered in seaweed and natural debris. A low, weedy bluff blocks your view to the north, but the smell of the bog is strong. Peering over the top of the dunes, you see a desolate wasteland of scrubby marsh extending far to the north. The tall, dense, leafless scrub and yellowed grass, together with the bluff itself, make excellent cover from distant prying eyes. You begin your slow walk westward through the scrub toward the river. All is quiet.
Boko finds the waters around the fortress lifeless. There are no obvious guards or sentries, nor any other signs of activity. Carefully circumnavigating the stony island, she finds two submerged entrances. The first, on the southern side (facing the ocean) is a cave mouth barred by a 20 feet wide by 20 feet high gate. To the east of this bronze gate is a chain and pulley mechanism for opening it. The gate is currently closed. Within, she sees a large natural cavern and a large force of sahuagin - dozens if not more. They are socializing and resting. Some have hammers, others have spears. A few sharks also swim within the cavern, close to the roof. Shoals of tiny silver fish dart about here and there, obstructing vision in places. The unlit room extends beyond Boko's vision in all directions.
Swimming to the other side - the north side, facing the mainland - Boko finds a second entrance. Like the other entrance, it is on the bottom level, on the seabed, some 80 feet below the surface, directly below the causeway. It's a small entrance, rough-hewn from the rock. It looks abandoned. A small, dirty, crudely-fashioned chamber within is empty, and a rough passage leads beyond it to the south.
Bokoshark swims around the abandoned entrance, getting a good sense of it, of how to get there from the shore, of how the causeway interacts with it (does the causeway go all the way down the the seabed or is it more of a bridge that doesn't go down to the bottom?), and if anything seems to be hanging around there. She goes up a bit closer to the surface and looks up through the water at what's above the water. Any other entrance, any lookouts, any activity in the air-breathing world. She swims lazily in circles about 20 feet up from the ocean floor, maybe 20 minutes near the smaller entrance, to give her a good sense of the activity of the place, patrols, etc.
Then she moves back to the southern entrance and does more lazy circles outside the entrance. She's see sharks circle hundreds of times before. They're not always hunting one specific bit of prey. They're curious, especially when it comes to unique things in the ocean, and this sunken fortress is certainly unique. She does her best to catch the eyes of the sharks inside, swimming close to the roof. Can she fit through the gate's bars? She doesn't get close enough to try, but she's curious. Eventually she swims back out to sea, losing interest. She does a wide, wide circle to double back to shore, closer to where the rest of the party went ashore, seeking to reunite near the trees.
The causeway is essentially a stone bridge with little in the way of support underneath. It extends for 190 feet from the coast to a ledge with a set of large stone doors, just above the waterline. It is 10 feet wide and 10 to 15 feet thick. The small, abandoned-looking entrance Bokoshark examined is below the causeway.
There seem to be no patrols, above or below the surface. All remains quiet.
Returning to the large, gated entrance, Boko can see that the gaps in the criss-crossed bronze are large enough for small fish (or a humanoid arm, or a Tiny creature) to pass through, but not big enough for a small- or medium-sized creature to squeeze through. The sharks, you notice, are wearing shell plate armor – plates of shell and coral permanently affixed to their bodies. One of the sharks spots Boko and makes an aggressive lunge toward her from the other side of the gate, making it quite clear that this is NOT her territory. It then swims away into the gloom in a huff.
Boko continues on in a circuitous arc to the rendezvous point.
Meanwhile, the others continue to pick their way through foul-smelling swamp and scrubby dunes in the same general direction.
Boko was going to try shifting into something smaller, but is dissuaded after the shark in plate mail lunges at her. Before she surfaces at the shore, she looks around, poking her shark head out of the water to see if there's anything on the shore nearby that might notice her. Either way, she shifts into a large (not giant) normal crab just in the waves, and surfs into the sand. Getting her claws underneath her, she makes a speedy crab break for the vegetation and shoreline, waiting to be in deeper scrub or trees to shift back into herself. Then finding the trees and looking for her party.
The land party eventually arrives at the small head of land at the edge of a broad, brown river delta. They encountered nothing other than a patch of quicksand that Qivys nearly lost a boot in. They find Bokocrab waiting for them. Peering back to the east, you notice that Tom and Butter have taken the keelboat out of sight - presumably into one of the small swampy coves you passed this morning which occasionally cut into the monotonous boggy bluffs along the coast.
All remains quiet other than the roar of the gentle surf here, and the babble of the river. There is no sign of life except for the hardy insects and distant wheeling birds. The smell is particularly potent here. The river water is not something you would be tempted to drink.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
Gerrard:
Insight: 9
Looking around, Gerrard says, “I hope Mistress Boko comes back soon. I don’t relish breathing that river water—perhaps when we go we should enter seaside instead.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
Qivys moves around the small area they intend to stay till their next move. After making sure it is secure, he will move off from the group and set a perimeter/observation post, choosing the best spot to cove the most area to watch, and hunker down till its time to move.
The crab waves at them, then darts around behind a tree, and Boko shifts back into view. "You have arrived. They do not appear to have set an underwater watch. And I do not see them on the surface, though we should not try to tempt fate by walking into the water by that causeway. Someone could be watching. Anyhow, there is an entrance underwater out toward the deep, but it is gated, and protected by dozens of soldiers and even some armored sharks that seem trained for war. We should not try to sneak in there. However there is a seemingly forgotten or underused entrance just under the causeway. I did not go inside but that seems to be our only, and best, shot. I could use a small rest to regain my abilities. When do we want to go inside? I assume as soon as possible,"Boko says, in a quiet flood. She offers any other information she noticed on her scouting (feel free to look at above posts, Boko would have shared everything). She spends the rest on her perch in the trees, trying to look for the most feasible, and least-unpleasant route into the water, as close to the ocean water as possible and avoiding the river, and limiting time out in the open, and then commits to memory a route underwater that would bring the group to the smaller entrance, in case she has to do this in the dark.
She's open to anyone's thoughts, and solicits Oceanus' ideas if he does not offer any.
"You think this smells bad? Imagine the slime that aboleth produces that has begun to collect at the bottom of the bay back in town."
Peri has only just found a somewhat comfortable, somewhat dry place to sit, when a large crab appears from the direction of the sea and -- is it waving at me? Before he can really question his sanity the crab disappears behind a tree and Boko reappears. Oh thank the gods; can't lose my marbles now! He listens to her report, particularly interested in the cloudy water's potential to hide them from any watchers. "Three entrances, two of 'em locked up tighter than a barrel of rum. At least that makes plannin' easy. I just hope that's not an open invitation into the soup pot."
"Once we're in there, what then? We're just supposed to be gatherin' information, right? What if, right before the real attack, two groups slip in through this entrance. One goes for the causeway gates, to force 'em open, and the other goes for the underwater gates, to lock 'em shut. The devils have an advantage fightin' underwater, so what if we don't fight 'em there? We've got a big bottle of poison -- if they're locked in and someone dumps in the bottle, they're scuppered, and good."
All is quiet - there are no signs of activity on the fortress island, the causeway, nor the lands, nor the seas surrounding it. You may take the benefits of a short rest if you like, as you sit, watch, discuss, and rest.
”Sounds like a good plan to me, though I am still concerned about the darkness. If we are worried about the light from my blade giving us away, someone can lead me when it gets dark,” offers Gerrard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
Gerrard:
At Peri’s question, Gerrard says, “I think Mistress Boko’s suggestion is a best first step—let her do the initial scouting in an aquatic form. Based on what she learns, we can plan further, possibly with her magic to aid our stealth.” The young noble nods at Boko appreciatively.
“For fighting versus fleeing if we are spotted, I think that will be a judgement call,” he adds to Qivys’ statements, “A lone sentry with no warning device might be worth the risk if he is guarding an area we need to search and we can take him out quickly without raising an alarm, but we should flee from most groups of any sea devils or any with a signal horn or such, lest the whole population be roused against us.”
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
(Is this the plan? Are the rest of you remaining with Tom and Butter? Or are you boarding the folding or row boat? What is Boko wildshaping into?)
Peri:
"So a reconnaissance ahead of the reconnaissance?" he grins. "I won't argue; be good to have an idea what we're lookin' at."
"Here's an idea for the first step of our plan: while Boko's takin' a tour around the island, we row straight over to land, well short of the river. Then we go overland to that little clump of trees, there." He points out a distinctive group of trees not far from the river's mouth. "Should be fairly dry land, and we can hole up there for the day and get some sleep. Boko can meet us there and let us know what we're up against. Think you'll recognize those trees?" he asks Boko.
Qivys give Peri an odd look then turns to look around a bit.
Once they board the rowboat Qivys will take the oars (assuming they re positioned in a central location instead all about) and will start rowing once folks have boarded.
As Boko drops over the side and into the icy water, the rest of the party clambers into the rowboat that Tom helped hoist into the water.
Qivys begins to row the boat toward the desolate shoreline. It's grim and quiet. A few birds wheel in the air far to the north. There is no activity visible on the sahuagin's distant isle.
Boko nods at the trees, and says, "I will take a look. I will not plan to take long. I can stay in one form for about two hours. If I am spotted or they take interest in me, I will try to flee in the opposite direction from the shore and boat, and then either hide in a reef, wildshape into an octopus, and attempt to dissuade them. I will try to find out if they are keeping watch, if there are traps or hazards laid anywhere, and what it looks like there. Oceanus, you are welcome to join me but I do think this is better for a solo, animal scout. If the entrance seems unoccupied, I can swim close and take a look, though no more than a shark would. Regardless, I will return to the shore and meet up with you again. If anyone has boons to help me keep my senses sharp, or any inspiration to offer, I will take it before I depart."
Otherwise, she drops into the water from the boat and shapes into a reef shark. With 50 ft movement, she makes a normal, curious approach of the fortress, for a shark. Alert for anything notable.
Perception: 10
Kei
He let's the others formulate the plan of attack. Whatever they decide, he'll no doubt have to save their behinds again.
It's then that Boko asks for assistance. Like she's the only one that needs help. With a huff he turns to her. "Seems I can help with both" then under his breathe "as usual". He fans his deck of cards. "Draw a card. If I can guess what it is you can have your blessing, albeit a time sensitive one." He waits for Boko to draw, then knowing his cards as he does he will name the card she has. The trick provides her with a reminder that sometimes the simplest idea works the best. He turns and heads towards the row boat. "Guess now as good a time..." With a grunt he heaves himself over the gunwale and into the row boat.
A - cast Guidance on Boko
BA - offers Bardic Inspiration (d8) to Boko
Gerrard:
”I can only wish you good fortune, Mistress Boko. Your plan sounds wise to me, though I wish we had a way to communicate while you are scouting. Be safe,” says Gerrard.
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
Boko swims off, now in shark form. The water is deep, visibility poor. (Deeper than 20 feet below the surface, the water is heavily obscured without the aid of a light source. Fortunately, Shark-Boko has 30' blindsight.)
The others row ashore. They make landfall and pull up their little boat on a black, narrow, rocky beach covered in seaweed and natural debris. A low, weedy bluff blocks your view to the north, but the smell of the bog is strong. Peering over the top of the dunes, you see a desolate wasteland of scrubby marsh extending far to the north. The tall, dense, leafless scrub and yellowed grass, together with the bluff itself, make excellent cover from distant prying eyes. You begin your slow walk westward through the scrub toward the river. All is quiet.
Boko finds the waters around the fortress lifeless. There are no obvious guards or sentries, nor any other signs of activity. Carefully circumnavigating the stony island, she finds two submerged entrances. The first, on the southern side (facing the ocean) is a cave mouth barred by a 20 feet wide by 20 feet high gate. To the east of this bronze gate is a chain and pulley mechanism for opening it. The gate is currently closed. Within, she sees a large natural cavern and a large force of sahuagin - dozens if not more. They are socializing and resting. Some have hammers, others have spears. A few sharks also swim within the cavern, close to the roof. Shoals of tiny silver fish dart about here and there, obstructing vision in places. The unlit room extends beyond Boko's vision in all directions.
Swimming to the other side - the north side, facing the mainland - Boko finds a second entrance. Like the other entrance, it is on the bottom level, on the seabed, some 80 feet below the surface, directly below the causeway. It's a small entrance, rough-hewn from the rock. It looks abandoned. A small, dirty, crudely-fashioned chamber within is empty, and a rough passage leads beyond it to the south.
Bokoshark swims around the abandoned entrance, getting a good sense of it, of how to get there from the shore, of how the causeway interacts with it (does the causeway go all the way down the the seabed or is it more of a bridge that doesn't go down to the bottom?), and if anything seems to be hanging around there. She goes up a bit closer to the surface and looks up through the water at what's above the water. Any other entrance, any lookouts, any activity in the air-breathing world. She swims lazily in circles about 20 feet up from the ocean floor, maybe 20 minutes near the smaller entrance, to give her a good sense of the activity of the place, patrols, etc.
Then she moves back to the southern entrance and does more lazy circles outside the entrance. She's see sharks circle hundreds of times before. They're not always hunting one specific bit of prey. They're curious, especially when it comes to unique things in the ocean, and this sunken fortress is certainly unique. She does her best to catch the eyes of the sharks inside, swimming close to the roof. Can she fit through the gate's bars? She doesn't get close enough to try, but she's curious. Eventually she swims back out to sea, losing interest. She does a wide, wide circle to double back to shore, closer to where the rest of the party went ashore, seeking to reunite near the trees.
The causeway is essentially a stone bridge with little in the way of support underneath. It extends for 190 feet from the coast to a ledge with a set of large stone doors, just above the waterline. It is 10 feet wide and 10 to 15 feet thick. The small, abandoned-looking entrance Bokoshark examined is below the causeway.
There seem to be no patrols, above or below the surface. All remains quiet.
Returning to the large, gated entrance, Boko can see that the gaps in the criss-crossed bronze are large enough for small fish (or a humanoid arm, or a Tiny creature) to pass through, but not big enough for a small- or medium-sized creature to squeeze through. The sharks, you notice, are wearing shell plate armor – plates of shell and coral permanently affixed to their bodies. One of the sharks spots Boko and makes an aggressive lunge toward her from the other side of the gate, making it quite clear that this is NOT her territory. It then swims away into the gloom in a huff.
Boko continues on in a circuitous arc to the rendezvous point.
Meanwhile, the others continue to pick their way through foul-smelling swamp and scrubby dunes in the same general direction.
Boko was going to try shifting into something smaller, but is dissuaded after the shark in plate mail lunges at her. Before she surfaces at the shore, she looks around, poking her shark head out of the water to see if there's anything on the shore nearby that might notice her. Either way, she shifts into a large (not giant) normal crab just in the waves, and surfs into the sand. Getting her claws underneath her, she makes a speedy crab break for the vegetation and shoreline, waiting to be in deeper scrub or trees to shift back into herself. Then finding the trees and looking for her party.
The land party eventually arrives at the small head of land at the edge of a broad, brown river delta. They encountered nothing other than a patch of quicksand that Qivys nearly lost a boot in. They find Bokocrab waiting for them. Peering back to the east, you notice that Tom and Butter have taken the keelboat out of sight - presumably into one of the small swampy coves you passed this morning which occasionally cut into the monotonous boggy bluffs along the coast.
All remains quiet other than the roar of the gentle surf here, and the babble of the river. There is no sign of life except for the hardy insects and distant wheeling birds. The smell is particularly potent here. The river water is not something you would be tempted to drink.
Gerrard:
Insight: 9
Looking around, Gerrard says, “I hope Mistress Boko comes back soon. I don’t relish breathing that river water—perhaps when we go we should enter seaside instead.”
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
Qivys moves around the small area they intend to stay till their next move. After making sure it is secure, he will move off from the group and set a perimeter/observation post, choosing the best spot to cove the most area to watch, and hunker down till its time to move.
The crab waves at them, then darts around behind a tree, and Boko shifts back into view. "You have arrived. They do not appear to have set an underwater watch. And I do not see them on the surface, though we should not try to tempt fate by walking into the water by that causeway. Someone could be watching. Anyhow, there is an entrance underwater out toward the deep, but it is gated, and protected by dozens of soldiers and even some armored sharks that seem trained for war. We should not try to sneak in there. However there is a seemingly forgotten or underused entrance just under the causeway. I did not go inside but that seems to be our only, and best, shot. I could use a small rest to regain my abilities. When do we want to go inside? I assume as soon as possible," Boko says, in a quiet flood. She offers any other information she noticed on her scouting (feel free to look at above posts, Boko would have shared everything). She spends the rest on her perch in the trees, trying to look for the most feasible, and least-unpleasant route into the water, as close to the ocean water as possible and avoiding the river, and limiting time out in the open, and then commits to memory a route underwater that would bring the group to the smaller entrance, in case she has to do this in the dark.
She's open to anyone's thoughts, and solicits Oceanus' ideas if he does not offer any.
"You think this smells bad? Imagine the slime that aboleth produces that has begun to collect at the bottom of the bay back in town."
Peri:
Peri has only just found a somewhat comfortable, somewhat dry place to sit, when a large crab appears from the direction of the sea and -- is it waving at me? Before he can really question his sanity the crab disappears behind a tree and Boko reappears. Oh thank the gods; can't lose my marbles now! He listens to her report, particularly interested in the cloudy water's potential to hide them from any watchers. "Three entrances, two of 'em locked up tighter than a barrel of rum. At least that makes plannin' easy. I just hope that's not an open invitation into the soup pot."
"Once we're in there, what then? We're just supposed to be gatherin' information, right? What if, right before the real attack, two groups slip in through this entrance. One goes for the causeway gates, to force 'em open, and the other goes for the underwater gates, to lock 'em shut. The devils have an advantage fightin' underwater, so what if we don't fight 'em there? We've got a big bottle of poison -- if they're locked in and someone dumps in the bottle, they're scuppered, and good."
All is quiet - there are no signs of activity on the fortress island, the causeway, nor the lands, nor the seas surrounding it. You may take the benefits of a short rest if you like, as you sit, watch, discuss, and rest.
Gerrard:
”Sounds like a good plan to me, though I am still concerned about the darkness. If we are worried about the light from my blade giving us away, someone can lead me when it gets dark,” offers Gerrard.
Gerrard Feldren - Human Noble in Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Kerric Brightblade - Elven Warrior in "Apocalypse"
(Everyone may benefit from a short rest.)
All remains quiet. You have about 2 or 3 hours of daylight left.