For three days, the Sailing Dragon has lived up to its name, clawing through the waves like a beast in a cage.
The voyage has been anything but smooth. As soon as you left the coast, the sky turned dark and the weather turned foul. Your captain – a blue-skinned Water Genasi named Salty Annie – spent the last seventy-two hours screaming orders over the wind, her skin shimmering with sea spray as she worked her crew to the point of collapse just to keep the ship afloat.
You spent the time huddled below deck, listening to the clatter of the heavy raindrops, or clinging to the railings as the brig pitched over massive, rolling waves that sent seawater flooding across the deck. More than once, you heard the crew praying to the gods. You might have even joined them.
For Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash, the storm was a nightmare. The constant spinning and lurching has left you completely drained. Ironically, it is the cleric that has suffered the most – the smell of fish and wet wood, the whooshing sounds of the waves, the wind in the sails – it's as if everything makes your stomach turn.
Because of your failed saves, you are suffering from seasickness (Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks) until you reach land.
Tatiana, once the initial dizziness passed, you found your footing and held your ground while others tumbled. Valeria and Devizes, you were completely unmoved. Even when the sailors felt sick, you stayed steady. For Devizes, the storm was just a bit of splashing water; for Valeria, the wild wind felt as familiar as the fire in her blood.
Finally, the sea has calmed. The water has settled into a heavy roll, and the sky is a flat, quiet grey. The violent lurching is gone, replaced by the sound of sailors pumping the last of the floodwater out of the hold.
Captain Annie told you the trip would take three days. That time has passed, but there is still no land in sight. Between the storm and the repairs, the captain hasn't had a moment to give you an update. You have a few more hours on board to wait and wonder.
[Feel free to describe your characters and how they spent those three days of chaos. Did you help the crew, stay in your bunk, or watch the waves? You can also use this time to introduce yourselves to one another.]
The others on the Sailing Dragon would have noticed her as soon as they came aboard the ship, a strikingly beautiful young redhead clad in black leather and red leather gloves, speaking to the crew with confidence and moving on the ship like it belonged to her. There was a restlessness with her though, walking the length of the ship back and forth to keep herself busy, although in the evenings she would be found entertaining the crew with outrageous stories about the adventures of one Roric, who seemed like quite a scoundrel.
As the ship nears it's destination she would prepare herself to finally see the island she had heard about so many times. She stands up in the forecastle with the wind in her long red hair, mostly looking to the horizon for any signs of the fabled Stormwreck Isle, but also curiously glancing about for the motley group of passengers that were also go ashore along with her. "Any of you been to Stormwreck Isle before?" She calls out in the wind to the other passengers present with a friendly smile.
Devizes is a forest gnome, standing just 3 feet 2 inches tall and weighing a compact 48 pounds, his small frame packed tight with wiry muscle and old soldier’s grit. What he lacks in size, he makes up for in presence there is nothing delicate about him.
His green eyes are sharp and alert and they gleam with a restrained intensity. His brown hair is thick and perpetually unruly, usually worn pulled back with leather ties to keep it out of his face, though loose strands still frame his brow. A heavy beard, braided in a practical soldier’s fashion, shows streaks of lighter brown and grey where age and stress have begun to mark him.
Devizes’s face bears the quiet history of war: small scars along the cheek and brow, a broken nose that healed slightly crooked, and a permanent set to his jaw that suggests stubborn refusal rather than cruelty. His build is squat and powerful, shoulders broad for a gnome, hands calloused and strong from years of weapon drills and forced marches.
He's rather taciturn on board ship, and a gnome of few words, but he seems to ride out the storm and at times it even looks like he might actually be enjoying himself.
While he doesn't talk much, he does keep a wary eye on Padrionn, Zaria and Borabash, who appear to be suffering through the storm, though there is little that he can do to help them through their sickness other than keep a supply of fresh water close by for when they need it.
He helps out on the boat as needed, seemingly amused by the Captains ranting at her crew, and when her ire turns on him he just grins and knuckles down to his task.
As the storm subsides he joins Valeria on the fo'c's'le and stares out to where he thinks the island might be. "Never been," he replies gruffly in a remarkably soft, but drawling voice. "Might be we'd a been a Stormwreck ourselves had yon storm lasted any longer. Ain't got no idea what this island be like," and he gestures towards the three that had suffered the worst through the storm, "but thems three gonna be mighty glad o'getting there, I be sure."
For the better part of the last three days, Padrionn Gilderglass has been a sickly green rather than his usual gold.
The dragonborn arrived aboard the Sailing Dragon in high spirits, strutting across the gangplank with swagger to spare, dispensing bone-crushing handshakes for passengers and crew alike. "Paddy Gilderglass, an' oi'm delighted t' make yer fine acquaintance!" He grinned toothily, doffing his battered top hat with all the greasy, gallant courtesy a baseborn ruffian from Waterdeep's Dock Ward could muster.
By early afternoon, the wind had been well and truly knocked out of his sails. It was subtle at first - the churning. The queasy awareness of soup sloshing back and forth in his innards, the unsteady gait, the unrelenting pressure behind his eyes. He'd been in the middle of helping out in the galley, carving his way through some salted beef for the evening's supper, when his stomach had mutinied. He turned just in time to unleash a volley of vomit across Salty Annie's pease pottage, an almighty spray that slathered the bulkhead in half-digested shame.
The cabin boys had taken to calling him Paddy Greengills after that. He'd chased them around the hold with a fine mind to box their ears, but even that revenge was scuppered when he'd doubled over and emptied what remained of his dignity into a crate. He barely ate for the rest of the voyage, surviving on scraps of bread and water only when he felt too woozy to go on. For Zaria, Borabash and Tatiana, the dragonborn offered looks of sympathy in their mutual suffering, while his envy bordered contempt for how unfazed Valeria and Devizes appeared to be.
From time to time, Padrionn put on a brave face and rose from his bunk to puff on a fat cigar, and do the rounds with his fellow passengers. A simple butcher from humble beginnings seeking a fresh start, he claimed to be, and the array of razor-sharp cleavers and polished knives he kept on his person certainly seemed to support the claim. Yet there was a dangerous glint in his golden eyes, the aura of a man used to doing bloody, brutal violence - at least when he wasn't being shamefully unmanned by the sea and this wretched storm.
On the third day, he ventures onto the main deck, blinking in the cool air and calm winds like a man released from captivity. "Ah, praise be - the B*tch Queen's released us from her unholy grasp." Padrionn croaks as he stumbles over to the fetching redhead and hardy gnome, catching the tail end of their conversation. "Too right oi will! Blergh. Been feeling as if oi've been tossed inside out, so oi have. Ah, never set foot on the isle though - only read bits and pieces about it here and there. Where's Salty Annie? Weren't we meant t' be ashore by now, or am oi losin' the run o' meself?"
Tatiana is exactly where a former farmer would be during a crisis: refusing to stay idle while there is work to be done. While her stomach did a few somersaults early on, she quickly found her "land legs" on the shifting wood, her sturdy build and low center of gravity making her surprisingly stable compared to the taller, lankier passengers.
Tatiana spent the better part of the storm near the mainmast, her thick red hair soaked through and plastered to her neck, despite her attempts to keep it tied back. She didn't have the sea-lungs of Salty Annie’s crew, but she has the calloused hands of someone used to gripping a plow in a gale. Whenever a crate broke loose or a rope began to fray, Tatiana was there, using her weight to pin down sliding barrels or helping the sailors haul on lines that felt like they were trying to rip her arms out of their sockets.
As the sea finally settles into a heavy roll, she stands by the railing, wiping salt-crust from her icy blue eyes. She looks like a drowned cat, but her expression is one of calm resolve. Seeing the others emerging from the hold, she looks toward Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash with a sympathetic, if slightly amused, wince.
"Easy there, friends," she says, her voice surprisingly deep and steady despite the wind. She reaches for a waterskin, offering it to the green-faced Cleric. "The worst is behind us, I reckon. The earth doesn't move like this back in the fields, but she'll be beneath our boots soon enough."
She turns her gaze toward the grey horizon, her shock of white hair standing out against the dull sky. "I'm Tatiana. Though most just call me Tati. If any of you feel like your insides are still trying to be your outsides, I’ve got a bit of dried ginger in my pack. It’s better than the smell of this fish-water, at least." She looks over at Valeria and Devizes with a nod of respect, recognizing the steady stance of those who weren't broken by the storm.
Zariais hardly a stranger to operating under duress. She can still remember with striking clarity the way her whole body used to hurt, when she first started working in the Vault of the Sages, copying down obscure and esoteric documents until her hand struggled to relax the grip it held on her quill. For over a decade now, she's striven to meet any challenge put to her with as much stoicism as she can muster, knowing that they will eventually pass away, leaving her all the wiser for having experienced it. When she first heard that she would be sailing to Stormwreck Isle upon a ship called the Sailing Dragon, she couldn't help but think about what an auspicious experience the travel would be.
She can't believe how wrong she was.
Three days of near constant buffeting at the hands of the sea. This is the first time Zaria has ever left Silverymoon; she's never even seen a sailing vessel like the Dragon before, much less ridden on one. The seasickness sets in almost immediately. On the first day she sits - or rather, clings desperately to one of the railings - on the top deck and tries to meditate, thinking she might at least gain some valuable insight to focus her Spark (as she calls her Ki). What she gets instead is an upset stomach the likes of which she cannot recall ever before experiencing in her life.
She tries much the same the next day, but keeps her efforts below deck this time, faring little better for her precautions. By the third day, even her stoicism has been worn down to a bare nub, and she spends much of the day hunched below deck in her hammock, looking about as sullen as she does seasick. Only when the seas finally calm does she manage to regain some semblance of her composure and return topside, eager to get a glimpse of Stormwreck Isle as soon as possible.
Zaria can't hide the disappointment on her face when, finally emerging from her confinement below deck, she is not greeted by the sight of the island which she has waited so long to visit. She swallows her disappointment quickly, though, saying quietly, almost as if to herself. "It can't be too much longer now, surely. Maybe the storm delayed our passage, and we still have some distance yet to travel."
Borabash Pevreivon — ‘Pev’ to his friends, ‘Bash’ to his enemies — is sick.
He is perhaps 3 foot 6, he has perhaps a small copper hat which he should rarely be seen without, and, more rarely absent is the crooked turn of a half-smile on his lips, and the flash of his teeth, as jokes fly freely at speeds only a rock gnome amongst rock gnomes can fathom or withstand.
Pevreivon may be kind, may be gentle, may be an ear to turn to with difficulties and a mind who seeks to imagine strange solutions and to wit orthogonal complications to your ills. He may have freckles the colour of fool’s gold that glimmer, and brassy-golden eyes, a mystery to his parents, but taken to be the touch of the sire of gnomes, Garl Glittergold.
Pev might be all of these things. But you would have no way to know, as for three days the poor gnome has wished and prayed for death. For excoriating fire. For the destruction of all travelogues and guide books and for the cessation of divine dreams and inherent vocation. For the cancellation of the seas. He has scarcely eaten, and even breathing now is a distinct unpleasure, for it extends his time on this voyage.
On the third day he rises, so far as to move to the forecastle and lie there on the deck, just close enough that he might see the others and the absence of land.
“Bleeeeerrrghhhh??”
He retches, but it is dry. He wretches, there behind your feet, the figure of self-pity.
The young redhead lets out a brief chuckle at the hardy gnome's comment as she looks over the gnome's two less than hardy cousins and goldie scales. "Yes, the sea isn't for everyone I suppose."
"Good to meet you Tati, I'm Valeria, but Val is fine too." She then turns and says to the short warrior with the dried ginger. "So, assuming we get ashore without gettting shipwrecked, what are you all planning to do? Looking for hidden dragon's hoard perhaps?" Valeria continues, looking around at the others with a curious smile as the wind plays in her long red hair.
Devizes watches Bash's plight then kneels down and offers him some water and some ships biscuit. "Here. It'll settle yer stomach." He shrugs. "If it don't, it'll at least give you something other to bring up than yer stomach. Either way, it'll soon be over and ye'll get those feet on yon dry land." It was meant to sound encouraging but...well...he'd been here before; on ships, seeing others suffer from the sickness. It was the only time he ever felt helpless.
He looks back out of the rail of the ship. "Looking fer an an answer that I ain't ever gonna find," he says to Val, affably. He pauses then pulls a crumpled piece of parchment from inside his coat. He gives a humourless laugh and offers it to her. "See if ye ken what that might be," and when the parchment is opened up it looks to be a blueprint for some kind of strange contraption. "I ain't got the first idea what that thing meant to be, and there ain't anyone around that knows, neither. Might be someone on the island knows." He shrugs. "I ain't holding my breath mind, but someone mentioned there be somebody here that might help...might know."He looks around at the group. "If they don't. Well...I like the travelling part just as much." He turns and leans against the rail, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath of sea air. "What brings you all here then?
"We was!"Salty Annie suddenly appears behind Padrionn. Her voice sounds like grinding gravel after all the shouting she’s done, and her hair is pulled into a thick up-do that looks like a tangle of dark seaweed. "We was, and I didn't lie to ya. But that storm did us all dirty...sent the ship leagues off course."
She huffs as she moves to the gunwale, grabbing a thick line and tightening it with a grunt. Despite her lean frame, she seems scarily strong, her skin shimmering with a faint, watery blue hue.
"The lot of ya done being sick all over my ship yet?" She looks over at Zaria, then down at Borabash, who is still sprawled in the middle of the deck. She shakes her head, although a small, tired smirk touches her lips. "Never in all my years have I seen a soul take to the illness as bad as you, little priest. If Garl Glittergold wanted you on the water, he’d have given you gills."
She wipes salt from her forehead and looks towards the grey horizon. "The storm stole our time, but the wind is finally behaving. Keep your eyes peeled. We'll find the island soon enough, or I’m a land-lubber."
Just then, the lookout calls down from the mast, waving his spyglass enthusiastically. "LAND! Stormwreck Isle with its Dragon's Rest, straight ahead!"
And sure enough, a small dot is barely visible on the horizon.
"What did I tell ya?" Salty Annie smirks. She turns and head back up the stairs to the quarterdeck, her hands gripping the helm to steady their course. "We'll be there in no time now!"
[The island is finally in sight, but it will still be a little while before you arrive. Feel free to continue your conversations or ask Salty Annie any last-minute questions before the ship reaches the cliffs.]
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
"Honestly, I just heard so much of this place growing up and thought it was about time to see if it is anything like what I've been told." The young redhead says, stepping closer to the hardy gnome with the enigmatic response to look at the parchment he offers her. She nods and smiles to him, she too liked the travelling, she never had the patience for staying in one place for too long, but she was curious to see if this isle would be any different. If anyone else was interested and the hardy gnome wouldn't object, Val would show the parchment to the others too, curious to see if they had any artficers among them, particularly among the less hardy gnomes.
(Intelligence check regarding the content of the parchment: 14 )
Padrionn squints down at Pev as he languishes on the planks, chewing the end of his unlit cigar. His reptilian head bobs up and down slowly in approval as Dev tends to the fallen gnome. "Bahamut take ye under his wing, lad. Looks like yer having a rough time o' it. Well, some small comfort for ye - ye weren't the only one emptying yer ballast with every ring of the ship's bell. Heh heh heh... oi did me fair share of rapid jettisoning from the hold, oi did! Off the bow an' out the stern!"He laughs gutturally, before his gaze falls upon the human redhead.
Paddy had come to Stormwreck Isle to serve his beloved Ysolde, to become the man she had said he was capable of becoming. He was pure in his intentions, but there was nothing in that denied a man the right to accumulate a bit of gold. "What's this now about a dragon's hoard?" He inquires, his snaggle-toothed maw attempting a casual smile that did little to hide the greedy glint in his eyes. His eyes flash to the piece of parchment being exchanged between Dev and Val, already half-convinced it was some manner of treasure map.
Before he can satisfy his curiosity, Salty Annie materialises behind him. "Good to see ye, Cap'n..." The scaled ridge above his right eye rises as he watches the captain work. Formidable woman. The kind I'd like to get to know better... The dragonborn's admiring glances are cut short by the sudden cry of the lookout, and he scurries over to the gunwale, to take a good look at the isle growing on the horizon. He turns to Zaria and barks a phlegmmy laugh. "Cheer up, love, we're almost there! Ye'll have even more places to sit an' sleep!"
When Padrionn notices Annie departing, he limps after her onto the quarterdeck, quick enough despite his somewhat ungainly gait. "Ye know much about our destination, Cap'n? Where are we putting in? Who should we go meet first? And tell a lad true now - is there dragon treasure on the isle?"
Borabash takes little nibbles and small sips of the ship’s biscuit and offered water, and he looks perhaps a little less green for it, though every movement is pained and he groans with each wave that the ships crests and rolls over.
“I …” he pauses as if awaiting a heave, but none comes, his nose pressed and compressed against the wet boards of the deck. “I … wear a hat because anything can happen without decent stone above your head, and now without earth beneath my feet, I’m adrift. I think I am unlikely to become the world’s greatest sailor by the end of this trip. Perhaps it might take two, even three, short voyages more.”
In answer to why such a sea sick gnome has undertaken this journey, he says,
“Silent bells and broken wings, I see them when I sleep, and the isle ahead of us. Some things are mended by a little kindness. Some wounds are tended better with a little humour. I think there’s something for me ahead of us.”
It takes him more than one attempt to get so many words out. He turns his hat to the use of a bucket as he tries.
Dev listens to Bash, fascination clear on his face. "Silent bells and broken wings, eh?"and he seems to consider this for longer than is really needed. "Sometimes all ye need is the road ahead and the greatest courage comes when ye chose to walk down it." He blinks a little in surprise at his words. "Summit' like that, anyway."
His attention turns back to Val who seems to be studying the parchment closely. It seems to be a blueprint for some kind of machine, but she can't make head or tail of its purpose. All the parts seem to work together logically, but what this thing is for, remains a mystery.
"Wierd, aint it," Dev says after a long silence. He gestures at Padrionn intimating that he's welcome to look at the parchment too. "Might be someday some person be able to tell me what it is." He grins at the Dragonborn, a smile of genuine delight and anticipation. "Dragon hoard, eh? The big problem with them dragon hoards, is they tend to got dragons on 'em."
Val too chuckles at the comment about the problematic dragon on it's hoard. Admittedly she didn't quite expect either on this isle, in spite of it's rumoured history. Still, it was a tantalizing thought, and the subjct of many of her old mentor's outrageous stories about this isle. "Perhaps you simply need to build the thing to find out it's purpose."She suggests to the hardy gnome, handing him the parchment back, trying her best to ignore all the regurgitating around her. "So we're all here for the first time then." She says looking around at the others. "Would you all consider exploring the isle together, as a group? Safety in numbers and all that."
At Val's words, Dev looks round the party. It had been a long time since he'd journeyed with anyone other than himself. Sometimes things happen for a reason. The stars align; things come together at the right time. Some might call it fate. He takes another breath of sea air, and something sparks inside him that he hasn't felt in years. Excitement? Hope?
"Why not," he says, a little more gruffly than he intended. "Would be good to travel in a company again. It's been too long." He watches as the parchment makes its way round the group. "Might be I find a builder some day and get it made, proper like," and he rubs a hand through his beard. "If they can make head or tail of it."
Padrionn's face lights up with excitement when Dev gestures to the parchment, but the enthusiasm wanes before he even lays eyes on the diagram. If it was really a treasure map, no one in their right mind would go flaunting it about. Ysolde would have told him to be less cynical, that people weren't always as greedy and secretive as he assumed.
Paddy peers over with a briefly melancholy sigh, and finds himself befuddled by the schematic for an alien machine. "What's this? Bah. Oi've less o' a notion than a pig in a prayer-hall, me boy." He shrugs, and then turns to the gnome still spitting incoherent, delirious gobbledygook. The dragonborn rolls up the sleeves of his billowy white shirt, cracking his stubby, scaly knuckles. "The lad's clearly addled. Clean away with the fairies. Say the word and oi'll give him a slap t' knock the sense back into him, sure as the mornin'."
When Val proposes that they join forces, he mulls it over and lets out a wet, raspy chuckle. "Heh heh heh. If we're talkin' about filchin' a bit o' gold from dragons' hoards, I suppose there's comfort in numbers. Aye, oi'm with ye. Why not?!" His reptilian head turns to Zaria. "You in, love?"
Salty Annie had glanced at Padrionn, when the dragonborn had come to ask her questions, with a knowing glint in her cerulean eyes. "Treasure, ya askin'?" She'd smirked mysteriously. "If ever there was an island to hide a hoard, it'd be one where dozens of dragons once drew their last breath, don't ya think?"
She'd chuckled, clearly amused by his greed, before adding more seriously, "You should go see Elder Runara in Dragon's Rest. A lovely and wise lady she is. She leads the cloister there. She can tell you more about the isle's secrets than a simple sailor like me ever could."
The sky has mostly cleared by the time the Sailing Dragon reaches the island. In the now calm sea, seaweed shimmers in countless brilliant colors beneath the hull, and rays of sunlight break through the grey clouds to illuminate the lush grass and dark basalt rock of the island. Navigating with practised ease, Salty Annie guides her ship towards a quiet harbour on the north side. As the brig nears the shore, she barks a final set of orders, and her crew hurry in preparation to drop anchor.
A large, open-air temple comes into view, perched on the edge of a cliff high above you. At its centre stands a towering statue of a wizened man surrounded by seven songbirds. Two sailors row you ashore as Salty Annie waves a final goodbye from the quarterdeck.
The sailors set you down on a rickety dock where a large rowboat is neatly tied. They point towards the end of the beach, where a narrow path - barely wide enough for one person -begins its winding climb up the cliffside. "Good luck to ya!" they call out, already rowing back towards the ship.
Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash no longer feel seasick as they find themselves back on land.
For three days, the Sailing Dragon has lived up to its name, clawing through the waves like a beast in a cage.
The voyage has been anything but smooth. As soon as you left the coast, the sky turned dark and the weather turned foul. Your captain – a blue-skinned Water Genasi named Salty Annie – spent the last seventy-two hours screaming orders over the wind, her skin shimmering with sea spray as she worked her crew to the point of collapse just to keep the ship afloat.
You spent the time huddled below deck, listening to the clatter of the heavy raindrops, or clinging to the railings as the brig pitched over massive, rolling waves that sent seawater flooding across the deck. More than once, you heard the crew praying to the gods. You might have even joined them.
For Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash, the storm was a nightmare. The constant spinning and lurching has left you completely drained. Ironically, it is the cleric that has suffered the most – the smell of fish and wet wood, the whooshing sounds of the waves, the wind in the sails – it's as if everything makes your stomach turn.
Because of your failed saves, you are suffering from seasickness (Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks) until you reach land.
Tatiana, once the initial dizziness passed, you found your footing and held your ground while others tumbled. Valeria and Devizes, you were completely unmoved. Even when the sailors felt sick, you stayed steady. For Devizes, the storm was just a bit of splashing water; for Valeria, the wild wind felt as familiar as the fire in her blood.
Finally, the sea has calmed. The water has settled into a heavy roll, and the sky is a flat, quiet grey. The violent lurching is gone, replaced by the sound of sailors pumping the last of the floodwater out of the hold.
Captain Annie told you the trip would take three days. That time has passed, but there is still no land in sight. Between the storm and the repairs, the captain hasn't had a moment to give you an update. You have a few more hours on board to wait and wonder.
[Feel free to describe your characters and how they spent those three days of chaos. Did you help the crew, stay in your bunk, or watch the waves? You can also use this time to introduce yourselves to one another.]
DM: Hoard of the Dragon Queen Adventure, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and even more dragons
The others on the Sailing Dragon would have noticed her as soon as they came aboard the ship, a strikingly beautiful young redhead clad in black leather and red leather gloves, speaking to the crew with confidence and moving on the ship like it belonged to her. There was a restlessness with her though, walking the length of the ship back and forth to keep herself busy, although in the evenings she would be found entertaining the crew with outrageous stories about the adventures of one Roric, who seemed like quite a scoundrel.
As the ship nears it's destination she would prepare herself to finally see the island she had heard about so many times. She stands up in the forecastle with the wind in her long red hair, mostly looking to the horizon for any signs of the fabled Stormwreck Isle, but also curiously glancing about for the motley group of passengers that were also go ashore along with her. "Any of you been to Stormwreck Isle before?" She calls out in the wind to the other passengers present with a friendly smile.
Devizes is a forest gnome, standing just 3 feet 2 inches tall and weighing a compact 48 pounds, his small frame packed tight with wiry muscle and old soldier’s grit. What he lacks in size, he makes up for in presence there is nothing delicate about him.
His green eyes are sharp and alert and they gleam with a restrained intensity. His brown hair is thick and perpetually unruly, usually worn pulled back with leather ties to keep it out of his face, though loose strands still frame his brow. A heavy beard, braided in a practical soldier’s fashion, shows streaks of lighter brown and grey where age and stress have begun to mark him.
Devizes’s face bears the quiet history of war: small scars along the cheek and brow, a broken nose that healed slightly crooked, and a permanent set to his jaw that suggests stubborn refusal rather than cruelty. His build is squat and powerful, shoulders broad for a gnome, hands calloused and strong from years of weapon drills and forced marches.
He's rather taciturn on board ship, and a gnome of few words, but he seems to ride out the storm and at times it even looks like he might actually be enjoying himself.
While he doesn't talk much, he does keep a wary eye on Padrionn, Zaria and Borabash, who appear to be suffering through the storm, though there is little that he can do to help them through their sickness other than keep a supply of fresh water close by for when they need it.
He helps out on the boat as needed, seemingly amused by the Captains ranting at her crew, and when her ire turns on him he just grins and knuckles down to his task.
As the storm subsides he joins Valeria on the fo'c's'le and stares out to where he thinks the island might be. "Never been," he replies gruffly in a remarkably soft, but drawling voice. "Might be we'd a been a Stormwreck ourselves had yon storm lasted any longer. Ain't got no idea what this island be like," and he gestures towards the three that had suffered the worst through the storm, "but thems three gonna be mighty glad o'getting there, I be sure."
For the better part of the last three days, Padrionn Gilderglass has been a sickly green rather than his usual gold.
The dragonborn arrived aboard the Sailing Dragon in high spirits, strutting across the gangplank with swagger to spare, dispensing bone-crushing handshakes for passengers and crew alike. "Paddy Gilderglass, an' oi'm delighted t' make yer fine acquaintance!" He grinned toothily, doffing his battered top hat with all the greasy, gallant courtesy a baseborn ruffian from Waterdeep's Dock Ward could muster.
By early afternoon, the wind had been well and truly knocked out of his sails. It was subtle at first - the churning. The queasy awareness of soup sloshing back and forth in his innards, the unsteady gait, the unrelenting pressure behind his eyes. He'd been in the middle of helping out in the galley, carving his way through some salted beef for the evening's supper, when his stomach had mutinied. He turned just in time to unleash a volley of vomit across Salty Annie's pease pottage, an almighty spray that slathered the bulkhead in half-digested shame.
The cabin boys had taken to calling him Paddy Greengills after that. He'd chased them around the hold with a fine mind to box their ears, but even that revenge was scuppered when he'd doubled over and emptied what remained of his dignity into a crate. He barely ate for the rest of the voyage, surviving on scraps of bread and water only when he felt too woozy to go on. For Zaria, Borabash and Tatiana, the dragonborn offered looks of sympathy in their mutual suffering, while his envy bordered contempt for how unfazed Valeria and Devizes appeared to be.
From time to time, Padrionn put on a brave face and rose from his bunk to puff on a fat cigar, and do the rounds with his fellow passengers. A simple butcher from humble beginnings seeking a fresh start, he claimed to be, and the array of razor-sharp cleavers and polished knives he kept on his person certainly seemed to support the claim. Yet there was a dangerous glint in his golden eyes, the aura of a man used to doing bloody, brutal violence - at least when he wasn't being shamefully unmanned by the sea and this wretched storm.
On the third day, he ventures onto the main deck, blinking in the cool air and calm winds like a man released from captivity. "Ah, praise be - the B*tch Queen's released us from her unholy grasp." Padrionn croaks as he stumbles over to the fetching redhead and hardy gnome, catching the tail end of their conversation. "Too right oi will! Blergh. Been feeling as if oi've been tossed inside out, so oi have. Ah, never set foot on the isle though - only read bits and pieces about it here and there. Where's Salty Annie? Weren't we meant t' be ashore by now, or am oi losin' the run o' meself?"
Tatiana is exactly where a former farmer would be during a crisis: refusing to stay idle while there is work to be done. While her stomach did a few somersaults early on, she quickly found her "land legs" on the shifting wood, her sturdy build and low center of gravity making her surprisingly stable compared to the taller, lankier passengers.
Tatiana spent the better part of the storm near the mainmast, her thick red hair soaked through and plastered to her neck, despite her attempts to keep it tied back. She didn't have the sea-lungs of Salty Annie’s crew, but she has the calloused hands of someone used to gripping a plow in a gale.
Whenever a crate broke loose or a rope began to fray, Tatiana was there, using her weight to pin down sliding barrels or helping the sailors haul on lines that felt like they were trying to rip her arms out of their sockets.
As the sea finally settles into a heavy roll, she stands by the railing, wiping salt-crust from her icy blue eyes. She looks like a drowned cat, but her expression is one of calm resolve. Seeing the others emerging from the hold, she looks toward Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash with a sympathetic, if slightly amused, wince.
"Easy there, friends," she says, her voice surprisingly deep and steady despite the wind. She reaches for a waterskin, offering it to the green-faced Cleric. "The worst is behind us, I reckon. The earth doesn't move like this back in the fields, but she'll be beneath our boots soon enough."
She turns her gaze toward the grey horizon, her shock of white hair standing out against the dull sky. "I'm Tatiana. Though most just call me Tati. If any of you feel like your insides are still trying to be your outsides, I’ve got a bit of dried ginger in my pack. It’s better than the smell of this fish-water, at least."
She looks over at Valeria and Devizes with a nod of respect, recognizing the steady stance of those who weren't broken by the storm.
Zaria is hardly a stranger to operating under duress. She can still remember with striking clarity the way her whole body used to hurt, when she first started working in the Vault of the Sages, copying down obscure and esoteric documents until her hand struggled to relax the grip it held on her quill. For over a decade now, she's striven to meet any challenge put to her with as much stoicism as she can muster, knowing that they will eventually pass away, leaving her all the wiser for having experienced it. When she first heard that she would be sailing to Stormwreck Isle upon a ship called the Sailing Dragon, she couldn't help but think about what an auspicious experience the travel would be.
She can't believe how wrong she was.
Three days of near constant buffeting at the hands of the sea. This is the first time Zaria has ever left Silverymoon; she's never even seen a sailing vessel like the Dragon before, much less ridden on one. The seasickness sets in almost immediately. On the first day she sits - or rather, clings desperately to one of the railings - on the top deck and tries to meditate, thinking she might at least gain some valuable insight to focus her Spark (as she calls her Ki). What she gets instead is an upset stomach the likes of which she cannot recall ever before experiencing in her life.
She tries much the same the next day, but keeps her efforts below deck this time, faring little better for her precautions. By the third day, even her stoicism has been worn down to a bare nub, and she spends much of the day hunched below deck in her hammock, looking about as sullen as she does seasick. Only when the seas finally calm does she manage to regain some semblance of her composure and return topside, eager to get a glimpse of Stormwreck Isle as soon as possible.
Zaria can't hide the disappointment on her face when, finally emerging from her confinement below deck, she is not greeted by the sight of the island which she has waited so long to visit. She swallows her disappointment quickly, though, saying quietly, almost as if to herself. "It can't be too much longer now, surely. Maybe the storm delayed our passage, and we still have some distance yet to travel."
Borabash Pevreivon — ‘Pev’ to his friends, ‘Bash’ to his enemies — is sick.
He is perhaps 3 foot 6, he has perhaps a small copper hat which he should rarely be seen without, and, more rarely absent is the crooked turn of a half-smile on his lips, and the flash of his teeth, as jokes fly freely at speeds only a rock gnome amongst rock gnomes can fathom or withstand.
Pevreivon may be kind, may be gentle, may be an ear to turn to with difficulties and a mind who seeks to imagine strange solutions and to wit orthogonal complications to your ills. He may have freckles the colour of fool’s gold that glimmer, and brassy-golden eyes, a mystery to his parents, but taken to be the touch of the sire of gnomes, Garl Glittergold.
Pev might be all of these things. But you would have no way to know, as for three days the poor gnome has wished and prayed for death. For excoriating fire. For the destruction of all travelogues and guide books and for the cessation of divine dreams and inherent vocation. For the cancellation of the seas. He has scarcely eaten, and even breathing now is a distinct unpleasure, for it extends his time on this voyage.
On the third day he rises, so far as to move to the forecastle and lie there on the deck, just close enough that he might see the others and the absence of land.
“Bleeeeerrrghhhh??”
He retches, but it is dry. He wretches, there behind your feet, the figure of self-pity.
The young redhead lets out a brief chuckle at the hardy gnome's comment as she looks over the gnome's two less than hardy cousins and goldie scales. "Yes, the sea isn't for everyone I suppose."
"Good to meet you Tati, I'm Valeria, but Val is fine too." She then turns and says to the short warrior with the dried ginger. "So, assuming we get ashore without gettting shipwrecked, what are you all planning to do? Looking for hidden dragon's hoard perhaps?" Valeria continues, looking around at the others with a curious smile as the wind plays in her long red hair.
Devizes watches Bash's plight then kneels down and offers him some water and some ships biscuit. "Here. It'll settle yer stomach." He shrugs. "If it don't, it'll at least give you something other to bring up than yer stomach. Either way, it'll soon be over and ye'll get those feet on yon dry land." It was meant to sound encouraging but...well...he'd been here before; on ships, seeing others suffer from the sickness. It was the only time he ever felt helpless.
He looks back out of the rail of the ship. "Looking fer an an answer that I ain't ever gonna find," he says to Val, affably. He pauses then pulls a crumpled piece of parchment from inside his coat. He gives a humourless laugh and offers it to her. "See if ye ken what that might be," and when the parchment is opened up it looks to be a blueprint for some kind of strange contraption. "I ain't got the first idea what that thing meant to be, and there ain't anyone around that knows, neither. Might be someone on the island knows." He shrugs. "I ain't holding my breath mind, but someone mentioned there be somebody here that might help...might know." He looks around at the group. "If they don't. Well...I like the travelling part just as much." He turns and leans against the rail, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath of sea air. "What brings you all here then?
"We was!" Salty Annie suddenly appears behind Padrionn. Her voice sounds like grinding gravel after all the shouting she’s done, and her hair is pulled into a thick up-do that looks like a tangle of dark seaweed. "We was, and I didn't lie to ya. But that storm did us all dirty...sent the ship leagues off course."
She huffs as she moves to the gunwale, grabbing a thick line and tightening it with a grunt. Despite her lean frame, she seems scarily strong, her skin shimmering with a faint, watery blue hue.
"The lot of ya done being sick all over my ship yet?" She looks over at Zaria, then down at Borabash, who is still sprawled in the middle of the deck. She shakes her head, although a small, tired smirk touches her lips. "Never in all my years have I seen a soul take to the illness as bad as you, little priest. If Garl Glittergold wanted you on the water, he’d have given you gills."
She wipes salt from her forehead and looks towards the grey horizon. "The storm stole our time, but the wind is finally behaving. Keep your eyes peeled. We'll find the island soon enough, or I’m a land-lubber."
Just then, the lookout calls down from the mast, waving his spyglass enthusiastically. "LAND! Stormwreck Isle with its Dragon's Rest, straight ahead!"
And sure enough, a small dot is barely visible on the horizon.
"What did I tell ya?" Salty Annie smirks. She turns and head back up the stairs to the quarterdeck, her hands gripping the helm to steady their course. "We'll be there in no time now!"
[The island is finally in sight, but it will still be a little while before you arrive. Feel free to continue your conversations or ask Salty Annie any last-minute questions before the ship reaches the cliffs.]
DM: Hoard of the Dragon Queen Adventure, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and even more dragons
"Honestly, I just heard so much of this place growing up and thought it was about time to see if it is anything like what I've been told." The young redhead says, stepping closer to the hardy gnome with the enigmatic response to look at the parchment he offers her. She nods and smiles to him, she too liked the travelling, she never had the patience for staying in one place for too long, but she was curious to see if this isle would be any different. If anyone else was interested and the hardy gnome wouldn't object, Val would show the parchment to the others too, curious to see if they had any artficers among them, particularly among the less hardy gnomes.
(Intelligence check regarding the content of the parchment: 14 )
Padrionn squints down at Pev as he languishes on the planks, chewing the end of his unlit cigar. His reptilian head bobs up and down slowly in approval as Dev tends to the fallen gnome. "Bahamut take ye under his wing, lad. Looks like yer having a rough time o' it. Well, some small comfort for ye - ye weren't the only one emptying yer ballast with every ring of the ship's bell. Heh heh heh... oi did me fair share of rapid jettisoning from the hold, oi did! Off the bow an' out the stern!" He laughs gutturally, before his gaze falls upon the human redhead.
Paddy had come to Stormwreck Isle to serve his beloved Ysolde, to become the man she had said he was capable of becoming. He was pure in his intentions, but there was nothing in that denied a man the right to accumulate a bit of gold. "What's this now about a dragon's hoard?" He inquires, his snaggle-toothed maw attempting a casual smile that did little to hide the greedy glint in his eyes. His eyes flash to the piece of parchment being exchanged between Dev and Val, already half-convinced it was some manner of treasure map.
Before he can satisfy his curiosity, Salty Annie materialises behind him. "Good to see ye, Cap'n..." The scaled ridge above his right eye rises as he watches the captain work. Formidable woman. The kind I'd like to get to know better... The dragonborn's admiring glances are cut short by the sudden cry of the lookout, and he scurries over to the gunwale, to take a good look at the isle growing on the horizon. He turns to Zaria and barks a phlegmmy laugh. "Cheer up, love, we're almost there! Ye'll have even more places to sit an' sleep!"
When Padrionn notices Annie departing, he limps after her onto the quarterdeck, quick enough despite his somewhat ungainly gait. "Ye know much about our destination, Cap'n? Where are we putting in? Who should we go meet first? And tell a lad true now - is there dragon treasure on the isle?"
Perception: 9
Borabash takes little nibbles and small sips of the ship’s biscuit and offered water, and he looks perhaps a little less green for it, though every movement is pained and he groans with each wave that the ships crests and rolls over.
“I …” he pauses as if awaiting a heave, but none comes, his nose pressed and compressed against the wet boards of the deck. “I … wear a hat because anything can happen without decent stone above your head, and now without earth beneath my feet, I’m adrift. I think I am unlikely to become the world’s greatest sailor by the end of this trip. Perhaps it might take two, even three, short voyages more.”
In answer to why such a sea sick gnome has undertaken this journey, he says,
“Silent bells and broken wings, I see them when I sleep, and the isle ahead of us. Some things are mended by a little kindness. Some wounds are tended better with a little humour. I think there’s something for me ahead of us.”
It takes him more than one attempt to get so many words out. He turns his hat to the use of a bucket as he tries.
Dev listens to Bash, fascination clear on his face. "Silent bells and broken wings, eh?"and he seems to consider this for longer than is really needed. "Sometimes all ye need is the road ahead and the greatest courage comes when ye chose to walk down it." He blinks a little in surprise at his words. "Summit' like that, anyway."
His attention turns back to Val who seems to be studying the parchment closely. It seems to be a blueprint for some kind of machine, but she can't make head or tail of its purpose. All the parts seem to work together logically, but what this thing is for, remains a mystery.
"Wierd, aint it," Dev says after a long silence. He gestures at Padrionn intimating that he's welcome to look at the parchment too. "Might be someday some person be able to tell me what it is." He grins at the Dragonborn, a smile of genuine delight and anticipation. "Dragon hoard, eh? The big problem with them dragon hoards, is they tend to got dragons on 'em."
Pev chuckles for a second, at that. A dragon on a dragon hoard is a problem indeed.
Val too chuckles at the comment about the problematic dragon on it's hoard. Admittedly she didn't quite expect either on this isle, in spite of it's rumoured history. Still, it was a tantalizing thought, and the subjct of many of her old mentor's outrageous stories about this isle. "Perhaps you simply need to build the thing to find out it's purpose." She suggests to the hardy gnome, handing him the parchment back, trying her best to ignore all the regurgitating around her. "So we're all here for the first time then." She says looking around at the others. "Would you all consider exploring the isle together, as a group? Safety in numbers and all that."
Borabash makes the sign of the gnome-sire on his forehead and flaps his hand in assent.
At Val's words, Dev looks round the party. It had been a long time since he'd journeyed with anyone other than himself. Sometimes things happen for a reason. The stars align; things come together at the right time. Some might call it fate. He takes another breath of sea air, and something sparks inside him that he hasn't felt in years. Excitement? Hope?
"Why not," he says, a little more gruffly than he intended. "Would be good to travel in a company again. It's been too long." He watches as the parchment makes its way round the group. "Might be I find a builder some day and get it made, proper like," and he rubs a hand through his beard. "If they can make head or tail of it."
Padrionn's face lights up with excitement when Dev gestures to the parchment, but the enthusiasm wanes before he even lays eyes on the diagram. If it was really a treasure map, no one in their right mind would go flaunting it about. Ysolde would have told him to be less cynical, that people weren't always as greedy and secretive as he assumed.
Paddy peers over with a briefly melancholy sigh, and finds himself befuddled by the schematic for an alien machine. "What's this? Bah. Oi've less o' a notion than a pig in a prayer-hall, me boy." He shrugs, and then turns to the gnome still spitting incoherent, delirious gobbledygook. The dragonborn rolls up the sleeves of his billowy white shirt, cracking his stubby, scaly knuckles. "The lad's clearly addled. Clean away with the fairies. Say the word and oi'll give him a slap t' knock the sense back into him, sure as the mornin'."
When Val proposes that they join forces, he mulls it over and lets out a wet, raspy chuckle. "Heh heh heh. If we're talkin' about filchin' a bit o' gold from dragons' hoards, I suppose there's comfort in numbers. Aye, oi'm with ye. Why not?!" His reptilian head turns to Zaria. "You in, love?"
Salty Annie had glanced at Padrionn, when the dragonborn had come to ask her questions, with a knowing glint in her cerulean eyes. "Treasure, ya askin'?" She'd smirked mysteriously. "If ever there was an island to hide a hoard, it'd be one where dozens of dragons once drew their last breath, don't ya think?"
She'd chuckled, clearly amused by his greed, before adding more seriously, "You should go see Elder Runara in Dragon's Rest. A lovely and wise lady she is. She leads the cloister there. She can tell you more about the isle's secrets than a simple sailor like me ever could."
The sky has mostly cleared by the time the Sailing Dragon reaches the island. In the now calm sea, seaweed shimmers in countless brilliant colors beneath the hull, and rays of sunlight break through the grey clouds to illuminate the lush grass and dark basalt rock of the island. Navigating with practised ease, Salty Annie guides her ship towards a quiet harbour on the north side. As the brig nears the shore, she barks a final set of orders, and her crew hurry in preparation to drop anchor.
A large, open-air temple comes into view, perched on the edge of a cliff high above you. At its centre stands a towering statue of a wizened man surrounded by seven songbirds. Two sailors row you ashore as Salty Annie waves a final goodbye from the quarterdeck.
The sailors set you down on a rickety dock where a large rowboat is neatly tied. They point towards the end of the beach, where a narrow path - barely wide enough for one person -begins its winding climb up the cliffside. "Good luck to ya!" they call out, already rowing back towards the ship.
Padrionn, Zaria, and Borabash no longer feel seasick as they find themselves back on land.
Your visit to Dragon's Rest has begun.
DM: Hoard of the Dragon Queen Adventure, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and even more dragons