Bad Days for Sharks and Merrow (13th - 14th of First Harvest, Rose: 47)

The party attracted a crew of all women sailors and left the port of Sphant bound for the lizard folk colony. Knowing only that there was a handsome reward for the return of books bound for Seminary, and with the faith that they would return shortly, they set sail for a two day voyage on calm seas.

The voyage itself was uneventful. During the trip, the sailors helped show the party how to jib the rigs, jiggle the mainline, and swab the deck. The hired crew performed admirably, following the directions of the young teenage girl-prophet and her Holy Company: a moniker for Siegride and the rest of the party who're emblazoned with similar dwarven artifacts. The sailors, citizens Sphant, naturally bore a superstitious and religious bent about them, and found the girls leadership, commanding presence, and vision - not to mention an uncanny understanding of weather patterns and storms - as something divine inspired. 

The girl prophet instructed the crew to weigh anchor just north of the colony's island some quarter-mile away from shore where rocks had claimed half a dozen ships over the decades; their husks were seen as ominous shadows in the moonlight. In the morning on the 14th of first harvest, the party boarded two small rowboats and cautiously approached the dangerous rocks where the Gentle Current had run aground.

The party could feel the intensity of the current building as it closed in on the rocks, and they felt their ships being pulled into that place. They saw the vessel leaning over some 40° in bad shape; it's masts were broken and it's sails were ripped and fluttering carelessly in the wind.

As they approached, the party started to take notice of dorsal fins cresting along the top of the sea line. Soon, it was obvious that the party was rowing through shark infested waters and that the sharks were becoming increasingly interested in their presence.

Just then, bursting from the sea, a massive great white shark with a rider - a Merrow Prince (Merfolk who, by legend, have been twisted by evil and demonic forces, who plunder the treasure of ships and feed off of the flesh their crews) commanded the party to return their vessel, or they would most assuredly die. Rising from the ocean depths were the Prince's hunting party: five other Merrow's armed with harpoons and wickedly Long claws.

Siegride summoned the force of her deity and created a localized storm that would yield to her command. She also cast water walk on the entire party so that they might walk the surface of the seas. But she waited and did not strike. She waited to vet out the intentions of the prince as the party began to row away.

Surrounded by a school of sharks and the Merrow, some members of the party thought it was prudent to begin rowing backwards, and to-in fact-return to the ship. The little row boats drifted in their turn to point their bows back toward the anchored Sea Wyvern.

However, one member of the party - Ma'yah - The rash young magic user-was not duly impressed with the idle threats of a demonic Merfolk prince mounted atop a great white shark commanding her to leave an area of the sea that he controlled. No. She prepared a spell and her mind that would release a bevy of magical arrows into the prince on her command.

Her companion, the tiny pseudo dragon named Dru, in seeing what she was doing, flew over and landed on her lap. He looked up at her with big, sad, pleading eyes… as if attempting to say, "I want to live… please don't... Whatever you're planning…" but the little dragon did not deter her.

On the end of second round, as the Merrow were encouraging the party to start rowing away at harpoon-point, the party struck first: Ma'yah cast Magic Missile on the prince and the seas exploded into chaos.

First, the prince fell off of his mount and the great white shark torpedoed for the boat that Ma'yah was on. It opened it's keeping maw and tore a chuck out of the boat. As it tried to return to the safety of the sea, it incurred attacks of opportunity that allowed the party to beset massive damage against it. Bad plan, noted the shark.

Meanwhile, other Merrow surfaced and brandished their harpoons and claws and teeth, setting themselves upon the party. All of this would've been fairly normal fare for the Merrow hunting party until, of course, the Dwarves and Humans started walking on water to attack them. They weren't prepared for that. Standard operating procedure is for the demonic Merfolk where to use their harpoons to stab and grapple a victim and pull them into the depths of the icy water, allowing them to drown and become fish food. Not today. It would appear that some divine intervention allowed the surfaced dwellers to walk upon the water as if it was the land itself, and the ensuing battle was very confusing.

Ma'yah was attacked with prejudice by a smaller reef shark that lunged out of the water, bit her, and dragged her with a STR check into the water! Again, let's check standard operating procedure's for a shark. Bite victim. Check. Victim Bleeds. Check. Lock jaw, preventing victim from escaping. Check. Maybe shake the victim a bit, right and left, check. Then plunge deep into the watery depths to drown the victim.

Everything seemed to be going according to standard operating procedure for the shark and her blood tasted rather nice, as such was the perks of the job, except that Ma'yah had water walk cast on her and was effectively a super buoyant mass of human flesh that raced to the surface at 60 feet per round. The shark, nose downward and dragging his victim into the sea, suddenly found himself swimming against the magical forces of the universe, its prey weirdly pulling him back towards the surface, whereas its body was thrust backwards and out of the water in a display of unintentional acrobatics that threw the shark into the air and, consequently, it let go of Ma'yah. She went spilling onto the surface of the ocean like it was a wet tile floor.

The party engaged the Merrow on their own turf, walking on water, shooting, stabbing, casting spells. Llewelyn cast a hypnotic pattern that affected three reef sharks who ended up swimming around in circles aimlessly ... The PC's duked it out with the Merrow's in hand to hand, and the aquatic hunters got in a few good licks, but were no match for lightning bolts hurled from the sky, sharpshooting Rangers, and, stabby halflings.

Ma'yah, prone on the water, struggling to get up, suddenly was the target of severe aggression (probably for her attacking the prince): a dark shadow appeared in the water underneath her and the massive jaws of the great white shark opened and snatched her, ferociously ripping at her, and drug her down into a watery doom.

Revisiting standard operating procedures for sharks: bite, bleed, shake, drown. Every shark learns that in school. That's what's supposed to happen, it's how one gets ahead in life, and the massive great white had a lot of power in its tail and attempted to take Ma'yah into the cold darkness, swimming 30' then sixty feet down. Ma'yah attempted to stab the monster with her dagger but couldn't penetrate its hide. Things looked mighty bad for her. still, it couldn't best the carnal forces of magic as its momentum slowed, and it's prey's body thrust the enormous fish backward through the water to suddenly burst forth to the surface - tail first - and into the air, where both Ma'yah and the great white were hurled some five feet above the ocean to crash back into the water (for the shark) and on to the surface of the water (for the divinely tweaked Ma'yah).  Once there, she was attacked by a Merrow and rendered unconscious and dying.

Meanwhile, the prince - realizing his peril - thought that a direct confrontation with these land lubbers was the wrong way to go, and he opted for something epic. Both he and his shark mount moved at the same initiative at the top of the round, so he disengaged the party allowing him to sink backward into the ocean and away from his assailants without incurring attacks of opportunity, then remounted his great white shark who burst out of the water to leap at the divinely inspired Siegride. The reader should bear in mind that this shark gets +10 to hit and had advantage because of the blood frenzy in the water, and still _missed_ the cleric because of her mondo awesome AC of 24, whereas the demonic Merfolk prince riding this massive great white shark leapt out of the water, huge mouth gaping rows of teeth, and sailed right pass her in super slow mo (one could just see the twisted agony and surprise on the Merrow's face, then pan over to the shark's expression which was went from uber smug to sharkly shame), then the shark and princely rider (most un-epicly) splashed into the water on the opposite side of the rowboat. Thereby he was attacked by a water walking dwarf with a holy weapon she acquired from some old mines some 300 miles away.

Returned to consciousness, Ma'yah unleashed a volley of Magic Missiles against the prince again to finally finish him off. His body sank to the sea, and one lone Merrow escaped into the depths of the sea.

It was a bad day for sharks and Merrow. But it was only going to get worse.

The party continued their way to the Gentle Current, climbed upon the nearby rocks, and boarded the vessel. There they investigated the ruins and found the remains of several sailors. They also found the ship logs:

The Current is a three-mast Barquentine with a shallow draft. Captain Herisha Jeremo; Quartermaster Lynn of House Parque, Merchants of Floreth; a crew of eighteen: a pilot, a navigator, a cooper, a doctor, a lookout, two cooks, a sailing master, three carpenters, seven able sea men. Logs would show the boat built Rose: 13 in Rhackdalia; recent voyages have been running legitimate merchant cargo to destinations throughout the Shattered Isles and Floreth....

Logs would show that the Current was carrying 20 water-tight trunks of books and scrolls and literature that had been smuggled out of Rhackdalia before the Wall fell. House Orlante financed the recovery of these texts and commissioned to have them sent to the Seminary in Sphant. There was other material - food stuffs, blankets, bedrolls, supplies for refugees; chests of artifacts from the library; tapestries from the library.

The ship's cargo was apparently dragged out of the hull and across the rocks down into the depths of the sea. Gorbash dove in and swam some 90' down into the coral reef to find a cave opening decorated by the Merrow, and he tried to descend further into the cave but had to return, fearing drowning. Meanwhile, Ma'yah cast a spell to allow her to shapeshift and breathe underwater, and she found that the cave opening lead to a cavernous lair. She then returned to the group. The party concluded that it would be too difficult for everyone to hold their breath for seven or eight minutes, so they had to find another way.

Returning to the ship, the astounded crew was in awe of what they had seen: water-walking, flames shooting out of their hands, lightning called down from the heavens, streaking magic missiles ... pretty fitting of a Holy Company, they had thought, and they spoke to all of the party with some reverence. There the party waited, slept, and took eight hours to rest and heal up, and, to wait for the tides to lower so that they could explore the caves against the face of the cliff, facing the water.

The party returned at low-tide and found the cave, saturated from being inundated with water, and descended into the depths. They wandered in the dark, down some 90-feet, and came across a large pool of water where on the opposite edge was a syphon of water that spilled into a hole. Then the party noticed the fins - sharks - but these sharks moved oddly and, in fact, climbed out of the water. They were mutants! Six of them! Scary! They had four legs and truncated torsos, and gaping maws with rows of teeth! Oh yah. Sounds menacing. Yet, as usual, they were clumped together thus dazed by some uber-powerful bard spell, rendered useless and mowed down by a frenzy of maces, axes, arrows, and daggers. It wasn't long before the party had taken one of their bodies, tied some rope around it, and tossed the body of a shark-dog into the hole. So much for that encounter. 

Kersplat! Some 30' down. Siegride thought she heard some voices but couldn't understand the language, so Ma'yah cast a spell on Siegride that allowed her to comprehend and speak any language. Turns out some female voices down below were surprised that the sharkdog on a rope had fallen through the hole, and they went to go get some guards. Meanwhile, they pulled up the sharkdog and did the kersplat-thing again, and followed the corpse down into the hole.

At the bottom, Siegride was first to realize that she stepped into a birthing pool filled with tadpoles and a white muck (the guts of squished tadpoles that had been crushed by the falling sharkdog). The rest of the party descended. There was phosphorous moss growing in the pool and soon it was obvious they were in some Merrow nursery. 

Exploring their surroundings, the party were in some narrow caves that were dimly lit with the phosphorous moss with water (that fell from the spillway above the cavern) into nursery. It wasn't long before the party was met in battle by Merrow guards who were sure that these were the scoundrels who killed their prince. 

In the next fifteen minutes of game time, the party would encounter some fourteen armed Merrow guards and - to their credit - Siegride kept screaming in their Abyssal tongue that the carnage they were unleashing could be avoided if they simply surrendered the books stollen from The Gentle Current. It was a bloody mess. The Merrow got in a few good licks but they were no match for the seasoned adventurers. Regrettably, most of the guards didn't even understand the concept of a book ... but the party did encounter some more intelligent Merrow (who whisked themselves away in fear as they were met by Merrow guards) where one Merrow aristocrat did cry out, "Books? Books?! What books?! Kay-Den-Nay has books! We must find Kay-Den-Nay!"... before being arrested by his friends and dragged away into other chambers. 

Eventually the party would come across a large 9' tall statue and find its craftsmanship somewhat shoddy in concealing a secret passageway behind it. The party opened the statue and saw a descending slope downward....

... and that's where we'll start up next time!

Massacre at Sunrock Abbey (8th - 11th of First Harvest, Rose: 47)

The remaining pirates on-shore were quickly dispatched, and the party moved to tie up and subdue the charmed brigands and cleric of Mother Takhisis.

About 300' away, the former pirates' (well, their bodies were strewn around the beach so former is an apt term) ship was all aflutter. The remaining crew was preparing to take some kind of ultimately futile action in either escaping with their lives, or, foolhardily attempting to defend themselves. What happened next was somewhat pathetic but entirely predictable.

Siegride cast Water Walk allowing all of the party members to walk on water. If that didn't look like the End Times for the poor pirates onboard the vessel, what they saw next was a bit of medieval shock and awe. The two dwarves got in front of a dingy and, hoisting up some ropes, started dragging the boat across the waves since - as the spell works - the dingy would simply float. In the dingy, Elan was readying her bow.

Vongur was whooping and hollering, saying he'd never walked on water before (he has no legs, that's the irony, get it?), and was encouraging the dwarves to dig in and haul the boat across the water.

Ever seen Princess Mononoke? Sure you have. There's several scenes where Ashitaka is slinging arrows with his possessed demon-arm. The arrow flies through the air and amazingly, like, decapitates samurai or makes their chest explode with one shot. Okay, keep that image in your mind for a second. Elan is a 6th Level Ranger with Sharpshooter Feat and she ignores the disadvantages of distance with her bow. She attacks twice per round. The bandits have 16 HP a piece; each connect with her arrow would bring that and maybe 5-10+ extra HP of damage.

Now imagine the scene. The pirates see the party walking on water like Gods whereas a Sharpshooting Ranger being dragged across the waves by Dwarves like some Hell-born watery chariot ... her first shot connects to a bandit on the center mast trying to get the sail up, and he explodes; her second shot connects to another bandit on the stern mast and he explodes. Bloody corpses fall from the masts to the deck. The pirates freak. That was just the first round.

As the party closed in, the pirates feebly fired off arrows at disadvantage because of the range penalties. Arrows fell limply on all party members. Within two rounds of water walking, Elan had dispatched the four archers on the ship.

At this point, their sitting ducks because the ship has no armor or assault weapons, and, they're fresh out of archers. Nobody wants to climb up the masts to hoist the mainsail because, well, death, so they just wait for the party to approach, who, upon closing into range, start hailing wind, fire, arrows, and doom upon their heads. Meanwhile, the Dwarves and Halfling scaled the side of the ship, boarded, and proceeded to obliterate the opposition. It didn't take long before the ship was theirs.

After claiming the ship and looking around, it occurred to Gorbash that things looked familiar around here. Others agreed, and suddenly, it dawned upon the party that this ship - or a ship just like it sharing the same name, The Sea Wyvern - was the derelict, broken, beached hide out of Moonshade Phenelope of House Morley, and belonged to Lord Aphik Mackery of the Bullywugs. It was grounded, its hull busted, and old - maybe 100+ years old - with holes in its hull. If this wasn't the same ship it was remarkably like it in nearly every detail.

The party was able to recover one dingy (not all four depicted in this map).

But the party shelved that conundrum and pressed on to heal themselves, and take an inventory the loot between the ship and the shore:

• Sacks and bags of grain, millet, rice, peppernuts, and other foodstuffs; regular clothes; blankets, topsoil, cured meats; many barrels of pickled tuna; flasks of wine; salted pork; many glass jars of preserved fruits.
• 22 ceremonial wax candles, 14 garments, 4 tapestries, 7 ceremonial bowls and goblets
• Black Armor and Green Armor, Stylized Dragons, Half-Plate and Helm +2; difficult to fit others; would fit a woman human well; two Maces +2 (One Black, one Green)
• Four books - the books are holy books and scriptures that confess the Goddess to be a lizard woman; barrels of scrolls containing scripture, collections of philosophies, written in Common; they are of academic and spiritual interest only
• 4459 Crowns in a chest
• Large Copper Statue (800 Crowns), life-sized, 500 pounds - now green - Lizard woman
• 1 solid copper egg (stylized lizard egg or dragon egg); now green; 200 pounds
• 2 Potions in a copper vase - Elixir of Health; red clear liquid with tiny bubbles of light in it.
• A box of tongues (the tongues from the dead clerics) 9 of them

On board the vessel, the party found maps and tactical information about an abbey not far from the shoreline. The details of the map included defenses, elevations, armaments, extended information on its occupants; it was written in a flowing script not common to Floreth, but resembled Arabic; it was obvious these weren't nautical maps but were created by seasoned soldiers. There were also nautical maps that showed a remote island to the south with specific water depths ... this was a sailor's map, and seemed to correlate to the nautical locations of the pirate cove outlined by the very mouthy pirate under Siegride's truthiness spell.

The party ventured out to that abbey on the map during the dusk and evening hours. There they found a very simple abbey, primitive stone structures, farm animals, hay, a single water well - a very simple way of life. Some of the walls of the abbey had bas-reliefs of a Goddess with a lizard-like head: the torso of a human female but the head of a lizard. Regrettably, the party also found the nine bodies of the clerics who used to worship here: their mouths sewn shut and their eyelids cut off so that their eyeballs appeared to bulge out of their sockets.

Tamroohk took some time to gather up the bodies of both clerics and dead pirates and performed some last rites on their corpses.

Tolman rolled a natural 20 on a Religion check. Although the Halfling knows nothing of Tiamat (Takhisis) or its dragon-cult, and certainly couldn't identify this particular representation of the Goddess, he ascertained that the cultists arrived and proclaimed their harmless sect heretics, and then killed them and mutilated their bodies; the tongues taken and mouths sewn shut so they couldn't speak their truth in the afterlife, and, their eyes permanently open to the Truth as perceived by the followers of Tahkisis. Again, he was only guessing, but it was a pretty sound guess. Meanwhile, the loot found in the hull of the ship (the large statue and egg) would have been holy symbols and objects recovered by the cultists.

During this time, the party realized that their on-shore captives had - during the skirmish - escaped. That is, the cultist with the green dragon tattoo escaped and slit the throats of the remaining berserkers; some degree of tracking led them to conclude that she must have escaped to the populated areas of Sphant and would be difficult to track there.

Some Detect Magic and Identify spells were cast on the objects and they determined the magical properties of the potions, half-plate armor, helms, and maces. These were found on-shore from a tent that went up in a mess of fireball. They are ornate, religious in nature, very skimpy and small for a midsized creature (seemingly custom-crafted to a small-stature female human). The maces were fashioned as dragon claws grasping a spiked orb and were both black and green in color.

The party spent the night in their newly acquired boat and, in the morning, sailed feebly and unexpertly to Sphant. Siegride made a successful ability check and navigated the ship there. They secured a slip and moored their vessel; the Harbor Master charged 5 Crowns a day for the slip, and Siegride paid for up to seven days; 35 Crowns total. The Harbor Master (a woman dressed in red robes with a book chained to her wrists, like it's been in every port you've ever seen in Floreth), recorded the date/time of the ship, and passed along paper to the quartermaster or captain to keep in their logbook.

The party did try to report the ship as being formerly owned by pirates, but she did instruct the party to take the matter up with the Magistrate as to dispensation of the craft. She had no vested interest in the matter.

The party wanted to spend some time running some investigations:

• Collectively, the party agreed that now would be a good time to establish a Company with the Croupier. Without a House backing the Company, the party would need to produce a deposit of 10,000 Crowns. That becomes the floor to the account - additional monies could be added and spent, but the 10,000 Crowns is collateral held by the Croupier to cover their losses should a Company abuse their spending. Stormhammer Company was the name bandied about (or, alternatively, a Phalanx of Tiny People Company).
  
• Elan returned to Pathfinder Abbey and explained what she found at the brigand's landing site, and, that the pirates had been taken care of. The Rangers called this place Sunrock Abbey and the clerics were worshipers of Lacerta-Mulier, an old representation of the Goddess. They live like the Amish might in a similar setting, decrying the advances of time and comforts of technology. There are many such small sects in these forests, they explain, who sought sanctuary on this island. The Rangers were appalled at the grizzly attack and considered it uncharacteristic of pirates in the Shattered Isles to be so merciless and ritualistic in their brutality. In hearing of this, the Ranger community tasked Elan with learning more about the clerics of Takhisis and their possible intentions in the Shattered Isles. They also promised to be on the lookout for the missing cleric that could be hiding out in Sphant.
  
• Siegride was tasked to find an able-bodied crew for the ship. The ship can be manned with a crew of seven. Siegride would be able to find such a crew - they would collectively require just 1 Crown of pay per day away from Sphant. They could be corralled to leave Sphant whenever the party felt like leaving.
  
• Gorbash went about unloading non-essential equipment and trading it in for what he could get off it in cash; I said he could get 1/2 of the PH listed value for whatever he was trading in.
  
• Tamroohk would be gaming and drinking, on the lookout for the cleric. Unfortunately, she didn't find anything related to the cleric but did hear about the rumors of a holy massacre at Sunrock Abbey. Some of the people she was playing with indicated that those clerics were private folk and kept to themselves; they awaited the arrival of a new age as represented by their eggs - a collection of different kinds of eggs crafted in different metals. Tamroohk recalled that the party found only one egg, a solid copper egg, that had greened with age and exposure to the sea. Tamhrook did run into Whylo of Dhyane again who was astounded of the news of the party taking on the bandits, and Whylo wanted to hear more stories (and even offered to purchase more wine and ale for Tamroohk to hear them) about the assault!
  
• The party expressed interest in going after the shipwreck in the Shattered Isles that was carrying recovered texts from Rhackdalia's library and were donated to the Seminary. There had been a reward of 1,000 Crowns offered for recovering them by the House that sponsored their donation. The Rangers had thought that the ship grounded near a known colony of Lizard Folk. Ma'yah and Llew did some research at the library at the Seminary on the Lizard Folk. It's presumed that the colony has some 500 individuals. The colony isn't necessarily friendly to outsiders but isn't outright hostile - sailors who've been stranded on their island lived to tell the tale, and some even suggested that they were aided by the kind, gentle lizard-people. It's reported that they have intelligence, a language, even a form of tribal government, although they've no official treaties with Sphant or Floreth. Some Lizard Folk have emerged as guides or spotters for fishermen looking for an advantage in finding large schools of prized fisheries. The Lizard Folk don't seem to have any connection to Sunrock Abbey or the Lacerta-Mulier, although some religious academic observers have written that the parallels between the Godhead and the Lizard Folk are too similar to ignore, and perhaps early indigenous people found their hybrid manifestation to be a sign of the holy. Ma'yah and Llew learn that the Lizard Folk like to be left alone but have been known to trade for baubles - jewelry, gems, precious stones, and the like.
  
• Tolman attends to gardening, vegetables, and the like. Another Black Ship sighting took place on the 6th of First Harvest, this time in the waters to the south. Curious that the maps onboard The Sea Wyvern correlated the marked cove in those waters ...

Next we meet it'll be the 11th of First Harvest, and the party has crewed ship, stocked with provisions and ready for departure. What's next? Well, the story's up to them ... I just work here. Probably something to do with retrieving a cache of marooned books in a sea wreck on a remote island colonized by Lizard-people Sounds fun!

Stay tuned!

R


 

Beached Brigands! (8th of First Harvest, Rose: 47)

He didn't know it, but the Bandit Captain had 45 seconds longer to live.

A young woman of some 17 years of age and her companion, an effeminate-looking human male with a lute, just emerged from the treeline on the Isle of Sphant. Along the beach, the Captain's crew had staged a camp with tents, supplies, food stocks, and other matters. In the distance, their ship was anchored off the coast and two row boats were near it, off-loading cargo, whereas the crew on the beach seemed to be loading some cargo into two more row-boats.

The Bandit Captain had some twenty seasoned men on the ground with him - six of them gruff Berserkers used to rough up local militia if they ever encountered some. This had been an easy voyage thus far. He was enjoying a relaxing, sun-filled day along the coast, and was preparing to depart these waters for his secret mooring place elsewhere in the Shattered Isles when, suddenly, this blond, freckle-faced brat showed up demanding what he and his crew were doing.

"We're refugees," he explained casually with a broad smile, "from Rhackdalia. Escaping the giant onslaught. We're moored here for the afternoon and we'll be departing shortly." His bandit crew drew their weapons, nocked their arrows.

The young woman - Siegride of Isthmeira - wasn't convinced and demanded to know more. She evoked a divine prayer to compel those around her to tell the truth. Llewellyn the Bard (with a shiny new face) stood ready by Siegride's side. Still, the Captain continued with his story. "Look, we don't want any trouble. Why don't you and your ... pretty boy ... just go back the way you came. We'll even clean up around here ... zero impact. I realize that's probably important to some of you cleric-types-"

"We're pirates!", yelled one of his crew who, unfortunately, fell victim to the truthiness spell Siegride had cast, and that sent one of the nearby Berserkers into a frenzy! Pushing a couple of the crew aside, the Berserker came in swinging an awfully large ax.

What happened in the remaining 18 seconds would be hard for the Captain to absorb in just a small amount of time for, as I previously mentioned, he would be dead. Many things happened very fast.

First, the girl and her girly entourage wasn't alone. There were some severe fighter-types (two Dwarves), some sharp shooter in the woods (a Ranger), a spell caster, and a squat spell-casting, stabbing, halfling from the Erenlands. Tactically, he vaguely realized that he had seriously misjudged the situation, and there was a blur of blood and carnage.

Second, the girl was impossible - absolutely, mostly impossible - to hit. He was well-versed in his scimitar and dagger, and viciously tried to cut her. Yet, to his amazement, his sword and knife would miss the waif or pass eerily into the darkness of the cloak she wore - she was some kind of whispy waify jinks! He would have thought, "Just what in the Hell did I get myself in to?", if he had the time. But he didn't. 15 seconds.

Third, the pansy-looking fella was actually a Bard spellcaster. He ended up charming more than a third of his crew in those first few seconds, which meant that his side was going to take a beating by just standing there, listening to him sing and play a lute. There's nothing more embarrassing than that for a pirate, well, THAT and trying to kill a 5'1" freckly 17 year old blond girl wielding cosmic divine energies. 13 seconds.

Fourth, as he was becoming consciously aware of the fact that he should be retreating and running for his life but still - pridefully - convinced that his team could manage this problem, his insubordinate pirate crew member had started spilling the proverbial beans. During the height of combat, the truth-pirate told the girl where they sailed from (the Sagean Coast) and gave her an exact nautical position of his home village and sea port; then followed that up with a confession that they were pirates stealing goods from Sphant and loading them on to the boat so that they may go back to his secret mooring place in the Shattered Isles (which, again, the pirate conveyed precise nautical coordinates for). He would have face-palmed if he had the time to do so, but, really, he didn't. 12 seconds.

Around this time, there was a moment where things looked on the up and up. The priestesses he was escorting for their recent work emerged from their tent and called down some divine wrathyness. Both of them were dark-skinned, very tan, black hair, wearing skimpy outfits, and both of them had these amazing dragon tattoo sleeves down their left arms. The priestess with a green dragon tattoo caused a bolt of flame to descend on Siegride, but Siegride managed to roll well and throw up her shield before being baked by the Sacred Flame. Meanwhile, Elan the Ranger and Ma'yah the Wizard were paralyzed when the second priestess sporting a black dragon tattoo cast Hold Person, and they stopped in their tracks. All very encouraging. In the pit of his stomach, for an instant, he felt a twinge of enthusiasm. 11 seconds.

But that enthusiasm was quickly curbed by a rash of death levied by Tamroohk in a mighty mowing down of four adversaries in a row, and, as Tolman darted up to try to take out the Girl with the Black Dragon Tattoo. He brought her to her knees and she lost her concentration, freeing the two others from the spell. And, as the priestess raised her left arm, the dragon tattoo appeared to writhe as she prepared her spell that would have caused terrible necromantic damage against poor Tolman, she hissed, "Mother Takhisis will take you!" Two arrows from the Ranger silenced her and her petty threats forever.

Now, it was at this moment that the freckled little girl seemed to cast some divine thunderous energy that blasted the Captain and his standing crew back some 15' in the air from a massive concussive force. As his body was hurled backwards and tossed like a doll to the earth, it was at that moment that he thought, "You know, now would be a good time to exit-" ... nine seconds.

Except that, at that moment, Ma'yah unleashed a fireball on him and his crew that was immediately surrounding him. There was a massive explosion, tents immediately upended, stuff went BOOM, and his body was wracked by sering pain - three or four of his crew died instantly. Their blackened, charred corpses littering the beach.

Eight seconds.

Yep. That was the moment. The moment to flee.

In a frustrated gesture of surrender, he ripped off his piratey eye patch (apparently not believing he deserved it any longer), threw it to the ground, and ran. He started to sprint to the row boats in an effort to flee this madness, to get away from the freckled girl and her "tiny killing machines" (a comment yelled by one of the Berserkers before being uber-munched by the pounding from another Dwarf).  He sprinted, dashing across the battle map, racing for one of the boats to take him off of the island. Quickly, one of his trusty men ran up with a bow and was providing cover for his escape. He was thinking, "I should reward that guy when I get back-", but that was about the last thing he was going to think. Four seconds.

There was the smell of brimstone and bat guano. He felt the air super-condense and heat all around him. And he knew, right then and there, that the misfortune of meeting a freckled blond on the coast of Sphant would be the last thing he-

-the second fireball spell ignited the world around him, and his skin - and the skin of most of his remaining crew - burned to a crisp and he died in supreme agony. And that was that.

Meanwhile, the session ended before we could finish things up. The party had yet to dispatch a couple of Berserkers. Next time we meet: the party mops up the beach and likely assaults and acquires the dead captain's ship.

R