Session 53: Wulf Sneaks onto a Ship

We have a dead body and a boat. It's 1am. We carry the woman's body up the cliff together in the boat. Once we get back up into the woods area, we flip the boat upside down and hide her body under it before we prepare to rest. Setluk starts his magical smokeless fire for us again and at Quell's request, casts gentle repose on the corpse. Cali took first watch, and Wulf went second. During his watch, an owl dropped a mice on his head by accident and then swooped back down to pick it back up.
 
In the morning, Wulf is all weird and awkward about the owl incident but does not elaborate or tell us the story. Quell asks him why he's being all weird and he says "it is nothing... nothing important."
 
"Should I go catch breakfast?" Wulf asks. Jade looks up, already snacking on trail mix. Cali is already casting Goodberry. Setluk is already cooking sausages. There is an awkward pause.
 
"...If you're hungry..." Cali says, popping a berry in their mouth and putting the bowl out for anyone else who wants them.
 
Wulf sets off to redeem himself via hunting and kills a squirrel. He plays it off like he purposely only caught something this small since we all had food already.
 
After breakfast, Quell asks which questions we should ask the corpse. We go over some ideas, and Setluk gives Quell a clear quartz that will make her unrecognizable to the woman. The rest of us hide on the other side of the body so she won't see and recognize us. Quell sits down and casts the spell.
 
"What was your mission coming here to this place?" is Quell's first question. The woman says "to guard the fool," and we assume that means Vren.
"Who will Irrin be reporting back to?" is Quell's second question. The woman says "the silent sky."
Quell asks her third question: "How can I find your Lady?" The woman replies "the bell above the harbor."
Quell steps out of view of the woman and asks if she should ask about the silence guy or the shards. None of us have heard of the silent sky.
"Do you or your Lady already have any cold crystal shards?" is Quell's fourth question. The woman says "she has none. she angers."
Finally, Quell asks the fifth question: "What is she expecting us to do next?" The woman says "die." With that, the woman returns to her own death.
 
Wulf starts digging a hole for the woman to go in. Cali makes sure to remove her cloak just in case we need it, and we start to investigate the pouch she'd been carrying. Quell starts to melt the wax that is sealing the pouch and eventually she's able to open it. Inside is half a tooth, a broken dagger, a scrap of bloodstained silk, and a broken sea glass cloak pin that seems familiar to Quell. She can't quite place it, but Wulf remembers seeing it on the cloak on the body Quell inhabited when we were in the mirror at Tasha's house. Wulf tells Quell that, and she remembers that Takari, the orchid woman's sister, was in that place.
 
There are some other small broken and/or bloodstained items in the pouch as well, all of which are nonmagical. Quell wonders if they could have been used for scrying. Wulf does remember thinking that the body Quell was in in the vision did look like her. However, there doesn't seem to be any items for the rest of us, so Cali thinks that it probably wasn't meant to scry on us if that's the case.
 
Wulf looks at the tooth and after determining that it's from an adult human, Quell says she can scry on it. While she does that, Jade identifies the magical bone dagger we found last night. It is a dagger of venom (+1, action to coat blade w thick black poison, lasts until hits creature dc+con save, 2d10 poison damage, only used that way once a day-not again til dawn). Wulf takes a look at the ring we found, and Cali looks at the cloak. The ring can cast dimension door twice a day and has a shiny little peridot in it. The cloak is a cloak of the manta ray (while wearing w hood up, breathe underwater, 60ft swimming speed. not req attunement.) Wulf gives Cali the ring and Cali gives Wulf the cloak. (Jade has Vren's cloak still tucked away in her bag, this cloak was from the woman we just spoke to.)
 
Quell ritually casts commune at a nice spot on the cliff looking out over the water. She asks if the silence guy is the same as the orchid woman and she says no. Quell asks if Irrin is headed back to Nag, and she says soon. "The boy that wore this cloak pin, was he related to me?" Quell asks and she says "yes."
 
Quell relays two of those answers to us, not the third. We still need to get the shards from Laerig and Setluk's island, but after that it seems like we will have to go to Nag. We discuss future plans a bit, and Wulf says that first, he wants to introduce us to Stirk. And... his friends. He looks a bit embarrassed. Quell says we will stop there after our next two stops. We start off toward the port town to get a boat to Laerig so it can get us to Setluk's island.
 
There's a huge line at the gate and a guy with an escaped chicken. They make him wait while he's yelling about how if all his chickens get out it'll be on them. They do eventually let him in. Quell marches past the line up to the guards and asks what's going on, posse in tow. They tell us that they're checking everyone who comes into town. Quell says we were helping Henrik (one of the guards) the other night and would like to come in and speak with him please. He narrows his eyes and says we can go to a smaller gate with a line since we don't have a wagon.
 
The woman at the smaller gate recognizes us after a moment, says "you're that strange group from the boat right?" She tells us Henrik got "a little drunk last night" and complains about getting him back home last night. She asks us to just tell her what weapons we have and she'll let us in. She says they haven't found the killer yet and thought they were using the market bustle to get away with it. Cali says sorry for overstepping but... if they are using the bustle of a crowd to get away with it........ they gesture to the crowd now lined up outside the gate. She sighs and says yes just about everyone but the commander has figured that out, but it is what it is. She lets us through and Wulf says the Schild phrase, "Walk under kind skies" as we enter. She advises us not to stay long, this is not a happy place to be right now.
 
We start heading to see Tam (to then see Lady Sophie with him) and Setluk says he will start looking for a ship for us. We part ways for the moment.
 
Tam fills us in on the drama we pretty much just heard, tells us that just about everyone disagrees with the commander and there are likely to be riots. He doesn't know what to expect from a crowd this size and Cali gives him an allegory of hunting a pack of deer and then just shooting into the sky: either they will scatter and you lose your dinner, or they turn around and trample you. Either way, it's not what you wanted and you are not in control.
 
We head down to the docks to get Setluk because the journey to Lady Sophie's will take all day without a horse, but when we get there there's already a bit of ruckus. People are getting shoved into the water left and right, and Setluk meets us in a shadowy alley. Asks if any of us read Naghi script, at which point Cali, Jade, and Quell all nod. We look and see that on the bough of one of the ships is "The Silent Sky" in Naghi. Wulf decides to don his new underwater breathing cloak and Cali will cast Pass Without Trace from the dock so we are within 30 feet of each other. Wulf gets himself tossed into the water by a fight that is nearby, and Cali leans on a post near the ship before casting so they don't look suspicious. Quell tosses Rabbit in after him and he rides on Wulf's head.
 
He successfully gets on the ship and slips unnoticed inside. It's magically dark in here and it seems like someone is behind a curtain to the left. Rabbit can't see so Quell listens through him instead and hears a convo in Naghi about captains orders and their ancy-ness toward leaving the port. Wulf explores a bit more to his right and accidentally steps on a creaky floorboard. He immediately backs out and heads toward the way he came in. Someone in a weak voice calls after him "who's there" but he can't understand the words. He responds in schildling "where's the captain?" Someone starts banging a stick on the floor with gathering force and Wulf tries to look like he is supposed to be there, or thinks he does at least. The man who had been on the bough shows up behind him and he says "I am here to report to the captain" in schildling. In traders cant the man says "what are you, lunch?" Wulf acts very confused and says "is this not The Laughing Gull?" in schildling. Wulf succeeds on a bluff check, so the guy calls him dumb and tells him to "get the abyss off my ship before you're doing it in pieces! Drink less!" in common, Wulf says "apologizes! I go! Sail under kind skies!" One of them points at him and he takes note of their appearance before taking hold of a rope and swinging off the ship and onto the dock.
 
Rabbit is still down in the ship and hears one of the people as they descend again say "doesn't that cloak look familiar?"
 
EOS