The Sea Devils

Life, Organisation Association

The Path of Nightshade lose a member of the party during a long rest. Thuniel is captured and interrogated by they Sea Creatures known as Sahuagin. The party negotiates her release but these Sea Devils are very interested in Mozakosh.

The party discusses the five other points of interest in this cave, including the giant octopus in the water, the cliffside where the Sahuagin live, a top of a pyramid poking out of the water, a giant tower, and a ruined, partially sunk tower. After some discussion they decide in the morning to try and establish better relations with The Sahuagin they nicknamed "The Sea Devils."   During the rest, Thuniel takes first watch. When Moz wakes up for second watch, Thuniel is gone. Moz looks around the island and can’t see any sign of struggle. After she arrives back at the camp, she notices Mirag was also on watch. She asks him about Thuniel, but he just says she was there, then she was not. As far as Moz can tell, he’s a simpleton and he’s not lying.   Moz looks around for Thuniel, trying to find her and rules out the upward direction. She throws some rocks, which disturbs the water. Moz casts locate creature and finds the giant octopus about two miles away. It is alert and interested because of the rocks disturbing the water.   Moz wakes up Gilly and Bobushio and tells them all she did to investigate. Gilly goes to talk to Mirag and Bobushio does his own investigation. Gilly is able to figure out that Mirag fell asleep at the beginning of his watch, and Thuniel was gone when he woke up. Bobushio looks around our camp and he finds that the Saguahin probably came and took her pulling her into the water off the beach.   They decide to travel to the Sahuagin and try to find Thuniel. Bobushio tries to convince Mirag to come with them, and he feels bad that he fell asleep, so he says he’ll go wake up Pakili and ask her. Bobushio helps Mirag decide he’s scared of Pakili and that he’ll come without waking her.   Meanwhile, Thuniel had gone for a walk while on her watch. She was grabbed and dragged into the water, bound fast and a jellyfish is slapped on her face. Thuniel struggles, but passes out from fear and panic.   When she wakes up, she is no longer in the water. She hears chittering-like language and sees two warriors and a matriarch/priestess of Sahuagin. They start water-boarding Thuniel and the woman asks in Elvish how they can get out of here and how can they get their home back to where it was. At one point, the matriarch uses a golden dagger to carve symbols on Thuniel’s forearms and rubs saltwater in them. Thuniels finds out also don’t live here, they were brought here and they want to go back to their home. They did not attack first. They just wanted information from Pakili and she attacked her. The tower has a magical practitioner in it, and they are afraid of it and don’t want to go in there.   What seems like hours pass and Thuniel doesn’t break, but she does eventually convince them that she has told them the truth as she knows it. She is suddenly alone, exhausted and mostly dead. She has no weapons, sitting on a tiny island of land in the middle of small dome/cave above the water, covered in her own blood and vomit. She rinses herself down, then does some meditating to steel herself for the next round.   Back with the party, they manage to get to the cliff with no issues from the octopus. As they approach the cliffs, there are Sahuagin watchers along the clifftop watching the party. There’s a lower point with ropes to climb up. Bobushio calls up the cliffs in a couple of languages, but there’s no reply.   Moz can tell that the chittering is mocking. Moz mind links with one of them and asks if they’ve seen an elf. She gets a “who dis?” She waves a tentacle and he responds, “we didn’t think the creature from the depths could talk, we’ve been trying to talk with it.” Moz tries to tell him she’s not the one from the depths and she’s from somewhere else. He starts trying to push her out of his mind and doesn’t respond to her anymore.   Moz picks the other Sahuagin and tells him, “We are here to talk and help. Have you seen our friend?” The new guy expresses skepticism that a mind-talking octopus wants to help us? You’re gonna have to talk to King Krakatoa. Moz asks if they can come up, and he replies that you’ll be under armed guard. Bobushio flies up with Gilly on his back, but Moz can’t hold on as an octopus and becomes humanoid. At the top of the cliffs, they are chittering, reacting to Bobushio’s flight. The guy asks Moz, “Is this your friend?” He seems intimidated, but ready to fight.   Bobushio says, “Boo” for effect. Moz tells the guy to give Bobushio a poke.   Moz reaches the top of the cliffs and when they see her, they gasp. Gilly can tell that they never expected to see something like Moz. Like, wow, she’s not an octopus. The Sea Devils tie up Bobushio, Mirag, and Gilly, but leave Moz free. Gilly manages to make the cuffs loose enough that she can easily escape. Moz asks if they can be nice to her friends and he answers that they are being nice to them, they should be dead. They lead them down the cliff, and give them jellyfish to wear.   They lead them to an underwater fortress that looks like a coral reef was grown and cultivated to be a palace. Moz is looking for magical influence, but she doesn’t see anything magical. This is all nature and harmony. There’s a sense of urgency and interest in their chittering as more and more gather. A large guard type comes up and is upset with the people, who explain something to them, and the guy relaxes enough to take over guarding them to see the king. Bobushio uses ISAC to try to loosen his bindings.   Moz tells her contact that she has a way to make communication easier, and not to be alarmed when she casts a spell. He tells everyone to stand down. Then she casts Comprehend Languages and she can understand them. Moz hears them say, “They’re like the other mind talkers we’ve seen before. She might know more about what’s going on. Other landtalkers haven’t been able to understand us, only the mind-talkers.   They escort everyone into the hall. Crossing the threshold, she sees Quori language inscribed on things around the hall. Moz asks Bobushio to look around to remember to things written there for her.   They are taken to the king and told that the closest we’ll be able to pronounce his name is King Krakatoa. The throne room is beautiful and ornate. King Krakatoa is armored and crowned. There’s a female next to him, presumably the queen. There’s a matriarchal priestess lady there with her headdress and mask.   Moz hears the king say, “How dare you let the landwalkers in our lair? They are why we are stuck here.” The queen says she’s not comfortable having these people in our home. They have done nothing but hurt our people, even when we tried to approach them diplomatically. All the land dwellers since we entered this sunken cave have shown nothing but hostility. Remember the legends and myths about land dwellers.   Then the guard says “one of these is not like the others. She can understand us and talk to me in my mind.” The king is interested. “We have a treaty with the mindtalkers because they have helped us against the lizardfolk. We have to honor our treaty with the mindtalkers because that is why we have been able to survive. Their home is close to the mindtalkers, and they were taken away from there.”   The big guard says, “We only have to honor the treaty when we are in our lands and we’ve been taken from our lands,” and people start to agree with them. Then the priestess says that Moz might be only their only chance to get out of here because she didn’t get anything out of the elf.   The king tells Moz she has permission to speak. Tell me why you’re here. Moz says they didn’t mean to intrude. They came here looking for a book. They got stranded on an island and now they’re there with you all.”   She convinces him. He says he’s at a disadvantage because he’s in a land where he doesn’t know the rules, and everyone has been hostile. But we’ve been taken from our home. No one could ever understand us because everyone always attacks us on sight. Until we met the mindtalkers and they could understand us.   The king’s father created a treaty with the mindtalkers to drive back the lizardfolk. They helped us and we helped them not be slaughtered by the lizardfolk. We will honor the treaty with you, but not with Mirag because he is a slayer of us.   The captain wants to kill Mirag now because he has killed a bunch of them. The priestess argues, then the king yells at everyone to stop. He says, let’s all talk in Quori so Moz can understand all of us. The others are disgruntled, but do it because the King tells them to.   Moz explains that she was removed from her people too, so she doesn’t know about the plight of her people, but she will happily honor the treaty. The king asks what she wants. Moz says she wants Thuniel back, but she can also do what she can to help them get home. Moz says she doesn’t know how to get them home, but she will try.   The king says they may have mistreated her friend, but they’ll give her back and owe her a debt. The king says he will give them the information he has, but he will do what he can. He says that they are from a place near the frozen sea.   Bobushio starts to peice together some of the timeline resently. He figures out that someone saw his design, took it to another plane where they could recreate the ship and figure it out in minutes of our time. So the Astral Elves got the ships and recreated the tech, but it’s underdeveloped, even though they’ve had it for more time than Bobushio. Pakili was then given the ship, she got sent here or brought here looking for the Shurkaan (Devourer) shrine and the tome (maybe), but then she got stuck here.   Looking around this place, we can see that there are things being pulled from this plane and that and it’s getting soupy and weird here. The grimoire is probably sucking all these people in, and we might be near a manifest zone too. But there’s a lot of potential shenanigans going on here.   Moz tries to figure out why these people would have been brought here. It seems too great to be a coincidence that the Sahuagin are here and are allies of the Quori. There was also something from Bobushio’s past in this space. Seems awfully convenient. . .   Moz is able to determine that the Sahuagin have been here less time than the ship has been crashed here. Moz asks a lot of questions and they say that in the blink of an eye, a section of their city was teleported here. They woke up in waters they didn’t know. They tried to talk to Pakili who immediately started killing them, and they were very cautious after that. The octopus in the water is unlike anything they’d ever seen. It seems almost possessed and is an expert swordsman. They think it’s not a beast anymore, but has become more. The grimoire could put together two consciousnesses. Same as with Nerezza and Mirag.   The queen says that this is a lot; we are going to send the healer to your friend and give you a place to rest. Moz asks for new jellyfish, and the king just makes the water drain away around them. Bobushio dries himself off, which weirds the Sahuagin out.   They go to get Thuniel, but Moz asks to come with. It’s miles and miles of swimming to get to Thuniel. Thuniel doesn’t know Moz is coming and as soon as Thuniel sees the priestess mask coming out of the water, she roundhouse kicks her in the face. Moz rushes in to stop her from causing an incident. Thuniel backs off and is pissed that she doesn’t get to beat the shit out of her captors.   Meanwhile Bobushio manages to learn the words King, yes, and no in their language. Bobushio tells them that he is a king. They lead them to the guest chamber and gave him a better bed.   The priestess heals Thuniel a little bit. Thuniel shows Moz the carving on her forearms and Moz can read that it is a glyph that would have prevented Thuniel from swimming too far away from the cave prison. The priestess heals away the magic, but not the scars.   The current carries them back through the tunnels to the barracks where we’ll stay. It’s damp, but clean.