Session 15: Take a Crews
General Summary
We all step into the new captain’s quarters to go over what our next plan of action. We need to gather as many useful crew members as we can in this town or we’ll be stuck in port for awhile. We decide doing some recon is a must in this place, so well part ways to tackle this task. TT and Antic visit the library to collect records on any nearby penal colonies, Owkbanok and Inami collect information on the whereabouts of several plantations, Amelia and Tonari get word of a prisoner ship coming in the next day as well as a slave ship arriving in a month’s time, and me and Nathan case the prison by magical means as I jot down anything that may be of use to our plan. With that, we all reconvene to swap information and go over everything. The penal colonies are off on some islands and given that we can’t get out of the port without a crew to row our ship, that’s off the table for the time being.
The prisoners on the ship will likely be taken to the prison in town, so our best options are a prison break or hitting up the largest plantation in the area to liberate the slaves and hope we can recruit them. Hitting the prison first will have all eyes on us, so we decide to go do some recon on the plantation and hit that first. It’s a few hours out of town, so we hitch a carriage ride, the driver a young human man by the name of Finn who’s fate was sealed the minute TT whispered to me that we should kill him afterwards. After all, he might hear things he shouldn’t and we don’t want him turning around and selling our asses out and as the ride goes on, we all start to make him more than uncomfortable. With each word out of our mouths, Finn grows more and more scared as we hint to an early death for him and ask him needlessly personal questions that trigger his alarm bells even further.
This boy’s sweating up a storm and trying to convince us that he’s never exposed anyone’s secrets and doing anything he can to butter us up so he doesn’t die tonight and for awhile, we all consider leaving him be once this is all said and done. But upon reaching our destination, I can’t take the risk of our plan being passed along to the town guards, so I ask dear Finn for a hug. He’s hesitant, but after a moment, leans in for an uncomfortable hug and promptly gets my dagger to his spine and his body deposited in the nearby rose bush. We take a gander at the land before us, taking note of the guards and fields themselves, but also where the slaves are kept in the evening. With that, our current plan is to have Owkbanok go in and pose as a slave as this is a human owned property and it appears any half-orcs here are kept as such, so his presence as anything other than that might be alarming. So we hold onto his gear for him so it isn’t stolen away and with that, the rest of us go to speak with the owner of the property.
It’s all to gain entry into his home so we can take him out later to free the slaves, but for now, we all exchange pleasantries and pretend to make a deal to buy a couple tons of grain. The deal’s set and we ask for a place to stay and this clueless man offers us rooms so long as we pay half of what we agreed upon for the grain. This works wonderfully for our plan as a gnoll servant leads us to the rooms, TT asks her to leave her master’s bedroom door unlocked and we’ll all keep her safe. There’s only three rooms, so TT and Nathan take one of their own, leaving me and Amelia to share a bedroom. And as the Slut Squad usually does, we pound it out (I swear it’s just to pass the time) and it’s in this moment that I realize there’s something different about her. Did she do something with her hair? Is it her perfume? No, you see, everybody; Amelia here isn’t as human as she claims to be.
She’s a changeling; the offspring of hags and beings that hear a spiritual “call” to discover their origins after a certain age. Now Amelia knows her parents…or what she’s assumed are her true parents. The King and Queen of Carlo Rose, two perfectly normal humans. She has no idea about this changeling stuff and is offended when I bring it up and tell her about how a hag is her mother. She’s in denial and doesn’t believe me, which is fair considering my wild conspiracy theories I lay on this party when I’m high, but still; I’ve hunted enough magical beings to know their true natures when I see them. It’s clear it’s something she’s not willing to entertain though, so I drop the subject. Though c'mon, what’s better than boning and then immediately trying to make somebody question their own humanity afterwards?? With the silence becoming uncomfortable and Cayde losing his shit at the door because Owkbanok’s in trouble, I get up to take him outside as I’m thinking he just wants to go run around.
It’s very clear once I step out that he doesn’t want to play as there’s the stench of blood in the air and Cayde is still losing his mind. Because while the rest of us were getting cozy, poor Owkbanok was getting manhandled by guards and having no choice but to grin and bear it for the sake of the plan. He gets a little too lippy with them and after he punches one of them in the face, they demand he go gather up the other slaves so they can bear witness to his punishment. This gives him the perfect opportunity to pick some of their brains about the revolt one of the guards mentioned and he learns the slaves have been planning it for a month. They easily outnumber the guards and have been stashing some weapons for when it all goes down, to which Owkbanok ensures them that it’ll happen soon enough. Once he gathers the crowd, the guards make an example out of him, whipping him within an inch of his life before going back to their posts and some orcs kindly drag him back to their cabin so he can rest.
Knowing Owk’s in trouble, I secure his sword and some healing potions to Cayde’s harness and turn the leopard loose. He manages to sneak through the property, finding the orc cabin and pushing his way through the rotted wood in the back to avoid the guard posted at the front door, and Owk’s relieved and grateful to see the care package. The other orcs help him stash his weapon as it’s more than clear that the revolution begins tonight and back at the manor, the rest of us have reconvened in one of the bedrooms to figure out the next step. TT’s going to sneak into the bedroom to take out the guard that’s been posted in the master’s chambers and then take him out afterwards, and possibly even his wife. But her plan falls to pieces as the guard doesn’t immediately die from her attack and she trips, stumbling back through the bedroom door and into the hallway, alerting the rest of us that it’s go time. I take out the master easily enough, Cayde mauling his wife afterwards, but the guard manages to slip past us like he’s a walking stick of butter until Nathan puts a crossbow bolt in his back.
With Amelia’s new guard zombie, Shaun (of the Dead), kicking down the glass door to the outdoor world while we all scream about a riot, the slaves on the property know it’s go time. Owkbanok immediately sets his sights on the guard he nearly whipped him to death, hitting him with some scorching rays while TT works on toppling the guard towers. Nathan sets one on fire and me and Cayde just work on culling the herd of guards that are quickly getting overwhelmed with the entire situation. It’s not a good day for any of them considering we’re not even giving them an inch to breathe nor surrender and anybody that tries to flee is taken down easily enough. In all the chaos, some of the slaves take this as a chance to escape themselves, so when the dust finally settles, there’s only a whopping 28 of them left and the 3 house servants who were busy packing up loot for us during the battle.
Owkbanok gives them a speech, letting them know who we really are and that we’re seeking recruits. They don’t have to come along, but anyone who does gets 300 gold for signing on and 25 of them agree to join, 28 once we ask the house servants to join us. We can’t take a bunch of liberated slaves into town, so TT has her parrot fly back to the ship with a note to tell our crew to meet us at the shoreline with the rowboats so the slaves can get directly to the ship. TT and Owkbanok handle escorting the slaves to the shoreline while me and Amelia gather up the valuable horses and loot and go directly back to town. Understandably, the ruckus has caught somebody’s attention finally and as a squadron of guards tries to stop us on the road; we both pretend to panic and fear for our lives. These guards nearly catch our bluff, but we escape by the skin of our teeth and once back in the town, we quickly load up the horses and get settled for the night.
The other group is gone for h o u r s as the shoreline was much farther than they anticipated. They travel through the night and morning, all of them dead tired when the shores are finally in sight and they all clamber aboard the rowboats. While we’re all worried for our crewmates, me and Amelia take our stress out on each other, bickering like a couple who’s spent 40 years too many together. We take verbal jab after jab until things turn physical as she goes to kick me, but I flawlessly trip her ass…only for her to trip me to the ground with her after. It seems the wires that separate “arguing” and “foreplay” have gone terribly amiss for the two of us cuz while our friends are out there struggling to get back; we decide to have yet another tryst in order to forget about our problems. Eventually, the others finally arrive back by nightfall and we can all take a breather and help our new crew get settled in before we tackle the prison break.
Missions/Quests Completed
Mission: Plantation Takedown
Character(s) interacted with
Report Date
28 Jun 2021
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