Session 10: A Fishy Situation

Monday & Tuesday, February 1 & 2, 2021 @7:45pm-9:40pm & @7pm-10:30pm

General Summary

The Far Harbor

Having returned back to Drogz, Wynne leaves the party to their own devices, letting them know that she will update them if she gets any new information. Travelling about the city, the party encounters a newspaper boy announcing the headlines, including: a port city in Dig failing to siege; increased abomination activity north of Ghiz; news of slavery has become public and the guilds are working to uproot such in their country; and a new trend of bears wearing hats has surfaced. Distracted and disinterested, Ghozun goes off to find "the knitting homies," finding his way to a textile shop. Sadly for the tiefling-orc, the shop is an industrial sewing shop, making it utterly useless for him. On the other hand, a little old lady offers him a book that she used to learn how to knit when she was young. As soon as he goes to sit down and study, Slab approaches him, lifts him up by the equivalent of his scruff, and tells him that they're leaving.

"Come with me or be manhandled." -Slab Goremount

With Slab suddenly very interested in a specific task and framework of mind, the party opts not to argue, immediately following along after him without complaint. They enlist the aid of Wynne's Galwind, to which she also adds her entire crew, to avoid any mishaps and ensure that it is properly tended to and manned. Aside from sleeping, during the travel everyone takes to themselves: Ghozun took the time to study his new book, gaining a Dex proficiency in knitting, attempting to knit a... hat shaped object; Lavug uses his Woodcarver's Kit and artificer skills to carve runes into his Wofrite staff to transform it into a --- and tinkered with his models in an attempt to construct a better cannon; Eldin successfully fished four medium fish; Slab meditated and prayed; Duul learned basic boating skills and helped the crew; Emyr helped out the crew, using his downtime to hangout with Chompsky; and Chompsky, being the regal beauty that she is, majestically did the Titanic thing at the bow, when not in the company of others. Once their destination is within sight, the crew opts to stay a distance away, feeling superstitious of the city, Eldertide, proper. Taking two longboats, the party, including everyone's favorite bear, made their way to the dock. On their way, they feel something bumping against one of the boats, though only enough to be noticeable and not to do any harm. Eldin started poking an arrow in the direction of the bumping, feeling something tug against it. He lets the arrow go, and it is immediately pulled into the water. Slab responds by casting Call Thunder at level 3. The water becomes energized with the attack, and fleshy, decaying humanoid parts mixed with barnacles and other oceanic bits and pieces surface, including a full body of such. Failing miserably in his evaluation of arcana, Ghozun thinks it's a good idea to bring the creature to shore; Lavug, on the other hand, has the knowledge to know that whatever this creature is was likely a humanoid that was captured or lost at sea and was transformed into its state by something from the deep, even noticing that it appears to have a lower tusk, signifying that it was once of orc lineage; the rest of them are simply not studied enough to have an inclination of it, though they know well enough to stay the fuck away. He doesn't specifically suggest that Ghozun continue in his efforts, but he doesn't discourage them, leading to the dead creature being brought along with them.
Making landfall, they are greeted by fog and poor perception by the masses of them. Slab and Ghozun notice a lot of damage to the stalls and buildings closest to the pier, including dried blood pools and dragging streaks from said pools. Seeing nothing but dollar signs, the brothers immediately take to trying to scavenge and salvage the gold they see, to which Slab uses Thaumaturgy to make himself louder and shout for them to stop. This draws the attention of several waterlogged, dead bodies similar to the one they'd dragged ashore. Combat begins. Things of note that occurred include: Slab using his Call Lightning to attack the "Bloaters", affecting one such that he stimulates its nerves and causes it to "Thriller" walk its way towards them; Ghozun and Chompsky when directly into the fray to fight; the party started a fire on the pier, fending off future waves; and on another use of his Call Lightning, Slab overkilled a "Bloater" so effectively that the remaining damage bounced to another one, killing it outright. With the wave defeated, a strange voice calls from a nearby alleyway, calling for the party to join him if they wish to live. Suspicious but more trustworthy of a random stranger dwarf than hoards and waves of apparent zombies, they take his advice and make their way after him as another twenty or so "Bloaters" come into view. He leads them to a large, makeshift wall which they are ushered into hurriedly. Part of it collapses from the effort of opening a way for them to enter, and citizens immediately rush to patch the barricade with anything that they can.
As it happens, this portion of the city is what remains of it, including the citizens within. The wall effectively cuts the city off primarily from the shore, but appears to wrap around the entire city. In relative safety, they begin tending to Chompsky's wounds while Lavug goes to track down the city's mayor for information, with Slab joining him. The mayor seems both excited to have outsiders around to help and distressed that there are so few people coming to their aid. He leads the party aside and explains to them of their plight and introduces himself as Mayor Bronze, who bares a remarkable resemblance to Ambassador Silver. [It appeared to be that the dead began to come out of the water, and an Acolyte began preaching off-scripture, claiming this to be part of some sort of "divine plan" of Zumna. He was apprehended but escaped and has not been seen since.] To the best of his knowledge, any of their citizens that have gone out or been sent to a burial at sea have, for the last several weeks, come back as these creatures that have been terrorizing them. Duul sets off to procure a map and make plans.

Meet Me in the Pit!

Studying the map provided to them, the party began to plan out their attack on what appeared to be the epicenter of the Bloater plague; the now abandoned cathedral to Zumna, where the zealot acolyte most likely decided to hold up. Duul marks up the map to help everyone as he works out the the plan. The final idea is to first spend an hour splitting up with one of the city's four remaining masons and analyzing the integrity of the walls. Second, they will scout their way to the cathedral for some reconnaissance and possibly to go ahead and handle the zealot as soon as possible. Assuming the Bloaters do not immediately drop dead, they will then return to the safe zone, gather the masons and anyone else that might be capable in construction and create a kill pit in the former marketplace.
After their analysis, they discover that if the current pace were to keep up then the wall could hold another four days, assuming that they are only experiencing the sporadic small group rather than a coordinated or heavy assault. With this knowledge in mind, Duul proposes that they take a night to rest and recuperate before beginning. The new plan is to rest, set the builders up for the pit with their own people to guard them while the party scouts. The new pit is going to include a tower in the center built of non-flammable materials for some of the able-bodied citizens to barricade themselves into the top of. From inside, they will be setting the open courtyard beneath them aflame to both lure and eliminate the Bloaters, forming the structure more as a shark cage than anything else. The next trick becomes whether or not they're able to convince what remained of the former-city-now-village people to go along with this plan. With the party themselves not even 100% on board with the plan, this quickly proves to be a difficult task. Where persuasion fails, however, intimidation succeeds, and the terrified masons agree to go along with the plan, more afraid of the threat now in their walls than the one outside them. In the day and the half that follows, two of the mason workers die, though the structure is erected in the end. It is capable of holding up to ten people. However, their only way in or out of the structure is a single ladder. Their next hurdle is to figure out how to lure attention to the tower. Bells are employed for the task, positioned in the tower to be operated by the "shark bait."
It is now the second day since the wall has been inspected. The party now decides to climb the original, external wall to make their way towards the cathedral on a scouting mission. The bait townsfolk are instructed to begin ringing their bells at high noon, giving the party time to get across. Once they reach the wall beside the river, they find out that part of the wall had been collapsed to render the river impassable by boat. With a rope tied to an arrow that is fired across the river, mouse-Ghozun runs across before transforming back into himself to secure the rope to the opposite end while the rest of the party secures it on their end. Eventually, the party makes their way to what appears to be the church distract, where they find an open courtyard of "survivors" being ushered to what's likely to be the zealot via some rather... unattractive abominations. It is around this time that the bells begin to go off in the distance. Deciding that it would be best not to just outright burn down the entire district, as thorough of a method it might be, they conclude that they must make their way down to street level and face the problem head on.
With no safe way to sneak to over and down the rooftops or climbing down the wall itself, they move towards the stairs under the influence of Lavug's Featherfall and Duul's Pass Without a Trace, they leap down to avoid any potential patrols or anything near the stairs, to say nothing of the fact that they'd be in direct view of the cathedral were they to use them properly. With luck's finicky grasp, Eldin gets caught and captured once more, though Slab and Duul are able to silently take down one of the sea abominations guarding the door. Proceeding to stash the body away, they drag it to the pier, wrap it in a tarp, and hide it from view. With the coast from the riverside pier to the delivery door clear, they return and Lavug attempts to pick the lock to the door, though he must first disable it's rudimentary doorbell. Peaking inside, he gives Duul enough room to use Mage Hand to hold the bells still as the party sneaks through. With Lavug taking a moment to defog his glasses from the sudden humidity change, Slab surveys the area they've made their way into and determines that he's fairly certain he knows the layout. On their way to the inner sanctum, in fact, they find the trio of seabominations carrying Eldin away. With two more guarding the way into the inner sanctum, the party is left to decide just how they want to go about things, especially at the risk of blowing the cover they've worked so hard to keep. Using Silence to keep their actions unnoticed, the party takes out the five fish people in the area, freeing Eldin before proceeding onward.
Inside the sanctum, all but Emyr loose all chance at stealth, and they come in upon the sight of what is now most assuredly the zealot acolyte. The man wears the remnants of his priest's robes and stands over a mysterious, swirling pool of water. He turns at their arrival, flanked by two tentacle creatures and two black lagoon creatures, the later of whom seem to be summoned from the water pool/portal. As villians do, the priest goes to monologue, but senses something in the room. Emyr feels a strange, almost familiar pull coming seemingly, distinctively from his blood towards the priest, and it appears that he's not the only one. He zeros in on a gem on the priest's person, which appears to be acting as the focus for the portal. While everyone else prepares to fight, Emyr approaches the priest and attempts to pickpocket the gem from him, getting caught at the last viable moment.

"You are of the same blood." Zealot Priest

Immediately after, Duul tackles the priest to the ground in an attempt at making things far, far easier the party. In theory, this action should make it to where the priest cannot resist Emyr's thievery or dodge the rest of the party's attacks. However, is that the way that fate wills things to be? Will the party successfully thwart the zealot's plans and restore not only Zumna's foothold in her once holy port city, but the city itself? And what has become of the shark bait citizens acting as a distraction for the remaining survivors? Find out all this and more next week!

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Notable Places & People

Wynne
Unnamed little old crochet lady
Eldertide
Mayor Bronze
Unnamed Dwarf Stranger
Wynne's "Galwind" Crew
Four Two Unnnamed Mason workers
Zealot Priest of the Deep (Acolyte)
A shitload of zombies & evil fish people

Session Highlights

Report Date

01 Feb 2021

Primary Location

Eldertide

Going Forward...

TBD

Inventory Changes