13A:Play/5 Duck Innuendo

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Starring: 📜Elistheren, 🌲 Qistis, 📚 Annalana
Guest Starring: Firigin, Meridan (Dwarf officier)
Location: Firigin's Island; Stranglesea
Date Played: 2016 December 13

Shark (Trap) Week

📚 Annalana: The book has a cypher, which Qistis is able to easily break. She does and it says “Do not read if you value your ability to live, breath, and procreate.” We decide to leave quickly, before he returns.

As we leave, there are traps. Qistis escapes harm but Elistheren and I are caught in flying sharks jaws. The one that set upon Qistis attaches to the door and blocks egress. Elistheren pulls a bottle of everything bad for teeth out of his hat.

Firigin opens a chest and throws more jaws at us. Annalana starts to disrespect Firigin by stabbing a painting and kicking over a shelf to break it. Annalana and Firigin go back and forth until Annalana finally decides to be calm.

📜Elistheren

Our interrogation is rather biting. Annalana snaps, and we're left chewing over how to handle Firigin. We molar it over, and… I can't really do puns. I'm sorry. But I've just been chewed on- which, it appears this has a religious component. I do ask Firigin some questions about his dental aspirations, and take some notes.

🌲 Qistis: The book I took off Firigin's shelves has a cipher. I get far enough to read a warning and pass it off to Annalana. Considering Firigin's distaste in assisting us in finding Sharp I will head its words. I most certainly do not think whatever lies in this book is worth loosing my life over.

We try to leave the man's house only to be assaulted by a trap in the form of shark jaws that hold my companions in place. The sight is rather humorous and Anna's increasing hostile frustration just makes it all the more amusing. The teeth wizard comes back into his home and while I try to get some information out of him, anything that might help us find Sharp really, Anna starts throwing what can only be described as a childlike tantrum. Thankfully this doesn't put Firigin off completely, but if she keeps this up we'll be completely stuck here with nothing to go on.

Talking with Firigin

📚 Annalana: Firigin is resistant to sharing information about Inigo. “I guess that he is alive.” He tries to impress upon us that he is retired and desperate to be left alone. “So I don’t know how he did it, but he escaped his own assassination. I was still packing when my doors were beat down.”

Firigin did think about revenge but decided to just let him go, as he wasn’t worth the effort. He is sure that he can get us to him but he doesn’t know where he is. Firigin has a device that can take us to him, one that he modified to find Inigo. Elistheren agrees to publish our findings so that it is public knowledge and Firigin isn’t bothered.

The device is a boat, one that will sail us to him after singing a tune, which is a Dwarven song about a woman who reject suitors, “The Ballad of the Stone Girl”.

I ask about Inigo’s weakness and Firigin tells me that he won’t be running away from us. Apparently something has happened. “After his last assassination attempt he only came out a little ahead.”

Elistheren and Firigin talk about the obscure god that Firigin follows. They bond and Elistheren arranges to get a letter on Firigin’s death so that he may continue the god’s worship.

We are led to where the boat is kept and it is covered with an illusion. To reveal it we must reveal a secret that we do not want to have known. Elistheren speaks a secret and there is laughing on the wind and the kelp takes the form of a boat. It is halfway between a rowboat and a longboat. It is nondescript except for a bronze doodad on the sprit (front).

📜Elistheren

There's one thing you learn when combing through ancient and musty stores of wisdom: the Powers of the world assume that history itself is a keeper of secrets, that facts once lost are lost forever. They are not. The Elf Queen, for example, has an entire chapter of her history where… well, let's just say it's impolite to share. Religion is more lascivious back then than it is today. I'm most excited by a boat powered by song. I quite like singing.

🌲 Qistis: Firigin shares with us a way to get to Inigo. An enchanted boat will lead us to him after its passenger hears a specific tune. Firigin tries to tells us in a roundabout way what the song is, but Annalanna is familiar with it thanks to her years of serving with the dwarves. The boat is also kept hidden by an illusory spell that hides it's presences. Only a secret never uttered will reveal it. Elistheren offers and tells of a suitor that the Elf Queen once had. There is a laugh on the wind and the boat is revealed to us. Should we return from this mission I would love to ask Firigin the nature of this spell. It seems extremely useful.

Journal

📚 Annalana: I only managed to decipher a few passages of Firigin’s journal, which talks about the Elf Queen and another womanly icon being in a relationship. The journal finds this offensive.

📜Elistheren

Again, lascivious.

🌲 Qistis

empty

Magical Boat Ride

📚 Annalana: I sing the Ballad of the Stone Girl and the boat starts to creak along, moving of its own accord. It is moving at a walking pace in a perfectly straight line, just above the waves, with a minute amount of rock. After a few hours a soft, dwarven voice says, “Destination confirmed, the Stranglesea”.

Night falls and we rest.

Qistis knows about the Stranglesea, there is a mass of algae that sits on the sea. Lots of monsters and strange things that make fascinating reagents. Elistheren says that no one knows much about the Stranglesea, as you can’t find it on purpose. He says that you could accidentally find it. “I certainly wasn’t thinking about the Stranglesea”, Elistheren says. I have heard that there are “mermaids” that are actually sea plants that attack people (and I’m not sure why I wrote that down).

There is a giant spout of water and white whale starts rushing towards us, opening its mouth. I shoot arrows into its mouth to no avail. Just as it starts to get close there is a kraken that wraps around the whale and drags it under.

📜Elistheren

The ocean is dangerous, and the Stranglesea is no exception. To the contrary, it's even more dangerous. But there's so much washed up here, so much gathered, so many old things to explore.

🌲 Qistis: Annalanna sings the song and we're on our way into the sea. I really do hate sea travel. I'm going to try and keep myself occupied for as most of the journey as I can. It seems my idea to pack some extra pipeweed will do me just fine on this trip.

A few hours into our trip and the ship pipes up. "The Stranglesea" seems to be where we're headed. An interesting place that I've read about before. It's a large floating island of tangled seaweed, sea plants and refuse. I know of at least four rare plants that can be found on the island, though I keep that information to myself. I'd like to try and make a bit of a harvest for use in potions (not to mention I'm sure they would fetch an amazing price on the market).

Stranglesea

After the third day, the boat has stopped moving, we are gently caught in a tangle of seaweed that goes on for miles. “Destination arrived, Stranglesea,” says the voice of the boat. As the others awaken, I do recon. There is a collection of wrecks here, obscuring our boat. The boat is pointing to the dead center of the island. We are between two shipwrecks. The kelp is about a foot thick, thinner in some places, thicker in others. There are small, hand-sized carnivorous plants that attack fish in the water.

Qistus sends out Umbra to scout invisibly, and when it returns it begins to sketch out a map of the area. I pull out my compass and begin to navigate in the direction that the boat indicated. We end up heading in the direction of the trash heap in the map. I’m walking along, leading the party, but as I focus on the direction, I end up in the sea due to a misstep. Before Qistis thinks about it her shadows leap out and pull me back onto the mat, just before a gaping orca maw would’ve got me.

As we approach the trash heap there is a thicker weed mat that is somewhat dry. It is a basking zone of animals, lots of seals and gulls. I create a few waypoints and we circumvent the trash heap. We make it to the edge of the mat and find nothing.

📜Elistheren

empty

🌲 Qistis: After what feels like an eternity of this gods forsaken sea travel we finally make landfall (in a sense). The island is large than I would have expected so Umbra does some of the hard work for us and provides a rudimentary map that we can use to navigate the island. There seem to be some points of interest, of which at least two are hostile but I'm sure there is more danger on this island than just ratfolk and some goblins. To the south there is a dwarven ship so we make our way there to try and find someone we can ask about Inigo Sharp.

Dwarven Ship

📚 Annalana: We decide to investigate the Dwarven Ship, which turns out to have a pallisade erected around it. The mountainous sigil of the Dwarf King adores the ship. There is a crenelated iron wall at the top.

I call out in Dwarven and hold up my helmet to show that I’m allied with the Dwarf King. After a long wait, a crew of dwarves, five of them, come out onto the ship. One of them speaks into a brass cone, “Keep your weapons down and approach slowly.”

I introduce myself as Captain Annalana Love of the 14th Suicide Grenadiers and I am introduced to the officer, Meridan. “We were sailing and then woke up in the weed mat. The engines were close to getting us out until they failed. We have stopped counting the phases of the moon.” He tells us that there are goblins and rats. As we exit the palisades he yells, “If you find Sharp, we want him back”.

We make camp in the shadow of the dwarven pallisade and nothing of note happens. The next morning we parlay once more with the dwarves and find out that Sharp is a mechanical wizard. He was previously helping the dwarves fix their engines before he vanished mid project. He is a damn brain in a jar, of sorts.

📜Elistheren

Inigo Sharpe has left a mark on this island already. There are three factions, they aren't working together- the whole situation is as unstable as the deep ocean. It's honestly all rather thrilling.

🌲 Qistis: The Dwarven ship proves to be an inconvenient hassle. Palisades, barbed wire defenses and a hostile crew are all just fantastic signs that our quest for Inigo Sharp will go completely smoothly from here on out for sure....

Fortunately Annalanna knows dwarven and is very familiar with their culture so at least we get some information out of them. They lack in trust for us but they share that Inigo was here anyways. He was helping them repair their ship before he managed to disappear....oh, and did I forget to mention that Sharp is a disembodied brain.... A FUCKING BRAIN. I can't deal with this anymore.

Trash Heap

📚 Annalana: This pile of trash is irregularly shaped and about 30 feet tall. Behind it we can see the wreckrat ship in the distance. There are elephant seals basking in the sun. I fish for a few hours and hand them to Elistheren, who provides us a distraction to get to the trash heap.

Qistis and I find a makeshift chair and table, with charcoal. The writing on the table is an agreement between a human and dwarf to trade goods. We search and find nothing of interest but Annalana writes “We See You” on the table in charcoal.

📜Elistheren

The elephant seals are our first real barrier. They're highly territorial, which means you need to give them something worth leaving their territory for. Bait, so to speak. With some help from some fish, I make excellent bait.

🌲 Qistis: We're somewhat unsure of what to do with our new information as a brain in a jar could be literally fucking anywhere. We circle back to the trash pile and basking area to see if we can find any hint of Inigo's presence here. The elephant seal really puts me off investigating but we form a good enough distraction that Annalanna and myself are able to investigate (myself rather delicately, don't want to stink up my clothes more than necessary because who know how long we're going to be stuck here). There's some signs of humanoid-ish inhabitation in the trash heap and Anna leaves an 'extremely' non-threatening note on the table for whoever comes back there. I can only hope this doesn't come back to bite us.

Fungus Patch

📚 Annalana: Except for some weird, lumpy shapes, this seems like the rest of the weed mat. This stretch is oddly empty of debris. There are strange pustles, from a few inches to a few feet in size. They are dangerous fungal masses. It may have some intelligence (but probably not).

Elisthereen tries to convince us to go into the patch and when it is obvious that we aren’t going to follow, he rushes into the patch and enemies reveal themselves. We are set upon by fungal creatures!

A floating spore is thrown at Elistheren, who is overwhelmed with troubles of being shipwrecked. We take out a larger plant creature that explodes in a puff of spores, fortunately far from anyone.

In the heat of battle I’m hit with spores that remove my memories. I see only a half elf enemy and her allies. I have no idea where my allies are and why I am alone, but I know battle and battle is good. I stab at Elistheren but before I can cause harm my mind clears and my memories come back.

📜Elistheren

You have to understand! There are rare fungi in here. Of course I had to explore! And get confused.

🌲 Qistis: I will murder Elistheren in his sleep tonight. I don't care how rare or how valuable those damn fungi were, that was 'not' worth it.