South Seas Campaign Journal

The South Seas Campaign Journal Being an annal of the exploits of the heroes of our story.

A Night on the Town

Our story begins with our heroes doing what they do best... carousing on the town. Our heroes find themselves at The Singing Mermaid, a small dive of a tavern on the waterfront whose name changes everytime a big wave comes and it gets washed upon the rocks.

The majority of the party is imbibing questionable brews while Edward and Aireannwyn each provide their own brand of entertainment (The latter singing and playing the lute, the former juggling live animals...)

The trouble begins when a few men in gray cloaks enter the bar with their hands on their weapons. Aireannwyn notices that one of the swaggering newcomers has a tabard of a guardsman under his cloak. Trafen recognizes one of the individuals as being one of the bandits that were responsible for his parents' demise.

Aireannwyn decides to apprise the tavern owner of the situation. As she crosses the room, she notices that it is she that they are headed for. She panicks and runs for the back door.

Dramen sees this maiden being pursued by these dastardly rakes and starts yelling at them. As one of them instructs a second to go outside and circle around the back, the third spins around, recognizing Dramen's voice. Dramen recognizes this man, too, as being on of the pirate crew of which Dramen was once a part. He calls Dramen a murderer and a duel ensues.

Aireannwyn comes out of the side door of the tavern and sees the man discussing something with one of the watchmen on the street. Meanwhile, inside, Dramen is getting the best of his former compatriot while Trafen and Gleb' make short work of his companion (with a token effort by Edward in the form of one tossed feline.) Areannwyn informs the rest of the party about what she saw outside. The whole party decides to make a hasty retreat into an alleyway.

It's not long before a few guardsman - on horses and equipped with pistols - start charging down the alley and shooting at the party. Dramen foolishly tumbles into the alley in an attempt to startle the horses and gets trampled for his efforts. Edward and Trafen pelt the horsemen with missile fire and take one down. Dramen manages to shove the other one off of his horse and knock him unconscious. With this hostage in tow, they head to an abandoned warehouse to interrogate him as to why this whole thing has transpired.

After some intimidation and some mental interrogation by Gleb', the party discovers that this man was pursuing the party merely because he was told that the party had slain one of his fellow watchmen (which didn't explain why said watchmen were ingognito and pursuing one of the party members in the first place) who was one of the guardsmen in the service of one Count Anavir.

(Campaign background note for the uninitiated: In the city of Tai, the city guard are provided directly from the personal guard units of the 12 houses and 1 priesthood that hold seats on the city council - Alan.)

Areannwyn suddenly realizes why the guardsmen where after her. Count Anavir is one of the nobles that has been fighting the religions of the Sword Isles in trying to abolish slavery. Areannwyn had infiltrated Count Anavir's estate in the guise of a serving wench and uncovered some compelling information showing that the Count was blatantly violating the accords on slavery that the religions of the Sword Isles had pushed through.

She brought this knowledge to public light, but the Count managed to somehow smooth over the situation with the other nobles, and he got off with only a minimal fine. But he obviously did not forget Areannwyn's role in the whole affair and dispatched his guardsmen to teach her a lesson.

Trafen took a special interest in this, since by some great coincidence, Count Anavir is the very man who set the bandits (who slew his parents) free. And now it even appears that those bandit are now - or possibly eeven where then - in Count Anavir's employ.

The party did a little investigation, mainly Trafen and Dramen down by the docks, Areannwyn in her temple, and Kryn in the upper crust, and uncovered some more information about the Count. They discovered that the Count was suddenly within the quotas for slaves required of him by the accords, but none of the slaves he held ended up in the hands of local nobles. They just seemed to have... disappeared.

They did uncover some information about a small island that Anavir has a mansion on off the shores north of Tai. It appears that he is running some pleasure palace for the rich there. The party quickly decided to check this place out. They rent a boat and ask for assistance from the temple of Salaya.

Arriving at the island, the party arrives on the west end away from the docks and pleasure palace. On their way in, they notice a ship with a very unusual, bulbous bow and strange riggings and sails. The island itself has sheer drops on all sides, basically being a huge rock jutting out of the ocean.

The climb the cliff face on the west end. Dramen is the first to reach the top, and spies a lovely young woman cowering behind a tree. He attempts to sneak up on her, but as he is about upon here, she spins about, and her features melt away into that of a horrifying withered old hag!

Her supernatural aura strips the strength out of Dramen and many other party members as well. They laid into the abominable beast with their blades. The onslaught forces her to retreat into the sea, cursing the party as she plummeted. But before she fell, her horrifying evil eye caused some manner of illness that paralyzed Trafen.

The party left Trafen behind at the edge of the copse of trees guarded by his elven dog companion. They proceeded down to the mansion and attempted to get in. They spied the master of the mansions holding discussions with a strange, spider like being that stood upright on 4 hind limbs and with 4 manipulating arms.

About that time, the guards discovered the the party's prescence and laid into them with gunfire. With a few good bow shots and a well placed sleep spell by Joshua, the party survived the initial encounter. But the spider-things had aparently ended their negotiations and fled the scene, with a human-sized packaged in tow. Eddie overheard a few words of their parting conversation, in which the spider things mentioned "the deal has been struck..."

The party became very interested in these spider-things and chased them down, leaving the mansion behind. Two spider warriors drew weapons and guarded their master's retreat, while the other two attached their webbing to the cliffside and lept, swinging down towards their eerie ship on their web strands, with their cocooned prisoner in tow.

Being the foolhardy... er, brave swashbuckling types, Dramen and Gleb' did a little cliff diving to the harbor 60 feet below in an attempt to catch the spider-things. In the meantime Joshua, Kryn, Eddie, and Arreanwyn engaged the spider-warriors.

The spider-things reached the docks down below and scurried across a bridge of webbing that led to their ship. Dramen cut the webbing, nearly spilling the two spider-things (and their cocooned victim) into the water. Gleb' jumped up and grabbed the cocooned package, and Dramen tried to help by grasping his leg, but the added wieght only caused Gleb' to lose his grasp and slip off. Dramen and Gleb' managed to slay one of the spider things before two more warriors came over the side and blunted their advances. They spider-things retreived their package and loosed the web, and their boat sailed out to sea.

On the top of the cliff, the onslaught of our 4 remaining hero incapacitated one spider-warrior. The other one retreated, and swung down to the spider-things depating boat on a line of webbing.

Below, though all had seemed lost, Dramen and Gleb' noticed that there was another cocooned victim dangling from the web that had led to the ship earlier. They cut the web cocoon open and it revealed a young elf maid. She was alive, and was brought to consciousness. She gave her name as Gliolindë.

The party had enough of this and regrouped on the west side of the isle, where they met with some priests of Salaya who hired a small ship expecting to pick up escaped slaves. They were rather dissapointed to see that the party only returned with one freed slave.

On quizzing one of the older priests about the spider-things, Arreanwyn learned that they are called the shilek, and are a race of reclusive slave-keeping creatures that have the ability to transfix and dominate creatures with their stare. Apparently, Anavir had struck a deal allowing him to keep excess slaves off shore, selling some off to the despicable shilek.

Gliolindë's Tale

Gliolindë says that she was a handmaiden of Elvylith Grayhawk, the younger sister of the crown prince of the deposed royal family of Lerendian isles, Robert Grayhawk. When the coup went down, Gliolindë and Elvylith fled in a boat piloted by some of the Grayhawks' Bloodguard, but the boat was captured and the present Bloodguard were slain.

Their captor, a pirate queen working with the rebelling autocrats who called herself Shaleen, had mercy on her and her lady. Instead of slaying them outright (as she was apparently instructed to do), she handed the princess and her handmaid over to the Count Anavir's house as slaves for safekeeping. The count apparently felt they were getting a little "hot" and traded them off to the shilek along with their latest shipment of slaves.

(DM's hint and enticement: As short as it is, there are LOADS of implications within Gliolindë's tale. Any player who can come up with most or all of the implications may earn themselves a handy "paying attention, and clever to boot" experience point bonus next adventure. There are campaign mysteries several YEARS old that could be uncovered here by an astute detective. )

A Night on the Town

Gliolindë's Tale

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