An hour before dawn our heroines, Loris, Alya, and Agnes began walking down to meet Captain Xershian at his ship. The left the lavish inn, the Silver Sea-Serpent on the highest hill in Schooner Bay and descended toward the docks. They made a quick stop at the Rusty Spur Stables to catch up with Louverne. Then continued on to the other best known inn in town: Braylor’s Boathouse. As they came into view of the crooked old ramshackle building they caught the eye of a “Wallace”, the first mate, who retrieved Xershain from the inn.
The company continued down the piers out toward one of the larger ships in the common port. “The Codfish” showed it’s peeling paint and it’s bright green and blue flag with an emblem of a fish breathing fire. But what caught the attention of the travelers was the 5 crew-members already lined up on the ship’s deck. A tall, greying Pelican-like Aarakocra named Sam wearing nothing but a red vest, a HUGE muscular man with a broad belly who responded to “Tubs” or “Billy”, a very stout, well armored dwarven woman named Fern Firebeard, Keljor, a thin, shifty, elf with a cloak and a bow and finally Kerzha, a tall, strong woman with greyish features, flowing hair, and an spidery scar running from her neck to shoulder.
Over the next few hours the crew sailed toward the volcano island in the distance. As they approached Captain Xershain reviewed the “plan”. Sam, would create a distraction on the close side of the island while the ship sailed around behind the island and dropped off a party to attempt to get any evidence that they could find that might link some benefactor to the cult. “We need evidence!” he reminded the group.
Sam flew away with two bags of gunpowder to create the distraction while Xershain summoned a huge fog-bank to cover the ship’s approach.
Finally, in place at the cove on the South side of the island, the party departed in a large rowboat just as two explosions rocked the far side of the island.
Our group landed in a large, open, moist cave/cove and had just started to investigate. Keljor found a fancy gold and brass mirror covered in weather motifs along with a few Green labeled potions of health. Fern found boxes full of cultist cloaks and a very nice pair of leather sandals with Dwarven runes on each of them. Loris found 35GP and a beautiful opal necklace. Ayla collected three Red labeled Potions of health. Kerzha licked just a little bit of the sickening black ichor and discovered a beautiful purple and pink envelope. Just as the group had begun digging through crates and supplies when two cultists and an odd snake-person suddenly stepped into the room! The party rapidly searched the crates few a couple more seconds as the cultists forced the head of the snake person into a slimy black ichor that ran down two evil-looking idols on either side of a large set of doors.
Within a second or two the screaming Snake-person burst into a swarm of tentacles that ripped it’s body apart into several dead husks and a few small living snakes that wriggled away.
The cultists each drank from the ichor and began horrible mutations as well. One turned into an enormous shark and began hurling cannonballs and the other turned into a massive UmberHulk, an insectoid that looked like a cross between a boulder and a crab.
These two engaged the heroes in an epic fight, and just as they began to weaken their cultist allies began to join the fight, from above, and very soon from the path beyond. Our heroes chose to take what they had and escape in their row-boat. They returned to the ship and began to sail away but they could hear the cult leader, the “Mouth of Xexil”, echoing behind them “You sail into the mouth of doom! The water is Her Domain!” And a foreboding ripple was felt in the ocean. All chase ceased, and the Codfish sailed away at full speed.
The heroes took a few minutes to catch their breath and share what they had seen and heard with Captain Xershian. He allowed everyone to keep whatever they had found but he did take the coded letter from Ayla.
The crew-member “Sam” hasn’t returned from his distraction mission.
Beware the Murder