LogFate of Souls-Jason-4

Game log for the 2018/02/11 session of Fate of Souls, as taken by Jason

We've reached a deserted island and beached the ship. It's a tropical island, lush with vegetation, with a spring. As far as we know, there's no civilization o n this wee plot of land. It's not a huge island - from the top of its central peak, one can easily see all around. There's only a narrow passage that leads to the beach, and it requires some skill to steer Omdurman through the gap.

Weyden jumps overboard in full armor, sinks up to his shins in wet sand, and is immediately dripping with sweat. The beach is not wide and the careened ship pretty much occupies it. Piro starts building a fire. Börk leads Weyden, Ham, and a few others to the fresh water.

When Piro tries to divine the future, she sees darkness, like she's in a tunnel.

It's a hell of a trek up to the spring. They encounter howler monkeys, and by halfway up the hill, Weyden is really feeling the weight of that armor. He's dehyrated. Also, everyone is covered in bugs. There's no evidence of people. The pool of the spring is a greenish color. Ham hears a weird sound- kind of a low whistling, intermittent. There's a spot with a cliff, where he can see forever, with a gorgeous view. In between the reef and the island, there's deep and sheltered water, and that space is full of sharks. At the top of the island - and I mean the very top - there's an enormous tree, Yggdrasil-style. Ham climbs it. The howler monkeys do not favor his efforts. There's a bird's nest up there, with fist-sized eggs. From the top, he can see everything. Way off on the horizon, a couple ships move about, but he can see they're not on course for the island. He can also see that if he goes to the side of the island away from the beach, he could only cover maybe sixty feet before reaching a cliff. From the top of the tree, Ham can no longer hear the low whistling noise. When they return to the spring, one of their amphorae is missing. Ham sees that the depression in the mud left by one of the missing amphorae is cloudy, but there are no tracks leading away. Whatever took them came out of the water or the air. There does seem to be a cave in the middle pool. For now, they all agree to live with their reduced complement of jars.

Back at the beach, they use Piro's fire to boil the water. Weyden removes his armor and lays in the shade to recover. They tell everyone about the missing jug. Overnight, some of the crew sleep in a large tent, and others set up hammocks. Overnight, one of the sentries (Teznith goes missing. When the next watchman wakes up on his own, he alerts Bartleby, and the captain wakes up the rest of the party. Piro looks into the fire to scry Teznith's whereabouts, and she has trouble breathing. She starts to panic a little, and then she sees a human skull, looking up, and then she can breath again. Bartleby theorizes that her experience represents finding an underwater cave with air. Ham find a trail showing where something got dragged through the jungle, leading more or less to the pool. There are non-human footprints, sort of frog-looking. Hirazoth recognizes them as the semi-mythical creatures called The Promised, who have exchanged their souls / lives / sanity to the gods in exchange for immortality. Each of the five gods has their own variety of Promised, and those belonging to Tintenwal have distinctive features. The wizard alerts the rest of the party.

Sure enough, the trail leads back to the pool. We briefly discuss ways Hirazoth could try to help get to or through the cave, but Hirazoth warns them that wind strong enough to move any appreciable volume of water would be a risk to everyone around. Toth pipes up and mentions that he can't swim. Bartleby finally decides to go himself, but Ham decides he wants to go after their missing man, because he has a code about letting people go missing. We tie a rope around him and agree on some basic tug-based signals, give him an oilskin-wrapped torch, and send him into the pool. The tunnel behind the falls isn't entirely submerged at first, but the roof gets gradually lower until he's going to have to go fully submerged. He has to feel his way along, getting more and more nervous, and then he puts his hand on a human skull. He pushes up and comes up into a pocket of air, just like in Piro's vision. He keeps going, comes to a new cave where he hears a low wub-wub-wub sound, and gives the signal to get pulled back.

He comes back up and he's in fine shape. Bartleby suggests sending a couple people this time, and those two can pull the rope through, creating a guide line for everyone else. Ham and Weyden go first, and when they get there, they hear, very close by, someone saying something in an unknown dialect. It's dark but it seems like the voice is close by. Weyden starts lighting a torch. A rock about an inch wide bounces off the Purgator's helmet, and the thing out there begins making more noise. They hear a loud splash, and then something moves past Ham's leg. He gets out of the pool, but slips and falls back in. Something tries to stab him, but even in the water, Ham's considerable experience in hand-to-hand fighting makes the difference. He blocks an incoming stab and then thinks he feels something moving away. Weyden gets the torch lit and sees a thing coming at him in the water. He dodges its spear and drives it back with his hammer.

Ham sees that there's an island of sorts in the pool, and a larger section of the cavern with a proper floor. Bartleby fees the rope moving fast and heads into the cave with it. Ham once again drives off whatever's attacking him. Bartleby rushes through the tunnel, bypassing the air pocket and heading straight into the fray. He sees Weyden looking for the thing in the water, which is just enough of a warning for him to push the creature's attack aside. He moves to stand at Weyden's side. Ham ties the rope off to a big rock.

Piro moves to follow Bartleby, but Börk beats her to it, while Toth tells her it's not safe. Hirazoth follows Börk while Piro has her argument, which ends with a bit of misdirection. Hirazoth is just about to head into the water when Börk comes back, sputtering that it's too far. Piro squeaks past both of them, and with help from the rope, pulls herself through.

The creature stabs Weyden, but its spear clangs harmlessly off his armor. Ham's opponent drives him back with a flurry of stab attempts. Piro arrives and tries to sneak up on Ham's attacker. Meanwhile, Hirazoth nearly drowns before he remembers the skull, feels his way to the air pocket, and surfaces just in time to see something sneaking around, maybe to attack Weyden. He calls out to Weyden to warn him. Weyden turns just in time to see... Piro, though there's something behind her.

Weyden pushes past Piro and hammers the fish-thing behind her, crushing its head in a spray of ichor. She tries to get out of the water but can't find the traction in the dim light. Ham drives his back, although he can't quite get past its guard. It tries to push back but they seem to be evenly matched. Bartleby lights his torch off of Weyden's, which gives it adequate illumination. Hirazoth clambers out of the water, with much flailing.

Weyden pulls Piro out of the water by her collar, with her active cooperation, and that lands her upright on the ground. Ham continues his battle with a fish-thing, and it checks out of the fight. (For now.) We gather our breath.

As Hirazoth gets to his hands and knees, a dart hits him in the ass. He shouts out. In the distance, Ham hears a human scream. We all head off the beach. Hirazoth finds that his ass-dart was barbed. He's most likely been poisoned. Since we're hurrying to rescue Teznith, Weyden takes point, trusting his armor, but the close confines of the tunnel slow him down. When he emerges from the tunnel, he's confronted by three Promised with spears, attacking him. They're no match for his armor. Ham comes out behind Weyden and tries to skewer one of the Promised, but the little bastard's too quick for him. When the creature counterattacks, Ham slashes low and knocks it down.

Weyden shows the creatures his Purgator's mark while trying to hammer one, and they flee. In fact, some of the others that were further down the tunnel flee. There's a dim light up ahead. We move forward, with the Captain calling out for Teznith. Eventually we see light ahead, which turns out to be an open area, lit by globes full of glowing algae or crap. There's an altar of sorts that looks like a well, with a griddle over it. Teznith is strapped to the grill, with a stab wound bleeding into the well. He doesn't look to be alive. There are frogmen around, including one that looks to be their shaman. He calls out something in their heathen gibberish, and gestures, as if telling them to attack us. Piro notices two other tunnels out of this chamber. Bartleby yells for Hirazoth to shoot the shaman.

Ham leaps into the fray and presses the frogbeasts back. Piro throws her dagger at the shaman but misses. Hirazoth whistles up a wind to help his future endeavors, but he's too woozy to control it. Weyden takes on a couple of these frog-bastards and forces them apart, though he isn't able to take either out. They regroup before they attack him.

Ham attacks again but his two opponents are too quick for him to hit. Piro throws a rock at one of Ham's foes and beans it in the head. Hirazoth throws another rock and his the frog-shaman, calling out prayers to Sylthalar. Weyden's two foes are small, and quick, and he can't ever get a good swing going, because he keeps having to parry.

Ham can't quite connect but he's driving his opponents back hard. Weyden's attackers can't get nothing done. Bartleby's opponent got carried away and charged him, and then loses his nerve when he sees he's alone. Bartleby's counterattack goes nowhere, sadly.

Ham's opponents were already off balance, and that means that their defence crumbles. He takes them both out. Dead fish people smell like figh guts. Piro gets in on the "throwing rocks at the shaman" action but misses. Hirazoth throws another rock but misses entirely. Weyden's pushing his foes back but can't connect. A dart goes whistling past Piro's head. She screams. The froggies attack Weyden, but in order to get this fight ended and protect Piro, he trusts his armor and attack them right back, crushing them both in exchange for some bruises. Bartleby's attacker is joined by another creature.

Ham moves to attack some more froggies, but they're quick enough that he can't really do anything to them. Piro hits a Promised with a rock and makes it drop his blowgun. Hirazoth misses the shaman with another rock. Weyden's attackers can't hurt him, but Ham kills one of the Promised fighting him. Bartleby gives ground against his opponent, then turns the tables and draws blood from one of them. Weyden moves to support Bartleby and absolutely destroys one of them.

Ham presses his foe but can't hit him. Piro hits the shaman with a rock, and he stops capering to hiss at her. Hirazoth also throws a rock, but he's too woozy to be accurate. Weyden moves toward the shaman, shouldering Promised aside to do so. A frog-thing ducks under Ham's guard and claws him inside the thigh. Bartleby's attacker isn't quick enough to get through the Captain's guard. One tries to get between Weyden and the shaman but gets brushed aside. Hirazoth gets shot with a dart. Bartleby kills another Promised.

Ham keeps the pressure on and this time, he's completely lethal. Piro tosses another rock at the shaman but misses. Hirazoth throws a rock at the shaman, but he tries to hard to get a good throw and trips over his own feet. Weyden gets to hand-to-hand with the shaman and knocks the wind out of him, but can't knock him down. That's when he hears that there's something in the well. The shaman tries to run but Weyden's right there and hammers him flat. The other frogmen scatter. One of the rear guard blows a dart at Ham, but he dodges.

Bartleby goes to cut Teznith loose just as a tentacle comes up to pull the body down. He hacks at it, and it spits black goo. Weyden throws the shaman's body down in there. As he does, another tentacle comes out of the well and begins feeling around. Bartleby hits it with a torch, causing it to recoil into the well, and then goes to reclaim the body, with Weyden's help. The tentacle comes back up and grabs a dead frog-thing's body, and then, judging from the noises, eats it.

Weyden searches for Soulstones and finds two soul stones, set into the wall, surrounded by runes. Hirazoth recognizes it as a lemma, for tracking the movement of the sun, and notices that there's a hole in the wall on the opposite side whence sunlight could come through. Hirazoth also mentions he's been poisoned. Ham takes an obsidian dagger as a souvenir. Weyden takes the stones from the lemma. Then we leave. On the way out, we notice the walls have some spots where attackers might lie in wait, and then there's a spot that we don't notice until someone blows a dart at Weyden. Now he's poisoned too!

Bartleby unties the rope from the rope and ties it to Teznith, and then tugs the rope for Toth and Börk to reel us in. Most of us do fine, but Piro looses her nerve and breathes some water before she surfaces. When Teznith's body comes out, there's a Promised attached to it. He vanishes back into the water before anyone can land a blow on him. We return to the ship without incident.

Piro tries to divine our best means of defense, and sees one fire becoming many. Callow tries leaches on the dart wounds that Weyden and Hirazoth received, but the leeches won't suck. He finds other treatments for them, though not before joshing Hirazoth that someone will need to suck the poison out of his as. Hirazoth, having no sense of humor, uses the wind to make that that the next time Callow farts, the stench goes nowhere. Anyway...

The crew rings the camp with fires and keeps a close watch overnight. We hear their noises overnight, and one sailor gets hit with a dart, but nobody sees one. Once the sun is properly up, the noises stop. Hirazoth summons a wind to keep the smoke from the watchfires from getting high enough for a ship to see it, but as a result, the jungle gets thick with smoke.

Ham goes looking for a better way to get at the fishmen, accompanied by Weyden, Hirazoth, and Toth.

At the ship, Piro can sense that she's being watched, but she's pretty sure they aren't watching from within blowgun range.

Ham realizes that the weird noise he keeps hearing comes and goes with the wind. It turns out to be wind blowing over a cave entrance. We decide to build up a large fire at the entrance, then blow smoke and embers down it. A brief squall wets down the leaves, but we use olive oil to make things good and smoky, and then Hirazoth goes into his thing and creates an immense wind that blows straight down the tunnel. The smoke begins coming up again from another whole, about a hundred yards away. Ham and Weyden go to cover the exit hole while Toth and Hirazoth tend the fire. Weyden builds a lattice of branches and leaves to reduce airflow out of the tunnel, and that's got to be making it unpleasant down there. We don't hear any noises from down in the tunnel, but we keep the smoke flowing in there all day.

The sailors finish the repairs on the hull that day, allowing us to float it again before nightfall. Sadly, there's no place to anchor that's out of shot from the ground, so we'll have to put out to see.

Weyden and Toth have conceived a serious hate for these Promised and want to go into the caves again after them. Piro tries to look into the fire to see what might happen, but all she sees is a long, smooth, dark tunnel, like maybe a well. It doesn't feel like a good thing.

Bartleby tries to talk Weyden out of taking the time to deal with the frog-men. Weyden's willing to pass it up if the Captain will swear to return and deal with them, which Bartleby is happy to do. On the way out through the narrow passage, he has sailors write warnings on the rock walls on either side, so any other ships that anchor here will know what to expect. On the way out, we almost lose a match to vegetation, but we rush the crew to the other side of the ship, which tilts the mast and eases it by.

Bartleby allows the crew to rest now that we're in deep water. While everyone else sleeps, Weyden and Toth cages the soulstones we stole from the Promised. On the downside, word gets around the ship that the Sealers just lost them the bounty from two stones. Piro takes the caged stones for herself.