Argua - Half-Orc Barbarian (271 points)
Masha Deathfoot - Human Martial Artist (265 points)
Puddin' Noddington - Gnome Thief (299 points)
Mahk Strawngmussle - Human Labourer (72 points)
Uncle Ruckus - Human Wizard (250 points)
NPCs:
AA Ron Rogers - Human Agent (??? points)
Avandry 1st-19th 2546, Isserno
The party placed some orders for gear and hung out in and around town; Archer was forced to hire a henchman because shopkeepers kept kicking her out, and got extremely ripped off when AA Ron Rogers, Agent extraordinaire, rolled negative on his Loyalty. Masha got a Cloak of Blur from the displacer beast pelts she brought back, and picked up the Amulet of Haste that she'd commissioned about a month ago.
Argua headed back to the now rebuilt Shadowmantle Manor to find that a small village had sprung up. Having no ties to the Shadowmantle name, she renamed it Ashina, and paid more money to expand the village and erect a small keep to guard the lands. Cost of living is $0 in a domain that PC controls, so Argua stayed around Ashina and made sure that new heraldry was made up: a great axe on a field of ... leopard print.
Puddin' went back to Brunnhilda Bronzespire to find out more specifics about the contracts they'd have to make to get to the Swordfish Islands. A week later, she was told that they'd be indebted to the Martel Company for $10k each, and would have to pay it off before being brought back to the mainland. Apparently, several people had made it back with vast riches, but it wasn't clear if they were genuine or just Martel plants.
The party stowed most of their money at Ashina Manor, taking "only" $5k each for their journey; there was some discussion about storing it in a bank, but they figured there wouldn't be any branches in the remote island chain they were going to. They decided to bring Mahk, despite the extra cost, because he's bit better than a base Labourer.
Avandry 20th-22nd 2546, The Star of Elysium
The party booked passage aboard the Star of Elysium, an Elven merchant ship, to the free city of Trugo, where the Martel Company were recruiting for their expeditions. Much to the players' surprise, there were no sea monster attacks, though the seas were very rough, and Masha got badly seasick, leaving her down 1FP.
Avandry 23rd 2546, Trugo
Trugo was a giant slum built on a hill, with mud streets running down into the bay, where shakily-constructed wooden buildings on stilts stood above the ruins of their predecessors. Further down the docks, a large crowd was assembled around a ship with yellow sails. The party decided to check out the adventurer's guildhall, but found it closed. They went to the Bottomfeeder, a seedy tavern near the docks, found it mostly empty, and asked the bartender what was up with the Martel Company.
He responded that they'd been showing up for a couple days every two weeks or so, and that lots of people were trying to get aboard, which required bribing your way on board. Part of the crowd was the adventurer's guild protesting that their monopoly was being broken, but the only other powerful factions in Trugo were other merchants, and none wanted to self-regulate. When questioned about people returning, he said that some woman had come in with a pouch full of gold.
They headed back to the crowd on the docks, and Puddin' asked the adventurer's guilders what their plan was. A halfling, who was apparently one of the leaders, loudly launched into a speech about how, if everyone boycotted the Martels, then eventually they'd have to go through the proper channels, and give up their exploitative measures like the debt contracts! After all, the guild just wanted what was best for adventurers!
Argua was swayed to their cause (though not enough to actually boycott the Martels), but the rest of the party ignored them, and continued on into the crowd, Argua and Mahk pushing through. A ring of guards with yellow-painted pauldrons held back the roaring crowd from rushing the gangplanks and the yellow-clothed man standing on a stack of crates, who was auctioning off the last 15 places on the ship.
A swashbuckler-looking type apparently won a bid and was let past the guards and to the auctioneer, where he signed a contract and coins changed hands. Puddin' bribed the party's way past a guard for $100, and they made their way up to the auctioneer, just as a heavily-armoured knight apparently won a bid for $1,000. While Puddin' bribed the auctioneer, Argua started pressuring the other party members to take a blood oath to sabotage the Martel Company so that the Adventurer's Guild could take over.
The party each bribed the auctioneer, signed a contract (which nobody was able to parse), and received a metal token engraved with a swordfish in return. They walked up the gangplank onto the Eyecatcher to find several adventurers as well as a bunch more yellow-pauldroned guards and a yellow-robed man eyeing everybody as they boarded. Several more filtered on board; the first five or so seemed to be actual proper adventurers, but the rest looked far more desperate and poorly equipped.
Once the last of the "adventurers" had boarded, the guards and auctioneer retreated aboard, keeping the crowd from rushing on, and the Eyecatcher pushed out into the harbour. The auctioneer welcomed the crew aboard and explained the terms of the contract in case some had been unable to read them: they were now indebted to the Martel Company for the sum of $10,000, and they would need to pay that off before leaving the Swordfish Islands.
He also explained that at some point during their transition through the Bonestorm, everybody would have to head below deck, for their own personal safety. Argua asked if there was a bar an board, was told that she could buy all the rum she could drink from the Martel Company, and they set sail.
Avandry 24th-38th 2546, The Eyecatcher
The long journey was fairly uneventful. Puddin' hid from Argua to keep from having to fulfil the blood oath which she had agreed to. Ruckus noted that the yellow-robed man was clearly a wizard, who was casting Wind to speed the ship along. Argua aggressively flirted at a silent man (with default Sex Appeal) who never removed his heavy plate armour; despite his silence, he seemed to be receptive to her advances. Archer used her compass to note that they were going northwest-ish.
As they neared the Bonestorm, visible only as a dark wall on the horizon, the weather got gradually worse until the party were all rendered immobile from seasickness, and miserably stuck to their tattered bunks below decks. Once they were closer, they heard the sound of hundreds of knucklebones hitting the ship from all sides, and the sea got choppier still until, with three great heaves, they were through, and the weather suddenly calmed.
Avandry 39th 2546, The Swordfish Islands
On the other side of the Bonestorm it was smooth sailing, though the dark wall of clouds still loomed behind them, and the party returned above deck as they approached a chain of tropical islands. Off to starboard, a group of monkeys swung through mangrove trees and howled at the Eyecatcher, and were answered by a far louder roar from further inland. The Eyecatcher stuck to the coast of this island, and slowly a second came into view, across a narrow channel, with some pale stone ruins far to the left and a looming volcano deep into the jungle. Basalt cliffs protected the rest of the visible coast.
Shortly, they arrived at a secluded bay which housed a walled tent city, with four stone buildings further inland, right beside the wall. The only other permanent structure was a garishly-painted, three-story wooden building that looked to have been built around an enormous ribcage. The party were welcomed to Rand's Retreat, and disembarked. Argua told her "boyfriend" where she'd be camping if he needed "some lovin'".
They were greeted on the shore by a far more sloppily-organized group of Martel mercenaries, who gave them a brief orientation. The island across the channel, known as Hot Springs Island, was where the Company was focusing their resources; their researcher, Mungo Swampstone, was looking for certain plant and animal samples, and regularly posted work on the board near his lab. He also sold copies of his research notes on certain things that had already been discovered. Boats left for Hot Springs every two days, and would take a 10% cut of their haul on return. Masha asked if they were in immediate danger, and one of the mercs replied that they weren't, so long as the wall held.
The mercs told them about the buildings at the back: there was Mungo's lab, the company store (which also recharged power items), a small temple to Avandra, and the Martel Company Field HQ, sporting the large insignia of a yellow swordfish. The tent-dwellers looked on hungrily as the party walked through their midst before Puddin' asked after Rand's Place, where they were supposed to meet their contact, and was informed that it was the big building made out of "monkey bones".
The party headed to the giant pirate tavern, and, after spending $10 for the privilege, were told that Old Will was out back with the pigs. Argua woke up their contact, an old, tanned human in tattered yellow robes, by throwing a bucket of water at his head, and Will woke up, cursing them out until they told him that Brunnhilda had sent them. At that, he regained his composure and told them that he knew where the rod was, but would need them to get some things from Hot Springs Island first. They'd have to track down:
- A live blue poison dart frog.
- The heart of a "crystalback wydarr".
- One of the "magical whale bones" that the ogres use.
Alternatively, they could bring him a live golden kujibird; they were extinct elsewhere in the world, but might have survived here, shielded by the Bonestorm. Puddin' asked him about the island they were on, and found out that it was populated mainly by 40-foot gorillas, but it was still safer here than on Hot Springs, so long as you stayed inside the wall. Will deflected further questions about what he was doing here were shot down, and told them that next time they came looking he'd hopefully be inside Rand's Place before staggering back inside.
The party went off to Mungo's lab to take a look at the bounty board and what notes were available for purchase. Apparently there were some humanoid factions on Hot Springs; the Night Axe, Fuegonauts, and Nereids. Puddin' bought a map of Hot Springs, some notes on poison dart frogs to better hunt down the one they needed, a briefing on the Night Axe ogre tribe, as they'd need to steal a magic bone from them, a list of which factions valued which parts, and what currency they used, and finally, notes on a few weird creatures they'd never heard of.
The next boat to Hot Springs wouldn't leave until tomorrow, so the party got settled. Puddin' thought up ways to avoid paying the 10% return fee (especially on the money they'd brought with them), while Argua workshopped ideas of how best to overthrow the Martel Company. They did some asking around about why people weren't adventuring on this island, and found out that, in addition to Hot Springs being chock full of gold, the Martels discouraged people riling up the locals (that is, the giant gorillas), as that usually resulted in damage to the wall and their buildings (and, you know, death).
More precise knowledge about the gorillas seemed unreliable; as many people claimed they were just big gorillas as had outlandish stories of shapeshifted druids, hive-minded alien beings that just looked like gorillas, or magic guardians with laser eyes set here by the ancient elves to help visitors. They tried to track down one more rumour, and found that there were a bunch of elvish ruins, which were where all the money was, and also that if you stayed in them too long, your eyes started to reflect non-existant flame.
Notes:
When it comes time to head back to the mainland, I'm just going to have the players pay for 7 people (6 PCs + Mahk) regardless of who's actually there.
The company store is a total ripoff by design; everything costs double.
For this adventure only, I'm actually going to require (simplified) food tracking. Just per day, and if they run out, there's plenty of food to be foraged on the islands.
The channel between Rand's Retreat and Hot Springs Island is about 20km wide. Archer might be able to build some sort of improvised boat with Survival (though she has the wrong specialty), but nobody has Boating, though Archer or Argua might pick it up.
This being a tropical setting, people are going to have to make daily HT rolls or be down FP.
0XP because nothing adventure-y happened.
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