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[RichGreen]

Sunday 4th June

The mission to bring back the runaway slaves gets underway, with Bloody Mary, Rodrigo, Merritt and William heading inland from Santo Domingo. They pass through miles of sugar plantations before reaching the edge of the jungle at midday, with William and Merritt using their tracking skills to work out where the slaves went.

After a couple of hours of slogging through the jungle in the heat, the pirates decide to stop for a rest. Just as they do so, Merritt catches sight of something metal glinting in the sunlight: a rapier with an eagle-headed hilt is sticking out of the ground. As he goes to investigate, he discovers the mangled remains of two Spanish soldiers in the undergrowth. While some of the others move up to take a look, Rodrigo, at the rear of the group, is pounced on by a giant jaguar with six legs and two large tentacles growing from its shoulder. A desperate fight against the jaguar takes place: the beast lands many savage blows with its tentacles and bite on the party, but is itself very hard to hit, appearing to be somewhere slightly different than where it actually is. Bloody Mary and Rodrigo go down first, followed by Merritt and William…..


A few days (?) later, the former men (and women) of the Fortune come round: Bloody Mary has another hideous scar, this one on her neck [loses a life], and Merritt has lost an eye. Even worse, Rodrigo and William have both lost an arm to the jaguar! Merritt attends to their wounds to make sure they are cauterized and not infected: he does well, despite his lack of depth perception. With no real alternative, they decide to press on and find the slaves.

After an hour or so of walking through the jungle, the pirates come to a small river. Merritt and William are both worried about piranhas, but the Captain steps into the shallow stream and just wades ahead, using a stick and a weird dance routine to make sure she isn’t going to fall into a hole. Although this looks daft, she gets across safely. Merritt and William follow and are attacked by a swarm of piranhas! They do, however, manage to get to the other side with just a few minor wounds. Rodrigo is last to go: he takes a run up and spectacularly leaps the 20’ stream in a single bound.

Beyond the stream, the jungle gets thicker and the trail easier to follow, as the slaves started hacking their way through. The pirates emerge in a clearing with a depression straight ahead, crossed by a fallen tree. Rodrigo tries to jump on to the tree, slips, and falls down into the depression beneath. William and Merritt walk down into the dip, up the other side, and across to where there is a trail leaving the clearing. The captain decides to go round the outside of the clearing, through the undergrowth. Unfortunately, she is attacked by a large humanoid plant creature with nasty-looking spikes protruding from its body. Bloody Mary shoots at it, but her bullet has little effect; she decides a hasty retreat would be a good idea. The others resist being entangled by the undergrowth which has been animated by the plant monster, and move out of the clearing and down the path into the jungle. The creature hits the captain again, hard, but she manages to get out of its immediate vicinity and uses one of Madame Laveau’s concoctions to heal her wounds.

The trail throught the foliage leads into another clearing, this one is dominated by an enormous black monolith, a jagged shard of crystal 12 feet tall. As well as the footprints of the slaves, William and Merritt spot small webbed footprints. There is some speculation that these are from ducks, but this seems unlikely. As the pirates look around, thorns erupt from Bloody Mary’s face, causing her terrible pain and shocking the others!

Pressing on, the party enter another clearing with a large boulder shaped liked a coiled snake in its centre; yellow flowers and moss grow in the cracks between its coils. From here, they reach a bigger clearing, now home to about sixty slaves. The slaves are wary of the one-armed, battle-scarred pirates at first, but Merritt talks to them reassuringly and shows them Father Jeremy’s token. He explains that they are here to help and will draw Cuauhtemoc away from their homes. The slaves agree to return to Santo Domingo with the pirates, but suggest that they talk to the frog people about a safer route back to the coast.