ADVENTURE 1: DOWN UNDER
PC Roster:
Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 1
Brendan Conaill, human monk 1
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 1
Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 1
NPC Roster:
Hoppy, mongrelfolk adept 1
Manta Surfwader, halfling ranger 1
Game Session Date: 19 July 2025
- - -
It was late afternoon in Port Duralia, although due to the extremely dark clouds that had suddenly rolled in, it seemed almost as dark as twilight. The weather didn't bother Shiroko, though: she was glad to see land once again in sight, after a month or more at sea. The halfling vessel, a massive barge towed by a pair of baleen whales, had transported a load of goods from Shiroko's homeland of Sokoku, a small island nation only recently opened up to trade with the outside world. The barge's arrival in Sokoku had been a timely one, as the young wu jen desperately needed to flee from the bestial attentions of
Lord Tajūkan, a local ruler with a taste for those of an animalistic nature. Shiroko, a snow fox hengeyokai, had attracted his attention and it was all the young woman could do to escape him and his small army of retainers. She knew staying in Sokoku would only eventually see herself caught up in his clutches, so she took the first opportunity to leave everything she knew behind.
But now, her new life in a new land was about to begin. The halfling deckhand, a ranger named
Manta Surfwader, was rowing at a steady beat, drawing the two-person rowboat past the massive towers protecting the harbor from attack - the pillars rose up from the sea floor in a gentle arc, and each had barriers that could drop in place to prevent larger boats from making it to shore. But a small rowboat was no problem, and Shiroko sat in the back of the small vessel, admiring Manta's rhythmic movements as he broke through the waves towards shore.
But then, in a single moment, everything went from tranquil to chaotic. A pair of scaled hands rose up from the side of the boat and clamped down upon the top of its starboard side, while someone else pushed up from below the port side at the same time. Just that quickly, Shiroko and Manta were tossed over the side of the boat to splash into the cold waters of the bay.
Having fled her homeland with much haste, Shiroko didn't have much in the way of belongings with her: her tube containing her spell-scrolls (which she hoped was as watertight as she had been led to believe, but had never actually tested for herself), the umbrella she carried with her at all times, and a backpack with a few sets of spare clothes. She ended up beneath the water hanging onto her umbrella with one hand; it had trapped a bunch of air beneath it and as a result was keeping her afloat near the top of the water, whereas Manta had dropped to 10 or 15 feet below her before kicking back up towards the surface. But Shiroko, whose visual acuity was much greater than that of a halfling, was the first to make out what had toppled them from their craft: a pair of reptilian humanoids with sloping brows and a fin running down their spines like that of a fish: sahuagin, the feared sea devils of the deep!
Still holding her umbrella with one hand, Shiroko kicked away from the nearest sahuagin, trying to put some distance between them. But it was a much better swimmer than she was, and with a few strong kicks and a swish of its tail it had caught up to her, slashing at her with a set of claws. Blood pooled from the claw marks scoring along her abdomen; below her, she could see the other sahuagin attacking Manta in a similar manner, but the halfling - a trained sailor having spent most of his adult life on board seagoing vessels, managed to dart away from the attack at the last moment.
Desperately reviewing her currently prepared spell selection, Shiroko kicked away as best she could and cast an
animate water spell, channeling a bit of extra power into it to
extend the spell's duration for as long as she was able. The water between Shiroko and the sahuagin bubbled and came to life, taking on a vaguely humanoid form and slamming a gout of water at the reptilian foe. But the sahuagin merely ducked under this unexpected resistance, swam beneath it, and approached Shiroko from the side - this time with a sharp, thin needle of some sort in its hand. The needle stabbed into the side of the hengeyokai's neck, causing the world around her to go black. As she went limp, the sahuagin gathered her up in a net, then spent a moment or two figuring out the working of the umbrella (it had never seen such an unusual device; perhaps it was valuable?), and tucking it in with its unconscious captive. Not too far away, the other sahuagin had likewise dealt with Manta and was gathering the limp ranger up in its own net. Then the two turned away from the bay and fled to deeper waters, leaving the rowboat floating upside-down upon the waves.
Up in the dockyards, Brendan Conaill sat on a crate and waited for his contact from the Silent Sodality, a weird little guy named Kruz Taszan. He'd worked with Kruz on a couple of jobs before, when some extra muscle had been needed. Brendan wasn't a full member of the Silent Sodality, just someone they sought out from time to time when they thought he'd be useful. He didn't have the skills of a thief - and let's face it, the Silent Sodality was nothing more than a thieves guild, no matter the public face they tried to give their organization - but he'd grown up on the streets of Port Duralia and knew how to handle himself just fine.
A sudden scream shook Brendan from his reverie, and he looked up to see a weird sight indeed: dozens of fish-men rising up from the harbor waters and terrorizing the people nearby. As he watched, one gathered a screaming woman in a net, while a couple of others were heading in the young bruiser's direction. There were a few other people between him and the fish-men, though: a dockworker he knew as
Lugger Joe and some Sokokan kid he didn't remember seeing before. But he had the features of the spirit folk from that faraway land: the odd skin tone, the narrow eyes, and the big, round straw hat and the kimono were big giveaways.
As Brendan stood up and readied the wooden staff he carried as a weapon, Lugger Joe grabbed the kid and tossed him to the ground at the feet of the nearest approaching fish-man, then turned and high-tailed it out of there. He fled past Brendan (who had half a mind to trip him with his staff as he passed, just on general principles), but before he knew it he was in combat with another of these reptilian invaders. He lashed out with one end of his staff, clonking the sahuagin on the side of its scaly head, then dodged a swipe of the creature's claws. In his peripheral vision, he could see another of the fish-men gathering up the kid in a net and returning back to the ocean with him; the one he was fighting also carried a net and Brendan swore he wasn't doing down like that - not without a fight, in any case!
Brendan took a swipe of the creature's claws on the side of his arm, the attack leaving a row of bleeding, parallel grooves along his bicep. He got in another whack with his staff, then noticed the fish-man pull some sort of needle from a harness he wore around his waist - almost like a porcupine's quill. The reptilian foe stabbed at Brendan with it and he was unable to dodge in time, the needle stabbing him in the side of the chest and making the world go all woozy for a minute. But the young thug shook it off and continued his attacks. He was holding his own for a bit, too, until the sahuagin got in another stab with the needle or whatever and the world finally did start to go black. Before he passed out completely, though, he had the satisfaction of seeing Lugger Joe paralyzed in a net, being hauled back into the ocean by another sahuagin. Served the sucker right: if a decent guy like Brendan was being taken out, no way a feckless coward like Lugger Joe should make it through the attack unscathed....
People were running around in a panic on the docks, as sahuagin chased down victims for their nets. One young woman, a dark-haired human of twenty summers or so, had just purchased a fish from the dockside for her dinner when the sahuagin raids began; her heart hammered in her chest as she froze in panic, unsure of what to do. Finally, as one of the fish-men focused on her with a wide, sharklike grin filled with horrible, pointed teeth, she let pure instinct take over and she fled. But the sahuagin gave chase, seemingly pleased at having to chase down its fleeing victim, and it soon caught up with her, stabbing her in the neck with what the young woman, quite clinically, identified as the spine of a sea urchin. "No, please," she tried to say, but her voice was incoherent as her body froze up, entering a state of paralysis as the poisons worked their way through her system. She was already out when the sahuagin wrapped her up in his net and strolled proudly back towards the waves.
Kruz Taszan had been running late; he was supposed to meet that weird guy with the long mustache, Brendan something, who was a lot tougher than he looked; Hell, the guy didn't even wear shoes and his wardrobe allowed him to pass as a beggar, should he be so inclined, but he'd seen him take down two guys in leather armor wielding short swords with nothing more than that heavy stick he carried. But as the young rogue, wearing his own leather armor, ran towards the docks he was surprised to hear screams ahead. Sprinting out of an alleyway, he stopped short as he saw a fish-man wrapping an unresisting - possibly dead? - young woman up in a net. "Hey!" Kruz yelled, pulling the light crossbow from his back and placing a quarrel into its slot. But then he saw two more fish-men headed his way, and he was forced to shoot one of them to keep himself safe. The woman, it appeared, was on her own; he had to make sure he didn't follow in her wake!
Before Kruz could reload, the two sahuagin were upon him. One stabbed at him with a trident, which Kruz managed to dodge easily enough, but it had just been a ruse to distract him from the other one's attack, stabbing him with some sort of quill or spine. Kruz shook himself as the sahuagin removed the weapon, already feeling like he'd been poisoned but unwilling to fall sway to the venom before he'd taken at least one of these fishy goons out. He staggered backwards, pulling the knife from his boot and sending it flying at the sahuagin he'd struck with his quarrel. But it was getting harder to keep his vision clear, and before he could get another quarrel out and ready the sahuagin were upon him, one of them stabbing him with another spine. This time, the word went black and Kruz collapsed in a heap upon the streets of the dockyards.
Eventually, the sahuagin retreated back to the sea as quickly as they'd emerged, whether because they feared to stray too far away from their natural environment or because they'd already gotten a sufficient number of captives, nobody could say. By the time the city guard had arrived on the scene, there was no sign of the sahuagin raiders, save for the stories from those who seen the attack and lived to tell the tale.
- - -
Wakefulness came slowly, in bits and pieces.
Shiroko suddenly realized she was laying on something painful. She sat up, surprised to see not even a glimmer of light anywhere around her. Then, she suddenly realized a few things in rapid succession: she wasn't sure where she was; she was cold; she was wet; she was breathing water, not air.
That got her attention really fast. She sprang upright, sitting up and listening to see if she could hear anything around her. It was silent, but she was definitely still underwater - and she was breathing just fine. Weird.
Well, she could certainly do something about the darkness, at any rate. Casting a
dancing lights spell, she caused a few balls of illumination to circle around her head, letting her at least see where she was. A pit of some type, with chunks of broken wood scattered about on the floor; she'd been laying with a chunk of board beneath her shoulder blades. She looked about, but couldn't see her umbrella or her scroll tube anywhere around her. Checking her ripped kimono, she saw her backpack had been taken from her. That meant someone had systematically removed her items - she was a prisoner, it seemed. Her mind flashed immediately to Lord Tajūkan, but no, she was far from him - and then she recalled the sahuagin overturning her boat. She called out, "Manta?" but got no response. He must have been dropped into a different pit, then.
Shiroko looked up, wondering how deep the pit was and if she could get out of it. She was surprised to see the pit was not only covered at the top, but there was a wooden door on the ceiling above her. It was a rather normal-looking door, too. She turned her head to look at it, and then suddenly everything clicked into place. This wasn't a pit - it was a cabin on a ship. A sunken ship, which explained the water - and it must have landed on its side when it sank.
The next berth over, Brendan woke up and went through a similar sequence of realizations. The sahuagin had taken his staff, he noted, but they'd left the cloth he wore on his head, no doubt thinking it was nothing more than a head covering. But it was more than that; as he tugged it down over his face, the skull-like design took full form, giving him the appearance of a skull-headed figure - but, more importantly at the moment, granting the human full darkvision. He looked about at his current position, saw the door on the ceiling, and swam up to it. Sure enough, it opened upwards, and he swam up through the doorway into a low-ceilinged hallway. The reason for the low ceiling, he saw, was because the ship was on its side, and the hallway was normally 15 feet wide - that's how far it was from the "floor" to the "ceiling" in its current orientation - and in the middle was a pair of stairs, originally going up at one end and down at the other, but now going side to side.
The door to the side of him opened up and a bit of light escaped, followed shortly thereafter by a smallish woman with some really unusual features. The large, white-furred ears sticking up from the top of her head, for one thing (they at least matched the woman's pure white hair), and the lengthy, white-furred tail sticking out of the back of her robe. Before she could scream at his skull-faced appearance, he lifted his mask to reveal his human countenance. "And just what are you supposed to be?" he asked, never having seen a hengeyokai before.
"I am Shiroko," the wu jen replied. She'd learned the local language - they called it "Armaturian Common" - from the halflings on the barge during her voyage to the small continent, but she didn't feel like explaining her origins and life story to this uncouth-looking stranger. If only she still had her umbrella with her!
"What's going on? Where am I?" called out a fearful voice nearby. The woman who'd been captured after being chased down by a sahuagin had awakened in absolute darkness. After determining she was underwater (and yet breathing normally - how was that possible?), and after stumbling around in the dark looking for a door (and failing), she decided to try swimming up to find a way out. She bumped her head on some sort of metal protrusion, grabbed onto it, and found it turned. It was, she soon learned, a door on the ceiling for some reason - and when she swam up and out of the room in which she had awakened, she saw two others in the hallway above: a grubby-looking man with one of those long mustaches, and an improbably sort of fox-woman. "Where are we?" she asked, hoping for this to somehow make some sort of sense. But there was at least some light up here, small globes of it swimming around the fox-lady's head. It showed them to be in the middle of a long hallway, with 11 doors on the floor and another 11 directly overhead.
"We're in a sunken boat, on its side," replied the man, giving her a thorough checkout from head to toe. She crossed her arms in front of her, uncomfortable under his gaze.
"Let's see who else has been taken," suggested Shiroko, bending down to open the door beside hers. Inside was a hooded figure whose robes were tattered and patched all over. "Here," she said, reaching a hand down to the man. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed her hand with his own as she helped pull him up and out of the room below. His hand was pale and smooth, light in color like that of a spirit folk, or an elf. But once he had reached the hallway, he crouched down and bowed low before the hengeyokai, stumbling over his thanks. It was as if were going out of his way not to make eye contact with his rescuer, which Shiroko thought was a little odd.
Kruz heard the talking above him but couldn't see a single thing in the pitch blackness. But he had a way to fix that, if only temporarily. He'd had a reddish birthmark on his collarbone since birth, and a few years ago it had started itching. To the young man's surprise, when he'd started to scratch that area, the birthmark turned into a solid, crystal sphere, hung on a silver chain about his neck. And when he held the globe to his eye and looked through it, if he concentrated, he could see things through it as they really were. The effect didn't last long, but it would be enough for him to be able to see where he was.
Kruz reached to his breastbone with his fingers and activated his third eye. The necklace and globe took solid form, and he held the crystal sphere up to his eye. For the next several seconds - that was all he could manage to hold the
true seeing effect - he was able to glance all about him, seeing perfectly fine in the darkness. He saw the door on the ceiling and swam up to it, figuring out how to open it in the darkness, for by then his magical vision had faded and the necklace faded back into a red birthmark. But there was light in the hallway above him, and he saw Brendan there with the others, nodded his greeting, and opened the door on the floor just past his. Inside was a dockworker named
Chig Armstrong who seemed perfectly content huddling down in the corner of his room and waiting for the sahuagin to forget about him. He piled up the broken pieces of wood - no doubt bits of furniture that had gotten smashed when the ship was sunk - about him, hoping to camouflage his location. Kruz just shrugged and moved on.
Brendan swam up onto the side of the stairwell and looked up at the doors above him, wondering if there was anybody up there. And if not more people, maybe their belongings? He hadn't had anything with him but his staff, but he'd feel more comfortable with his trusty stick in his hands.
Shivering with fright as much as the cold, the dark-haired woman opened another door and helped
Kenji Geshuku out of his room. This was the boy Lugger Joe had tossed at the approaching sahuagin, hoping to save his life at the cost of another. Kenji looked to be about 8 or 10 and he was obviously frightened, but he remembered his manners. "Thank you, lady!" he said.
Manta opened the door to his room and swam up into the hallway. He was glad to see Shiroko was all right; he'd seen her wounded by the sahuagin before he himself had been taken captive. "I imagine," he hazarded, "those sea urchin spines that knocked us all out gave us some sort of ability to breathe water. That's good; it means the sea devils want to keep us alive, but we don't know for what purpose, and we don't know how long the effects will last. We need to find our way to the surface, as quickly as we can."
"I want my staff back first," said Brendan.
Shiroko opened another door at her feet and was hit by a wave of furious swearing. "What the [redacted] is going on here?" demanded Lugger Joe. "Who the [redacted] are you people, and what the [redacted] [redacted] are we doing underwater?"
"We were taken captive by the sa-hoo-a-gin," explained Shiroko, stumbling slightly under the unfamiliar word for the sea devils these Armaturians used.
"Yeah, well, I'd like to see any of those [redacted] show their [redacted] faces - I'll carve them a new [redacted] [redacted], right proper!" swore Lugger Joe. But when prompted to come out of his room, he declined, saying he was going to wait there in ambush for the [redacted] sea devils. Shiroko suspected it was more likely he was afraid to come out and help them face their captives, but she kept that thought to herself.
"What was that?" she asked suddenly, twitching her fox ears. "I heard a sound!" Everyone stopped talking, and sure enough, it sounded like someone had bumped into the side of the stairwell. Someone, or something, was moving through the sideways stairwell, headed in their direction. Kruz went over to the last of the evenly-spaced doors along the floor and opened it, finding a sideways berth like the others, but this one was empty. If there had been a tenth captive in this room, he or she had already been taken away.
The dark-haired woman, who had yet to introduce herself, swam up to the top of the ceiling and opened a door. She was immediately bombarded with a pile of falling wood, chunks of smashed furniture from the cabin above. But one piece of wood, likely a table leg, looked like it would make a halfway decent makeshift club, and they needed something to fight with against the sahuagin. Without any hesitation, she passed it over to Manta; he seemed like he could handle himself with a weapon.
Two sahuagin suddenly appeared in the hallway, having swum up through the sideways stairwell. They had voiced shock on their way up at the light spilling from the hallway and were confused to see their victims out of their rooms; the drugs must not have been as potent as expected, for they should all still be unconscious! But with a few words in their bubbly language, one spun about and went back the way he'd come while the other swam forward, slashing at Shiroko, dropping the wounded hengeyokai back into unconsciousness. He seemed surprised - and a little dismayed, if the others could read his reptilian facial expression correctly - at her having been taken down so quickly, almost as if he were afraid of having slain her.
Manta leaped forward, swinging his table leg club for all he was worth, the attack clumsier in the water than it would have been in the open air. The sahuagin easily avoided it, swimming back out of range. Down at the other end of the hall, Kruz was oblivious to the combat going on behind him, and he opened the last door on the "floor" in the ship's current orientation, finding it to be nothing but a bathroom. With a frown, he closed the door back up and looked at the door about halfway up the wall at the end of the hallway; it was sideways, of course, but it might be where their gear had been stashed. He kicked up to it to go find out.
The hooded man in the tattered robes ran up and grabbed Shiroko away from the sahuagin, casting a
cure light wounds spell on her as he did so, spinning her around so he stood between her and her attacker, who was now in heated battle with the little halfling ranger. Shiroko awoke in the robed man's arms, and she got a look at his concerned face looking down at her before he flinched and turned his head away. It was quite a remarkable face: the right side of it covered in brown fur, and sporting an ear as large and pointed as her own, while the upper left side was that of an oversize frog or toad, with the green scales of a lizard covering the left side of his lower jaw and the muzzle of a lizardfolk. Shiroko had never seen a mongrelfolk before, and she understood his hesitancy to be seen, but he had just saved her at risk to himself. "Thank you," she said, placing her hand upon the side of his face.
Brendan picked up a slab of wood that had fallen from one of the overhead rooms; it wasn't as good a weapon as his staff, but it would have to do. He dropped down from the top of the sideways stairwell in the middle of the hallway and swung his makeshift weapon at the sahuagin. The dark-haired woman reluctantly did the same with another table leg, stabbing it hesitantly at the sahuagin's direction; it was clear she was no warrior, merely a woman from the city in a situation unlike anything her life had prepared her for thus far. Not unexpectedly, her tentative jabs came nowhere to hitting the reptilian captor, but it at least gave him another foe to have to worry about.
But the sahuagin was apparently over any hesitancy he might have displayed before when he knocked out Shiroko. He stabbed out with his triple-pronged trident, catching the dark-haired woman in the midsection and sending her falling backwards into unconsciousness, trailing streaming clouds of blood in her wake. Manta attacked again with his own table leg, trying to direct the reptile's focus upon himself. But now that Shiroko was back to consciousness, she cast one of the few combat spells she had remaining: a
ray of frost that went over Manta's head and struck the sahuagin in the upper chest. It didn't take him down - she hadn't really expected it to - but she had at least done her part in dealing it damage; maybe, with enough resistance, they could get it to turn tail and flee back the way it had come.
Kruz was still oblivious to the battle raging behind him. He opened the sideways door and found himself in what was apparently once the medical bay, although one wall of cabinets was nor positioned on the floor and the other hung from the ceiling, the drawers from those above having fallen below and caused a scattered mess on the floor. But a quick perusal alerted the rogue to a few scalpels which would likely do as makeshift daggers, a bottle with a still-legible label that said "RUM," and what looked like it might be a little caddy of potion vials. He grabbed them all up and popped open the potion caddy, and as luck would have it, there were four potions inside, each marked "CLW" - Kruz was pretty sure that stood for "
cure light wounds."
Having saved Shiroko, the mongrelfolk adept made a grab for the dark-haired woman and cast another
cure light wounds spell upon her, his last for the day. It wasn't enough to revive her, but he could see she was still breathing, and at least his spell had closed up her wounds, as she wasn't actively bleeding any more. He swam up to the top of the sideways stairwell, kicking with his mismatched legs while he held the woman in his arms, up by where he saw Kenji had made his way to relative safety. He placed the woman on the side of the stairwell, bade Kenji to keep her safe, and swam back down to see if he could be of further assistance.
Brendan swung his piece of wood at the sahuagin again, frustrated that he didn't have as much power behind his swing while he was fighting against the tug of the watery element all about him. But then the sahuagin dodged past him and stabbed at the mongrelfolk, dropping him with a thrust of his trident. The ranger swung at the sea devil with his table leg, clonking him in the leg to little discernable effect. But now it was Shiroko's turn to save her own savior, as she swum up to the top of the stairwell, dragging him by the collar of his robes behind her, and placing him beside the unconscious woman with the dark hair. In the process, the hood had fallen from the adept's head, exposing his misshapen features to the others. Kenji's eyes gaped at the sight, but he said nothing; the man was obviously an ally, no matter that he looked like a monster.
"Hey!" cried Kruz, having now noticed the battle after his explorations in the infirmary. He swam over to the top of the sideways stairwell, where there were two people knocked out and in obvious need of the healing potions he carried - if they could figure out a way to drink them while underwater. He passed the potion caddy over to Brendan, who popped open the top, discerned for himself what "CLW" likely meant - and stuck the end of one of the vials in his mouth. Pulling out the sealed cork with his teeth and pushing it to the side of his mouth with his tongue, he inhaled the contents, feeling his vigor restored as the wounds he'd sustained thus far sealed up.
"Hey!" Shiroko scolded the young thug. "These two need healing more than you do!"
"Yeah? Well, they should have said something, then," Brendan scoffed, tossing the caddy over to the fox-woman. Shiroko frowned at him, then pulled out another vial and worked at getting it unstoppered and down the mouth of the fearsome-looking mongrelfolk who had saved her life. Once he was back awake (and hurriedly pulling the hood back over his uneven features), she did the same with the dark-haired woman lying at her side. She was surprised when, after both were back up, she noted she hadn't heard the sounds of combat for a bit now. "We drove him off," Manta informed her.
"He probably went with his buddy to go fetch reinforcements," Brendan guessed. "C'mon, we gotta find our gear before we're facing down a whole lot more of those fish-guys." While some of the others started opening the doors on the "ceiling" of the hallway - having all learned by now to stand off to the side when doing so, to avoid getting hit by falling debris - Brendan went through the sideways stairwell, popping out on what was the main deck, with four sets of steps leading up to the forecastle and the stern. (There were doors at the front and aft, between the sets of stairs, leading to the rooms below the two upper sections.) But what caught Brendan's attention - he had his
skull mask back on, providing him full darkvision - was not the top of the sideways vessel, but the section of sea floor off to the side and front of the sunken ship: coral had been shaped into a natural pentagram encircled by another row of coral, and at each point of the pentagram stood a sahuagin. Another of the sea devils, this one wielding a sacrificial dagger, stood in the middle of the circle, and just outside the circle was the abandoned body of a human woman, likely the tenth captive that had been missing from the berth at the end of the hallway, nearest the bathroom Kruz had checked out. Her throat had been slit, and a trail of blood still drifted from the gaping wound, driving the four sharks swimming around the exterior of the pentagram a little crazy - yet their training held, and they held off their blood frenzy for now.
And on the far side of the pentagram stood or swam nearly two dozen other sahuagin, all of them impatiently looking at the front bottom of the sunken ship. As Brendan watched, the two sahuagin who had been inside the ship (to fetch the next sacrifice, he now realized) grabbed up another four of the sea devil spectators, and the half dozen sea devils started heading to the front of the vessel.
While the eyes of the sahuagin were focused elsewhere, Brendan swam across the open deck and made it through the door between the sets of stairs at the aft section. He explored what must have been the captain's quarters and those of the first mate, uncovering a masterwork short sword hanging on the wall of the latter bunkroom.
The others, in the meantime, had finished checking out the upper berths and Manta had finally found where their gear had been stashed, in the other bathroom currently accessible only through the "ceiling." They gathered up their gear - Kruz taking temporary custody of Brendan's wooden staff - and then the rogue and the frightened brunette went over to the lower deck, hoping to find a way out. The got more than they bargained for when they ran into the first pair of returning sahuagin, and the woman was almost immediately caught up in a sahuagin's net. She screamed in terror and felt her heart explode in her chest; immediately thereafter, she stopped moving altogether, the events of the past day having been too much for a mere civilian. The sahuagin, unaware that the "sacrifice" he'd gathered for the ritual had just gone ahead and expired all by herself, started heading back, oblivious to the situation at hand.
Kruz took a tentative hit from the other sahuagin's trident; this one at least was being careful not to slay the rogue - he wanted him unconscious, not dead. But then Brendan caught up with them and passed the masterwork short sword he'd discovered in the first mate's cabin over to the leather-clad rogue. Together, they managed to convince the sea devil to back away, retreating to wait for additional backup. But then a roar of shock and surprise reached the interior of the sunken vessel, and although none of the land-dwellers could determine what was being said - it was the burbling language of the sea devils, which none of them understood - they could pick up the anger, fear, and hatred coming through.
Out in the open ocean, past the sacrificial circle of coral, past the sahuagin spectators, and even past the circling sharks, a mermaid named Adrielle approached. She wore a leather harness and wielded a trident of her own, and she was swimming in a straight line for the sahuagin forces, a grim look of determination on her face. As she approached, the seashell amulet she wore around her neck started glowing; unbeknownst to her, it had picked up a suitable dead body that met her individual specifications and
teleported it into the extradimensional space within the whorls of the seashell amulet.
Fortunately, Adrielle wasn't alone: behind her swam a mermaid samurai wielding a katana, five mermaid warriors and nine mermen wielding sharp daggers, and half a dozen giant sea horses, three of them mounted by three of the mermen. The sahuagin spectators turned and swam to meet these attacking forces, while the six in and around the points of the sacrificial pentagram held their positions, as if unable to leave until the ritual they'd started had been completed. The sahuagin priestess in the middle of the coral pentagram called out demanding the others to bring the next victim. Others called to the sharks, ordering them to attack.
Kruz and Brendan advanced through the hole in the front bottom of the sunken vessel - apparently the reason it was now on the ocean floor instead of still crossing the seas - hoping to double-team any sahuagin they might meet up with out in the open. However, their first foe was one of the sharks, whose limited intellect prevented it from realizing the "attack" command had been specifically targeted upon the merfolk, not the potential sacrifices. It swam up to Brendan and bit him with a mouth filled with sharp teeth, knocking the street thug back into unconsciousness, while Kruz did what he could to slay the shark with his masterwork short sword. Fortunately, Hoppy the mongrelfolk was nearby and swam over to the unconscious Brendan, casting a
cure minor wounds spell on the thug that failed to awaken him back to consciousness but at least stabilized him, preventing him from bleeding out. And then Shiroko appeared, casting an
elemental burst spell on the wooden deck right next to the shark, sending an explosion of splintered wood stabbing at it. Kruz grabbed Brendan by the neck of his shirt, dragging him back inside the sunken vessel, but the shark insisted on following. Shiroko cast a
ray of frost at the shark, but that only caused it to focus on her; it snapped at her and its teeth pierced her flesh, but at least she survived the experience without being slain or passing out.
The combat between the sahuagin and the merfolk forces proved to be bloody and without mercy, each side actively hating the other. There were deaths on both sides, but it was quite obvious the merfolk forces were getting the better part of the deal, slaying more of their foes than they lost from their own forces by a factor of more than two to one.
Hoppy depleted all of the rest of his daily spells - at this point, merely two more
cure minor wounds - but it was enough to restore Brendan back to wakefulness. And Manta had arrived to help fight off the shark that had been attacking the group by the vessel; between the halfling, the changeling, the human, and the hengeyokai, they finally managed to kill it. By then, the sahuagin spectators had been slain by the merfolk and the giant sea horses, and once the first of the sea devils manning the points of the coral pentagram had been taken out, the others realized their ability to finish the ritual - ten sacrifices to the Sea God,
Galrich - was no more, and they abandoned their posts, determined to die in combat rather than fleeing. (In their minds, this was what Galrich would demand of them.)
The merfolk were more than happy to give them the deaths they desired.
After the combat was done, Adrielle checked on the land-dwelling captives, who seemed to have escaped on their own. Shiroko informed her there were others still inside the ship, and while she and Hoppy went to fetch Kenji (and let the two dockworkers know it was safe to come out now), Brendan and Kruz went from room to room inside the ship, grabbing up what they could find in the way of treasure. Once everyone was back together, the merfolk helped the land-dwellers to mount up on the giant sea horses, and they escorted them back to Port Duralia. It was getting close to sunrise when they arrived, and the
water breathing effects from the sahuagin poison was about to wear off.
Before they swam into the harbor, though, the samurai mermaid took Adrielle aside and they spoke quietly in their own language. "Go with the others," she said. "There has been much more traffic upon the ocean's surfaces in recent years; we need to learn what these land-dwellers intend with their extended visits upon our seas. Learn what you can of them, and report back to us in the bay in a month's time, at the first night of the next full moon."
"I understand," Adrielle replied, touching her seashell necklace, the
amulet of kessaia. It flashed, and the mermaid disappeared, shunted into the extradimensional stasis of the amulet while her mind was transferred into the body of the dark-haired woman whose heart had stopped before being sacrificed. When the land-dwellers stepped out of the sea waters and onto the shore, the dark-haired woman was approached by Shiroko. "There you are," said the hengeyokai, once again holding an open umbrella over her shoulder. "I was wondering where you had gotten to. I don't think I caught your name - I'm Shiroko."
"Adrielle," said the mermaid, now in the human body she'd be "wearing" during her exploration of the surface world.
Kenji's mother,
Mrs. Geshuku, was overjoyed to find her missing son alive, and insisted upon bringing the five who had kept him safe back to her boardinghouse for a celebratory meal. There she insisted they could stay in two of her rooms at no cost for as long as they desired. (Her only insistence was that the men stayed in one room and the women in the other; she was a traditional spirit folk woman and wouldn't put up with any hanky-panky under her roof.) And thus, Shiroko and Adrielle found themselves sudden roommates, as were Kruz and Brendan.
That left Hoppy, who had an admission of his own: he saw the four heroes as his personal saviors and considered himself under a life-debt he could never repay. "If you would allow me, I will accompany you and use my healing magic to keep you safe, as you kept me safe from the sahuagin," he said. "I will sleep outside in the alley, where I will not be burdensome and my appearance will not disturb the clients in your boardinghouse."
"Nah, you can bunk with us," Kruz offered. "There's room for a cot or something besides the two beds in there - or one of us can sleep on the floor."
"We have extra cots!" piped up Kenji. "They cost extra, though."
"We won't charge them for extra cot!" chided Mrs. Geshuku. "They save your life! Show some gratitude and go fetch extra cot from storage room."
"Yes, Mama," replied Kenji, and went off to accomplish his task.
- - -
When I wrote this adventure, I knew I had to start off with an underwater adventure to get the mermaid PC involved, and I used a sahuagin raid as the catalyst to get the PCs, mostly strangers to each other (other than a passing acquaintance between Brendan and Kruz), gathered together as a team. I wasn't worried that sahuagin are stronger opponents than standard for 1st-level PCs, and decided I'd let the players run the "merfolk rescue force" as well as their own PCs there at the end. Logan ended up with the mermaid samurai; Vicki ran the mermaid warriors while Dan ran the merfolk warriors, and Joe ran the giant sea horses. But not wanting to spend the no doubt several hours such a combat would entail, I decided for the battle between the sahuagin and the merfolk forces, one hit resulted in a death; in effect, while fighting each other, they effectively all had 1 hp. (Against the PCs, we ran combat as normal.) It worked out okay for that specific situation, and we ended up finishing up the adventure within our normally allotted time.
- - -
T-shirt worn: I have a T-shirt I got at an aquarium years ago that has sharks on it, which seemed appropriate given the main adversaries in this initial adventure were sahuagin, who ally with sharks.
