D&D General Help me with a nautical Halloween adventure: Becalmed near a ghost ship

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My son and father are playing a piratical campaign and are currently en route to an island to find buried treasure (although it obviously won't be that simple). I'd like to have them have a brief Halloweeny interlude this weekend, though, specifically, with a ghost ship.

Becalmed in the middle of the ocean and not a sail in sight. And then ... there is. Another ship, also becalmed, with slack sails. But this one has tattered sails and no sign of crew on board. The ship itself is in poor condition and seems like it should have sunk long, long ago.

How would you run this? What's on board? How does the group (a rogue, a bard and a warrior sidekick) lift the magically becalmed conditions and get sailing again? And how do we make it spoooooooky?

 

[Leatherhead]

What they find, surprisingly, are a bunch of still captive and living people below decks who tell the party that there is a ghost on the ship. They tell the players that the ghost and her crew are keeping them all prisoners. The ghost crew only shows up at night to keep the ship afloat, while feeding the captives a grotesque pile of fish-guts that they have "grown accustomed too"

For the twist:

What the captives say is true, to an extent. There is an undead crew who is holding them. What they don't tell the PCs, is that the captives are in fact a Sea Hag Coven and their Sea Spawn minions who are being punished for their many crimes against various towns and ships by said crew. The ghost crew might not have been able to match the power of the hags in life, but in death they managed to hold them at bay. Getting off the ship requires either making a deal with the hags to destroy a wildly-spinning compass that binds the crew and keeps the ship still, or destroying the hags, allowing the crew to finally rest in piece.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

Never mind.

 

[Older Beholder]

I like the seahag idea posted above,
Out of interest, what level are the characters?

 

[Zardnaar]

I had this encounter about two weeks ago.

I had them becalmed in the middle of a heap of Sargasso that was semi solid in places. Smaller ships were stuck in in.

The ghost sip as such was self propelled and came in out of a fog bank.

Ship had a wraith and wright on it, crew and undead ogre in chainmail iirc. Once they killed the captain the ship started the break apart although they tried to loot one of the cannons.

Think I made it DC 25, 3/5 attempts required.

They were level 4.

 

[Arvok]

I think the key to making it spooky is to make the players feel powerless. A ship stuck in the middle of the ocean certainly starts them down this path. Throw in rapidly diminishing water supplies (most of the water barrels are mysteriously turned brackish? and the crew starts circulating rumors of a ghost on board) and you're beginning to increase the desperation. Depending on the level of horror you want to introduce, that might involve crew members committing suicide or simply disappearing.

After going for a couple of days without water, the characters should be 3 levels into exhaustion. That imposes all kinds of nasty penalties that will inspire horror of a different sort.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Out of interest, what level are the characters?

Level 3 all around.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

After going for a couple of days without water, the characters should be 3 levels into exhaustion. That imposes all kinds of nasty penalties that will inspire horror of a different sort.

That's a great idea. I need to refamiliarize myself with the exhaustion rules. Just getting a new source of fresh water should be enough to propel them toward the ghost ship, which they will likely otherwise regard as an obviously terrible idea.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's a great idea. I need to refamiliarize myself with the exhaustion rules. Just getting a new source of fresh water should be enough to propel them toward the ghost ship, which they will likely otherwise regard as an obviously terrible idea.

Won't work if they can purify the water or create new water.

Another way is a fatigue wave of negative energy.

 

[aco175]

Should there be a second option that forces them to head to the other ship. Say a giant octopus attacks them and damages the hull. This forces them to seek the other ship for a means to repair their own ship. This may be a bit of forced action though. There could be a shiny piece of bobby-dazzler (I almost wrote bobby-dangler which is totally inappropriate for your father and son game) glinting off the other ship. Another idea is that a captive manages to S.O.S. them from the other ship.