D&D 5E Spell & Crossbones

[Quickleaf]

Van Djik's Manor

Docking the long canoe, and having divvied the spoils from L'Ollonais' sea cave treasure, you make your ways through Nassau by night. Random shots and whooping hollers echo from the shoreline, interrupting the ocean breeze and soft call of gulls; pirates left too long without a venture can be counted on to make a ruckus. The route to Piet Hien Van Djik's manor takes you away from the center of the port onto dirty roads toward a forgotten ramshackle house at the western edge of Nassau, built into the hillside.

Mambo Asizwe in Nassau whispered that Van Djik was a cursed dwarf, cursed by the will of the loa. Yet the Netherlands revere him as a national hero. The truth, as with most things in the pirate port, likely lay somewhere in between...

A surly mixed race doorman, his face and body tattooed in the semblance of a living skeleton or ghoul, receives you as if he'd been expecting your arrival. "Master awaits you in his drawing room," he says in a heavy accent marking him as a man more accustomed to pidgin than proper English. Opening the door, he walks you through a home in disrepair. Floorboards are warped from leaks in the roof that have gone untended too long. Cobwebs begin to grow at the edges of the window sills. And yet there is an astounding amount of wealth on display, from grandiose oil paintings to chairs in golden filigree. Bowing stiffly, the tattooed doorman gestures for you to enter through parted sliding doors into the drawing room from which wheezing coughing echoes. The room is positively festooned with exquisite dwarven sabers and gilded ornamentation.

Nia's eyes, trained to pick out fetishes and charms, recognize several protective totems from Carribbean folklore scattered about the drawing room, icons of bone and grave earth intended to ward off death.

[SECTION]"Well, don't stand on ceremony...ack ack..." groans an ancient voice thick with Dutch accent. The room is poorly lit by a single oil lamp on a desk and ambient moonlight; within the shadows, a dwarven figure stirs from the cot he was lying on, brushing transparent mosquito netting out of the way as he stands with a strained wheeze. "Come in, gezagvoerder (captain)," he gestures to Katerina, "I knew it was only a matter of time before you sought me out. Ack...ack...You've been circling my old ship for a few days, I've been told. Well, Blackbeard's ship, but that black-bearded bastard doesn't know her half as well as I do."

Body hunched over as if in constant abdominal pain, Van Djik moves to his desk to uncork a bottle of jenever, a juniper-flavored alcohol. With shaky fingers he tries to set out seven shot glasses, but his coordination is not what it once was, making a mess of the jenever as he pours it. Nodding after his doorman, he levels his yellowed eyes upon your party, "You must think it strange; here is an aanarden dwarf trying to stay alive against all odds, and as his manservant he takes a man with the visage of Death himself." Van Djik chuckles ruefully to himself, half-raising his shot glass with a grunt and tossing it back like it's water.

It's clear the dwarf has signs of advanced yellow fever, yet when he spots Old Zef, his yellowed eyes shine with fierce light, and he switches to speaking in Dutch, "Well, you look almost as old as me, countryman! Whose flag did you fly under?"[/SECTION]

 

[Fenris]

Zef takes a glass and downs it as well. These two old dwarves could probably drink everyone here under the table several times over. Zef replies in Dutch "I wouldn't want to count grey hairs against you Van." smiles Zef "As for my ships, well I lost track after a score. I started under the Dutch East India Company flag, and finished, well I bounced around a while. Hard to find a ship or a captain that will last, at least for the likes of us. I will say however, I sailed under this lass' father, good man. She has good blood, she'll make a fine gezagvoerder" finishes Zef.

 

[Queenie]

"Thank you for the warm welcome," Katerina said, gesturing to the alcohol about. She desperately needed a drink, but she wouldn't allow herself yet. Once the two dwarves started speaking Dutch, she let them continue without interruption as her eyes traveled the room for clues about the dwarf and his ghostly "manservant."

 

[Quickleaf]

GM: OK [MENTION=8058]Queenie[/MENTION], make a DC 13 Intelligence (Investigation) check! On a success, you can learn something about either Van Djik or his tattooed manservant. On a success of 18+, you can learn something about both, or uncover two things about Van Djik. On a failure, you don't discern any clues. On a failure of 8 or less, you don't discern any clues & you must pick one of the following: Your monkey Stella gets into something she shouldn't, making a commotion and a mess, wrecking a map or other potential clue. You touch a cursed piece of treasure amidst Van Djik's horde, suffering the Accursed ill fortune. When Van Djik sees you snooping, he interrupts and insists that you finish a bottle of jenever with him and Old Zef – an amount of hard alcohol liable to completely addle a human's senses.

 

[Shayuri]

Nia hangs back in the shadowed area behind Zef and Kat, trusting them to steal the attention while she examines the room and its trappings more closely. Already she had seen the charms scattered about. He was a man struggling to keep his fate at bay. This was in line with what they knew of him.

The question bubbling in her mind was...why? So much effort expended, but she saw little evidence he was trying to break the curse. Only to hold on to life, day by day. Was he simply terrified to slip into the black waves below? Or did he have something he needed to do before he finally succumbed?

 

[Queenie]

GM: OK [MENTION=8058]Queenie[/MENTION], make a DC 13 Intelligence (Investigation) check! On a success, you can learn something about either Van Djik or his tattooed manservant. On a success of 18+, you can learn something about both, or uncover two things about Van Djik. On a failure, you don't discern any clues. On a failure of 8 or less, you don't discern any clues & you must pick one of the following: Your monkey Stella gets into something she shouldn't, making a commotion and a mess, wrecking a map or other potential clue. You touch a cursed piece of treasure amidst Van Djik's horde, suffering the Accursed ill fortune. When Van Djik sees you snooping, he interrupts and insists that you finish a bottle of jenever with him and Old Zef – an amount of hard alcohol liable to completely addle a human's senses.

So. I do have a very, very bad history of rolling in this game. At times it feels like poor Captain Katerina has never had a success. She's quite an impressive Captain in that regard.

Today is not the day to change this fact, apparently.

Investigation Check: 1D20+1 = [2]+1 = 3

I have to go with the drink, since Katerina's flaw is drinking and it is well documented she is thirsty. Luckily we have some other capable members of the crew... unfortunately we just lost our doctor but hey, she's been drunk before!

That's right, I'm taking one for the team. You all go snooping while Kat distracts. It was my plan alllllll along.

 

[Matthan]

Blaise accepts the offered drink and contents himself to the merest sips as his captain begins to help finish off the bottle. While they're drinking, Blaise interjects, "Thank you for your hospitality. You have a fine home and an ever greater taste for drink. I'm not sure your source, but this is exquisite."

He takes another sip and allows a smile to play across his face before continuing, "I know that you have heard of our intentions to bring the Coral Curse back to sea. I hope that you'll let us be frank with you. You have shown such kindness in welcoming us into your home that I would not want to dishonor you by wasting your time. In that regard, I hope you don't find this to forward, but after hearing the stories of what plagues your old ship, I am curious if thedjab that has brought the Curse low has done the same to you."

 

[Quickleaf]

[SECTION]Just as Katerina takes a few paces toward a bookshelf framed by twin golden-hilted sabers, Van Djik cracks a jaundiced yellow eye at her with astounding perspicacity exceeding his seeming decrepitude. "Blackheart's daughter. I recognize you now, jonge dame (young lady). Blackheart, there was a man who knew how to stage a tar black night raid. And I don't say it lightly, but he gave our dwarven raids against the Spaniards during the Eighty Years War a run for their money." Despite his rough jovial spirit, Van Djik's eye twitches slightly when he says 'Spaniards.' "Come, join us for a bit of a drink..." Van Djik pours another shot glass for Katerina to the brim. Famous last words coming from a dwarf's mouth; Katerina would be in for a bender of a night if she accepted, and etiquette demanded she did.

"The East India Company, you say?" inquires Van Djik, suppressing a coughing fit as he refills his and Old Zef's glasses. It's clear the ancient dwarf stands either by force of will or magic sustaining him against the ravages of the yellow fever. "I signed on with them nigh a century ago. Returned a captain, and then they sent me to the West Indies. Put a big bright star on my lapel calling me a vice-admiral, no less. It was well enough when the Company was young and wild, but too much bureaucracy killed the spirit of the thing for me. Aye?" he inquires of Old Zef, about to toss back a second shot.

Upon hearing Blaise's words, however, Van Djik pauses with the glass raised midair in his shaky hand. While a thin sheen of sweat was on his cragged skin before, he seems to positively break out in fever and his eyes water. "We christened her that – The Coral Curse because she was curse upon the Spanish Main," he says in a distant hollow voice. "I never would have kept the name had I known what awaited us..."[/SECTION]

GM: So [MENTION=4936]Shayuri[/MENTION], I think you were eluding that you wanted to make an Insight check to deduce Piet Hein Van Djik's motives in staving off death, yeah? I'm holding off a little on that since it would make sense Nia would need to observe him in conversation a little before making that determination.

 

[Shayuri]

(OOC - *salutes* Aye-ffirmative!)

 

[Queenie]

Katerina smiled politely at the old dwarf but inwardly grimaced; this would be the worst time to lose her senses. She assumed she’d been close to something the doomed Captain didn’t want her to see, one of her keen eyed companions would hopefully pick up on that. Still, she couldn’t refuse the request, not if they wanted to continue to get information from this man.


She took a moment to whisper into Bella’s ear, who hopped off her shoulder, landing nimbly on Blaise’s arm. She scurried up and settled comfortably on his shoulder, her small puffy tail curling around the man’s neck. They might be able to use the tiny monkey while Katerina was entertaining the dying man.


The Captain slid into a chair at the table with the dwarves, putting on her best manners. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t do this the customary way,
sí?” she smirked, raising the glass to her mouth before gulping it down. The malty, woodsy flavor was no match for her preferred sweet rum, but at least it didn’t taste like ale, which was essentially just warm piss. While she’d been drinking since she was a small child, she would not be able to keep up with the dwarf, so they needed to get this information quickly.


“My associate is correct, we would not offend you by wasting your time. But we would hear your story. I do not believe Blackbeard tells us the truth of the matter of what was once a grand ship, at least under your watch. Once we secure the ship, I have planned to speak to any of your remaining crew and offer them a place on their old ship, if they would be willing to step foot on it again after the curse is lifted."

She pushed her empty glass towards Van Dijk. "So why don’t you tell us a story, Captain? What is it that you encountered and left you in such a state? Perdóname for saying but with all this wealth, you must have looked into ways to cure yourself of this curse and found no solution, so it must be something quite unusual.”

OOC: Katerina has told her monkey to take orders from Blasie and Nia, she'll go to either. Feel free to use her if you'd like, she can do all kinds of minor tricks. I may be spending the next OOG 6 months drunk so might as well give her to someone who can use her lol Interesting info on Jenever! Apparantly it's customary to bring your mouth to the glass on the table -no hands- BJ style