Chapter 4 - Session 1

The Shatters and a New Shore

Events and Actions

Two days after fleeing Spider Island and the vessel of the Divinity of Two, Mani's sense of the totem shifted, suddenly detectable only ahead of the ship rather than behind. Moments later the party saw a brilliant flash on the horizon behind them, followed by a distant sound like thousands of voices screaming rolling across the water, and then a wave of land erupted from the sea, speeding towards the Amada like jagged lightning and leaving a treacherous new seascape of rock pinnacles in its wake. As it passed over and through the ship, panic took hold — Captain De Guzman fought to slow the Amada as best he could while everyone clung to whatever was fixed, young Werner among them, wrapped around the mast and crying out until it subsided. In the aftermath, the party discovered their magical medallions had gone hot and each had lost a piece; Noddy found that pressing his own invisible medallion into his palm revealed its new outline, worn away like a coin bitten at the edge.

Fearing the cataclysm might send a tsunami like the one that had destroyed Old Port, the party kept watch from the crow's nest for land to shelter behind, but none of substance was in sight and no wave ever came. Once the danger passed, Noddy teleported onto one of the nearby rock spurs to investigate it directly. The spur ran for about a hundred feet but was barely three feet wide in places, undulating along its length with the odd gap he had to hop across; he found freshly broken, jagged stone and wet sand with small tide pools and a few stranded fish, but no plant life at all, before teleporting back to the ship unseen by the rest of the crew.

They concluded that the Divinity of Two had destroyed the totem, causing a cataclysm similar to the Great Change, an event they now call "The Shatters." Deciding it was too dangerous to turn back, they continued west, navigating slowly through the hazardous new terrain; a long navigation roll by Noddy, cross-checked against Captain De Guzman's own plotting, put them roughly 336 miles from Spider Island, ruling out an ordinary gunpowder explosion as the source of the flash. Before getting properly underway, Randolph the Chronicler pressed the party for more detail on the mangani and giant spiders of Spider Island so he could sketch them for his records, and continued piecing together a map of their travels from what they told him; asked in passing how Old Port had originally fallen, he could only say that the poor of its Cliff Town had likely undermined the cliff face with their tunnelling until it gave way one day, with no single triggering event known to him. To keep the Amada itself out of danger, the party sent the longboat well ahead as a scout, taking soundings and working the sails themselves, so the ship would have room to react if the smaller boat ran into trouble. They spent the better part of a week working free of the rock field this way, sailing at half speed and covering roughly 500 miles in total as the pinnacles grew sparser and more scattered the farther they travelled.

As provisions ran low, Captain De Guzman gathered the party to explain, reluctantly, that he intended to cut rations for the crew's sake unless they could find more food. Noddy sent his familiar, Pocket, ranging far out over the water in response, and the mission paid off when Pocket spotted a giant bird perched on a rock outcrop, dipping into the water for fish and seals. The party closed to firing range and engaged it with grape shot from the Amada's two cannons; the first shot went wide, but the second, fired by Mani, struck the bird's foot and severed a toe. The wounded bird screeched, scattering the smaller birds around it, and took to the air before flying off to the northwest — Cosimo wondered aloud whether it might be intelligent enough to be wary of them now. Leela, asked if she recognized the species, did not; nothing like it lived on Spider Island as far as she knew. With the bird gone, the party moved in on the fish shoal it had been hunting, sharing the water with a couple of unconcerned sharks; Noddy boiled the top layer of the sea with his Evaporate Liquid spell to stun a large catch of bream, sardines, grouper, and other smaller fish for easy collection, while Batu Batu organized drying racks to preserve it. The haul replenished the ship's food stores, though the party remained low on fresh water.

With fresh water running low, the party turned the ship northwest for a day chasing the bird's likely course in search of land, but sighted nothing and turned back onto their original heading. The detour proved useful: successful navigation rolls from Noddy and Werner let them triangulate against the angle to the totem Mani could still sense, suggesting land was only three or four days away. Rationing continued as they pressed on, until Pocket, ranging far ahead and above the ship, spotted haze on the horizon that turned out to be land. They soon made landfall at a wide river delta on a large, sandy landmass that at first looked like nothing but bare, featureless dunes cut by channels of fresh water breaking through to the sea; they spent half a day refilling the ship's water casks before exploring upriver in their longboat.

Before setting off upriver, they swapped anything too obviously military for plainer clothes, mounted a swivel gun on the longboat, and packed a small keg of powder and shot alongside a few days' food and some rum to trade with. They encountered a lone Islander, Fontra, at a small hut on a river island, who mistook them for the southern ship that had visited six months earlier to trade guns; his simple, woven, off-white tunic marked him as more sophisticated in dress than Leela's people, who wore mostly animal skins. Batu Batu was able to communicate with him and learned that a Southerner named Watkin had been left behind to manage the trade. The party decided to pose as a second, unaffiliated merchant ship — borrowing the name Green Gull from a captured southern vessel — and retrieved a crate of muskets and a little powder from the Amada before heading back upriver. Fontra set off on foot to warn Watkin, and though the party's longboat easily overtook him along the way, he caught up with them again, breathless, not long after they arrived. As they travelled upriver, with Leela among them, they passed grazing, horned, ox-like beasts and long-tailed reptilian creatures with wide, tooth-filled mouths basking at the water's edge, along with one distinctive, tall, drooping tree hung with clusters of large yellow flowers that neither Leela nor anyone else in the party could identify, then reached a large, newly built gate spanning the entire river, opened inward by around ten islanders hauling on ropes with the help of one of the ox-like beasts. Beyond the gate the river widened into a broad, fertile valley thick with agriculture, reed-built structures, and canoe traffic — clear signs of a sophisticated Islander settlement far larger than Fontra's lone outpost.

Passing through the gate, the party continued to a small compound within the settlement. There they found Watkin, a large Southerner in fine, poofy-trousered dress and a floppy hat, dozing in a hammock on the porch beside a small table and fan. Riu and Mani introduced themselves, startling him into shouting for help twice before Riu could cast a spell to muffle the sound beyond a ten-foot radius; the warning still carried, and two armed southern soldiers came running to his aid.

NPCs & Creatures

Fontra: A young, slightly-built Islander dressed in a simple woven tunic, who lived alone in a hut on a small river island near the delta. He mistook the party for the southern ship that had traded with his people six months earlier, and set off on foot to warn Watkin of their arrival.
Watkin: A Southerner left behind on the island to facilitate trade with the Islanders. The party found him dozing in a hammock on the porch of a small compound, dressed in fine, poofy-trousered southern style; he was badly startled by their approach.
Southern Soldiers: Two armed men who came running to Watkin's aid when he called out.
Giant Bird: A massive bird-like creature found perched on a rock outcrop in The Shatters, feeding on fish and seals. It fled northwest after the party's cannon fire severed one of its toes; Cosimo speculated it might be intelligent enough to be wary of them now.
Pocket: Noddy's seagull familiar, sent ranging far ahead of the ship first to search for food and later for signs of land; his sighting of haze on the horizon gave the party their first glimpse of the new landmass.
Fred and Wilma: The party's own two giant spiders, taken alive from Spider Island. With that island now destroyed, the party speculated they might be the only giant spiders left anywhere in the world.
Randolph the Chronicler: Pressed the party for a fuller description of the mangani and giant spiders of Spider Island so he could sketch them for his records, and continued building a map of the party's travels from their accounts.
Creatures: The party observed various new creatures along the river, including large, horned, ox-like beasts — one of which was used by the islanders to help haul open the river gate — aggressive, long-tailed reptilian creatures with wide, tooth-filled mouths that swam and waddled along the banks, and a pair of ordinary-sized sharks that showed no interest in them while they gathered fish.

Locations

The Shatters: A vast, dangerous new seascape created by the cataclysmic destruction of the totem on Spider Island, characterized by thousands of sharp, freshly-broken rocky pinnacles that erupted from the ocean floor in roughly straight lines, rising nearly sheer from deep water; one spur Noddy explored ran about a hundred feet long but was barely three feet wide in places. The formations grew sparser the farther the party sailed from Spider Island.
Isle of Sands: The party's name for the new landmass they discovered. Its coast first appeared as bare, featureless dunes cut by channels of fresh water, but a wide river delta led inland to a fertile valley thick with agriculture, reed-built structures, worked metal tools, and canoe traffic. Past a newly built defensive gate spanning the whole river — manned by some fifty or sixty islanders working construction and dozens more standing armed guard, mostly with bows and clubs and only the rare musket — the party found a large and comparatively sophisticated Islander population.

Conflicts

The party engaged a giant bird found perched on a rock outcrop, hunting fish and seals. They closed to firing range and opened up with grape shot from the Amada's two cannons; the first shot went wide, but the second, fired by Mani, struck the creature's foot and severed a toe, sending it screeching into the air, scattering the smaller birds around it, and off to the northwest rather than pressing an attack.

Learnings and Discussions

The party concluded that the Divinity of Two destroyed the totem on Spider Island using a Diad, triggering the cataclysm that formed "The Shatters."
The destruction of the totem caused a piece of each of their medallions to break off, diminishing their power.
Noddy realized he can sense and manipulate the medallions differently than everyone else — he alone can remove one from another person's neck. Mani recalled that he once did just that to Stick Stab, now aligned with the Divinity of Two, and later placed that medallion on the prisoner Hans; he wondered aloud whether Hans, wherever he is, felt this same change, and whether the enemy could sense it too.
Fearing a tsunami like the one that destroyed Old Port might follow the flash, the party kept watch from the crow's nest, but none came.
Cosimo revealed he had successfully attuned to the Diad recovered from the dead cleric's boats on Spider Island; along with a boost to his own power, he can now sense that a powerful spell of unknown nature is bound up within it, and hypothesized that this may be the very spell responsible for the cataclysm they had just witnessed.
The party theorized that a Diad had been used against a Totem in the same way roughly 40 years earlier, and that this earlier destruction was what caused the Great Change; "The Shatters" appears to be a repeat of that same act, possibly tied to renewed activity by the Church of the Two provoked by the Southern Wind Witches.
Rereading the scrap of paper recovered earlier, the party found a line describing the original expedition as unable to return through the Maelstrom "without the aid of the heretic" — a mysterious figure connected to whatever happened forty years ago whom they still cannot identify.
Cosimo suspected the black totems are the "bones of the world," conferring special abilities on those who dwell near them, and that a faction within the Church of the Two regards them as a threat — possibly unaware that destroying them is unraveling the world's magic.
The party reasoned the first Southern mission to Spider Island had likely run out of priests and Diads fighting through the island's mangani and Islander defenders, making it something of a suicide mission, and concluded that pursuit by the enemy ship was unlikely given how much time and manpower such an assault would have cost it.
Debating what to do if the Divinity of Two's ship reappeared, the party weighed fighting it outright — still galled that so powerful a warship stood apart from the war effort — against the reality that it was a triple-decked ship of the line badly outgunning the Amada's four cannons; they settled on staying ahead of it and out of sight rather than risking an engagement.
Riu argued that the ship's destruction of Spider Island so soon after the party's own departure was likely coincidence rather than pursuit: the two vessels had simply been converging on the island independently ever since the Amada outran the other ship in the Maelstrom weeks earlier.
A limited amount of fresh water can be extracted from fish, from the flesh near the spine and around the eyes, though not enough to meaningfully offset a real shortage.
Knick Nab explained that southern ships are typically named with a colour paired with a creature, such as the Green Gull, the Red Robin, or the Blue Lagoon, and that the Amada itself has something of a reputation among southerners — some know it by name, or as "the ghost ship" — which shaped the party's decision to invent an alias rather than sail in under her own.
The new landmass is inhabited by a sophisticated Islander society that practices agriculture and is building significant defenses.
Southerners have made contact with these Islanders and are trading guns for a "yellow food." A Southerner named Watkin is on the island overseeing this arrangement.

Items Gained

A large quantity of fish, stunned in bulk with Noddy's Evaporate Liquid spell and dried on racks by Batu Batu, replenishing the ship's food supplies.
A full supply of fresh water from the river.

Items Lost

A piece of each party member's Medallion was lost during the cataclysm, resulting in a tangible weakening of the items' power.