Chapter 7 - Session 2

Birdcrown Isle

Events and Actions

Before weighing anchor from Drowned Man's Port, the party settled accounts with the crew. Knowing word of the battle and the fortune taken from it would spread through the port regardless, the officers chose to get ahead of the story rather than suppress it, concluding there was little to gain from asking the crew to keep quiet about a fight everyone would hear of sooner or later. The quartermaster then warned that men who had just helped take a bigger ship and come away with a fortune in gold would want shore leave, and that how much of their earnings were paid out beforehand would shape whether they came back at all. After some debate over paying out half shares to encourage return, Knick Nab argued for paying everyone in full and trusting the crew rather than playing games with them; the vote went his way. Five to seven days of leave and resupply followed off-page. Two crew members chose not to return, but the party came away net ahead: Nicolas's followers Sven and a second convert — settled, after some joking about the placeholder name stuck to him, on Fletcher — signed on alongside Nicolas himself, and Grantos was informally agreed to merit three shares and a senior officer's standing once he formally joined the crew, though the question of his vote was left for later.

With Grantos aboard to call favorable winds and the coordinates the Elves had given for Birdcrown Isle in hand, the Medallion made a swift five-week crossing, helped by charts recovered from the Fortnum that, while accurate as far as they went, marked no island by that name. The party used the crossing to sharpen the ship for whatever waited: Mani trained daily with Randolph the Chronicler, including a spectacular bout of fencing along the yardarm that nearly ended in a fall before a rigged net caught him; the crew ran gunnery drills within the limits of their powder; and the charts were corrected as the voyage went. A single stop at a marked island replenished fresh water and added a few wild sheep to the stores, with no other vessels sighted the whole way. Asked along the way whether the name Bird Crown Island meant anything to him, Grantos drew a blank, though he did recall islanders speaking of giant birds visiting his own home island more than fifty years past — he had seen none himself in all his decades of captivity since.

As the ship neared the expected latitude, Noddy spotted land first from the rigging with the aid of his telescope, beating out Jacopa — who, no longer disguised as a man, was proudly displaying herself as a woman to the crew — to the traditional gold piece nailed to the mainmast; Noddy climbed up to retrieve it and handed it to her anyway. Birdcrown Isle resolved out of the haze as a large landmass ringed by a scattering of smaller islands. Closing in, the party got their first sight of the giant birds the Elves had described: enormous creatures roosting and nesting in holes along the upper cliffs, easily capable of carrying off a sheep or a person, though they showed no sign of hostility, only flapping out to circle when disturbed by the ship's passage.

The party circled the main island counterclockwise from the east, past a first colony of the giant birds, cliffs running a consistent 300 to 400 feet high and jagged along the crown-like top the whole way round. Partway along the northern arc they found a break in the cliff face — a narrow, roughly 30-foot-wide cut running back into the rock — the only obvious break in an otherwise unbroken wall of stone, and a strong candidate for wherever the Advance had gone to ground. Rather than commit immediately, the party chose to finish the circuit first, passing a second bird colony before completing the loop and noting one of the outer islands, taller and thickly wooded, roughly opposite the inlet — a plausible spot from which the Elves' own watchers might have observed the Advance disappear two years before.

An away team — Knick Nab, Mani, Cosimo, Noddy, Riu, Leela, and Randolph, with Old Salter and Gus left minding the boats — set out for that outer island hoping to make contact with the marooned Elves. On the boat over, the party asked Randolph what he knew of the Elves; he admitted he was no expert on them himself, though he suspected they had their own reasons for keeping to themselves and believed there were chroniclers among the Elves as well as among his own people. It was during this same conversation that Riu successfully cast a newly-manifested spell, Mind Tongue, speaking directly into Randolph's mind for the first time either had experienced anything like it; startled, Randolph speculated the ability might trace back to the party's medallions and immediately turned his thoughts to its uses in a fight. Inspired, Mani tried to reach Werner the same way using his own medallion and got no response, and a further attempt to reach Mistress Clara, much further away, likewise failed. The party landed on a small, pleasant, tropical island dominated by a central hill, made camp on the landing beach, and set out to be found: they lit a fire, cooked up a proper fish-and-crab meal with an extra place laid out for any guest who cared to join, scratched a pair of six-foot Elven runes copied from the Gildenhome map into the sand, and called out the names of Abedneith, Coralon, and Hortaf every hour or two through the afternoon, hoping word would reach whoever was watching. After a full day and night with no one coming to meet them, they set out to search the island, Noddy chewing on a length of the same root that had once let him see through an Elf's disguise, on the chance it revealed something here too. Near the top of the hill they found a set of well-maintained watch posts, clearly still in active use, but nobody in them; the posts faced outward over the sea rather than back across the island itself, so they offered no view of what lay beyond the treeline. Noddy levitated above the tree line and spotted signs of disturbance on the island's far beach; investigating, the party found three sturdy, long-occupied huts, evidently a real home rather than a rough camp — cutlery carved from bamboo, pots shaped from natural materials, and proper floors all spoke of people who had settled here for years with very little — but no Elves and no boat. Choosing not to press further, the party left a hatchet driven pointedly into the door of the empty huts along with a parting word that they meant no harm and had come only because Abedneith, Coralon, and Hortaf had sent them, then sailed back for the inlet.

For the approach to the inlet itself, the party assembled a proper away mission — Knick Nab, Mani, Cosimo, Noddy, Riu, Leela, Randolph, Old Salter, Gus, and the hunter Mathias — and loaded two boats with swivel guns and shot, a hundred feet of rope and climbing gear, a small keg of gunpowder and cases of granados, a cooking kettle, food and water for two days, and both the Father's Ember and the trust-side Twin-Faced Doubloon, the latter carried by Knick Nab. Grantos and Nicolas both stayed behind with the ship. The boats poled cautiously into the cut, wide enough that a bold captain might have sailed a ship the size of the Advance through it, with the tide's high-water mark plainly visible on the walls well above its current level. Deep inside, past a bend, the party found the Advance herself, run up against a small beach and listing, sails furled but rotted, with birds nesting undisturbed and no sign of anyone aboard. Alongside her hull, fixed into the rock, hung an old iron mooring ring with the rotted stub of a rope still through it — evidence the cove had served as a landing point before the Advance ever arrived, and a hint that there might be some way in or out of it besides the cut the party had just come through.

A thorough search followed. The upper decks and gun deck showed clear evidence of scavenging — missing planking, stripped doors, rope taken — but the cannon were untouched and still buttoned up, ruling out an attack from outside. The captain's cabin had been ransacked for anything valuable; personal letters and a book of Navy rules were left behind, and while the captain's log was gone, the charts were still there and were gathered up to bring back to the Medallion. Noddy swept the ship with a presence-sensing spell and found no one aboard but the party themselves. Riu swam the cove with a water vision spell, finding the bottom sandy and dropping away quickly into deep water; nothing about it looked structurally unusual, though the walls held plenty of nooks and overhangs large enough to hide something, and at least one shark was cruising the depths. Cosimo lit each room of the ship with a lasting illusion of daylight to speed the search along. Reasoning that the powder room was the one part of the ship built to stay weathertight and secure, the party turned to it next; behind its two padlocks, an attempt to pick the locks went badly enough to spark a small fire on the far side of the door before Noddy simply tore a hole through it with magic. Inside, stores were partially depleted but still present, along with equipment for refining powder and a small pouch hanging oddly out of place in a corner, holding a scrap bearing a cryptic warning: "Ware the waters, they do not move with the moon, and men, nay, creatures come from under." A length of slow match and a keg of the finer, musket-grade powder were staged just outside the powder room in case the ship needed to be destroyed in a hurry, though nothing was set off. Astronomy and sailing rolls found the tide pattern here normal, tied to day and night as expected; any exaggerated swing in the water level was chalked up to the narrow channel rather than anything unnatural.

On the beach near the ship, the party found six or seven crude wooden grave markers, boards scratched with names rather than proper headstones; several were recognized as former Advance crewmates, though neither Barrows nor Maynard's name was among them. A search of the small stretch of meadow beyond turned up clear evidence of a climbing route up the cliff — partly natural, partly reinforced in the past with ropes and scaffolding now fallen and gone, with a block and tackle still lying at the base. Judging the route too risky to send a party up unsecured, Noddy went ahead alone, levitating straight up the 300-to-400-foot cliff face, using a Shadow spell partway up to stay concealed and scouting handholds and hazards as he climbed. Nearing the top, at around 200 feet, he spotted a hideous, horned old woman in ragged clothes and a strange headdress, leaning on a staff topped with a skull, emerging briefly from a hole hidden in the cliff face; he called out greetings in several languages, but she withdrew without answering, and by the time he looked away he found the exact spot difficult to mark for a return visit. Back at the wreck, Knick Nab quietly rigged the Advance's own stores to be set off at a moment's notice, without lighting it, as the party weighed how to press further up the cliff.

NPCs & Creatures

Grantos — confirmed capable of granting the ship favorable winds while withholding the same benefit from another vessel some distance away, though he warned there are real limits to how long and how hard he can sustain the effort; informally agreed to merit three shares and senior status once formally signed on, but left off this away mission to guard the ship.
Nicolas — remained aboard the Medallion for this leg rather than joining the shore parties, on the party's judgment that keeping him and Grantos apart, and him away from a totem site, was the safer course.
Sven and Fletcher — Nicolas's two followers, formally signed onto the crew this session alongside Nicolas himself.
Randolph the Chronicler — trained Mani in swordsmanship throughout the crossing, including the yardarm duel; accompanied both shore parties, admitted he was no expert on the Elves but believed chroniclers exist among them too when asked during the boat crossing to the outer island, and was the recipient of Riu's first successful use of Mind Tongue.
Leela — accompanied both shore parties; her grasp of the party's language has improved to the point that translation is no longer a serious concern.
Jacopa — spotted land moments after Noddy and was given the traditional gold piece despite not winning it outright; no longer disguising herself as a man.
Old Salter and Gus — left minding the boats on both shore expeditions.
Mathias — the southern hunter brought along as an extra hand for the inlet expedition, chosen over the poacher Robin.
A horned old woman — glimpsed briefly about 200 feet up the cliff above the Advance's hidden cove, in ragged clothes and a strange headdress, leaning on a staff topped with a skull; withdrew into a hidden hole in the rock without responding to greetings called out in several languages.

Locations

Drowned Man's Port — where the crew was paid out in full and given shore leave before departure; two hands did not return, three new ones signed on.
Birdcrown Isle — a large island ringed by smaller ones, walled almost entirely by sheer 300-400 ft cliffs topped with jagged, crown-like peaks and home to at least two colonies of giant birds.
The Elves' Marooned Outpost — the outer, hill-topped island opposite the hidden inlet; found with well-maintained but empty watch posts, facing out to sea, and three long-occupied huts, but no Elves present.
The hidden inlet and the Advance's cove — a roughly 30-foot-wide cut through Birdcrown Isle's cliffs, navigable by ship's boat, leading to a sheltered cove where the Advance lies grounded and listing against a small beach and meadow, along with an old iron mooring ring predating the ship's arrival, a handful of crude grave markers, and the base of a partly man-made climbing route up the cliff.

Conflicts

None. No hostile contact was made; the giant birds and the horned woman on the cliff were both observed without incident.

Learnings and Discussions

The Advance was found essentially as the Elves had described: sailed into a hidden bay out of sight of their watchers roughly two years ago, and never seen again. The ship shows clear signs of having been scavenged over time rather than attacked outright — the untouched, closed cannon rule out a naval battle — but also clear signs of an earlier fight aboard her, in the form of powder scorching and shot marks belowdecks, and a missing captain's log that suggests whoever left took anything important and left the rest. The cryptic note hidden in the powder room — warning of waters that do not follow the moon and of "creatures" that "come from under" — raised the possibility of something aquatic and dangerous in the area, though nothing seen during the day's search bore that out directly. The grave markers confirmed at least some of the old crew died and were buried here, without settling the fate of Barrows or Maynard. The old mooring ring beside the wreck predates the Advance and hints at another way in or out of the cove beyond both the cut the party sailed through and the makeshift climbing route up the cliff, though nothing else found pointed to where such a route might lie.

In the final days of the crossing, Mani felt the same telltale tingle he associates with a totem's presence, steadily growing stronger and impossible to attribute to anything else as Birdcrown Isle drew near — a sign that took him by surprise, since nothing the party had learned of the island beforehand had suggested a totem might be there.

Riu's successful casting of Mind Tongue on Randolph was the first time either of them had experienced medallion-linked telepathy this directly, and Randolph's immediate speculation that the ability draws on the party's medallions gives the party a new thread to explore; Mani's own attempt to reach Werner the same way failed, as did a further attempt to reach Mistress Clara at a much greater distance, though it remains untested whether that failure was a matter of range, reliability, or something else compared to what the party has observed of Elven long-range communication; Randolph's own guess was that the gift likely does not stretch across an entire continent.

Items Gained

A scrap of writing recovered from the Advance's powder room, reading: "Ware the waters, they do not move with the moon, and men, nay, creatures come from under."
Charts recovered from the Advance's captain's cabin, though some were already water-damaged.

Items Lost

None.