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Chapter 7 - Session 3

What Comes From Under

Events and Actions

Still partway up the cliff above the Advance's cove, the party took stock of what rope remained: nearly everything usable aboard the wreck itself — doors, planking, rope, rigging — had long since been stripped away by scavengers, leaving only the hundred feet of spider-silk rope the party had brought over from the Medallion. At the foot of the climbable route itself lay old rope and fittings, worn evidence that someone had used the path before — a possible fallback if the wait for fresh line from the Medallion dragged on, though nothing the party cared to trust outright. Rather than risk the whole party on an unsecured climb up the cliff's partly natural, partly reinforced path, Knick Nab proposed sending back for more. Old Salter and Mathias took one of the boats back toward the Medallion, tasked with returning with the rigger Jacopa, Keyes, and Radult, plus rope, pulleys, and whatever else Jacopa judged useful for rigging a proper ascent. Two barrels of the Advance's remaining musket-grade powder went back with them as well, with enough left behind, by design, that the wreck could still be blown in a hurry if it ever came to that. Noddy floated the idea of rigging an intermediate platform fifty or a hundred feet up the cliff once better rope arrived, so that whoever stayed behind to mind the line would have some measure of safety while hauling gear up from below — a refinement left for Jacopa to work out on her return.

While the boat was away — a round trip the party reckoned at two to three hours — Noddy sent Pocket gliding along the cliff face to pin down the exact spot where the horned old woman had vanished the day before: a loose flap of hanging vegetation, easy to miss and clearly not natural, over a gap in the rock roughly two hundred feet up. Confident of the spot, Noddy then levitated up past it to scout further, poking his head above the cliff's rim with Pocket alongside him. Beyond the edge lay a shallow, grassy valley, rocky hills rising to one side and thick jungle beginning further inland; nothing looked overtly dangerous, but the ground was carpeted, as far as either of them could tell, in small clay pots — hundreds if not thousands of them, arranged in wide concentric rings radiating out from a central gap or chasm. One pot close to hand, tipped on its side, proved on a closer look to be gourd-shaped and clearly worked, but Noddy judged it out of easy reach without actually setting down in the meadow, and chose not to press further before heading back to report. Having seen enough, Noddy returned to the party below and shared what he and Pocket had found, sparking speculation about who could have had the time, and the reason, to lay out so many pots so deliberately — Mani, for one, wondered aloud whether they were filled with gold, gunpowder, or heads.

Waiting on the boat's return, the party turned back to the cryptic note found in the Advance's powder room the day before — "Ware the waters, they do not move with the moon, and men, nay, creatures come from under" — and weighed it against what the party had learned so far about elemental magic tied to the totems: air, earth, and fire had each shown themselves in one form or another, but never water. Before the thought went much further, someone noticed the cove's water level dropping far faster than any ordinary tide should allow — settling, at a stroke, whether the note deserved to be taken seriously. Within the hour, the drop was estimated at nine or ten feet below the high-water mark — enough, the party judged, to leave even their own boat unable to get back through the channel, let alone a full-sized ship.

With something plainly wrong, the party debated where to make its stand — the boat itself, the still-floating hulk of the Advance, or the flat, dead-end patch of grass above the beach where the old grave markers stood — and settled on the grassy patch as the most defensible option: a single approach if anything came at them in numbers. Werner, together with Leela, began ferrying supplies off the boat and up onto the grass to keep them from being lost or ruined, the crowding knocking over more than one of the old grave markers in the process, while Cosimo readied a floating, illusory disc — solid enough to bear two or three people and some 250 to 300 pounds of gear between them, and, stretched by successive castings, good for the better part of half an hour — as a way to move people or supplies up the cliff quickly if it came to that. In the end the party chose to wait rather than commit to the difficult climb while still short-handed.

While the party settled in to wait, Riu cast water breathing and water vision on himself, tied off the spider-silk rope to his own waist, and worked out a simple signal system with whoever minded the other end — two tugs to be pulled up — before diving to search the cove floor for whatever the note might be warning against. The water vision spell let him see clearly in every direction despite the murk, and after repositioning himself out near the middle of the channel he was able to scan the entire cove, including underneath the Advance's hull, all the way to the far wall. Nothing looked obviously out of place beyond a hammerhead shark, sluggish and clearly well-fed, cruising the deep water; nothing suggested a hidden doorway or entrance. Eventually surfacing and rejoining the others on the beach, Riu reported just how far and fast the water had already dropped, and noticed bubbles breaking the surface directly beneath the old iron mooring ring set into the cliff wall, close to where the party had first come ashore the day before.

Soon after, a thin mist began rising from the middle of the bay with no obvious source. Wary now, several of the party readied weapons as the mist thickened, cutting visibility across the water to no more than fifty feet. Out of the mist and the shallows, three misshapen, unmistakably hostile figures dragged themselves onto the beach, spears and improvised weapons in hand — one missing an arm entirely, the other two sporting a small, extra third limb. Before anyone opened fire, Knick Nab pressed for restraint, wondering aloud whether creatures this misshapen might be no different from children born outside the blessing of the Divinity of Two back home — killed or cast out for it, by that faith's reckoning, rather than monstrous by nature — and arguing they deserved a chance before the party assumed the worst. He called out a greeting in the hope that they might simply be islanders rather than a threat; the things answered only with screams and a headlong charge, settling the matter.

More of the creatures followed in successive waves as the fight developed — misshapen, mutated things, several of them unusually large and monstrously strong: a two-headed brute that hauled itself up the rocks using a third arm while somehow keeping a spear in the other two hands; a wild-bearded, powerfully built attacker with strange growths across its back, wielding a spiked pole like a mace; a one-handed attacker carrying nothing but an oversized, crushingly strong hand; and a portly, googly-eyed mutant with a bone jutting from its shoulder, a great claw in place of one hand, and spikes bristling down its back and side. Cosimo's shock bolts and a well-placed lightning bolt knocked two of the larger attackers down in turn, one left twitching on the ground with its weapon hand seized shut around its own club. Leela vaulted down into the thick of the fight with her battle axe, crippling one attacker's leg outright, then later cutting another open from abdomen to groin. Mani, unwilling to be shown up, leapt down between two of the newly arrived, oversized attackers, fighting for the first time with the pair of sabers taken off Second Lieutenant Bush during the Fortnum's boarding and wounding both in the same motion; by the fight's end he'd echoed Leela's earlier stroke almost exactly, cutting a third attacker open from abdomen to groin. Early in the fight Noddy slipped into resilient invisibility and fought unseen for its duration, catching a newly arrived attacker from above with a Fumble spell that tangled it in its own spear and dropped it stunned and prone; Knick Nab promptly booted it into the water. Riu, having surfaced from his dive, hammered a piton into the cliff face some eighty feet up, tied off, and fought on from there, adding his own shock bolts to Cosimo's against the enemy below. Randolph the Chronicler advanced along the beach's edge with a brace of small pistols, calmly swapping in a fresh pair mid-fight to keep the pressure on. Werner opened up with his musket from the rocks above, dropping one attacker with a shot to the head, then switched to throwing javelin after javelin into the mass below once his gun ran dry, while Knick Nab, ranging along the same rocks and later in melee, traded blows with several of the attackers as they piled up around him. Through it all, Gus held his rifle ready from a covering position above, moving up to fire down onto the beach once the press of bodies gave him a clear shot.

One attacker held back through most of the fight, sheltering near the Advance's hull in a set of oddly fine, mismatched clothes that marked it out from the rest — evidently some kind of spellcaster. It twice tried and failed to block Riu from casting his own spells, and, for all its finger-wiggling effort, was never seen to complete a spell of its own. One of Riu's shock bolts finally caught it square in the forehead, searing it and knocking it down; as it tried to crawl for the water, Knick Nab and the rest of the party ran it down on the beach and finished it off. With the last of the attackers dead, dying, or fled, the party was left standing over a beach littered with bodies, the mist beginning to thin, and the water in the cove still dropping — with the boat that had gone for rope, more hands, and more powder yet to return.

NPCs & Creatures

  • Old Salter and Mathias — sent back toward the Medallion by boat to fetch Jacopa, Keyes, and Radult, along with rope, pulleys, and two barrels of powder; still away when the fighting broke out.
  • Jacopa — sent for by name for her rigging expertise, to help set up a secure line up the cliff; had not yet returned by session's end.
  • Randolph the Chronicler — advanced along the beach armed with a brace of small pistols, calmly swapping in a fresh pair mid-fight, and helped hold the line against the creatures.
  • Leela — leapt down to engage the attackers directly, inflicting severe, decisive wounds with her battle axe.
  • Gus — held a covering position above the beach with his rifle for most of the fight, moving up to fire down once he had a clear shot.
  • Pocket — Noddy's familiar; scouted the cliff face to confirm the location of the horned old woman's hidden entrance, then accompanied Noddy over the cliff's rim to survey the meadow beyond.
  • The horned old woman — not seen again directly this session, though Pocket and Noddy confirmed the location of the flap of vegetation concealing her hiding place roughly two hundred feet up the cliff.
  • The amphibious attackers — a group of misshapen, mutated humanoid creatures that emerged from the cove in successive waves once the mist rose and the tide dropped; armed mostly with primitive weapons and grotesquely varied in form, among them a two-headed brute climbing with a third arm, a bearded giant wielding a spiked pole, and others sporting extra claws, jutting bones, and spiked hides. One, notably dressed in fine, mismatched clothing, held back to work spells of its own that never quite came off. All were killed except one large attacker that broke and fled late in the fight, once most of the others were already dead or dying, and was not pursued.

Locations

  • The grassy patch above the beach — the flat, dead-end area holding the old crew's grave markers; chosen this session as the party's defensible rallying point and used to stage supplies moved off the boat.
  • The meadow beyond the cliff's rim — a shallow, grassy valley near the top of Birdcrown Isle's cliffs, rocky hills to one side and jungle beginning further inland, its ground covered in concentric rings of small clay pots radiating out from a central chasm; spotted by Noddy and Pocket but not yet explored on the ground.
  • The Advance's cove floor — surveyed by Riu using water breathing and water vision; a sandy bottom dropping into deep water, a sluggish hammerhead shark, and bubbles rising from directly beneath the old mooring ring in the cliff wall.
  • The Advance's deck — considered and passed over as the party's defensible position; its bow and stern mounts would have given a commanding line of fire, but the swivel guns that once sat there are long gone.

Conflicts

The party's first real fight of the Birdcrown Isle expedition: a wave of misshapen, amphibious attackers — more than a dozen in all, arriving in three distinct waves — rising out of the mist and the shallows to assault the beach. Cosimo's spells and Leela's and Mani's blade work accounted for most of the larger attackers — Mani drawing first blood with the sabers taken off Second Lieutenant Bush during the Fortnum's boarding, and closing the fight with a killing stroke that mirrored Leela's own — while Knick Nab, Noddy, Randolph, Werner, and Gus dealt with the rest between shots, spells, javelins, and steel; Riu, freshly surfaced from his dive, pitoned himself partway up the cliff to add his own shock bolts to the barrage. One attacker — an apparent spellcaster in fine, mismatched clothing — held back through most of the fight and was cut down last, after one of Riu's shock bolts finally knocked it off its feet. Aside from a solid blow Knick Nab took while parrying, the party came through the fight without serious injury.

Learnings and Discussions

The rapid, unnatural drop in the cove's water level — nine or ten feet below the high-water mark within the space of an hour or so — confirmed that the cryptic note found in the Advance's powder room the day before ("Ware the waters, they do not move with the moon, and men, nay, creatures come from under") was a genuine warning rather than old sailor's superstition. The mist rising from the middle of the bay and the attack that followed shortly after tied the two halves of the warning together: the tide's behavior and the creatures were connected. The bubbles Riu spotted breaking the surface directly beneath the old mooring ring suggest that spot, already flagged as unusual last session, may be tied to wherever the creatures are coming from. The party also weighed the note against its broader, ongoing suspicion that each totem or magical tradition it has encountered ties to one of the classical elements — air, earth, and fire all accounted for in one way or another, but water not yet. The discussion circled back to old precedents: the flooding river the party had once likened to the Nile, and the pygmy tribe living near it, none of whom showed any sign of mystical ties to water; the farming valley's people, who showed no elemental affinity at all — unlike Leela's own people, whose ties seemed to run to earth; and the isle of stone men raising some structure skyward in worship of their god. None of it, on reflection, pointed clearly to water either, and the party reached no firm conclusion.

The party settled on the grassy grave patch over the ship or the boat as its defensible position, judging a single chokepoint more valuable than the Advance's higher, more open deck if a large number of attackers came at once. Riu and whoever held his line worked out a simple signal system for diving work — two tugs to be pulled up — that the party expects to keep using. Knick Nab's rigging of the Advance's powder to be set off at a moment's notice, done the previous session, remains in place and unused; the party continues to judge the hulk more valuable intact, for towing and refitting, than as an improvised bomb, barring real necessity.

Items Gained

None.

Items Lost

None.