Kay’s Journal – 1/21
500 XP
3 pearls, 25gp each
The ship is continuing along on its journey, heading down the coast to make a few more stops before heading off into the unknown. We’re getting some rest after the fight with the frog demon things.
The boat makes a lot of noise. Beyond the regular creaks and groans, I hear what sounds like something rolling back and forth with the rocking of the ship. I follow the noise down into the hold and identify the crate that it’s coming from, which happens to be in the middle of a stack of crates of food.
I unstack the crates to get to it. My goggles show me that the crate isn’t magical, so I quietly pry open one of the boards to get a look inside. All that’s in there is a single, smallish chest. The thing that’s rolling around sounds like solid stone or crystal, spherical, and hitting against the metal sides of the chest. The chest is magically locked, so I put it all back but move the crate to another spot for further investigation later.
We all wake up a bit before dawn. I tell everyone about the sounds and the orb in the chest.
We go eat breakfast with the first mate, planning to ask about the guys who turned into demons. Tanya is down here as well. Breakfast is quite tasty. The mate tells us that the two men had been on board for a couple months. The mate doesn’t think that being short a couple of hands should be a problem, but even so they’re going to try to hire some replacements at the next port (about 3 more days of sailing away).
No one suspected the men of anything odd. The behaved normally; nothing else has changed since they joined the crew other than us showing up. They shared a cabin and mostly kept to themselves. We ask to inspect the cabin and their effects.
Pujol knows that slaad are very chaotic creatures. They don’t like things being too much the same for too long; they are agents of chaos. They could have decided to become sailors, then got bored of it and decided they were done. Slaad are created creatures, not something natural. They can reproduce by laying eggs in other living creatures. He doesn’t know if these particular slaad do that or not.
We go to investigate their cabin. On the way, the mate asks us if we have encountered such creatures before. She seems primarily concerned about their ability to hide among normal people.
Their cabin is a small room, like the rest of them. There are some weapons and clothes there, and the same small chests that we have in our cabins. Fathom checks the beds and furniture, but doesn’t find anything.
CornCob opens the chest and finds some papers, a box, and a key. The papers are various travel documents, and a journal. It’s all very organized. Abran takes the box; he opens it and finds something that looks like a hair pick. The box is lined in velvet, and the pick is made of opalescent stone. It's probably worth about 150gp. CornCob pockets the key without letting the first mate see.
We try to collate the travel documents with the ship’s route, but don’t find any obvious matches. We do learn that the ship will be stopping in the town where they were hired. The journal starts very detailed and descriptive, but became less so over the last couple of weeks, like whoever was keeping it was getting bored with the whole thing.
We tell the first mate we’re going to look around. We take the key down to the locked chest I found earlier. CornCob opens the chest with the key; the magic activates correctly and safely; it would have blown up without the key. Yup, the chest belonged to the slaad. Inside the chest is a crystal ball, but it’s not perfectly smooth – it has facets, easily more than 100. Maybe 500. It is partly opaque; we can’t see through it. It’s probably a natural stone, but not valuable. However, it would have taken a lot of work to cut all those facets. It looks like it was rolling around because the straps that held it still in the chest broke. The stone doesn’t seem damaged, though. The inside of the box isn’t damaged either, so the stone must not have been loose for long. I look at it with the goggles, and see it’s definitely magic, some kind of controlling magic, kind of like the stone CornCob has for summoning the water elemental, but not quite the same.
Fathom spends some time with the gem to learn more about it. She finds the experience disturbing. She’s heard that some wizards can control slaad by using a gem from their head. This particular gem would go to a very, very large slaad. The ones we killed did not have a control stone. Fathom thinks that if we destroy this stone, it would destroy the slaad it is attached to. She also thinks that this giant slaad is very far away.
We consider destroying the stone, but decide not to.
It seems like time to get back to work, so I go up to the crow’s nest to be look out – and also to give the crew a once-over with the goggles.
The first mate has the wheel. There’s more activity on the ship than usual; lots of people are moving around on deck. I don’t see anything unusual about any of the crew. The first mate has some magical gloves, but no one else. The captain and the navigator are below, trying to determine the best way around a storm that’s coming.
Pujol goes below to offer to control the weather to get us out of/around the storm. They agree that he should use his abilities in about 6 hours, when we are about to approach the worst of the storm.
I see a line of fins heading for us. This is apparently not normal behavior for sharks. While the crew goes to the port side to look, I see a fish-looking guy climbing on board from the starboard. Looks like this is a coordinated attack.
I shoot one of the sahuagin; Abran shoots it as well and knocks it back overboard. Then he shoots another one. Pujol is on his way below decks, and doesn’t notice the ruckus – until the crew rings the alarm bell.
Another of the creatures climbs on board near Abran, and two large ones come up on the stern. I shoot at the one by Abran but miss.
CornCob comes up from below, summons his spiritual weapon, and damages one of the sahuagin with it. Abran draws his sword and swings at the one that is in front of him, then moves away. Pujol returns to the deck and shoots at that one with his crossbow.
The first mate secures the wheel, then goes to fight one of the big ones. A few of the other crew attack the one by CornCob, while other crew check over the sides.
The sahuagin attack, hurt the first mate pretty badly. Fathom casts a bolt at one of the big ones, but it doesn’t do much. Abran takes down the one in front of him, and moves toward the big ones. Pujol shoots at another one and offers inspiration to Abran.
The crew says that the sides are clear, and kill of the last little one. It also becomes clear that a fight is happening in the captain’s quarters. The two large ones left fight the mate and Abran. I shoot at the injured big one again, and it goes down. I start making my way down the mast.
Everyone starts shooting at the last remaining large sahuagin. Pujol tries to polymorph it into a hedgehog, but fails. The captains comes out of her quarters; she looks fine.
The last remaining sahuagin makes a rude gesture and dives off the back of the ship. The fight is over.
Abran casts a healing spell on the first mate, and CornCob does a mass heal to heal all injured crew, himself, and Abran.
The crew tells us they haven’t seen sahuagin in this area for a while. With two fights on board in the two days we’ve been on board, we are thinking maybe we need to renegotiate our deal with the captain…
