Kay's Journal - 3/18 - Reaper Errant

Kay’s Journal – 3/18

Abran spends some quality time with his newly won woobie/cloak. It protects him from the cold and will help camouflage him in snowy/mountain environments. Nice!

We get back to the ship. Fathom overhears some conversation – apparently one of the deck hands went missing for a while, came back, and got yelled at by the 1st mate. Fathom joins the conversation to learn more. The missing hand said he walked the shore line a bit. She asks if he’d normally shirk his duties like this – no, the crew says, he’s a solid worker at sea, though…less so on shore. 

We consider what to do. Is he another slaad? Or could he be the one who sabotaged the ship? Pujol suggests we try to track where he went on the beach. He goes to ask the captain about that. She agrees to let us go, so long as we don’t take too long.

Abran finds the tracks and we follow them. We come across a fresh water stream, at which point the tracks disappear. We follow the stream for a while, looking for tracks on either side, in case he hid his path by going through the water. Sure enough, after a while we find tracks leaving the stream and heading off.

We follow those tracks to a large boulder. Something has been carved into the stone. It’s different in style from the elven writing we found before, but it’s definitely ruins of some type. None of use recognize it.

I notice a broken piece of charcoal on the ground by the boulder – it looks like somebody did a rubbing of the carving. We see some charcoal dust around the area as well. Pujol thinks the charcoal was just pulled from a fire.

Pujol inspects the boulder, and thinks it’s a partly buried pillar, or maybe statue – it seems to have facial features, though not human features. Pujol walks a little ways in the direction the statue is facing, as far as he can get without getting out of sight of the rest of us. He doesn’t think out wayward crewman went that way.

Pujol has Abran do a walk around the place while he does a rubbing of the runes on his underwear. Abran finds Thorel’s path back to the ship; he also spots places where Thorel stopped and picked up shells. 

There are no indications of magic on the boulder. 

I copy the runes into the special book.

Fathom thinks the Fall is old enough (3-4 millennia since founding) that they’re likely to be generally interested in old stuff.

We get back to the ship and update the captain. Fathom asks the captain if she’d let us look through Thorel’s stuff. She will allow it, but only if we talk to him and he and the captain are there. We’re not so keen on that, so we decide to just watch him for a while.

But for now, we rest.

After resting, we decide to confront Thorel. We take the captain with us and go to Thorel at his bunk. The captain introduces the situation, saying we’re going to question him about his time on the beach. He seems caught off guard.

Thorel apologizes for skipping out when he gets on shore. CornCob asks if he saw a carved rock. He admits he saw it, and it looked old. CornCob asks if he took a rubbing, Thorel says he tried but isn’t sure he did it well. CornCob asks what he did with the rubbing. Thorel says it wasn’t very good, but after being asked again he says he has it and goes to get it out of his footlocker. It looks like he tried to do a good job, just isn’t practiced at it.

I ask where he got the paper, does he usually carry paper with him? He says he doesn’t usually carry paper, but he bought this in Ven. He was thinking about taking up drawing.

I look at him and in his footlocker with the goggles; there’s nothing magical in either place.

I ask what he was doing when the ship started leaking. He was the 2nd person to find it, and he started bailing right away. He had heard a rumor that it was sabotage.

CornCob asks what he plans to do with the rubbing. He planned to keep it – the salesman in Ven who sold him the paper suggested he document his trips. CornCob asks how he found the boulder – he says he just happened across it. This is a little odd, given that it looks like he made a direct line to the thing.

Pujol asks to take a look at the rubbing, and CornCob offers to buy it.

I think he might be lying – or, he might have been magically induced to do it. It seems like…maybe the second is the case. Maybe someone he met, like the vendor in Ven, made him do it, or maybe he’s a member of the order and they gave him the quest.

We decide to follow him the next time he goes ashore.

We consider adjusting the rubbing and giving it to Morgot. 

We ask Cook if he’s seen Thorel and Morgot hanging out much. Cook makes us omelets. Fathom asks if he’s seen Thorel hang out with anybody in particular – who are his friends on the ship? Cook says not really, Thorel goes his own way. Fathom asks Cook if Thorel hangs out with Morgot; Cook says they once had a dispute about bacon vs. pork belly. We ask Cook about tattoos; Thorel has two, a flower and a compass. The flower is old, but the compass is just a couple years old. The compass is under the flower. It has 8 points and is rotated a little.

We consider the compass tattoo. From a religion perspective, a compass might be used to highlight points in a text, but it’s not something that has a meaning of its own.

From a historical perspective, a compass was a guiding point to…something. There are a couple stories about errands to be run, and the hero of the story was given a map/compass that would always point in the direction they need to go. Fables include this as a motif in stories dealing with the rise and fall of nations or people.

All this goes into the magic journal.

Fathom considers trying to dispel the geas, if indeed Thorel is under one. She and Pujol go talk to him. Pujol chats him up while Fathom does the dispel. After the spell is cast, his demeanor hasn’t changed. Fathom asks again about why he was exploring. He talks about just…liking to explore. She asks if he was drawn anywhere in particular, and he says he was drawn to the NW side of the island. He says the rock was in a barren area and drew his attention because of that. He says it was just luck that he brought paper along that day.

Fathom asks about this merchant in Ven that got him interested in artistic pursuits. He describes a short man with greasy blonde hair, wearing a cloak where he carried all sorts of different stuff. Cook, Morgot, and a couple of the rest of the crew (the twins) were also there when Thorel met him. Morgot also talked to the parchment seller and bought a bunch of parchment from him, but then he always does.

Pujol asks who the first person at the whole in the ship was – it was Tanya. They had gone below to check the cargo. Tanya found the hole and sent him up to alert the crew.

Thorel seems more relaxed at the end of the conversation than at the beginning.

They ask him about his tattoo. He says he got it before Ven, and it’s on his butt. He had some extra coin and decided to get a tattoo. It’s flipped, so it’s pointing SE.

We go talk to Morgot to find out more about the weird parchment guy. Morgot says his name was Bryant. He sells all kinds of writing material. Morgot isn’t sure if he’s a patron of the arts, but does think the stuff he sells might be hot. Also, he sells bad ink that fades.

Pujol asks about Bryant’s personal life; Morgot doesn’t know. Pujol asks what temple they might be associated with; no answer. CornCob asks if Bryant has any special parchment that only goes to certain customers. Yes he does – last time he had some high quality stuff that must have come from the church or the military. CornCob points out that parchment like that could be used to fake orders. 

We show Morgot the rubbing; turns out that it’s on the special high-quality parchment, which as it turns out is not very good parchment for doing rubbings. We point out the symbol, but he doesn’t recognize it. We tell Morgot about the stone. CornCob describes it, and asks Morgot if he’s seen anything similar. He thinks he might have, on another island they came across. We are heading toward that island, more or less. CornCob asks if he has a sketch of what he saw on that island. He does; as he turns to get the drawing, we feel the ship nose dive suddenly. Winged creatures like the harpies we fought before are approaching.