Kay's Journal - 6/10 - Reaper Errant

Kay’s Journal - 6/10/22

We get to the tent city after finishing off the dinosaur. The residents aren’t hostile, but they are distrustful – usually people dressed like us show up to cause trouble. Pujol starts playing his harp to try to improve the mood, and it helps. People begin to gather around Pujol, and more residents emerge from their tents.

Gooseneck helps Margaret hand out soup. CornCob surveys the crowd, looking for people who stick out. He sees a couple people who might be smugglers. Fathom keeps an ear open for people talking about Bentor. I look around the camp with the goggles, and see one magical tent. It looks like it has magic similar to a bag of holding; maybe it’s bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside, or maybe it rolls up very small.

CornCob goes to talk to the maybe smugglers. He has trouble placing their accents. They ask if he’s sailing; he says yes. They ask if he’s looking for goods or labor. CornCob tells them we’re doing exploration and research – well, not here, right here we’re just on shore leave – but that’s what the ship is doing overall. They agree to talk some more over some wine. CornCob gets Gooseneck to go with him for the conversation.

Fathom and I go to look at the slaad brothers’ ex-tent. Margaret takes us to a small red tent. It’s just tall enough to stand up in, but no more. Fathom asks how they decide who gets what tent, and they just distribute what’s available to those who need one.

Margaret knocks, tells the resident of the tent that supper is ready, and then asks if we can look around the tent. He’s fine with it; he doesn’t actually seem to care at all. We ask him if the last residents left anything behind, and he points us to a small piece of cloth that he put in a chest. We look around inside the tent. It’s pretty bare in there – two cots, a chest, a tiny table, two stumps that would do for seating, and a weaving project of some kind that’s been done poorly. Bedding has been hung up so that bugs/snakes can’t get in there.

We open the chest and see the cloth. It’s about the size of a beach towel, maybe 4’ x 2.5’. There’s a lotus pattern woven into the cloth. Every third petal has been dyed after the weaving was done. Fathom leaves the guy 10 silver and takes the cloth.

Pujol wraps up his song. A 5-6 year old kid come up to check him, and the harp, out. Pujol plays some kid songs.

Gooseneck and CornCob talk to the maybe-smugglers. The maybe-smugglers seem to be trying to figure Gooseneck and CornCob out. They were hands on a ship, but stopped doing that when they found a better opportunity being ‘porters’ on ships occasionally. Gooseneck asks about the sladd crewmen. They say the brothers were there about a month. They dealt with the brothers a bit; got them some clothes, and they hunted with everyone else. Gooseneck asks if there was anything alarming about them – no. Just one odd thing: they went bathing daily, but didn’t always come back clean. They were looking for long term jobs.

Gooseneck asks if people looking for work go through or around Bentor. They say feelings are mixed. He’s both villain and hero to people here. Some think he wants to see that pay and jobs are fair. Others think they can do better without him. Bentor takes a finder’s fee from the ships captains. Gooseneck asks about hands who don’t want to go through Bentor. We need deckhands and a helmsperson. They know a few candidates for deckhands, but not a helmsperson. They suggest a gnome who lives in the tent city, a fiery lass, maybe a couple others. CornCob brings out a drawing of the tattoos from the guy from the ship who did the rubbing. He asks the maybe-smugglers about it. One of them thinks he’s seen it before, maybe on someone bathing over in the stream by the falls.

Gooseneck sets up a meeting with the candidates. The maybe-smugglers are Sirella and Creanna.

Back in the tent, I look for hiding places. The bed frame has a little makeshift headboard that has a centerpiece. The top of one of the supports as a plug in the top. I get the plug out; it has threads like a screw. Underneath, there’s a hollow with a mildewy piece of parchment. I pull it out; it’s a rolled-up scroll. I tuck it away to look at later.

A young girl comes up to the table; it’s the fiery girl Sirella mentioned. She says her name is Mint and she can tie knots, swab decks, whatever. CornCob offers to introduce her to the captain. Mint wants nothing to do with Bentor, but will be glad to talk to the captain.

The gnome shows up for his interview. He’s smaller than Pujol. Gooseneck says we are looking for a helmsman. The gnome says he can do it. He’s served on 2 or 3 ships. He wants 2.5 copper/day. His name is Trent. Fathom asks him about the guy who’s tent we were searching. Trent thinks he’s fine.

With these two, Ray (the guy from the tent), and the two women from the bar, we have our 5 candidates. Ray is interested. He wants food and to be told what to do. Doesn’t care about the salary. He’s worked on a ship before, the last ship he was on was the Baroness. He’s from the south end of the continent. Where he’s from the sea is teal, then gets dark and stays that way.

We ask Margaret about the slaad brothers and the bathing. She says they went a couple times a day, but she didn’t pay much attention. Most people bathe by the falls.

I look at the scroll with the goggles. There’s a series of five distinct areas with magic runes. With regular light, there’s a labyrinth detailed out in charcoal. It looks like the stuff was added on over time. It looks like there’s at least one rune per different type of ink. The runes do correlate to the colored sections of lotus flowers in the towel. There also seems to be an unmapped/missing section on the scroll.

The labyrinth looks like an amateur map. It looks like the entrance to the labyrinth in near the waterfalls. All the various markings are in the same hand – one person drew it all.

In the morning, we take our candidates to meet the captain. We go along the t-rex path rather than through the town. The captain talks to them. We show the map to Morgot and see if he wants to come along, and he’s up for it. Morgot thinks the lotus towel is some kind of code.

We have Morgot transcribe the runes and lotus stuff to show to Brooks. Maybe she’ll have an idea what it is. Fathom looks at the runes. They are not written in infernal, but each one refers to a layer of the Abyss. The map maker thought of the places as layers of hell, whether or not it really aligns to that. 

We go ask Brooks about the symbols from the map. Tell her we stumbled across them. Then we describe the lotus and ask if there’s any correlation. She doesn’t have anything obvious. Then we ask about the tattoos as well. One of the tattoos was a rose. Then we show her the towel. She tells us about lotus symbology, lotus = rebirth, separation from the dirty parts of the world. 

The colored parts of the lotus is different shades of green. CornCob’s religious experience doesn’t include this particular lotus symbology.

The towel does look like it could be an infant or child blanket, and the lotus symbol was rebirth?

We go back to the hot springs to talk to Margaret. We ask her about the runes – any local legends of note? She tells us the ruins around are from ancient lizardfolk. The ones by the T-Rex were a temple. They are now very incomplete. There are more ruins inland. Hundreds of years ago, a great lizardfolk tribe lived here. It’s not known why they left. Margaret might be able to lead us to some other ruins. She says there are some by the bathing falls as well.

We go to the waterfall. We think the entrance to the labyrinth must be close. I see a piton up in a rock in the waterfall – I think it’s about half way up. Morgot agrees. He thinks the labyrinth is behind the waterfall.

Pujol thinks they might have climbing and/or other gear stowed around. We search for any hidden equipment. CornCob finds it at the bottom of the pool under the waterfall. There’s a chest wrapped in oil cloth. We open the chest and find a key carved out of stone. There’s lots of metal in the stone, like an ore of some kind. It is magnetic. The carving is definitely lizardfolk in origin. The key doesn’t point to anywhere down here.

We try to find a way to the top of the waterfall. There’s a roundabout path that would get to the top, but it would take a while. A good climber would be able to climb faster. Fathom casts Fly on Gooseneck, who goes up to where the piton is. He ties a rope off to it. He also sees an area where we could climb in behind that waterfall. It looks like people have traversed that path. Gooseneck goes back there and finds the remnants of a carved platform. There’s a lizardman mouth carved in the wall that looks like the perfect size to stick an arm into. The opening for the key is in there. Gooseneck reaches in and puts the key in the lock. The door starts to open.

Kay's Journal - 5/27 - Reaper Errant

While we are still at Brooks, CornCob asks if the bouncy castle comes with furnishings. It does not. Further, if we put stuff in there and collapse the castle, it will eject whatever was in there. 

We decide to think about it for a while. In the meantime, we go check out the noises at the warehouse. We hear people talking about how crates should be arranged. Gooseneck charges in to the warehouse. He sees a lot of movement as people move around crates and chests. It looks like a wagon full of stuff just got delivered and they are trying to make space for it – getting it in its own space, separate from the other things. The other stuff is similarly arranged in to separated piles. It looks very disorganized. The crates appear to be mostly from ships, but a few come from inland. One of the crates definitely looks damaged; that could have been the crashing we heard.

Gooseneck says we heard the crash and came to check it out and offer aid. The warehouse manager apologizes for the noise, but says he has it under control. He asks everybody’s names; Gooseneck tells him. The warehouse manager is Johan. He asks if we have goods in the warehouse, or if the Silver Swan has goods to store. 

Gooseneck asks about hiring crew. Johan becomes visibly uncomfortable and says he can’t help with that; most people go to the Jagged Blade to hire crew. Pujol has Gooseneck ask if there is any cargo from the Starfish or the Bloody Anchor. The Bloody Anchor hasn’t been there for a long time. They did offload some cargo when they were here last, but didn’t store it here. The Starfish mostly deals in foodstuffs.

We go to the hot springs. It’s a little bit of a trek to get there. The jungle is still very natural, lots of typical jungle creatures, but it’s very well-travelled. Gooseneck and I see someone patrolling the path, so clearly the place is guarded. Nothing would go completely unnoticed here. I see where the path veers off to go to the tent city.

We see two people at the springs. One greets us, says it’s been quiet there recently – not many people coming. She’s Margaret, and is making stew. I look around with the goggles, and don’t see anything that stands out.

The second person, a young woman, comes out from behind some rocks. She’s carrying something in a big leaf which she takes to Margaret.

Gooseneck goes and sticks his feet in the water. It smells a bit of sulfur, and is quite hot, maybe 107, 108 degrees. He doesn’t see anything in the water. It’s clear, and deeper in the center. The edges are maybe knee deep, but the center is probably deeper than Gooseneck is tall. Fathom also sticks her feet in the water.

Abran is uncomfortable; he stays on the periphery and looks for animals. CornCob looks for trails, he sees a couple of paths. One leads to where Margaret is making stew, and past that to the tent city. The second goes off in the opposite direction. Neither go by the log where people would store their stuff. 

Nobody sees any mammals here (apart from ourselves). Plenty of little lizards and amphibians, though. Pujol talks to one of the smarter looking lizards, and asks it if this is a safe place. The lizard thinks it is! Also, there are good scraps. 

Abran patrols. He finds some tracks that concern him – it looks like a large wild boar; following those tracks, he gets to a spot where a bush has been uprooted. It looks like something grabbed the boar and dragged it away. He thinks this happened yesterday. It looks like the boar got dragged away from the town or tent city. He circles back to the springs and tells us he wants to go fight whatever dragged the boar off.

CornCob suggests that Abran ask one of the attendants about it. Abran does. Margaret says the heard some large creature sounds in the jungle yesterday, but did not investigate. Probably because there was a large creature out there, and it’s known that there are large predators around. So far, people who have gone hunting for them don’t come back, or come back empty handed. But few bother, as the creatures don’t generally bother humans.

Abran asks Margaret where she lives – in the tent city. He asks if there’s anything or anyone to look for. He says we’re looking for crew, and asks if she knows anything about slaads. She doesn’t, and asks if they are land creatures. Abran says that’s a question for the demonic Fathom.

Gooseneck asks the ladies if they remember the two guys who became slaad. Margaret remembers them well; they were brothers and lived in the tent city. They helped hunt for game. She remembers them as being very cleanly. Gooseneck asks if she could show up where they lived in the tent city. She says their tents are still there, but occupied by others now.

It gets on toward evening. Nobody else comes to the hot springs today. Gooseneck eats some of the crew – definitely boar.

We go with them to the tent city. CornCob asks where they got the boar for the stew. They had set snares.

On the way to the tent city, it falls oddly silent. A large shadow looms above us, leaning down slowly. There’s a massive shape coming toward the center of the group – it’s a big dinosaur.

Gooseneck runs to grab Pujol and Fathom and get them out of the way. Abran shoots at it, hits, then takes cover behind a stone column. Pujol polymorphs it into a hedgehog – which works – and then goes and picks it up.

Margaret shows us the way to a large lava crevasse. Pujol uses Mage Hand to drop the hedgehog into the crevasse. Half an hour later, when the polymorph wears off, we hear a hedgehog squeal turn into a large lizard roar. Then, a mangled dinosaur head pops out. It’s not dead, but it’s damaged. We finish it off and then head to the tent city.