c02s01e03 - crab custard and yak tail soup ========== night 9 -- Everyone in town is talking bout crabs and giant worms from athas.. and they want more to talk about. every sailor coming off a ship is being harassed with questions about the crabs. None of them know anything except the players, the temple staff, and some of the town guard. THX would revel in the opportunity to speak of the Allspark through the crab event, but both Frank and Nero want to keep a low-profile on this event so they head to the safety of The Moored Siren. Nero tries to process the shoulder imp that was banished by the origami frog provided by Cardinal ir'maladar, but too many fan girls wanting to know about the crabs lures him into drunken tales that quickly run off topic into unusual reminiscence of hells he's never experienced, which makes Nero feel even worse bout his circumstances... then Raskal arrives. The one eyed, white bearded barrel of a man pulls the 3 into the his make-shift office to congratulate them and hear the story first hand himself... after hearty smacks on the shoulder, the aging hero says that they haven't finished the job-- the same blacksmith lost a boy and a dog when more crabs came out of the worm trenches. Drink up and get some rest because we're going crab hunting in the morning. THX uses his divine knowledge to learn about crabs while he powers down.. strange dreams of a desert world where the sands of the Ivory plains are the powdered remains of entire civilizations falling to genocidal armageddon, the creatures mutating from the radiant power, the crabs collecting purple goop from the sandworms and seeking moisture to lay their eggs in the sweet protein jelly produced from the purple goop. All this while a 3-pupiled eye stares into THX. The only time he's seen an eye like that was the looking stone in the Sacred Flame's Alchemy lab. To find it in his dreams from the AllSpark is a mystery. -------------- Raskal has three ships. "Silent Heat", "cloud dancer", "Princess Scowl" --Silent Heat is a decommissioned thrane hammership. This cruiser model employs a fire elemental instead of the more typical air helm. Stripped of all the rigging, minimal manpower is needed for the slower ship to perform optimally; lots of armor plating, 3 auto balista and a repeating trebuchet lets this tank of a ship enforce Raskal's decisions. Ryan of Cyre was a former cyre captain prior to the athasian warp. He retired after declining offers from the Thrane and Aundair military to retain his commission. He's loyal to Raskal and doesn't say much but what needs to be said. Linny is the captain of the gunnery, a gnome engineer taking time out of life to enjoy the skiesFire helms only need a helmsman to keep the elemental focused on its current task. The rest of the crew are 4 gunners under Linny's direction. and any marines that Raskal has assigned to the ship follow Ryan's orders without question. --Cloud Dancer is a light skirmisher helmed by a zephyr elemental-- incredibly maneuverable but fragile, and very smart. Equipped with an auto-balista mounted at both ends of the ship, and broad, sweeping sails that Zephyr can pull fast turns and catch more wind for fast retreats and sudden ambushes. 12 men to fully operate the rig, it is Raskal's scout, courier, and dagger in the side of his foes. Renna the Blight is the ship's captain; having been Zephyr's pilot since her helming. She's a wind genasai and claims she and zephyr are cousins. Sam is the deckmaster; a real gaston of a sailor and Renna's Wife. pair of gnomes maintain the gunnery and the remaining crewmen are some of the most elite skymen to be found in Sharn. --Princess Scowl is Raskal's own ship; a water-worthy barge with his parent's ranch home bolted to the prow of the ship. auto-balista on the front porch; the backyard now the cargo deck of the barge, fenced in at the aft with a bunker housing a necrotic-catapult, hurling orbs of dark energy. Reload is a bitch but it is a serious weapon-- a gift from Ryan for his commission aboard Silent Heat. Raskal barks his orders from his parent's den looking out the front bay windows. His intercomm always scratchy with a hollow echo. Winston d'amonte oversees the sail crew -- 10 men total. His accented name denotes a dragonmark but he never identifies with any guilds. Most have seen the aberrant mark on his back, but no one's sure what it does. Brond is a dwarf from the Mror Holds. He commands all of Raskal's marines. total of 70 across the three ships-- most spend their time cleaning the ships and tending to the cleanliness of Cragwar's Inner Ward. -------------- Day 10 -- On the "Silent Heat", some bored marines taking a smoke break gossip about the missing rangers; Raskal set a squad down at the road attack two days ago and they're due to be picked up this morning... a week ago those rangers went into the woods and they haven't come back. Hopefully, they can deliver some good news to Jasper later today. Cap. Ryan drops the team off at the blacksmith's before slowly banking to head back down southward to skulk about the rendevous point. The team visits the mourning family... THX says a few words from the AllSpark that are misunderstood to be a heart-felt sermon of the Sacred Flame, and they all praise him for the blessings. The grave is empty; the boy was taken whole. The boy's mother and sister witnessed the attack.. the crabs scuttled out of the dirt and grabbed both the boy and dog while they played in the barnyard. The blacksmith had filled in the trench with packed soil.. but that wasn't enough to keep the creatures at bay. Now they start to fill it in with stones. Team recalls the crabs being non-violent when getting the purple stuff, but now that the worm is dead, they are becoming aggressive themselves... Frank realizes they can likley be lured with purple goop, so they get some rainbarrels ful of water and mix up a diluted dose they can spread around to draw the crabs to them. The team then has some good tracking insights and start to triangulate where the 4th "missing" day may have been spent--- in the forest about a day's treck, most likely. The team set off into the woods with purple bait water to find where they would have surfaced the 4th day-- and run into the recon team Raskal sent in. The recon says tracking the rangers was easy enough but then the trail dies suddenly a long march inward. They mentiion seeing some tipped / uprooted trees near the northwest edge of the woods near the two road attacks, and the party realizes that the crabs could never get through the dense roots and the worm probably tunnelled under deeply... so there's no real threat from within the forest itself-- they head back to the first attack and see it's been packed with dirt just like the blacksmith had done, and they probably will need to get eveyoneto fill the trenches with rocks. Long day though... the team calls the road camp for the night so they could keep an eye on the trench in case crabs came through. it started to rain. they dumped the two barrels of crab bait into the dirt in the trench to lure them to the team.. but instead during Frank's watch, THX and Frank catch sight of a rider moving too fast for such a late night to be something casual.. there may have been another attack! They flag down the rider -- Roger, a wagoner on a merchant caravan to make good on the balxcksmith supplies.. got ambushed by full plate brute under camo tarps killed one of the horses on each wagon and cut down a half-dozen green henchmen earning coin to add muscle to the wagons-- no contest. the soldiers came in without a word, brutalized the personnel and rummaged through the supplies, taking all of the blacksmith materials before casually leaving for the cragwoods eastward. Not one of the bandits spoke the entire encounter, and all left together united. Roger takes THX back to the caravan so he can let the AllSpark mend them, while Nero and Frank stay put on the worm trench. THX gets a description of the bandits.. and reads the mud on the road for more insight... these were incredibly heavy bodies. their steel boots sank deep into the road mud and none of the caravan can recall any of the bandits taking off their helmets or revealing any skin at all. THX is disturbed and worries they may be warforged.. hoping instead taht they are ridiculously over-armored road brigands? It doesn't look good though. Eventually THX trudges back to the team's roadside camp. the rain was washing out the trench ... down the west and east tunnels. This would need to be filled with rock which they decided to do next day once all's full rests were complete. Day 11 -- while working on filling the trench wtih rocks, Frank hears crabs along the tunnels.. he dumps a dose of crab bait on himself to make for a strong lure and sure enough the crabs fall for it... a ttoal of 10 emerging from either tunnel, passively slurping up purple mud from the night's storm, following the trail of purple on Ellis like ducks in a row.. one thunderwave concusses them all and they have a slew of dead crabs. All the crabs have the purple custard crammed under their shell-- it smells sweet and had a very creamy consistency. THX is willing to eat a mouthful of crab custard after his dream of knowledge, figuring it must be some sort of energy food for hatching crabs... after SUCCEEDING his saving throw, THX suffers from disadvantage to both strenght and constitution rolls of all sorts until the end of a long rest. Massive trippy side effect: tremorsense out to 100'. The two human heroes decline trying it themselves. following the likely path of the tunnel between the road and zeke's ranch, THX picks up on crabs heading FROM zeke to the road... the team turns around to beat the crabs to the road... they dig up the rocks to give the crabs a path out of the tunnel, Frank repeats the crab bait and Nero's thunderwave proves effective against the crabs again, and their total kill total rolls to 16 crabs.. plus the 4 crabs originally before delivering to Cragwar... 20 total. time for a nights rest. It's still raining. Day 12 -- the team spend the day carting to zeke-- THX takes another dose of crab custard and tremorsense shows no new underground disturbances. By night time, the team gets to zeke and have a dry night in the barn to sleep. Day 13 -- The heroes help to close the trenches with rock and then travels on to jeb's ranch further west.. the first sighting of the trenches. Jeb is happy to take them in but conversations turn to human sacrifices to appease the yaks' spirits and replensh the missing beasts quickly. Nero realizes his origami frog ward had fallen away during the rain and he hadn't noticed... and now folks were offering dark ideas again without realizing what they were saying. This does nothing to sooth nero's guilts and paranoia about being watched by evil. Day 14 -- after rough sleep, the team helps fill the nearby trench and heads back to cragwar, searching for signs of trouble at the few ranches they pass, but everything seems at peace.. even the rain stops midday. It's late by the time the heroes get into town. Raskal should be in house ath the Siren, and it would be nice to call this little chore over so they could look into the armored bandits up the road. THX wants to be sure we all know who these bandits are .. or perhaps who they aren't; he'd feel much more confortable if these bandits were just full armored humans-- maybe even bitter Cyrans looking to perpetuate the war between the nations--- anything would be better than warforged... end of c02s01e03 time spent in game: a bit more than 5 days. now level 3 Loots 10 new crab corpses 18 doses of crab custard finished stitching up the crab trenches.
