Cohen Speaks: Starting the Bullywug Gambit

What a cool name for an adventure!

Well, since the end of the last adventure the intrepid troop spent a week or two selling loot and buying new equipment.  They also provided all of the evidence uncovered in the Lotus Dragon’s lair to the Dawn Council (the ruling council in Sasserine).  This resulted in the group of adventurers being honored with medals called the Spire of Sasserine.  Thus our young heroes start to build their heroic reputation in Sasserine. 

So after a short period of R&R, Lavinia sends them to Kraken Cove, the heist location mentioned by her brother in his letters to Rowyn.  Not able to convince any of the local fishermen or merchants to take them even close to the infamous pirate refuge.  The party spend 100 gp of their rapidly decreasing funds to buy a couple of row boats…not as dumb as it might sound.  Some of them have very good ranks in Profession Sailor now and the party has picked some extra muscle in the form of a Minotaur, by the name of Crunchbite.  So, rowing in shifts they are able to make it to the general location in about 2 days.  Thanks to an epic Knowledge – Geography check by the Elven Ranger, whom the player has decide to name Malciver by the way, our boys & girls even know where Kraken’s Cove is!

Due to sheer cliffs around Kraken’s Cove, it is decided to make landfall a couple of hours down the coast and walk along the cliff tops.  However, still about a mile out they spot a column of black smoke billowing into the air.  At about the same time they start to come across the  horribly deformed corpses of animals native to the area.  Snakes, monkeys, birds etc, all of them either sprouting tentacles, crab claws, vestigial heads and extra limbs or have been torn apart, or both.  The only live animals seen are locked in vicious combat with one another. 

As Dream, in a well-meaning but horribly ill-timed bout of sympathy tries to help some of the afflicted animals, he and the party are set upon by a group of crazed things that might, at one time, have been monkeys.  The horrified heroes find out some unpleasant things.  Like, these crazed little tentacle monkey things are hard to hit, harder to kill, and even in their death throes have one last go at taking a chunk out of the nearest character.  With every successful bite comes a Fortitude check, making everyone very nervous. As well as that, they seem quite resistant to mundane weapons. 

After short but nasty fight, they continue on towards the column on smoke, a few minutes later they are presented with a frightening view from their vantage atop the cliffs.  Kraken cove is on fire.  Well a lot of it anyway.  3 or 4 ships are ablaze and drifting in the shallow harbour, one seems to have made it to deeper water unscathed and is making for the open seas.  Even the water is ablaze somehow.  Ignoring the rickety walkway that no-one wants to try, our fearless heroes throw 100ft of knotted rope over the cliff and prepare to climb down.  The Minotaur and Goliath brace themselves with the rope at the cliff top and lower the others down.  Rand and Oaradreth work out a complicated deal between themselves for the ninja to climb down and the wizard would then use Baleful Transposition to transport himself safely down the cliff… leaving the ninja to traverse the cliff again.  Not a problem for the ninja with an excellent climb ability.  All goes to plan until Oaradreth decides it would be Hilarious to resist the spell.  Which he does successfully.   Thus wasting one of the wizard’s two second level spells, and forcing Rand to join the queue to be lowered down the cliff by the parties’ two brutes.

In the activity and excitement of getting everyone down the cliff, the party fails to notice several terrible, twisted… things slinking towards them through the wreckage that is strewn along the length of the beach.  As the last of the party hits the beach the aptly named Savage Creatures break from cover and charge.  To give you a mental image, think of a cross between a crew member of the Flying Dutchman, from Pirates of the Caribbean, and a 28 Days later Zombie. 

 “It may have once been a man, but now its grey skin, strangely flopping arms and legs and the vacant eyed vestigial head hanging from its neck make the creature anything but.  Yet perhaps worst of all is the creature’s mouth, a cavernous wound in its twisted face filled with a twisting landscape of teeth, a mouth designed for one thing only – tearing flesh from the bone”  Also add tentacles, crab like claws and spines. 🙂

 

 

Next week, exploring Kraken’s Cove, and some more trying not to die.

Advertisements