Ship Group Notes – 23rd July 2011
By Helen (minor edit by Robert)
Party: Lassa, Erik, Maynor and T’rynn
Opening Note: This is only a transferring of the basic notes I had taken down at the time of the game and will not be quite the same when it is fleshed out and written properly. :>
The Wind Saber has been in dry dock in Marianburg undergoing repairs. T’rynn and Maynor have been bar-hopping. They can’t seem to get into any bar fights any more. Their reputation has everyone in the whole town behaving! Richtofen has paid for the repairs for the last two weeks and now it’s down to just a couple more days needed to bring the Wind Saber back up to full restoration. Lassa and her First have been interviewing for the new crew members. Richtofen’s agent shows up and has a satchel with ten full heal potions (the good kind) for the party and our new mission.
There was a new island colony. They discovered an ancient cave system that seemed to have some archeological significance. Some friends of Richtofen sent out an expedition and shortly afterwards all contact with the colony and the expedition. The Empire sent out a sloop to check, but no further word was heard from them either. So, Richtofen was asked to send out a team and he chose this party to go look into things on the island.
We set sail as soon the next morning, having the work crews double-time their completing the job. We estimate it will take us ten days taking the quickest route possible. We avoid other ships and such on the way, as best we can. On the eighth day in the afternoon we sight the island. We see there are pine trees and some others as well as scrub brush and other plants. No visible smoke can be seen. We continue sailing toward the island and upon closer approach Lassa decides to sail around to the east coast to where we can see the cove and the colony. The intelligence we have places the caves in the middle of the island. We send out T’rynn’s hawk and he returns after a couple of hours and reports everything is quiet. We find the cove. Lassa has the ship anchoring out of the cove in the deep water of the ocean. The crew has experience and instructions on what to do in the case of a storm and knows to keep an eye to any signals from any of the party members.
The party rows a small boat to the dock and everyone misses their initiative rolls. We go over to the sloop, which is still tied up to the small dock. It does not look like it’s been kept up per Empire standards. It’s dirty and the ropes are sagging and some odd trash is on the deck. We go aboard and are not challenged. No one seems to be around. Erik decides to go down below deck to check things out, trying to be sneaky as he does it.
He makes his way to the captain’s cabin and sees that it appears that some kind of combat has taken place here, but there are no bodies. He finds the log in a desk drawer and finds a hidden compartment with the ship’s fund in a chest. He has the light from the windows now shining in the passageway and realizes that the floor is covered in dried blood. He hurries back and brings the log and ship’s fund to Lassa. She reads that the last entries were pretty standard and about the same as she’s already seen. The place is too quiet and there are no fires from the town, or anywhere on the island. That is all. The last says they sent a party off to the main colony settlement.
Maynor, Erik and T’rynn go below to look at the crew’s quarters while Lassa and T’rynn’s bird are left up above. Lassa sees at the end of the dock a figure which spots her and starts running towards her while screaming. Its movements are not natural which causes a chill to run up her back, so Lassa pulls out her tri-barrel and fires all three barrels but only hits it once. It keeps coming. She draws her saber and manages to take off its head. It falls down dead. The others return having heard the gunshots. Before we can closely examine the body, we see seven more coming up fast and screaming from the end of the dock – all headed towards us. Lassa orders the party to stay on the ship to force them to come at us using the gang plank to restrict their attacks at us. She puts Maynor at the head of the gang plank. We fire off our distance weapons and do some damage but the keep coming. Maynor starts swinging his axe and does further damage with his sweeping blows. These are zombies! He takes out a big chunk out of one and beheads the other. The beheaded one drops and “dies” while the other ones keeps attacking. We realize we need to take off their heads as it seems to be the only thing that stops them. Maynor declares he’s shifting to let them on so we can help take them out too.
Lassa beheads one as does T’rynn. And Maynor takes out the last one in front of him. The last three move in. Erik has damaged number seven a little with his pistol. We manage to take out the last three after a bit of a battle... We then check the ship but don’t find anything other than old blood. So the guys grab a couple of kegs of rum and Lassa decides we can skip going into the village with all the zombies. We batten down the hatches on the ship and do our best to secure it. We row back to the Wind Saber and the crew is surprised. We set sail going around the island seeking another, possibly better, way into the center of the island and the caves to do the investigation and perhaps find out what happened to the archeological crew. After all they were the reason we were assigned to come to this island to find. We decide there is a good spot on the north side of the island. We have the crew row us out to the island and we will signal when we need to be picked up.
We cut inward and come across what appears to be the remains of a camp. It looks like it’s been abandoned for some time. Erik finds some sheets of paper which confirms this is the expedition’s camp. Lassa and Erik are reading the notes trying to figure out what happened, or what they might have discovered. We then hear a sound which seems to be like a crowd noise coming from the direction of the village. We figure the zombies have discovered we’re on the island. We rush up the hill and find a beaten path going further up. We decide with the crowd coming up fast behind us, we have to hurry on up. We find a sealed cave entrance and figure out it’s a door of rock which swings outward. We get inside and then reseal the entrance. We are in a tunnel which is dark and unlit, but Erik uses a small lamp and by its light can see it has a turn and seems to be an “L” shape. There is now a greenish glow coming from around the bend. We hear the zombies beating at the door. We’re trapped so figure we had best check out what is here and where it all goes. Maynor and T’rynn lead as we start out to explore the cave, hoping for another way out. We find a huge demon is in the cave with us. It is a huge, green-skinned demon with a three hex engagement radius. Lassa goes first and misses. The others go and do their attacks. Erik figures out his bullets are bouncing off as they are not magical. It is a long and pitched battle as we all do some damage to it in our turns. It finally strikes Maynor down and he ends up using a fate point. Lassa is knocked down to zero, but makes her toughness roll. T’rynn is really hurt but manages to do some more damage. And in the end Erik, who is unscathed, kills the demon finally. (Or rather sent it back to the demon plane.)
We think / hope that the demon was the one who created the zombies and with its demise they too could perish. We went back to the door and since we would only have a couple of hours more of air, did what healing we could. We would rather die now by a hoard of zombies than die by suffocation in a dark cave. We all trying pushing at the door and Erik ends up hurting himself (he rolled a hundred!). We finally get it shoved open a bit and realize that the zombies are dead and that with a lot of their bodies piled up by the door, they were blocking it and our way back out. Finally we get it open enough to get out again.
As we leave the cave, Erik notices that there are marks carved into the stone next to the door which in our rush to escape the zombies we did not see before. It appears to be like someone had sealed the demon into the cave long ago. We can only guess what happened once the seal was broken and the cave opened. We signal the ship and return to the cove. We do not really search the village but Lassa puts a skeleton crew on the Empire sloop and tows it back to Marianburg. We do have the papers Erik found from the expedition site. We turn the sloop over to the Empire and get 1200 gold as a reward. We keep the cash box from the ship which had 200 gold in it. Lassa give her crew 100 gold to split as bonus. The party gets 325 gold each from the rest. She sets down and writes up her report to Richtofen about the whole matter, including the papers form the expedition enclosed in the huge envelope which she will hand over to his agent when he appears.
And so we wait to sail out another day…
By Helen (minor edit by Robert)
Party: Lassa, Erik, Maynor and T’rynn
Opening Note: This is only a transferring of the basic notes I had taken down at the time of the game and will not be quite the same when it is fleshed out and written properly. :>
The Wind Saber has been in dry dock in Marianburg undergoing repairs. T’rynn and Maynor have been bar-hopping. They can’t seem to get into any bar fights any more. Their reputation has everyone in the whole town behaving! Richtofen has paid for the repairs for the last two weeks and now it’s down to just a couple more days needed to bring the Wind Saber back up to full restoration. Lassa and her First have been interviewing for the new crew members. Richtofen’s agent shows up and has a satchel with ten full heal potions (the good kind) for the party and our new mission.
There was a new island colony. They discovered an ancient cave system that seemed to have some archeological significance. Some friends of Richtofen sent out an expedition and shortly afterwards all contact with the colony and the expedition. The Empire sent out a sloop to check, but no further word was heard from them either. So, Richtofen was asked to send out a team and he chose this party to go look into things on the island.
We set sail as soon the next morning, having the work crews double-time their completing the job. We estimate it will take us ten days taking the quickest route possible. We avoid other ships and such on the way, as best we can. On the eighth day in the afternoon we sight the island. We see there are pine trees and some others as well as scrub brush and other plants. No visible smoke can be seen. We continue sailing toward the island and upon closer approach Lassa decides to sail around to the east coast to where we can see the cove and the colony. The intelligence we have places the caves in the middle of the island. We send out T’rynn’s hawk and he returns after a couple of hours and reports everything is quiet. We find the cove. Lassa has the ship anchoring out of the cove in the deep water of the ocean. The crew has experience and instructions on what to do in the case of a storm and knows to keep an eye to any signals from any of the party members.
The party rows a small boat to the dock and everyone misses their initiative rolls. We go over to the sloop, which is still tied up to the small dock. It does not look like it’s been kept up per Empire standards. It’s dirty and the ropes are sagging and some odd trash is on the deck. We go aboard and are not challenged. No one seems to be around. Erik decides to go down below deck to check things out, trying to be sneaky as he does it.
He makes his way to the captain’s cabin and sees that it appears that some kind of combat has taken place here, but there are no bodies. He finds the log in a desk drawer and finds a hidden compartment with the ship’s fund in a chest. He has the light from the windows now shining in the passageway and realizes that the floor is covered in dried blood. He hurries back and brings the log and ship’s fund to Lassa. She reads that the last entries were pretty standard and about the same as she’s already seen. The place is too quiet and there are no fires from the town, or anywhere on the island. That is all. The last says they sent a party off to the main colony settlement.
Maynor, Erik and T’rynn go below to look at the crew’s quarters while Lassa and T’rynn’s bird are left up above. Lassa sees at the end of the dock a figure which spots her and starts running towards her while screaming. Its movements are not natural which causes a chill to run up her back, so Lassa pulls out her tri-barrel and fires all three barrels but only hits it once. It keeps coming. She draws her saber and manages to take off its head. It falls down dead. The others return having heard the gunshots. Before we can closely examine the body, we see seven more coming up fast and screaming from the end of the dock – all headed towards us. Lassa orders the party to stay on the ship to force them to come at us using the gang plank to restrict their attacks at us. She puts Maynor at the head of the gang plank. We fire off our distance weapons and do some damage but the keep coming. Maynor starts swinging his axe and does further damage with his sweeping blows. These are zombies! He takes out a big chunk out of one and beheads the other. The beheaded one drops and “dies” while the other ones keeps attacking. We realize we need to take off their heads as it seems to be the only thing that stops them. Maynor declares he’s shifting to let them on so we can help take them out too.
Lassa beheads one as does T’rynn. And Maynor takes out the last one in front of him. The last three move in. Erik has damaged number seven a little with his pistol. We manage to take out the last three after a bit of a battle... We then check the ship but don’t find anything other than old blood. So the guys grab a couple of kegs of rum and Lassa decides we can skip going into the village with all the zombies. We batten down the hatches on the ship and do our best to secure it. We row back to the Wind Saber and the crew is surprised. We set sail going around the island seeking another, possibly better, way into the center of the island and the caves to do the investigation and perhaps find out what happened to the archeological crew. After all they were the reason we were assigned to come to this island to find. We decide there is a good spot on the north side of the island. We have the crew row us out to the island and we will signal when we need to be picked up.
We cut inward and come across what appears to be the remains of a camp. It looks like it’s been abandoned for some time. Erik finds some sheets of paper which confirms this is the expedition’s camp. Lassa and Erik are reading the notes trying to figure out what happened, or what they might have discovered. We then hear a sound which seems to be like a crowd noise coming from the direction of the village. We figure the zombies have discovered we’re on the island. We rush up the hill and find a beaten path going further up. We decide with the crowd coming up fast behind us, we have to hurry on up. We find a sealed cave entrance and figure out it’s a door of rock which swings outward. We get inside and then reseal the entrance. We are in a tunnel which is dark and unlit, but Erik uses a small lamp and by its light can see it has a turn and seems to be an “L” shape. There is now a greenish glow coming from around the bend. We hear the zombies beating at the door. We’re trapped so figure we had best check out what is here and where it all goes. Maynor and T’rynn lead as we start out to explore the cave, hoping for another way out. We find a huge demon is in the cave with us. It is a huge, green-skinned demon with a three hex engagement radius. Lassa goes first and misses. The others go and do their attacks. Erik figures out his bullets are bouncing off as they are not magical. It is a long and pitched battle as we all do some damage to it in our turns. It finally strikes Maynor down and he ends up using a fate point. Lassa is knocked down to zero, but makes her toughness roll. T’rynn is really hurt but manages to do some more damage. And in the end Erik, who is unscathed, kills the demon finally. (Or rather sent it back to the demon plane.)
We think / hope that the demon was the one who created the zombies and with its demise they too could perish. We went back to the door and since we would only have a couple of hours more of air, did what healing we could. We would rather die now by a hoard of zombies than die by suffocation in a dark cave. We all trying pushing at the door and Erik ends up hurting himself (he rolled a hundred!). We finally get it shoved open a bit and realize that the zombies are dead and that with a lot of their bodies piled up by the door, they were blocking it and our way back out. Finally we get it open enough to get out again.
As we leave the cave, Erik notices that there are marks carved into the stone next to the door which in our rush to escape the zombies we did not see before. It appears to be like someone had sealed the demon into the cave long ago. We can only guess what happened once the seal was broken and the cave opened. We signal the ship and return to the cove. We do not really search the village but Lassa puts a skeleton crew on the Empire sloop and tows it back to Marianburg. We do have the papers Erik found from the expedition site. We turn the sloop over to the Empire and get 1200 gold as a reward. We keep the cash box from the ship which had 200 gold in it. Lassa give her crew 100 gold to split as bonus. The party gets 325 gold each from the rest. She sets down and writes up her report to Richtofen about the whole matter, including the papers form the expedition enclosed in the huge envelope which she will hand over to his agent when he appears.
And so we wait to sail out another day…