Orhan 1 Day 23 TE 6054

Before leaving, D. and Oathar head in to the markets. Sadly, D. finds that the affluent society here is not the best place for purchases, but Oathar has some luck selling miscellaneous items. At one point though, a merchant with greed in his eyes pays a foolishly large sum for a jeweled +10 sword. Was Oathar swindled? the merchant? The sword did come from the armory in Quellborne... Hmmm... Very mysterious.

D. and Imre have a discussion about the possible sale of the magic backscratcher. Imre holds out for quite a while , but in the end, Oathar is unable to find a buyer.

We pick up our guide from Haeraan's temple and head off into the swamp.

Orhan 1 Day 33 TE 6054

We've not foud the goal, but people start feeling sick. Haeraan looks particularly bad and Oathar's a bit queesey. Luckily, Imre is all over that. Behold his Disease Purification.

Orhan 1 Day 34 TE 6054

Everyone is feeling much healthier.

Orhan 1 Day 43 TE 6054

The paths are gone and we're slogging through water. We're all wet all the time. Monko isn't so thrilled.

Eventually, we encounter a boat in the distance. Investigating briefly we find a nearby Necromancer dude ranch and the boat is unloading chained slaves into the ranch. There's not much daylight left, so perhaps we should camp for the night.

After sunset we see eerie lights springing up around the dude ranch. Throughout the night there's a glow surrounding the area. Haeraan has a dream about a giant skeleton that turns the slaves into skeletons. Behind the skeleton doing the badstuff is a large skull, underneath the skull is a huge skeleton. Behind that is another skull with gems in it's eye sockets. Hey! Didn't we destroy that already? Bah!

Orhan 1 Day 44 TE 6054

We scout. It appears the is preparing to set sail as all of the sailors come out of the ranch and row back to their vessel. We move down the channel towards the sea, and when the ship passes by, we board it silently. They see nothing as they sail out of sight of the dude ranch. Once we are well away the crew raises the Jolly Roger. When we are ready, Oathar casts on the forward sail to distract them, and the party attacks. It take five spells to do it, but the Pirate Captain finally falls. We fall upong the crew. Things are going so well, as crewmen fall over left and right that we decide to get complacent, and both Haeraan and Kyrik are grievously wounded and the Captain starts waking up again. D. mind shocks the captain. Oathar puts him down again and we start tying people up left and right.

One last pirate comes up and says, "Let them all go, or the wench dies." Oathar says, "Let the woman go and you may live to tell of this day." The pirate says, "Never, you have 3 seconds. 3.. 2..." We open up on him. Haeraan commands him, but he surrenders. Imre uses spell trickery to make his casting unnoticable. The pirate's knife breaks. Kyrik impales him with a thrown sword. Oathar short doors the wench to his arms. D. moves in to finish him off and delivers a telling cut. Kyrik pursues and finishes him off.

The woman is named Marla. She is from a little villiage along the coast ....somewhere. Oathar and Kyrik sail the ship a little ways away and drop anchor.

D. examines the cargo space. The usual slave ship stuff. D. finds 25 gold, some maps of the area including the channel, some small ivory figurines, a nice spyglass, and a parrot as well as a pirate hat. D. is apparently for dread pirate. She searches a bit more and finds a contract for slave between the captain and the dude ranch and indicates that the pirate will be paid 10 gold per adult and 3 per child, either alive or freshly dead. D. looks around for this wealth. She finds the cash box and detects traps upon it. Nope, looks good. She picks the lock and finds a sack filled with gold (200) and a smaller wooden box with a big trap. D. make a resistance roll against poison. But she fails and falls over.

Imre decides to prepare herbs to induce more sleeping in the pirates.

Oathar remembers to strike the colors. No pirate flags here!

After a while, people notice D. is missing and Imre heads down to find her. She's been poisoned! Imre casts his usual poison purification spell and then examines her. She's in a coma. Imre examines her and eventually determines that the only known antidote is a fairly common small berry (Golden Berry) that grows in this area. Imre and Kyrik head ashore to find the mystic herb. They find them fairly quickly.

Oathar starts throwing pirates overboard. Haeraan stops him and purifies the bodies so there will be only a few undead tonight. Oathar talks to Marla while we wait.

Imre finally cures D. Imre opens up the box. It goes off again, but we are wise to it's tricksey ways. Inside the box are three vials of some circulatory poison. (Jeggarukh - ID901-10d10 damage).

Oathar attunes to the ivory figurines which let's you talk to birds. There's also a dog figurine and a snake figurine, as well as a cow figurine.

We strip the remaining pirates down and chain them up in the hold, bound and gagged. The pirate captain grumbles but is gagged.

Orhan 1 Day 45 TE 6054

We interrogate the pirate captain. He doesn't want to answer any of our questions. We use our spells. His name is the Black Shark. He's been to the dude ranch a bunch. He doesn't know who's in charge there, but there are about 500 people there. The password is "In the Name of the Devourer"

Haeraan takes this to mean that they worship the unlife directly, but isn't clear on details. When told to list names, he gives four or five names for people who live there.He's never heard of another city like this one. There are no other hidden cities int eh swamp to his knowledge. He's not expected back at any particular time. His secret pirate hoard is on some deserted island. Asked again, he says it's buried on a secret island, only he knows where it is, and we'll never find it. When we demand directions he resists, but then he says, "Two weeks sail up the coast, into the maze of little islands off of the lighthouse peak. there you take a small boat to get around the reef. There, on a little island with a double palm tree is my pirate treasure, arrrr." D. thinks she knows what he's talking about. When asked about the guardians, he boast of the power of the three deadliest traps he could ever find. Imre pummels his mind with his question spells and gets a detailed discussion of the traps.

First he sacrificed and buried a crew of a ship so it's guarded by undead. Secondly, it buried underwater in a small cavern. There are sharks and other creatures guarding it. The third trap is that all of it is cursed. A witchdoctor put a curse on it so only he could take it away. We get all we can out of him and then kill the pirates after finding them guilty of piracy. We burn the captain's body.