11 Wylden 1119

Transport

Keldo Tidewater proved to be remarkably resilient. In the face of lengthy and intense questioning by the Marhaven authorities he refused to name any of his contacts in the smuggling business broken up by the adventuring party (Help Wanted). Even after he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years at Eldmoor, the druid remained silent.

Riley Hanal-Rian, master of the southwest docks, was left in a quandary. His ethics would not sanction any more aggressive treatment -- he had already sent twice to the temple of Freya to restore the captive's fading health and was sickened at what must have happened to cause it -- so he was compelled to give up and consign the prisoner to Eldmoor. Hopefully, he reasoned, the harsh environment would convince Tidewater to cooperate in exchange for his freedom.

To ensure the safe transport of this high-profile prisoner, Riley commissioned a reliable transport ship, the Lucent. He also contacted the Adventurers' Guild to secure the services of the party that had captured Keldo to escort him to the prison.

The ship was scheduled to sail at daybreak on Wylden 3. The party used the interval to ask around about the Lucent, Keldo, and Eldmoor itself. They learned that the Lucent was owned and captained by Gilliam Corgan, a retired justicair with an outstanding reputation. Word reached the party of Keldo's need for healing during his interrogation, suggesting that Marhaven's inquisitors had been perhaps excessively rough on the druid. They also heard of the reputation of Eldmoor as a hard, well-fortified prison for hardened criminals.

On the morning of the third the party took possession of Keldo at the Marhaven Justice Building on the center deck. The Lucent was waiting for them at the northeast docks. Strontium had the idea of concealing Keldo and all but two of the party inside crates and carting them to the ship on wagons, as if they were cargo, to deter any rescue attempts during the trip to the docks. It took some selling, but the group grudgingly agreed to the plan. Eight silver pieces bought the services of a carpenter to build the crates and a small group of teamsters to load the wagon. Strontium drove the cart through town with Aria, Quinn and Pendrul in the crates with Keldo. W'illot and Uiq followed on foot to watch the crowd.

The party reached the docks with only minor incident: a juvenile pickpocket managed to make off with a common dagger from W'illot's pack. He and Uiq deemed the theft unworthy of derailing their larger mission and let the kid escape.

The Lucent was equipped with a steel barred cell in the forward cargo hold. The party put Keldo in that cell and established a watch schedule. The prisoner would be kept bound and gagged at all times to prevent him from casting spells, and the party would ensure that he slept no more than two hours at a time to keep him from regaining spell slots. W'illot decided to practice his spell stealing on the druid as well to use up any slots he still had available to him.

The first day passed without incident. Strontium took his place by the cell for the night watch and noticed that Keldo seemed to be sicker than when they had marched him on board that morning. He mentioned it to W'illot at the shift change, and the two of them decided to wake Quinn for advice. Quinn recalled that Keldo was a sea kin, and therefore water dependent. They decided to wait until dawn and then arrange for Keldo to spend a few minutes immersed in the water.

Morning came and the party followed their plan. They bound Keldo in a net and had Aria and Quinn take him into the water. A few minutes in the sea improved Keldo's color enough that they felt confident taking him back to his cell.

When Strontium came down to start his shift that night, however, Keldo was once again visibly weakened and sickly-looking. Sea kin only require immersion once a week or so, so Strontium knew there had to be something more at work. In the morning the party removed Keldo's gag and confronted the druid about his failing health. Keldo listened to their questions but did not answer and did not yield to intimidation. Strontium read fear in Keldo's face, but even when challenged with that the prisoner remained silent. Finally the party gave up and gagged him again.

Shouts floated into the hold from the main deck above -- a ship had been sighted bearing down on the Lucent at high speed. Corgan had all hands on deck, manning the crossbows and the rigging, as he tried to avoid the oncoming ship. The interceptor was smaller and faster than the Lucent, however, which gave it the advantage.

Uiq stayed with the prisoner while the rest of the party went topsides. The smaller ship pulled to within visual range and the party saw the name placard on the port bulkhead: Night Wind. They'd heard the name before in pub talk: the Night Wind was a smuggler's ship often seen of late in the seas near Marhaven but never actually putting in. "And we're carrying a smuggler," Quinn noted wryly. "What a coincidence."

A moment later the Night Wind rammed the Lucent on the starboard side. Both ships shuddered from the impact. Pendrul, who had taken a position atop the bowsprit, maintained her balance by effort of will. As the ships crashed together the pirate crew attacked in force. Four human thugs jumped across to the Lucent's main deck with cutlasses drawn while four hadozee glided across from the Night Wind's rigging to land on the boom of the Lucent.

Strontium recognized the hadozee as a threat by virtue of their position and focused his energies on them. He cast light of lunia and sent a bolt of pure light energy to strike a hadozee. The creature was staggered but held on. W'illot and Aria engaged the thugs directly with bow and open hand while the crew focused on keeping the Lucent under control and trying to get the hadozee out of the rigging.

The hadozee drew slashing weapons and set to cutting the lines, causing the mainsail to flap free and bringing the ship to a slow drift. Strontium sent another energy blast up the mast and killed one of the ape-like intruders. Meanwhile Aria tried her Stunning Fist attack on a thug she had already hit with a damaging strike; the thug went beyond stunned and into dead.

With the Lucent unable to sail, the remaining hadozee pulled out crossbows and started firing on the party below. Captain Corgan took a bolt in the shoulder before Strontium could use another light of lunia to retaliate. Uiq emerged from the hold to join the fight and immediately started trading blows with one of the thugs while W'illot returned fire against the hadozee.

Pendrul saw that the invaders were being directed by senior crew on the Night Wind and chose to take the fight to them. She leapt across the narrow gap between ships to engage the Night Wind's bosun. The bosun stepped back and, at the same time, a woman atop the poop deck cast a spell that coated Pendrul's area with grease. Quinn noticed this and, after delivering the death blow to the thug she was engaging, jumped into the water with the goal of climbing onto the other ship and flanking the spellcaster and the enemy captain.

On the Lucent the party gradually took control. Strontium killed two more hadozee with light energy while Uiq finished the last human thug with his bastard sword. The last hadozee took a flying leap back to the Night Wind, which was in the process of trying to escape.

Aboard the smaller ship Pendrul was frustrated again by the sorceress, who laid down a field of caltrops in the grease. Pendrul slipped and fell, taking damage from the caltrops, before managing to slide out of the area and regain her feet. Uiq leapt aboard while Quinn climbed the sterncastle and both converged on the captain and the sorceress. The captain stood his ground and fought with dual sabres, but the sorceress took advantage of a slip by Uiq to drop to the deck, toss his lost bastard sword overboard, and lock herself in the sterncastle. Within a few moments Quinn and Pendrul slew the captain and the bosun, leaving the sorceress alone. She surrendered without further resistance.

Corgan did a fast damage assessment and shared it with the party. The Lucent was damaged and taking on some water, he said, but would be able to continue at reduced speed once the cut lines were restrung. They would need to lay over for a day at Eldmoor to repair the hull enough for the return trip to Marhaven. The Night Wind was in worse condition. The Lucent's reinforced hull had been stronger than the smugglers had anticipated; the Night Wind had taken severe damage in the forward bulkhead and could not be repaired at sea -- they had maybe 20 minutes before she went down.

The party set to work salvaging what they could from the sinking ship. The cargo hold was mostly empty but in the captain's cabin they found a modest cache of coin and gems. The weapons hold contained a replacement bastard sword for Uiq, a stock of mundane and unremarkable weapons, and one prize -- a masterwork aquatic crossbow. Aria took possession of that and replenished her bolt supply from the ship's stock. In the cabin of the sorceress they found a scroll case containing two scrolls and a strongbox holding a dozen lesser restoration potions. A final magical bonus was the Quall's Feather Token that the party took from the sorceress herself, which proved to have the power to produce a strong, steady wind on command. As the Night Wind settled into the brine, Strontium had the forethought to pry off the nameplate from her transom.

The party bound and gagged the sorceress and put her in the cell with Keldo for the remainder of the trip. Under maritime law she could be charged in Marhaven for her part in the attack, so the party planned to turn her over to the law upon their return.

Eldmoor Island proved to be as bleak a place as its reputation held. The Lucent pulled up at the sole dock and Corgan made his request to the dockmaster for time to repair the ship. The party took Keldo inside the stone fortress and turned him over to the guards. They were welcomed by Aiden Seacrest, warden of Eldmoor, who offered the heroes lodging and an antimagic cell to secure the sorceress while their ship was under repair. Corgan's men worked through the night and by morning the Lucent was patched together and ready to sail home.

The first day proved uneventful. The sorceress took Keldo's place as the sole occupant of the cell, bound and gagged to prevent spellcasting. W'illot practiced his spell stealing and the group kept her from sleeping enough to regain slots. The first disturbing note came when the party noticed that, like Keldo, the sorceress had become visibly weakened and ill during the course of the day. This disturbed them enough to warrant an investigation.

Quinn used detect poison and determined that the cell itself was not poisoning anyone. She and Aria inspected the bottom of the ship to see if anything was clinging to the hull and found nothing. As a precaution, they moved the prisoner to one of their cabins for Strontium's watch while Quinn and Aria stationed themselves inside the unlocked cell as a control measure.

Thing settled down for the night. Strontium locked himself into the starboard cabin with the sorceress and the others went to bed, save for Aria and Quinn. The sorceress appeared to sleep while Strontium kept watch. As the hour approached midnight, the dwarf's attention wandered just a little. The lapse proved dangerous: before Strontium could react, a pair of blue-black tentacles emerged from the prisoner's back and wrapped themselves around Strontium's body with surprising strength and speed. The wizard could do nothing but cry out for help.

His cries were heard. Quinn and Aria heard him easily, as did W'Illot. He woke the others and the entire party met in the corridor outside the locked cabin. The key was inside with Strontium, so Quinn put her shoulder into the door with impressive force and burst it open on the first attempt.

Strontium cried out again as he felt tiny spines pierce his skin and inject poison into his system. His hardy constitution seemed to shake off the effect but a rush of adrenaline gave him enough strength to break the tentacles' grip on his body.

Quinn made a quick assessment of the situation and concluded that either the sorceress, or some kind of parasite inside the sorceress, was attacking Strontium. She plunged her trident into the prisoner's throat and slashed it open, killing the woman, but the tentacles remained alive and animated. Two more appeared and grappled Aria even as the rest of the creature emerged from the dead body of the sorceress.

The creature was truly hideous. It seemed to be composed entirely of blue-black tentacles twisted together into a central mass. It had a gaping maw and a frightfully long reach for such a small thing.

Fighting this thing in the cramped space of the cabin seemed futile, so Quinn grabbed Aria and dragged her and the creature out toward the larger space of the cargo hold. Aria managed to break the creature's grip and help in the effort.

As soon as the thing lost its grip on Aria it climbed the wall and established itself on the ceiling of the cargo hold. Pendrul stabbed at it with her rapier and found that she could little damage to it with her weapon. Uiq, on the other hand, delivered a massive blow with his maul that, while it also seemed less effective, did enough damage to kill the thing.

With time to catch his breath, Strontium examined the twisted remains and worked to recall some of his early lessons on aberrations. He recalled hearing of the tsochari, a race of parasitic aberrations with the horrifying ability to inhabit either freshly-killed corpses or the living bodies of nearly any creature. The tsochar feeds of the blood and tissues of the host body, which would cause the host to appear sick and to need frequent restorative magic -- magic like the lesser restoration potions found on the Night Wind, in fact.

The party woke Captain Corgan with the ugly news: they would have to return to Eldmoor immediately, before the tsochar that was likely inhabiting Keldo had a chance to upgrade to a more powerful host body. Corgan looked at the corpse of the creature and agreed wholeheartedly. The ship turned about and made all speed back to the prison.

They docked again twelve hours later, a full day and change after their departure. It was mid day and the dock guards were surprised to see the Lucent returning unexpectedly. The party disembarked and made an urgent request to speak with Warden Seacrest.

A guard went inside to check and returned with the news that Warden Seacrest was not seeing visitors that day. The party concluded immediately that Seacrest himself had been taken over by the parasite. Their explanation was lost on the simple guard staff, so they asked for the warden's second in command.

Soon Joe, the warden's assistant, came out to the dock. The party explained that the warden was in deadly danger and persuaded Joe to take them back to the warden's office. He did so, grudgingly, and was present when the entire party received a telepathic threat: Leave now or the warden dies.

Joe ran in a panic. Pendrul kicked the door in and leapt atop the warden's desk with her rapier at the ready. Tentacles snaked out from the warden's back and enveloped the swashbuckler before she could attack, but Strontium had a light of lunia ready and managed to free Pendrul before the creature could inject her with its poison. Uiq tried to turn the creature's strategy on itself by grabbing a free tentacle but found himself wrapped up in another very quickly. Quinn also became ensnared by a tentacle and felt the poison inject into her flesh, doing some damage to her coordination and reflexes.

The confined space proved frustrating. Aria couldn't get close enough to fight effectively and W'illot couldn't get a clear shot for his bow. Strontium used his spells but had some trouble overcoming the creature's spell resistance. Finally it was Uiq who delivered the killing blow with his maul, again overcoming the creature's damage reduction through sheer power.

At the end of the short battle the warden was dead, slain by the tsochar itself as it emerged from the warden's body. There were no high-level clerics on the island, only healers of middling level -- after all, who bothers to raise criminals from the dead? -- so the party left Joe in charge while they took Seacrest and the dead aberration back to Marhaven. There would be a priest in town able to raise Seacrest, and the party felt sure that Riley would be interest in seeing the remains of the tsochari.

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