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8 Dierdos 1120
Blood Trail
The heroes of the Tumari coast were celebrated publicly and often in the first days following their return to Marhaven. The Church of Aegir praised the party for their courage and honor while giving thanks for the safe return of the missionaries. Lord Mayor Ander himself used part of his address at the New Year's festival to acknowledge the party and their deeds. Nials Toulon, publisher of the Marhaven Crier, took a particular interest in the group and their story. Within a few days of the festival the party had collected the outstanding bounty on the Blood Moon, their captured ship. They used some of the proceeds to refit her with proper sails and a new name, Torchwood, though Tika expressed reservations about naming a ship after kindling. Their celebrity status made it easy to find a mooring place for the cutter on the edge of the housing sector. On the morning of 7 Dierdos the party was gathered on the main deck of their ship as usual when three thunderstones lobbed from cover of the buildings nearby struck the cutter's deck at once. The blast from the stones deafened Loki, Karu, and Tak (Ash's weasel familiar). As the group gathered their wits to respond a human in leathers lept aboard the ship and tossed a tanglefoot bag at the space where Loki stood. The bag burst into a blob of goo that glued Loki to the deck where he stood. Ash spied another stranger in chainmail on the dock and put some magical caltrops between him and the ship while Vondran stood and looked about to discover how many more enemies may be closing on them. His question was answered in a very personal way when an older man jumped down from atop the sterncastle and trapped Vondran inside the silver jaws of a mancatcher and forced him to the deck. From out of thin air a set of metal bands tried to entrap Karu but succeeded only in tangling his feet a little. A female figure, also in leather, stepped out from behind a building and began reciting poetry even as she readied a shortbow. Karu tried to strike at the man holding Vondran but missed. Loki focused on scraping the fast-drying goo off his feet to free himself. Tika saw that the chainmailed man bore the symbol of Pelor on his chest and addressed him, asking the reason for this attack. The cleric chose not to answer after looking at the man with the mancatcher. Vondran's assailant moved swiftly across the deck toward Ash and attacked her with a sap. The blow hurt the sorcerer enough that she tried casting a defensive spell on herself, but she was unable to withdraw to a safe distance first; an attack of opportunity from the sap-bearer left her unconscious. The mancatcher held V0ndran fast and a glitterdust spell left Karu outlined in glittering dust, rendering his invisibility power useless. When the poet drew her bow and attacked Tika, the cleric noticed that the arrow had a blunt tip made of silver. The exclusive use of nonlethal weapons, along with the presence of another cleric of Pelor, told Tika that something unusual was afoot and the helpless state of three of her colleagues suggested that continuing to fight would be futile. Instead she used enlarge person and stepped ashore to address her larger, more imposing self to the cleric and demand to know the reason for the attack. Again the cleric looked to Vondran's assailant. The older man sneered and issued a simple demand: "Turn over the were-creature!" Tika assured the man that there were no were-creatures on the ship and invited him to search. A woman in wizard's garb stepped out from cover, her eyes glowing with the effect of a spell, and confirmed that she could detect no shape-changers on deck. The wizard's report along with Tika's reasonable tone persuaded the man to release Vondran and end the fight. When a search of the ship turned up no other life, were- or otherwise, he apologized gruffly for the attack and explained himself. The man was Arkos Ventrolo. He and his team were hunters of were-creatures, particularly those of the Fell Armada. The town was abuzz with news of a vicious attack aboard a cargo ship, the Intrepid, that looked to his practiced eye like a lycanthrope attack. That incident, coming just a week after the party's return to Marhaven with a captured Armada ship, had led Arkos to conclude that one of the group had contracted lycanthrope in the fight with the Armada and was now prowling the night in beast form. Once it became clear that there were no lycanthropes aboard the Torchwood, Ventrolo lost all interest in the party and their ship. He walked away stiffly and bade his team follow. The cleric, Cecil, stayed behind briefly to apologize for his captain's manner and to explain his history. Years before, Arkos Ventrolo had been a seafaring adventurer. With his brother Berkos and a band of brave heroes he patrolled the seas seeking fame and fortune. Six years ago, however, his ship was attacked by the Fell Armada. The Armada crew were vicious and cruel and won the battle. They took Arkos' ship and left him, Berkos, and the surviving crew adrift on a sargasso mat -- but first, they bit each man. When the full moon rose over half the men changed into were-creatures and preyed on their former shipmates. In the end only Arkos survived, and to do so he was forced to kill not only his mates but his own brother. Arkos recruited a new team and bought a new ship, the Silversheen. Since then he has made it his life's work to seek out and destroy the Fell Armada and the filth that they spawned. By way of compensation for the attack, Cecil left the group a scroll containing two spells developed by his team for their fight. One, false moon, was designed to expose lycanthropes by causing them to change shape involuntarily. The other, silver weapon, could temporarily endow any metal weapon with the properties of silver, thus enabling the weapon to bypass the damage reduction of most were-creatures. *** Aside from the scroll, their encounter with Arkos Ventrolo had also given the party an urge to investigate the attack on the Intrepid for themselves. They found the ship in the shipyard, already cleaned up, but were able to gain some basic information from the people on the docks. One looked at some sketches by Tika of were-creature footprints and identified one as looking like those in the blood on the deck. The print was that of a were-eel, a vicious sea predator able to walk the land or swim the water in its amphibious hybrid form. There had been no were-eels among the crew of the Blood Moon; so where did they come from? Security was tight at the shipyard because of its proximity to the northern naval station, where a Noordian longship was docked while the Chancellor held meetings with Lord Mayor Ander. The party spoke to the Intrepid's captain and to the master shipwright's office and gained permission to set up watch on the Intrepid that night. The night passed without incident on the cargo ship. A disappointed party disembarked and retired to Chez Tralene, a premiere restaurant catering to the mid and upscale customer. That day the clientele included a number of sailors from the Noordian ship. The party kept their ears open and overheard talk of "another" mysterious disappearance among the ship's rowing crew and the resulting rage of someone called Kalar. It was a start. The group approached the Noordian ship and managed to win a meeting with Kalar, chief bodyguard of Chancellor Orwen, the Noordian ambassador on the ship. Kalar proved intransigent and mocked the party's idea that someone on his ship was a were-creature, but permitted them to remain aboard long enough to seek information from the crew. He sent one of his men with them as an escort. The crew of the Noordian ship seemed cautious in the presence of one of Kalar's men, but the party did learn more about an incident some three weeks in the past, just before the last full moon. The Noordian ship had been attacked by a sloop of the Fell Armada shortly after leaving Noordia. The pirates had chosen their target poorly -- the presence of the Chancellor meant the ship was exceptionally well defended -- and lost the battle in short order, with the survivors being taken back to Noordia for trial aboard their own ship. Tika got a vibe from one sailor in particular named Nesbit that there was more to the tale, if only the watchful eye of Kalar's man were not there. She offered Nesbit a sacrament of Pelor, to be received in private. The sailor accepted and, in private, arranged to meet the party on their ship that night after his watch. Nesbit arrived on time, looking about nervously as if to ensure he hadn't been followed. There was more to the story, he said in hushed tones. During the fight with the Armada, Kalar and his right-hand man Mogren had boarded the pirate ship and returned limping. Their manner, which had normally been dismissive and harsh, turned particularly cruel and heartless after the full moon, which was also when men began to disappear from the ship at a rate of one or two per night. The men in question had mostly been oarsmen, men barely above slaves on the social scale, and thus not missed a lot, but the numbers were beginning to mount. Rumor was around the ship that one of the Armada pirates had survived and stowed away on the Noordian ship, but no such stowaway had been found. As Nesbit related this information to the group, a spear came flying from the deck area and pierced Nesbit in the chest. The sailor screamed out in pain and began to change: his skin turned black and oily, and his arms and legs transformed into vestigial clawed limbs. Tika recognized the new shape as the hybrid form of a were-eel. Nesbit was quickly joined by Kalar and another Noordian soldier, presumably Mogren. They wore metal breastplate and held masterwork greatswords in their strong hands. Kalar lept aboard the ship and swung his sword at Tika, narrowly missing. Mogren followed and readied himself for battle as well. The deck of the Torchwood left little room for maneuvering. Loki manifested his mindblade and attacked the creature that had been Nesbit while Ash protected herself from those greatswords with mage armor. Tika called forth a spiritual weapon and set it after Kalar then drew the silver spear she'd bought in town that day. Kalar fought viciously and with a professional fighter's skill. His greatsword crashed down on Tika and Vondran alternately, sometimes missing but often inflicting grievous wounds. Mogren struck at Loki and Karu, both of whom were stuck within reach by the close confines of the ship, while absorbing repeated magic missile attacks from Ash. Nesbit flailed away with his jaws at anyone in reach and did manage to land bites on Loki and Karu but was largely ineffective otherwise. The party found it hard going against Kalar and Mogren, whose armor protected them from most weapon attacks. Ash's rain of magic missiles ultimately took their toll, though, and Mogren began to change from human into eel hybrid form. The armor fell off and left the creature less protected, though still able to swing its greatsword with devastating effect. Vondran did his best to keep Kalar off Tika, even to the point of leaping off the boat to draw the enemy away. The tactic worked; the damage from Tika and Vondran combined with a magic missile from Ash caused Kalar also to assume hybrid form. Once the attackers were out of their armor they became much easier to damage, especially with the party's silver weapons. Vondran killed Kalar with his harpoon and Ash finished Mogren with her last spell, then Tika dispatched Nesbit to end the battle. With two of Chancellor Orwen's personal guard dead on their deck, plus Nesbit, the party sought help from Lord Mayor Ander. A minor official listened to their story and quickly agreed to summon the Lord Mayor for them. Upon hearing the tale of the attack, Ander sent a messenger to invite Chancellor Orwen to his office for an emergency meeting. Orwen looked at the bloodstained armor and weapons of his guard and was appalled at the tale of their savagery. He offered the party 5000gp for their discretion and for the return of the armor and weapons, which were the property of the Noordian throne. Ander arranged for the bodies to be collected and quietly stored on the Chancellor's ship, their ultimate disposal to be a matter of his discretion. The party debated finding Arkos Ventrolo to inform him that the were-creatures who attacked the Intrepid were dead, but decided against it -- let him find out on his own, they reasoned. Instead, they returned to the Torchwood to clean up and prepare for their next adventure.
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