19 Eidos 1120

Ghost Ship

The party settled into their new home and headquarters, the Daybreak. To help appease the superstitious nature of seafolk, they arranged for Archcleric Sebastian of the Church of Freya to bless the ship in a very public and effusive way. Merkator, devotee of the death goddess Holle, made himself inconspicuous during the proceedings. The discovery that the ethereal filcher Jibbets had made the move to the new ship as well brought mixed reactions from the group.

By the 4th of Eidos the party was well established, well equipped, and well housed, but the group finances were running low. When a messenger arrived asking the party to meet with a prospective client at the Adventurers' Guild hall, therefore, they were more than happy to do so. Their prospective employer introduced herself as Liandra, a representative of the Merchant's Association of Margier, and began by asking if the party was aware of the recent troubles in the northern sea.

In recent weeks there had been a rash of abandoned ships being discovered in the Northern Basin. First a passenger ship, the Celeste, was picked up by the Noordian chancellor's ship as it returned home from Marhaven. Then a fishing boat returned to Marhaven towing the empty but undamaged Roc's Cry, a cargo vessel that had sailed from Margier loaded with crew and trade goods. Speculation about the derelicts was running wild through the city, but actual facts were scarce. The party was certainly aware.

Liandra informed the group that she had information not made public: that five members of the Roc's Cry crew had been rescued at sea and were being treated at a healing facility in Margier. The sailors told a story of a fell, ghostly ship that appeared out of nowhere cloaked in fearful silence and crewed by undead sailors. Liandra also had news of a near miss encounter: a military ship, disguised as a civilian freighter, had been approached by a ship with a seeming-undead crew but the ghostly ship disengaged before the naval crew could do more than catch her name. The name they saw on the mysterious ship was familiar to those who live around the sea: White Lady.

The Guild had recommended the party to Liandra. She offered the group 5,000gp to find the White Lady and hand it over to the Merchant's Association, along with a standard 10 percent finder's fee for any of the lost cargo they could locate. The group retired to consider the offer. Uiq considered the bounty on the ship to be too small at less than a thousand gold each; with no guarantee as to the amount of recoverable cargo, he argued that the offer was not enough to be worth the danger involved. Pendrul negotiated with Liandra to raise the fee to 6,000gp and a deal was struck.

To take the Daybreak to Margier the party would need a sailing crew. Pendrul's charm and low-cut blouse enabled her to hire the six sailors and boatswain needed at the standard rates, which was quite a feat for a ship with the Daybreak's reputation. They left Marhaven the next morning and encountered good winds, enabling them to reach Margier as the sun set on the 6th of Eidos, just the day after they had left Marhaven.

At the offices of the Merchant's Association, the party was able to interview two of the rescued crewmen from the Roc's Cry, Jones and Simmons. They told of how they had been sailing out of Margier to Corsuhn with a hold full of trade goods when, at dusk, an unnatural silence enveloped the ship. Simmons and Jones both noticed it and tried to make sense of it when they saw, off the port side, a grotesque figure of a ship. It looked like a passenger ship but the deck was covered in loose strings of seaweed and the sail hung in shreds from a mast that lacked most of the necessary rigging. Yet even without wind the ship overtook the Roc's Cry and came alongside. The seamen got a look at the crew and felt their blood run cold: the approaching ship's crew had a ghastly visage, moving stiffly and slowly on the deck and staring with sunken black eyes. At that point a sudden panic seized the men and they ran for the lifeboats only to find their entire crew fighting to fit into too few spaces. Those who lost the fight took to the water themselves. Simmons and Jones combined with some strong friends to take one of the boats and rowed away as fast as they could with no thought for the ship or its cargo until they were well away in the dark. There they foundered with no navigator and no provisions for several days before they were rescued by a passing ship and brought to Margier.

After the sailors finished their tale the party interviewed Kellum, first mate of the naval cruiser Oldren. When the Roc's Cry was discovered empty, the Merchant's Association first assumed that she had fallen victim to piracy. The military response was to take the Oldren, disguise her as a civilian freighter, and cruise through the Basin trying to draw an attack. They were almost successful. Kellum related how, on the way back to Margier from a fake cargo run, the Oldren had also fallen into an eerie silence. The lookout spotted the outline of a ship emerging from under the water off the Oldren's starboard side some 100 feet away. Kellum also noted that the ship's sail was unusable and limp, yet the ship overtook the Oldren with apparent ease and drew closer. The Noordian crew saw creepy figures on board the approaching ship that looked and moved like zombies and ghouls. His men prepared themselves for a fight, but none took place; the ship just as suddenly veered away and sank under the water again. Kellum managed to note the name of the ship -- White Lady -- and got a brief look at the helmsman before it sank below the water. At the helm, he told the party, seemed to be a skeletal figure in tattered black robes. As to why the ship disengaged Kellum could only suggest self preservation, though undead are not known for having that trait to any great degree.

Armed with Kellum's pointed observations and the tale of the Roc's Cry crew, the party prepared themselves for a battle with undead. Uiq purchased two vials of magic weapon oil to overcome the considerable damage reduction of a lich, which seemed the most likely match for Kellum's description of the helmsman. W'Illot and Ash visited a local library to gain information on the characteristics of zombies, ghouls, and skeletons with an eye toward learning their weaknesses.

The group's plan was the same as that of the military: make the Daybreak look like a cargo ship and sail out of Margier hoping to provoke an attack. Thanks to the Marhaven expansion, they easily found a merchant seeking transport for a consignment of building materials and willing to pay 1,000gp to the party for delivering those goods. This gave them the realistic look of a loaded ship when they set out the following morning.

As dusk approached, the most likely hour for an attack, the party prepared for battle. Quinn took on the form of a squid and attached herself to the Daybreak's keel to watch the area below. Soon she spied the huge form of a ship approaching from behind the port side. She reverted to her natural form and went topside to warn her companions.

As they discussed the situation the Daybreak suddenly grew deathly quiet. The party was expecting this, of course, but the crew grew visibly nervous as they discovered their own voices silenced along with everything else. W'Illot readied his minor ring of spell storing, which Tolisa had pre-loaded with dispel magic, and cast the spell on the deck hoping to lift the silence spell.

Nothing happened.

W'Illot swore silently as the oncoming ship emerged from the water 80 feet off their port side. The crew pointed and shouted ineffectually at the sight of the craft, a 60-foot-long ship covered in seaweed and water. A shredded square sail hung limply from the rigging, yet the ship kept pace with the Daybreak and began to close the distance.

At 10 feet away the party was able to see the oncoming ship's crew readying for boarding. They did indeed look like a combination of zombies and ghouls: humanoids in tattered clothing with green and pale skin, black sunken eyes, and disgusting teeth and maws.

Suddenly the majority of the Daybreak's complement felt themselves in the grip of an overpowering panic. All the hired crew except the bosun leapt from the rigging and deck off the starboard side of the ship and swam at full speed away from the fearsome spectacle. Pendrul and Quinn also felt the panic and responded accordingly. Quinn, with a swim speed far faster than any rowboat, took to the sea directly. Pendrul ran for one of the rowboats and began to unfasten it from its tiedowns. In both cases W'Illot tried to stop his comrades from running past him but failed to get a hold. He even tried a sneak attack on Pendrul with his sap to keep her from running off, but failed to connect hard enough to subdue her.

Merkator recalled that Tolisa had Castanamir's belt of flying and ran to her side with a plan, which he communicated in improvised sign language. He dropped his gear and mimed to Tolisa to grab him and fly him to the other ship. There was only one problem: the flying belt had to be activated with a command word, and was therefore useless inside an area of magical silence. Tolisa thought quickly, jumped off the starboard side of the bow, and was delighted to hear the splash as she swam out a few feet from the Daybreak. She grinned and signaled her success to Merkator, who followed suit.

Psionic powers require no verbalizations to manifest. Knowing this, Uiq activated his psionic force screen power and augmented his strength with animal affinity, then leapt onto the quarterdeck of the White Lady to face down the skeletal figure at the helm. The creature responded with a blast of force that sent Uiq flying backward onto the main deck of the Daybreak, where the zombie minions had already boarded and engaged W'Illot. Uiq righted himself and helped W'Illot dispatch the invaders.

It quickly became obvious that all was not as it seemed. These so-called zombies moved at full human speed and bled when wounded. W'Illot even surprised one with a lethal sleight of hand attack that should not have affected a true undead. The lich-like helmsman, too, did not match up to the power of a true lich. True, it hurled magic missiles at both W'Illot and Uiq easily, but at nothing like the power level of even the weakest lich. These were clearly nothing more than common pirates led by a mid-level mage, fancy ship and ghostly makeup notwithstanding.

In the water, Tolisa saw Quinn jetting away and targeted her with a dispel magic. The magical fear left her instantly and was quickly replaced by a hot-blooded elven rage. Quinn cast call lightning for later use, swam back to the Daybreak, and took out her anger using her frost-enhanced trident on the first enemy she saw. Tolisa took one more moment to protect herself with a shield spell and then flew Merkator and herself to the bow of the Lady, where he called to Holle to exact deific vengeance on the supposed lich.

With the "zombie" minions falling rapidly and Quinn calling down lightning on his senior crew, the mage lobbed a fireball at the cluster of people in the midsection of the Daybreak. The flaming burst injured several but failed to set the ship on fire. It also killed the two remaining invaders on board.

It quickly became clear that the thugs' fate was of no importance, as one of the "ghoul" officers grabbed an axe and cut the lines holding the two ships together. His comrades bull rushed Tolisa and Merkator, sending them both splashing into the water and clearing the Lady's deck of heroes. The "lich" took the helm and the ship began to pull away.

With the hired crew still swimming in terror, pursuing in the Daybreak was not an option. Both Uiq and W'Illot tried to jump the gap onto the Lady but landed instead in the water. Quinn made the jump, barely, and held on to the railing as the ship began to submerge. Merkator also found a handhold and let the ship take him along. Baelavin followed his mistress and the retreating vessel.

The battle continued underwater at the Lady's full speed. An envelope of bubbly airy water formed around the submerging ship as it plunged further down. Quinn and Baelavin used their swimming ability to vault onto the deck and confront the fake lich. His senior crew swarmed around Quinn, who quickly found herself taking serious wounds while having trouble getting through the mage's protective spells. Low on health and outnumbered, she grudgingly floated up and off the deck, allowing the ship to move on without her. Merkator paused long enough to let off a parting light of Lunia at the mage and joined her in the wake with Baelavin.

Quinn refused to let the ship go quietly. She started to swim behind it, intending to track the thing to its port and then bring back the party to finish the fight. Merkator counselled patience and pointed out the difficulty of finding a 40-foot cog (Daybreak) in the hundreds of square miles of ocean between their position and the nearest land. With great reluctance Quinn relented. They returned to the Daybreak and reported on the Lady's heading and speed. The others had already reassembled the crew and collected Pendrul, who had rowed until the spell wore off and then assisted in gathering swimming crew in the rowboat. They set a course to match the escaped ship's heading, left one at the helm, and set about healing and recovering spells. It would be at least 10 hours before they reached land.

They sailed nearly through the night, guided by W'Illot's darkvision and Baelavin's sense for blood in the water, and came upon the desolate coast of the Moonlands. The aquatic types searched the coastline and found a wide underground tunnel leading inland. The water-breathers, Quinn and Merkator, took Baelavin and entered the tunnel.

It led inland three and a half miles and came out at the bottom of a salt water lake. A quick scouting run revealed the White Lady tied up to a simple dock on the eastern edge of the lake. A six-story tower and what looked like a burial mound stood silently nearby.

Quinn noted the direction and terrain and they swam back to the Daybreak to collect the rest of the team. The party rowed ashore, leaving their hired crew in charge of the ship, and took the overland route to the pirates' lair.

As the sky grew light with the promise of dawn a pair of sentries presented the only challenge to the group. There was no cover other than the lake so Quinn, Tolisa and Merkator swam up under the dock and made noises to distract the sentries. While they stood looking around the dock for the source of the noise, the rest of the group ran up and attacked with ranged weapons. W'Illot and Uiq fired on one sentry with Uiq using his Psionic Shot ability to increase the damage. Quinn charged at the other sentry and hurled her magic trident with lethal results. Both sentries fell dead before they could make any significant sound.

Uiq advanced on the tower to watch the door while the rest of the group checked out the White Lady. They clambered on deck and were charged by two pirates, no longer in ghoul costume but still brandishing cutlasses. Pendrul and Quinn made fast work of them.

With W'Illot in the lead they quickly searched the ship for more hostiles and found none. They did note similarities between this ship and the theurgeme that had taken them to Castanamir's island, which explained the Lady's ability to move without working sails or crew.

With the sun rising in the southern sky the party took a quick look inside the burial mound and found nothing but a set of iron doors with a hefty chain and lock. They proceeded to join Uiq at the ground level door and then burst through it into the pirates' bunkhouse.

The five occupants of the room jolted awake at the party's entry. One woke to the feel of Pendrul's rapier alongside his throat, another to Uiq's bastard sword. Given a fair chance to surrender, the pirates chose to resist. Pendrul's quarry rolled away from the blade to the floor and came up swinging a cutlass. The others likewise pulled weapons and stabbed at the party, but they were no match for the well-armed and ready group. Within a few seconds every thug in the place was dead.

Even such a short fight makes enough noise to act as an alarm, so the party hurried up the stairs to the next level of the tower. W'Illot worked the lock and let the party into a meeting room and office, then up to the dining and kitchen area, and to an armory filled with common weapons and tools. The next level held the abandoned beds of senior mates, and above that the plush accomodations of the ringleader, who was clearly a magic user. But where was he?

Uiq found the answer in a rope ladder that still clung to the east window. Rather than stay with the group he ran straight down the tower wall and toward the burial mound, fully expecting to find his quarry there. Pendrul ran down the stairs at full speed and managed to reach the mound at the same time, while the rest of the party hustled behind.

Uiq and Pendrul found the lock and chain gone from the iron doors, so they flung them open and dashed down the stairs. In their haste they failed to detect a trap: as Uiq's foot touched the third stair the entire staircase collapsed into a smooth ramp and a trap door at the far end opened into a 10-foot pit. Pendrul slid down and fell hard, but Uiq managed to control his descent and land undamaged in the pit.

As the others scrambled to catch up, Uiq and Pendrul vaulted out of the pit to face their enemies. Pendrul spotted the mage from the White Lady, now out of his costume, taking cover near some barrels. Uiq saw two pirate mates and a small figure in a mithral shirt standing atop a crate in the corner. He brushed past the thug to attack the gnome but wasn't quite able to reach it immediately. Rather than face the hulking warrior the gnome turned invisible and hid while his minions defended him.

The rest of the group arrived in tiem to see Uiq and Pendrul engaging the two senior pirates while the mage sheltered behind barrels and hurled magic missiles at them. Uiq felt a spell try and fail to affect his spirits, and Tolisa managed to avoid falling victim to Tasha's hideous laughter as she joined the fray. W'Illot and Quinn focused on the mage, he with his bow and she with her capricious zephyr and trident. The zephyr failed to harm the mage, who dispelled it at the first opportunity.

With the entire party now in the room, which proved to be an underground storage bunker, the unseen gnome unleashed a surprising degree of magical power. A mass whelm spell assaulted all of their minds at once, leaving Tolisa unconscious and Quinn and Pendrul barely standing. Merkator healed Tolisa, who put up a shield for more protection, then struck at the mage with deific vengeance. The mage shook that off and, as Quinn and Uiq and Pendrul closed in on him, let off a shocking grasp the put Quinn out of commission. Pendrul took revenge by plunging her rapier through the mage's heart for the kill.

The sole enemy left was the gnome, who still hid behind his invisibility somewhere in the room. Any chance of finding him through sound faded when a massive illusion of a battle filled the room, complete with clanging of weapons against armor and hooves against imaginary dirt and the screams of the imaginary falling soldiers. Uiq and Tolisa were completely caught up in the illusion, but even those who recognized it as such were unable to listen for an invisible enemy with all the extra noise around them. They searched for the enemy for several more minutes before accepting that their quarry had escaped.

Searching the tower, the ship, and the bunker provided at least some solace for the party's bruised and tender egoes. The trade goods in the bunker would net them a finder's fee in the thousands to add to their reward for the ship and the several thousand gold in coin, gems, and valuables they took off the bodies of the pirates.

Still, Uiq was unsatisfied. He looked at the luxurious theurgeme and knew it had to be worth an order of magnitude more than their agreed-upon fee for turning it over. He argued for keeping the ship, or at least a portion of the goods from the bunker, but found no support from his companions. In a show of distrust he rejected Quinn's suggestion that part of the group take the White Lady to Margier while the others take the Daybreak back to Marhaven to unload her cargo. He explicitly stated that he did not trust Quinn to negotiate a better deal with the Merchant's Association, which angered the druid, but she bit her tongue for the sake of peace within the group.

Ultimately the entire party ended up taking both ships back to Marhaven to unload the Daybreak. Quinn, irritated by the slight from Uiq and a perceived lack of support from her other companions, stayed behind while the rest set off for Margier to collect their reward.

The Daybreak and the White Lady docked in Margier three days later. Uiq kept his dissatisfaction under wraps in front of the Association, who paid the party the agreed-upon sum plus an additional 4,500gp finder's fee for the recovered trade goods. The Association also hosted a celebratory dinner in honor of the group, at which they were presented with a gold shield plaque bearing the coat of arms of the Noordian royal family. The plaque, which was meant to be mounted on the Daybreak, marks the ship as a friend of Noordia and obligates any Noordian vessel to come to the party's aid on request.

They set out from Margier on the morning of the 17th, fractured and tired but wealthy, having secured total rewards in excess of 20,000 gold pieces on their adventure. Even after paying the outstanding bills they would have plenty of coin for themselves.

However, there were still questions to be answered. The group recalled that White Lady was the name of a ship mentioned in the journal of Eidemon that had disappeared at sea in 1084. They wondered whether the ghost ship was the original Lady or whether these pirates had chosen the name deliberately to prey on local superstition.

And then there was the little gnome who could wear armor yet still cast powerful enchantment and illusion spells. What kind of illusionist was this? Whoever the gnome was, the group knew they had given him little reason to fear them. Some kind of reprisal was almost a certainty.

<MR>
8/28/06