Beyond the Shore: Session 20

The wise man says these animals
Lust greatly after pretty girls.
This way to catch them is the best,
A youth in woman’s clothes is dressed
And then with dainty steps he flaunts
About the Unicorn’s bright haunts.
For when this creature spies a maid
Straight in her lap he lays his head.
The huntsman, doffing his disguise
Saws off the horn and wins the prize.

— 16th century, author unknown

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Leo, Rummy, Adriana, Sandara, and Ratline stumbled back into the camp, exhausted from their flight, half a day after they had left to follow Caddis. Leo, Adriana, and Sandara stumbled off to their bunks, while Rummy, still mostly awake, sought out Thaduk and filled him in on what had happened with the Captain.

As Rummy and Thaduk chatted, Rummy spotted Ratline out of the corner of his eye, animatedly talking to the crewmen working on the ship. Suspecting the worst, the two half-orc officers steered their own conversation closer to the rat. Sure enough, Ratline was explaining, in great—if largely inaccurate—detail about how they had all been captured by a foul, cannibalistic swamp witch-demon-thing, and how Captain Caddis bravely and futilely held her off so that the others could escape, and, thus, was surely very much dead and they needed to hold elections for a new captain as soon as possible.

“Ratline, get over here, we need to talk…” Rummy yelled. The eager little rat scurried over and Rummy, perhaps to subtly for Thaduk, suggested that Thaduk and Ratline needed to “go share a drink”. Thaduk scooped him up under his arm, giving him a full nose of orcish armpit and they wandered off to where the wine crates had been stacked. A cheerily shared bottle of plum wine later, and Ratline was passed out under a tree.

Rummy, meanwhile, wandered off to find Wunorse, who was overseeing the ship’s repairs and explained that Captain Caddis was not dead, nor captured, but rather was “negotiating” with some locals who might be able to help them deal with the erratic day-night cycles in this place and thus speed up their work, and that the captain would be back as soon as the negotiations were completed. Rummy then suggested that Ratline had been hitting the bottle on the hike back, and was thus, not reliable—pointing to the little rat passed out under a tree hugging an empty bottle of wine as evidence. The workers bought his excuses and spread the word.

Rummy and Thaduk then got some shut eye as best they could through a “day” that, by this time had lasted 29 turns of the glass before growing dark again. Once rested they asked around for Zarina, soon learning that she had set up her bunk in one of the lanterns in the captain’s cabin—rather inaccessible due to the ship being heaved down.

Undeterred, Thaduk slung Rummy over his shoulder, walked over to the ship, and leaped, grabbing the railing of the aft-castle and climbing it like a ladder. Once parallel with the captain’s door, he jumped again, sideways, grabbed the door frame (one-handed) and swung into the room, landing on what had been the starboard wall of the cabin.

The aft lanterns in the cabin were hanging askew, and one was opened, with the oil pan and wick out lying in a corner of the wall-cum-floor. Inside, Zarina had pinned up a hammock, tiny curtains, and other accouterments to turn the large lantern into a very tiny apartment. Rummy, still hanging over Thaduk’s shoulder, banged on the wall until the faerie was roused. When they heard the telltale tinkling-bell sound of her trying to speak, and saw her tiny form stretching and yawning as she flitted out of the lantern, Thaduk finally set Rummy down.

The two of them grilled Zarina on what she knew about unicorns—where to find them, how to catch them, how many she needed. While she was able to give sufficient answers to these questions, it became clear that she was a short of “city pixie” and tended to think of unicorns as dumb herd animals and thus knew little about their actual behavior, habits, or proclivities than was told in the stories of mortals. She did, at least, provide them with a drawing so that they could better tell a unicorn from a skunkalope (multi-talented as she is, an artist she is not).

“Oh!” said Rummy, “I like how you emphasized the horns.”

“Oh! Not one horn,” said Thaduk, “two horns. Fore and aft.”

“Yeah…sure, that works. I’ll take both if you can get ’em. But just the one horn, with one point on the head. No antlers.”

She explained that the herd kept by the Faerie Courts were guarded by ‘herdsmen’, giant flaming fairy creatures, which had driven her off the last time she had tried to steal a couple of unicorns on her own. In order for the ‘flying ship’ plan to work, she said, she would need a lot of unicorn horns in order to sustain flight. Rummy asked if there were any unicorns that might not be protected by herdsmen, or ones that they could buy, to which she replied that they might find some in the cities or towns in Faerie. When asked if the horns would grow back if they just cut them off of a live unicorn, she said, “Yes. It doesn’t take long either. Only twenty or thirty of your years I would guess…”

Armed with what they considered enough information, the two half-orcs grabbed one of the ship’s boats, outfitted it, loaded the long-nine and a few rounds of ordinance in the bow, and readied to head out and go unicorn hunting. They drafted Zarina, Tilly, and Sandara to accompany them, and brought along Fishguts for good measure, figuring the cold, watery ooze-monster would be good in a fight against giant, flaming guardians.

They sailed around the western edge of the peninsula where the Dümplom was careened, and then turned east, following the southern coast of the island, staying just in sight of land. As they rounded the south-western end of the peninsula, Rummy spotted beautiful, white-marble ruins of ancient Grecian design lying on the bottom of the sea, fully submerged, but clearly visible through the sparklingly-clear green water. Along the southern edge of the peninsula, they noted several villages, ranging in size from a handful of huts to towns large enough for several thousand people. These they carefully avoided, lowering their sails and going rowing slowly to avoid being seen or making too much noise.

Finally, after nine hours of sailing, Zarina consulted their charts and pointed out that they were nearing the first likely spot for the migratory unicorn herds, which tended to congregate in the few low-lying grasslands around the island. Rummy spotted a stone breakwater, jutting out into the water next to a long, white-sand beach. Standing at the end of the breakwater was a life-sized red-stone statue of a bearded viking warrior, complete with horned helm, round shield, and broadsword, and draped with a suit of blood-red scale armor which was clearly not part of the carving.

Zarina flew up a bit to get a view of the land and suggested that the unicorns, if present, would most likely be to the north-west, where the ground was lower and flatter, and the floodplain of the river would make the soil more fertile. They pulled the boat up onto shore on the eastern side of the breakwater and lowered the mast to make it easier to conceal, then circled around to investigate the immediate area. Rummy found numerous tracks, most apparently from the same barefoot human(oid), beating a muddy path leading from the woods to the north down to and out onto the breakwater and back, some as recently as only a few hours ago. Thaduk, pointed out an area of the beach to the west, where the otherwise white sand gave way to a wide, glossy-black strip, almost like a road of obsidian leading down to the water. Wondering at the strange road, and tired from the long sail, the unicorn-hunters settled in to rest and watch for a bit before setting out.

They were all jolted awake from their brief doze by the crack of something very heavy striking a hard surface, followed by a loud trumpeting sound. They peaked over the breakwater and saw a massive, fifteen-foot tall flaming bull tromping along the blackened road towards the water. The giant red bull walked down to the water and stuck its head half in, drinking deeply. When it withdrew, it blew great gouts of steam from its nostrils.

In its wake trailed a long line of short equines, each no more than three-feet tall at the shoulder and perhaps four feet in length, and all brightly coloured in various shades of yellow, red, pink, blue, and purple, with overly large eyes and a single short, twisted horn in the center of their foreheads. The unicorns hung back from the bull, clustering in a tight pack, but laughing and chatting loudly in a language unknown to our heroes.

Thaduk stared at the bull, wracking his brain as to why it seemed familiar, then pointed out a folk tale he had heard as a child growing up in Moonplum, about a great bull that chased unicorns. He suggested that if they could force the bull into the water it would be somehow neutralized—though he was very unclear on whether it would kill the beast or just put out the fire. Rummy agreed that that seemed like a decent idea and ordered Fishguts into the water, figuring that if they could get the bull in, the ooze-demon could finish it off.

As Fishguts got close, the bull spotted it, and, snorting, blew a ball of flame out of its nostrils strait into the water, which exploded in a massive gout of steam, scorching Fishguts and halting his advance.

Proceeding with the plan, Tilly conjured a sheet of ice onto the glassy path under the bull’s feet. Sandara conjured a wave, drawing the moisture out of the wet sand behind the bull into a small wave to try to push it in, but the water boiled off and vaporized as it neared the bull’s fiery aura. Seeing the ice starting to melt, Zarina threw a fire resistance spell on Thaduk. The big orc then leaped up, raged out, and charged the bull at full speed. The bull, however, was quick, and turned lowering its head to intercept Thaduk, and impaled Thaduk with its horns.

Seeing the enraged orc charging in, the unicorns panicked, scattering and running away from the beach. The bull reacted to their flight by charging strait over Thaduk, trampling him into the sand to catch its charges. Then one of the unicorns, a good bit taller and thinner in build than the others, stepped forward. There was a flash of light from its horn—which was nearly two feet in length—and the unicorns immediately calmed down and began an organized, orderly withdraw back the way they had come along the black road.

Zarina chimed in Rummy’s ear, “They’re getting away!” She then turned invisible and flew off after the escaping unicorns, tossing bombs filled with sleep-inducing pixie dust after them. Rummy, Tilly, and Sandara meanwhile got the cannon from their boat into firing position and let fly at the bull. The shot hit the Red Bull in the shoulder, sending it staggering off the black road and into the sand, where its red-hot hooves immediately began to melt the sand, binding up its feet in the viscous glaze.

As the Red Bull struggled to get back onto the road, Fishguts emerged from the water and began hammering at the bull with its icy-cold pseudopods. Thaduk, meanwhile, pulled himself up from the dirt, chugged a couple of healing potions, and pulled out a spear. He then charged the bull full tilt from behind. Distracted by Fishguts and the melting sand around its feet, the bull was caught completely unawares by the Thaduk and impaled by seven feet of sharpened timber strait up the ass.

The bull tried to turn to attack this new threat, but Thaduk dug in his heels and, using the spear as a lever and the bull’s own momentum, tipped the bull head-first into Fishgut’s mass. The bull’s flames went out, but Thaduk could see faint flickers running along its flesh, mending its wounds. Thaduk yanked out the spear, leaped on the bull’s head, and stabbed it strait in the spine, almost completely severing the head. A few yanks made the decapitation complete and he stood, holding the half-ton bull head aloft and yelling, “Look! I got two horns for you!”

By then, a score of unicorns lay unconscious on the ground from Zarina’s sleep-bombs. Stepping out of the herd, the slender unicorn lowered her horn towards the party and unleashed a blinding flash of light. Thaduk blinked against the brightness, but sure that he saw, not a unicorn standing there, but a beautiful woman, tall and slender like the unicorn, with ankle-length white-blonde hair. Unfazed by the flash thanks to the distance between them, Rummy and the crew reloaded the cannon and fired at the unicorn, sending it sprawling into the sand with the sound of breaking bones.

When it stood up again, it was entirely humanoid, much as Thaduk had seen, with a brilliant, jeweled bindi in the center of her forehead where the horn would be. One arm of the unicorn-woman hung lifeless, the other waved a hand above her head and shouted something at them in the same unknown tongue the other unicorns had been using. “Non mittet in eam. Nos dedite!”

To be continued…

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Red Bull	CR 10

XP 9,600
NE Huge Outsider (evil, elemental, fire)
Init +3; Senses low-light vision, darkvision 60 ft., see in darkness; Perception +8
Aura Fear (20-ft., DC 14), Fire (5-ft., DC 18)

DEFENSE

AC 28, touch 11, flat-footed 25 (+3 Dex, +17 natural, -2 size)
hp 95 (9d10+45); regeneration 5 (good spells or weapons)
Fort +10, Ref +9, Will +3
DR 10/magic
Immunities elemental traits, fear, fire, negative energy absorption
Weakness vulnerability to cold

Speed 40 ft.

Melee gore +18 (2d6+16, plus burn)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks trample (3d8+16, DC 25), burn
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 9th)

3/day—fireball (DC 13), dispel good (DC 15)
1/day—summon (level 5, 1d3 scalding minotaurs, 100%)

STATISTICS

Str 33, Dex 16, Con 19, Int 3, Wis 11, Cha 6
Base Atk +9; CMB +22; CMD 35
Feats Alertness, Ability Focus (fear aura), Power Attack, Power Charge, Impaling Charge
Skills Perception +12, Sense Motive +12;
Languages: understands but cannot speak—Ignan, Infernal, Sylvan
SQ Fiery Aura, Fear Aura

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Burn (Ex)

A Red Bull deals an additional 2d6 points of fire damage with any gore attack. Those hit by a Red Bull’s gore attack must succeed on a Reflex save (DC 18) or catch on fire. The flame burns for 1d4 rounds. A burning creature can take a move action to put out the flame. The save DC is Constitution-based. Creatures hitting a Red Bull with natural weapons or unarmed attacks take fire damage as though hit by the Red Bull’s gore attack, and also catch on fire unless they succeed on a Reflex save.

Fiery Aura (Ex)

Any creature that begins its turn within 5 feet of a Red Bull must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 18) or take 2d6 points of fire damage from the intense heat. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Fear Aura (Su)

Any creature that begins its turn within 20 feet of a Red Bull must succeed on a Will save (DC 14) or be affected as if by a Fear spell. The save DC is Charisma based. Unicorns and Ponykind automatically fail their saves against a Red Bull's fear aura.

Negative Energy Absorption (Su)

Any negative energy-based attack that directly targets a Red Bull is absorbed into its body dealing no damage to the bull. Instead, a Red Bull heals 1 hit point for every 3 points of damage the attack would have otherwise dealt. A Red Bull gets no saving throw against negative energy based effects.

ECOLOGY
Environment any land (Faerie)
Organization solitary
Treasure incidental
This enormous, flaming-red bovine is 15 feet tall, measures nearly 30 feet from horns to tail, and weighs approximately 16 tons.
The Red Bull is a powerful demonic beast that attacks single-mindedly. Created by the lords of the Unseelie Court to protect the herds of unicorns which roam the plains of Faerie, he persues whatever target his master sets him against relentlessly. Anything or anyone that gets in its way is destroyed with hardly any awareness from the Bull. Even the immortal creatures of faerie, like unicorns, become filled with blind terror at the sight of it.

Beyond the Shore: Session 19

Isabel! do you not fear
The night and the wonders here?
Dim vales—and shadowy floods—
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over:
Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again—again—again—
Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places—
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down—still down—and down
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain’s eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be—
O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—
Over spirits on the wing—
Over every drowsy thing—
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light—
And then, how, deep! —O, deep,
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like—almost any thing—
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before,
Videlicet, a tent—
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

Edgar Allen Poe (Fairyland, 1831)

---

After some brief celebration of their hard-won victory, and furious patching to keep the Dümplom from sinking, the sailors of the Dümplom settled in to do a more detailed assessment of the damages. Caddis ordered the prisoners from the Faerie ship to be locked in the bilges for a few days, hoping that Fishgut’s stench (and the threat of what he might do to them) would soften them on the idea of working aboard the Dümplom. Returning from the bilges, Oppenheimer reported that the breach in the lower hull was bad. They could keep Dümplom limping along for a while, but would need access to fresh lumber and would have to to careen her and patch it from the outside to get her into proper fighting shape again.

After a brief consultation with the other officers, Leo steered the damaged Dümplom south towards a wooded beach sheltered under some cliffs. Boats were put in the water and the crew disembarked, pulling the ship broadside to the shore and letting the tide beach her. The crew immediately went to work unloading cargo, setting up camp, and unloading tools and scaffolding for the repairs (good thing they’d recruited a few squibs).

While that was going on, the officers looked around. The beach to the east sloped upwards into some rocky hills or low mountains. The forest, which stopped about twenty yards from the sandy shore, was utterly bizarre. While everything there gave the vague impression of a forest, the impression was truly vague. The towering, densely packed, tree-like structures ranged from marble columns with metallic leaves, to twisting snakelike bodies with clouds wreathing their heads, to tree-sized human forarms and hands sprouting from the ground, to long ladders with leafy boughs at the top. The only thing that actually appeared to have a wooden trunk sounded a hollow, metal gong-like note when Oppenheimer tapped it. “Better than nothing, I guess,” the carpenter commented. “It’ll take us a while to figure out which of these we can actually build a thing with…and how to cut them…”

Leo blew up at this point, railing at Zarina for not giving him more information before they sailed off. She explained that going strait into the storm, rather than around it as she had suggested, had been his idea. Zarina explained that the storm had clearly put them out on what she called the “Unseelie” side of the island. Faerie, she said, was split into two not-quite-opposing courts. The Seelie side, where she came from, were spirits of natural phenomena—water, flowers, stones, seasons. The Unseelie side was home to the stuff of mortal dreams, nothing but ideas and abstractions, and thus highly unpredictable.

At the top of a cliff of purple stone, due east of where they’d landed, they could see a titanic statue. While the sailing master and helmsman had their little spat, Caddis and Rummy hiked up to take a look. The statue was massive (easily fourty feet tall), made of solid iron covered in a thick layer of rust, and shaped like a naked, ostentatiously muscled man holding aloft a spear or javelin, in a late-period Roman style. The ground around the statue, in an almost perfect circle out to a distance of about a hundred feet, was worn down to bare rock—clear of all vegetation and debris save for a loose coating of black dust.

Pulling out his spyglass, Caddis scanned the horizon. The storm still waited, massive and brooding, just a few leagues off the shore, but otherwise the seas were clear, with no signs of other ships. The east and south were ringed with mountains, rocky to the east and wooded to the south, which rose up from the shore and blocked much of his view. Due south of of the beach where they had landed he saw a break in the mountains, a valley or pass, where the ground sloped down to a large lake with what looked like a mansion sitting on the shore. They returned to the ship and Caddis passed the spyglass and signal horn to Henrye, ordering him to take a few men and set up watch on the cliff, but to avoid going to near the statue.

Overhead the blazing magenta sun had not moved a degree since they’d arrived. Grumbling, Leo set a man to fetch the ship’s glass to measure out the hours since the sky refused to help. He struck up a song to stave off fatigue and keep the men working while they make a defensible camp and started selecting and cutting down trees (or what passed for trees) for lumber to repair the ship.

The officers turned in to get some rest while the crew kept working. Some five turns of the glass later, the sky darkened. It happened almost instantly, like snuffing a candle. One minute the sky was bright yellow with its magenta sun, the next it was pitch black with a giant, silvery moon in the exact same position that the sun had been in. Like clockwork with the appearance of the moon, they heard howls in the distance.

With the fall of darkness, Caddis and Rummy hiked back up the cliff to find Henrye and the other men they’d put on watch sleeping. The captain kicked Henrye awake, then kicked him again for good measure. “Can’t you to watch anything?! Get back to the ship, you’re a swab now! You’re going back to cleaning the decks until you prove we can trust you…” Henrye rounded up the men and they slinked back to camp. Once they were gone, Caddis lay down and passed the spyglass and bugle to Rummy, then lay down to get some rest himself.

Meanwhile, back at the beach, Adriana struck up a conversation with Zarina, trying to get more information about what they were looking for in this strange place. Zarina explained that the last thing she needed for her flying ship experiments was unicorns—or their horns more specifically. They reason she’d been exiled, she said, was that she had previously tried to steal an entire herd of the creatures from the Unseelie lords. For her experiment she’d need to harvest probably close to a hundred horns, or else obtain a dozen or so live specimens, preferably breedable stock. Zarina pulled out the map of the island they had taken from the Faerie ship and pointed out a few possible locations where they might find the unicorns, noting that the herds were migratory, but tended to settle in the low-lying grassy areas of the island.

Adriana asked if all the stories about unicorns and virgins were true. Zarina explained the unicorns, who could live for hundreds of years as mortals counted things, mated for life. On rare occasions, lone windowed unicorns, whose partners have been slain, will adopt young women (or very rarely men) of exceptionally pure virtue as surrogates. The bond generally ends if the woman becomes more committed to someone else (such as a spouse, or lover, or child). So yes, unicorns do befriend virgins.

A few hours later, up on the cliffs, Rummy caught a wiff of an awful, acrid smell that burned his nose and heard rustling in the woods to the south-east of where he and Caddis were set up. He nudged Caddis awake, who quickly took the form of a dromite to better detect the scent. A bad move it turned out, as he immediately become horribly nauseous. Shifting back, he recovered enough to throw a glitterdust spell in the direction of the rustling.

The sparkling dust lit up a bizarre creature, long and sinuous like a snake, but with the fur and markings of a sunk, its head crowned by an impressive rack of stag-like antlers, easily twelve points. Caddis quickly put the creature to sleep with one of his lullabies, and Rummy rushed up and stabbed it between the eyes. Rummy, who, while smarter than Thaduk, was still not the brightest bulb on the ship, insisted that the strange creature must be a kind of unicorn and collected the antlers.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully—likely in large part because of the lingering stench of the dead, three-hundred pound skunk kept all other would-be predators at bay. A dozen turns of the glass later, morning comes as suddenly as night did, though everyone has by this point been awake and working on the ship for quite some time.

Caddis and Rummy wander down from the cliff and Adriana immediately begins grilling Caddis about whether or not he is a virgin. Eventually she explains what Zarina told her about needing to “harvest” a bunch of unicorn horns, or, better yet, catch several breeding pairs of unicorns. Caddis admits that he is, in fact, still a virgin. Extensive investigation among the crew reveals that Caddis, Adriana, Thaduk, Caulky Tarroon, and Oppenheimer are the only virgins among their crew—as well as some other interesting tidbits, like the fact that Pixies are sexual beings (though Zarina is not at all interested in doing it with Leopold) and that Sandara has two kids of her own.

Quothe Adriana, “Our mission for now is to protect the captain’s chastity!”

With that settled, sort of, they debated heading out to hunt for unicorns, but realized that all of the locations Zarina had marked on their map were on the far side of the island. Thus, they decided to wait for the ship repairs to be finished, which Wunorse informed them would take three or four days, “that’s normal days, not the crazy light cycles here.” And crazy the day-night cycle certainly was, for only three turns of the glass after the sky yellowed, it was black again—though that only lasted an hour.

During the incredibly brief night, Caddis suddenly heard something like music, ever-so-faint coming from the east, across the mountains, and felt compelled to follow. Noticing him leaving camp, Adriana, Leo, and Rummy grabbed Ratline and Sandara and headed after him, leaving Thaduk to yell at the crew and make sure they kept up progress on the ship. Caddis made a bee-line strait into the mountains, albeit a strangely leisurely one, clearly not compelled to hurry.

As they climbed, Leo struck up a marching song to keep everyone from tiring out, and soon found himself being accompanied by a swarm of brightly coloured kittens who seemed to appear from nowhere. As the party marched and Leo sang, more of the little creatures appeared, stretching out in a half-mile long line behind them, horns blaring and drums banging adorably. Try as they might, they could not shake the strange little creatures.

Finally they reached the peak of the small mountain, nearly fifteen hundred feet above the beach. On a rocky outcropping overlooking the sea, they found a statue of a little boy, a toddler, perhaps three years old, carved seven feet tall from green-veined white marble. In the statue’s left hand was an alabaster rose, identical to the one Caddis always carried. In fact, on close inspection, the statue was an almost perfect likeness of Caddis as he was as a child.

Standing on the promontory, Caddis could hear the music much louder now, still coming from the east, down the far side of the mountain. He suddenly recognized the haunting melody as the same lullaby he always found himself humming when he used his magic to lull his victims to sleep.

Tili Tili Bom
Swiftly close your eyes
Someone is walking outside the house
And knocks upon the door.

Tili Tili Bom
The night birds are singing.
He is already inside the house
Of those who can’t sleep.

He walks…
He is coming…
Closer…

Tili Tili Bom
Do you hear someone nearby?
Lurking around the corner,
Piercing with his gaze.

Tili Tili Bom
The silent night hides everything
He sneaks up behind you,
And he is going to get you.

He walks…
He is coming…
Closer…

Tili Tili Bom
Do you hear someone nearby?
Lurking around the corner,
Piercing with his gaze.

Caddis pressed on and the others followed, trailing the parade of technicolor kittens after them. Halfway down the other side the others began to hear the song as well, and the melody was soon picked up by the kitten marching band. Hearing the song, Leo and Rummy also fell under the compulsion, and marched resolutely down the mountain towards the thick swamp they could see at the bottom, then heedlessly on through the waist-deep water and mud.

Near the center of the swamp, on a slight rise of land, they found a quaint little cottage, built up on stilts to keep it from flooding, with bright blue clap-board siding, and a wrap-around porch with stairs leading down to a small dock. Lace curtains hung in the open windows and the lovely smell of something baking wafted out.

As they approached the house, the song stopped. Caddis knocked smartly on the door and a rich alto voice answered, “It’s open, let yourselves in.” They walked in carefully to see an attractive middle-aged woman, with a faint greenish cast to her skin and violet hair, taking a couple of pies out of a pot-bellied stove. A small table stood near the door, with eight chairs around it and a fine, lace tablecloth.

Caddis greeted the woman and introduced himself. Hearing his voice, the woman started, nearly dropping the pies. She laid the pies on a nearby counter and half-ran to Caddis, throwing her arms around him. “Oh, it is you!” She hugged him tightly, nearly sobbing.

“Um who are you?” Caddis asked.

The woman pushed him back to arms length and looked at him carefully, smiling. “I’m your mother, dear Caddis. My name is Abere.” Over his shoulder, Adriana and the others could see that there was a definite resemblance between the two of them, but were not quite convinced…

“If you’re his mother, prove it.” Adriana demanded.

The woman looked hurt and sighed. “Are you sure? Must I?”

They insisted. Sighing again, she took another step back and in a moment, the flesh on her face appeared to melt and flow like wax. Beneath was the most hideous visage they had ever seen, so horrid that they all staggered in fear. Worse though, were her eyes, which were dark and piercing and identical, down to the last freckle, to Caddis’s and shone with the same intensity as his evil eye, though the effect on them was magnified a hundred fold.

“Well, I’m convinced…” Caddis said, and, quick as that, her face returned to normal. “So why was there a statue of toddler me and my rose up on the mountain?”

“You kept the rose?” Abere seemed almost ecstatic. “I knew it would lead you home…”

Caddis pulled out his own drowned rose, and held it up. “What do you mean? A storm brought us to Faerie, not this rose…” His mother simply started humming the song again, and suddenly he could hear it reverberating from the stone flower. “Oh…”

Seeing that Caddis’ friend were still weak and reeling from her evil eye, Abere offered them all some pie.

“Is it people?”

“No apple dearies, and it will make you all feel better…” and, indeed it did, as one bite of the delicious pastry was enough to dispel all the harmful effects of her gaze. As they ate, she bustled about, inquiring why they had come to Faerie.

“We need to collect some unicorns to make Captain Caddis’ ship fly…” Adriana stated matter-of-factly.

“Captain?” Caddis’ mother sounded impressed. She looked around the table and her gaze settled on Adriana in a strangely approving way. “And are you his…?”

“I’m his first mate…” Adriana replied.

“Oh! How wonderful.” The woman nearly clapped her hands. “When are you due…?”

“Oh, no no,” Adriana said blushing. “I’m First Mate on his ship…not his first mate…”

“Oh, pity. I was so looking forward to some grandbabies…” She sighed again. “Well, anyway dearies, it’ll be dark soon. Do stay the night, won’t you.” She bustled into the other room, “I’ll just fix up some beds for you shall I?”

While she was in the other room arranging linens, Leo’s eyes suddenly went wide as he remembered something. “Ummm…guys…we’ve got to get out of here. Now!” He stood, leaving the last couple bites of pie on his plate and began inching towards the door.

“What’s wrong?” came the hissing whisper from everyone around the table.

“I just remembered where I’ve heard her name before,” he wispered. “The natives on the islands back home talk about Abere as a cannibalistic demon who lives in marshes…lures men in…then her plant-lady servants drown them and she eats them…” Leo cleared his throat and raised his voice, “Terribly sorry ma’am. We’d love to stay the night, but we should get back to our ship and see how the crew is doing…” He continued backing slowly towards the door.

“Oh,” the woman looked sad, “Must you go?”

“Yes…I…”

As soon as Leo’s foot touched the ground outside, he felt something grab his leg. He looked down to see vines rising from the ground and wrapping his legs tightly, cutting off the circulation. He look up, then back down and, on his second glance saw, not vines, but a beautiful woman, lying naked on the ground and grabbing his leg tight with one hand and stroking it tantalizingly with the other. “Guys!”
Caddis quickly spoke up, “Actually, I’d love to spend the night, Mother, but my officers really do need to get back to my ship…”

“Oh, well that’ll be nice…”

The woman-vine-thing released Leo’s legs and stood up, along with five others. They all looked like masses of seaweed, tightly packed and twisted in the forms of female humanoids, each with a single long strand extending from their midsection off into the swamp, almost like an umbilicus. Crestfallen, the six vine-women slunk off into the swamp and vanished into the strange-looking trees.

Caddis waved his friends off, “I’ll be fine. If she wants grandchildren she has to keep me alive a bit longer.”

Adriana, Rummy, Leo, and the others ran as fast as they could out of the swamp and back to the ship, leaving Caddis to spend the night catching up with his Mommy.

To be continued…

---

Magic Ruins Everything

A major theme of the Exodus campaign I've been playing in is the hardships of human migration. As the GM puts it:

The Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years. The Trail of Tears. The Mongol Invasions. The wagon trains to the American West. History is marked by mass human migration, villages uprooted, families packing everything they have and setting out on a desperate, years-long journey to find a better place. Migration is one of the great human stories, and one that has not yet been the subject of a campaign.

This story is about a journey, and the perils of journeying. Many effects in D&D remove the journey, or take important parts of the tension of adventure away. Fly or Feather Fall remove the fear of falling. Water-breathing removes the fear of drowning. Teleport removes the entire journey.

So, as a guiding point, we ask: what would Gandalf do? If the effect removes the adventure, it will be Rule-0’ed. This currently means that any flying magical effect is straight out. (Flying mounts are another question entirely. Gandalf rode eagles.) For now, tactical effects like Misty Step and Dimension Door remain intact, but are on probation. 

As he says, D&D (in all its many iterations) is ostensibly a game about travel and exploration, and yet so much of the magic available to player characters doesn't simply mitigate the rigors of travel, it removes them entirely. Within the scope of the campaign, the GM has ruled out all spells that would speed travel (Teleport, Fly, etc.) but not those that could make other hardships moot. Who cares about having to cross a desert when you can cast Create Water? Who cares about dangerous cliffs when you have Feather Fall? Dark caverns when you can just make Light at will? Your small supply of food spoiling when you can simply Purify Food & Drink?

Low-level spells available to every 1st-level adventuring party can easily bypass all manner of daily hardships. In later editions of the game and many D&D clones (Pathfinder, 5e) a great many of these spells have even been relegated to 'Cantrips' which can be used ad infinitum. In such games all of the gear traditionally associated with low-level adventuring parties (or real-world exploration)--torches, extra water skins, long coils of rope--become completely extraneous and unnecessary. Magic just makes all your problems go away. Poof!

But is this a good thing?

As a GM I often find myself lamenting the lack of mundane suspense in adventures. So much of the fun of "adventuring" in the real world (camping, backpacking, spelunking, etc.) are from the hardships described above. Yes they are mundane concerns, and perhaps not as exciting as swinging a sword against a troll, but these kind of day-to-day fears are exactly the kind that players can relate to. Hunger, thirst, darkness, heat, cold, vertigo. These are things that cause existential dread in day-to-day life. Why would we let a 1st-level spellcaster banish them entirely?

The need for mundane gear also forces important decisions onto the player. Stuff is heavy. Is it more important to take an extra day or two worth of food, or extra ammunition for your bow? You only have so many hands. Can you convince someone else in the party to carry the lantern so you can keep your shield equipped? What happens if the only party member carrying a torch falls in a pit? Now you're fumbling around in the dark trying to light another one while the monsters bear down on you...

What would a modern-edition D&D game look like if you applied the same logic above and got rid of all of the basic utility spells? No more low-level casters providing infinite light, or food with no expiration dates, or instantly fixing all of the daily wear and tear on your gear. Would raising the level of these spells do? What if your Wizard had to use a 2nd-level spell slot to be able to create light? Would you still prepare it?

The Exodus: Session 36

Khut’s feeling…
Rather upset that Naquim Blackhand still draws breath…

CARDS
Hulagu
Human Relations #10: “It’s My Turn” – Dealing with Anger
Void Sept
Fireeyes
Hook: The Dolmens



In finding the HMB breeding grounds, we have camped in the blasted wilderness…
Additional food is hard to come by…
The camp digs in in muted, sullen silence…
Scouts indicate that the Nihil Sept is nearby to the East…
Chinua informs us that the Void Sept has cut off retreat to the south…
Led by Orbghuz Ironcrown (BWAHAHAHAHAHA)…
Ellen-Dear is meditating with the Yaghuth…who ‘OM’ like foghorns…
He sees a vision of a city…inhabited…at a distance…
Creatures with long, pale hair…
Long-necked like a giraffe…with tall twisted horns…
On its back is a twisted, moving cage like an orrery…
A second later he sees an endless rainforest as far as the eye can see…
And a sense of devistating loss…
Barruk wakes up to a snarl of challenge…and two burning Nohai eyes in the darkness…
Black fur and slavering teeth leaping for his throat…
Fireeyes! (isn’t he dead?)
Barruk rises, shaking his head slowly…
“You really want to do this?”
And Fireeyes gets the horns…and his teeth shatter…
Barruk wakes (for real)…with his hammer burning in his hands…
Oh look…the hammer is Sentient…and thinks that its Fireeyes…
We’re surrounded…again…so…LET’S THROW A PARTY!
We bust out the fatted Holy Mountain Beast…roasting on spits the size of trees…
Massive bonfires are lit…
The music is…complicated…
Yaghuth droning…under warbler melodies, nohai yipping, and steppe chants…
Rust appears at the edge of the camp and scouts call us over to meet some…guests…
We go to greet the emissaries…
In the valley below is a large camp of black felt tents…Steppefolk tents…
Tattered black flags fly in the wind and ranks of soldiers stand ready…
Rust stands with some black-clad folks…
Starts yapping about how we are brazen and over-bold…
Then a big, scarred orc calls for Vadim’s head on a pike…
Orbghuz Ironcrown and Naquim Blackhand are here…
They’re here to discuss a truce?
REALLY?
They want to join our Ordu…under our Yasa…
And only want freedom of religion for it…
We call a council of war to talk it over with Hoargrim…
There is a long…long talk about whether or not to accept them…
We’ve stolen beasts, stolen troops, stolen cities…
What keeps us from stealing a god?
The answer to monotheism is synchrotism…
There is some worry about splitting the camp…meh…
Khut: “We’re going about this all wrong…
We’re much too sober to make these kinds of decisions…”
We call the vote and 9 to 4, decide to let them in…
AND it becomes one hell of a party…
Families are re-united…Hellhorns and Black Crows and Drowned River coming together..
Including a whole bunch of Black Crow shamans who quickly join us…
Casting off their black cloaks…and letting Squee paint their faces…
Squee starts up some arts and crafts with the new children…
They tie-die some robes…
Ithunn points out to grumpy parents about the freedom of religion clause…
Ithunn takes the Amazons out for a training exercise…
Khut calls out Naquim…and gets cock-blocked by Giggles…
Because there are no challenges during the party…REALLY?
So Khut challenges Naquim to a smoke-off…and kicks his ass…
Ellen-Dear and Sorq get the magelings to put on a firework display…
And set some trees on fire…and put them all in contact with the spirits…
There is acrid tension and hatred in the air…
Both the old mothers and the black crow shamans jump into some cutting…
The rights take a turn even a bitter darker than Sorq is used to…
Ado has a chat with Altan about acquiring large swathes of black silk…
And makes some silk shirts for the troops…
Vadim and Barruk team up with some Fertility priests…
AND casts AWAKEN on MORVA THE ANCIENT HOLY MOUNTAIN BEAST!
Vadim clambers up by Morva’s ear and tells him the story of our beasts…
“You would like to charge your enemies, yes?”
“I suggest stepping on them…”
And Barruk steps in to discuss getting the beasts to partner with riders…
Getting Morva to tell them to “Stay still, at first”…
And Barruk spends a lot of time encouraging “Trampling” as an idea…
He might need some apples…
Rust starts moving among the people “doing good works”…
Reuniting families, managing strained relations from the splits, etc.
Khadagan and Hundreds go off to work on his armor some more…
Crushing some purple lotus to make a dye to colour the whole thing…
The wings are woven out of purple lotus fabric…
With thread-of-gold insect-like traceries…
A flaming circle of gold is etched in the chest…
Anything that bites him must save or be blind or deaf…
And the wearer is deeply terrified of the colour pink…
Squee: “We need exposure therapy!”
Iron-Dear goes off to spend some quality time with her spear-tusk…
Everyone dances the evening away (or meditate as appropriate)…
Everyone is stuffed with meat and fermented mare’s milk…
Khut and Khadagan notice that someone has been raiding our store of apples…
It is definitely not that Malik-shaped person hoofing it through the darkness…
There is also a light dusting of fade-cancer spores over all the plants…
We are hauled out of our sleep in the middle of the night by a hubbub…
Khut wakes up beside a passed-out Naquim Blackhand…
Urinates on him before catching up with the others…
Where Petrana and the Tradestoners have assembled an unofficial constabulary…
Yelling at a stone-faced woman standing unbuding in the middle of the yurts…
An angry crowd is gathering…
And the three biggest troublemakers find themselves Held by Sorqutani…
The fight ends before it starts…Petrana explains…
There was a scream from a yurt…
Belonging to a black crow soldier and his estranged wife…
AND Iron-Dear is in the tent, as usual…
A burly man in Empty Circle robes lies bleeding on the ground…
Raised bands on his arms…like nettle stings…
Rust convinces the woman to let us in to have a chat…
Ado modifies the woman’s memory to grant her perfect clarity…
She tells us her husband gave her a gift brought back from the EC…
A forged golden nail on a silk chord around her neck…
She smelled something like burning gulchberries…Madcackleweed…
Her head swam…heard whispering speech, then grinding noises…
Rust points out that the golden nail is a popular symbol among the converted…
The golden nail that pins the sky to the home of the gods…
Which rotates around the seven-starred constellation of the great bear…
Barruk blesses the nail and tells her to keep it as a memento of her husband…
Sorq finds the scuffed-out traces of a ritual circle…
And his head has a hole bored in it…death by trepanning…
Khadagan also finds traces of a paralytic toxin…
Green Lotus…the really rare, good stuff…
Khut looks at the nettle-welts…
Not nettles…precision work with a very fine whip…
Then does an autopsy on the body, head, brain…
Which is more like field dressing, but whatever…
Inside the mouth he finds a black crust…
Which Khad identifies as mutated fade-cancer spores…
Ithunn points out a neat curlycue of smoke rising from the fire…
AND raises the alarm…
There is a cracking sound…and an arrow materializes and cuts one of Ithunn braids…
AND another arrow is in the air from Khut’s bow…Ithunn tries to deflect it…
AND there is a surprised ‘Meow’…and a Pasht falls off of a tent…
Ithunn has a nice chat with the Pasht (Sarafesht)…who she owes a favor…
Apparently someone has taken a contract out on us…
Apparently they want the ones in our camp to be delivered to them…
One of those ones is the mother of one of their best assassins…
But is obscenely overly attached to her offspring…
Who is the one who is going to kill us apparently…
They take contracts to protect their homeland’s sovereignty and independence…
Vadim goes down on all fours and sniffs…a faint waft of incense and the Fade…
Barruk puts the scouts and mage-corps on alert for possible Old Empire intrusion…
Sorq brings in the coven…It’s time to smoke up…
“We’re like the super-dark version of the powerpuff girls”
The three sisters share a creepy meal…and their eyes turn creepy-green…
AND…we are standing in a lush, verdent forest with gray-green leaves…
The delusional dream-elf-twins notice…something…like we’re being watched…
And Vadim catches the very very faint scent of incense…
Khut and Iron-Dear take point…
We find a valley with an arcane circle with alien, old imperial ideoglyphs…
And a quartet of cloaked figures gathered around a twitching, bound body…
Arandyr creeps up to investigate…
And realizes that the valley isn’t really there…
A precipitous cliff dropping away into nothing…
And the hooded figures are looking directly into a mirror in their hands…
Creepy old imperial with long tongues with eyes on the ends…
Khut launches some arrows, which bounce off some suddenly raised shields…
Ithunn and Barruk go leaping in…with similarly ineffective results…
Khadagan follows and manages to sink its claws into one…
Then Squee makes them blurrily pink coloured…
Vadim’s cackles show up and tear into them…pulling one down…
Ellendear animates some little rock monsters to join the grand melee…
They try to telekinetically fuck up Vadim and Iron-Dear, but Ellendear shuts them down…
And Sorq treats us to a brand new kind of fire…immolating one…
Ado vanishes in a puff of purple smoke and appears in the melee as well…
They hammer us with mind blasts, stunning several…
Mostly Khut and Khadagan…who stand there for a long time doing nothing…
Rust runs to clear the blast radius…
Then one raises a Wall of Force between them and the cliff…
Iron-Dear appears and knifes one…and it dies…
Sorq drops a fireball on everyone…
One of them is blown strait off the cliff…
Then Ado…who had just been standing there…stabs one…
With a dagger…which pricks it…AND
Simultaneously mind-fucks it and inflicts a contagion…
Ithunn kicks one’s head clean off…
Squee drives the last one mad…and he gets eaten by the cackles…


And the author said, “This is good, this thing I have done.” And he went for lunch and a drink. And it was good!

- From the ramblings of Khut

Beyond the Shore: Session 18

Her face the sinking stars desire:
Unto her place the slow deeps bring
Shadow of errant winds that wing
O’er sterile gulfs of foam and fire.

Her beauty is the light of pearls.
AII stars and dreams and sunsets die
To make the fluctuant glooms that lie
Around her; and low noonlight swirls

Down ocean’s firmamental deep
To weave for who glimmers there
Elusive visions, vague and fair;
And night is as a dreamless sleep:

She has not known the night’s unrest
Nor the white curse of clearer day;
The tremors of the tempest play
Like slow delight about her breast.

The berylline pallors of her face
Illume the kingdom of the drowned.
In her the love that none has found,
The unflowering rapture, folded grace,

Await some lover strayed and lone,
Some god misled, who shall not come
Though the decrescent seas lie dumb
And sunken in their wells of stone.

But nevermore of him, perchance,
Her enigmatic musings are,
Whose purpling tresses float afar
In grottoes of the last romance.

Serene, an immanence of fire
She dwells for ever, ocean-thralled,
Soul of the sea’s vast emerald.
Her face the sinking stars desire.

Clark Ashton Smith, The Nereid

---

As the storm receded behind them, ahead the party saw a large island. The coastline appeared to be vast, virgin forest, filled with trees in a dizzying and shocking array of colours: leaves of bright pinks and sky blue and metallic gold against boughs like marble columns or twisting serpents in myriad pastel shades. Overhead the sky was a garish shade of yellow, lit by an overly large magenta sun and streaked with wisps of stark white clouds, without a hint of gray or shadow, or any other colour to them.

As the Dümplom prepared to drop anchor in the small bay, two ships appear around the headlands to either side of them, moving in perfect synchronicity, like some bizarre mirror image. The ship to their starboard side was beautiful, its hull the same stark, unblemished white of the clouds, with massive trumpet-shaped pink flowers in place of sails, growing from a living mast. The ship to port was entirely alien, a mass of undulating shapes in every colour of the rainbow (and then some) which somehow together give the vague impression of a ship.


Zarina, still perched on Leo’s shoulder, screams, “They’ve spotted us! Hurry, we must sink them before they can alert Leanne!”

“Any chance they’d parlay?” Caddis inquired.

“You’re mortals, so unlikely. Even less so if they know I’m aboard…”

Caddis gave the order to engage. Leo changed their heading to intercept the flowered ship and put it between them and the second ship. Looking up, he noticed that behind them, the storm seemed to suddenly change directions, one moment receding and the next approaching their stern with terrifying speed.

Leopold’s excellent sailing gave the Dümplom an early advantage, bringing them easily into range to deliver a full broadside to their target. The Flower-ship took a pounding, but did not retaliate immediately. “Do they not have cannons? I don’t see any cannons…” Then the trumpet-shaped flowers clinging to the mast turned and pelted out what looked like giant walnuts, each easily ten to twelve feet in length. The projectiles fell short of the Dümplom, but the great splashes they made entering the water attested to their lethal potential.

Quothe Rummy, “No cannons my ass!”

While the flower-cannons lacked range, the mass of archers on the enemy ship clearly had no such problems. A cloud of arrows filled the sky, arcing towards the Dümplom. Luckily, the greater range of the Dümplom’s cannons meant that they suffered only a few minor injuries from the continuous barrage from the archers.

For several long minutes the Dümplom tacked around its prey, trading cannon, seed, and arrow fire. Despite the clear advantage of position held by the Dümplom, neither of the enemy ships deviated from their course. The two sailed strait at each other, passing each other with only a couple feet of space between them, then sailed on. They continued to fire at the Dümplom, mostly ineffectually, but seemed somehow incapable of maneuvering at all.

Even with this vast advantage in maneuverability, the Dümplom’s luck did not hold out long. As Caddis gave the order to unleash a third broadside at the Flower-ship, there was a deafening KABOOM! from below decks, as one of the cannons exploded. Zeke Leerly, one of the buccaneers they’d picked up from Pegsworthy’s crew, was killed and Jessica, who has been aiding the crews in loading the cannons, came up on deck with severe burns and a dislocated shoulder.

Leo swung the Dümplom about to bring the starboard cannons to bear and ordered Zarina to help the gunners. The fairie wizzed over the side of the gunwhale and began tossing pixie-dust bombs into the muzzles of the cannons. The bomb-assisted broadside rocked the Flower-ship, opening a large hole near her stern and causing her to list badly. Caddis grabbed up his spyglass and looked to see how the enemy ship was doing, and got a good look at their captain, a beautiful women with pearlescent skin and long dark hair, wearing nothing but a wet, white shawl. “Bring us about, we’re going to board her!” he shouted to the crew, quite without thinking…

The crew went to work to follow the captain’s orders, adjusting course to bring them on course to board the Flower-ship. As the distance closed, another cloud of arrows rained down on the Dümplom. This time many of the shots hit home. One of the riggers, Elmo, took an arrow through the thigh, and very nearly fell from the rigging. Riaris, coming up to man the long-nine now that they were no longer broadside to the target, took three arrows—the last, in the left breast just above her heart, dropped her to the deck.

It was then that the storm hit. Wind, rain, and lightning lashed the Dümplom, but somehow seemed not to touch the two faerie ships. Leo held the wheel as steady as he could, but a powerful blast of wind heeled the ship over and blew it off course, right between and abaft of both the Flower-ship and the other one. Both ships unleashed hell, pelting the Dümplom with seeds, arrows, and now strange, twisting gouts of fire and ice from the second ship.

Caddis, against all reason, shouted again the order to board the Flower-ship. Leo clung to the wheel and turned it back onto an intercept course just as a massive wave caught up their stern and flung them into the enemy ship. They crashed into the faerie ship with a sickening sound of cracking wood. The two ships were hopelessly tangled together, with Dümplom’s bowsprit rammed halfway through the Flower-ship’s aft bulkhead. Shouts from below informed the officers that they were taking on water…

The Dümplom was sinking.

Captain Caddis wasn’t listening, however. He had already leaped the rail onto the deck of the Flower-ship and was charging towards the enemy captain (whether to kill her or bed her was hard to tell). Caddis fired an arrow at the captain, but she seemed to partly liquefy and it passed harmlessly through her.

Luckily, whatever force kept the storm from touched the faerie ship extended to the Dümplom now that they were so intertwined. Rummy rounded up every he could—carpenters, riggers, and swabs and ran belowdecks. He threw open the bilges, letting Fishguts out with orders to go help the captain, and then dove into the water with hammer and nails to try to plug the breach in their hull.

As Rummy and the rest of the crew worked frantically to shove the boats apart, bail out water, and plug the breach, Leo and Thaduk called up the gunnery crews, as well as Zarina, Chumlet, and Thaduk the Sot, and charged after Caddis. The crew of the Flower-ship, who, like their ship were strangely beautiful caricatures of humanity, shrouded head to toe in brightly coloured flowers, had their small boarding party outnumbered nearly 6 to 1. Zarina took the gunners and fanned out to screen Caddis from the ninety-odd, sword-wielding, pansy elves while the party and Fishguts continued to charge the captain.

As they neared the woman, Thaduk and Leopold also found themselves fascinated by her inhuman beauty. Of course, they were already charging, so the desire to get as close to her as possible made little difference. Suddenly, out of the hold came a massive cloud of tiny, winged, brightly-glowing humanoids, each about the size of a hummingbird and armed with toothpick-sized spears.

Caddis, seeing the look coming over his friend’s faces, finally recognized the fey enchantments at worked, and quickly dispelled the fascination from himself and Thaduk with his touch treatment. Thaduk continued his charge and rammed his spear through the woman. Again her skin around the point of impact seemed to liquefy, allowing the spear to pass through without harming her, but solidified too quickly as Thaduk retracted it, bringing a spout of normal-looking blood out with the spear-tip.

The woman lashed a hand out towards Caddis, sending a spray of poisonous liquid into his face, blinding and sickening him, then pointed at Thaduk. The swarm of pixies charged the big orc en masse—where one tiny spear was nothing more than an annoyance, several thousand of them left Thaduk disoriented and bleeding heavily. Caddis , blind, turned to run, hoping to leap into the water to clean out his eyes, but instead found himself running back aboard the sinking Dümplom. Sandara was able to relieve the weakness the poison had inflicted on him, but could do nothing for his blindness.

Leopold, meanwhile, unleashed a gust of wind to disperse the pixies and clear a path for him to rush up to the beautiful woman. Smiling, the enemy captain wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close to her naked breast, and kissed him deeply on the lips. Thaduk, in horror, watched as the woman against appeared to liquefy, this time pouring some large portion of her watery form down Leo’s throat, filling his lungs with water.

When she let go, Leo was drowning. His vision went black, his head swam. He tried to cough, tried to gasp, but lungs meant to hold air could not compress against the greater density of the liquid that filled them. With his last thought, he began to gargle and hum, flexing his diaphragm, vibrating his vocal chords, and using all the tricks of singing he had learned. While he could not breath around the water, his bardic talents allowed him to control the water itself, and with a miraculous gurgling song, expelled the liquid from his body and collapsed, gasping to the deck.

Thaduk and Fishguts, meanwhile, swung uselessly at the reforming swarm of tiny fairies. They were too small and there were simply too many of them for conventional attacks to do any good. Thaduk looked around for something to throw and picked up a strange, open-topped puffball mushroom filled with dew (the fairy equivalent of a water barrel perhaps) and chucked it at the tiny things, with similarly ineffective results.

Leo, recovering, drew his longsword and swung at the faerie-woman. The blade hummed as it bent into her flesh which seemed quite solid to the cold-forged blade. With a scream the woman backed away. Thaduk and Fishguts moved in to flank, pressing the advantage, and the three of them landed several solid blows against her. Meanwhile, Zarina and their crewmates were laying waste to the elven sailors. Still blinded, Caddis shouted encouragement from the bridge of the Dümplom, over the sound of musket-fire and bombs burst, urging the small strike-force on to victory.

The pixie swarm, now fully reformed, massed and dove again at Thaduk attempting to drive him off of their mistress. Fishguts jumped in the way and his supernatural sensory organs were assailed not so much by the tiny stabbing implements, but by the hundreds of brilliant, multi-coloured lights swirling in front of him. The horrible blob creature was blinded and schlorped off, swinging wildly, into the midst of the elven sailors, whose delicate senses were overwhelmed by the smell of him, further aiding the relentless assault of the Dümplom’s crew.

With this opening, the captain turned and ran from Leo and Thaduk, ordering the pixies to cover her retreat. Thaduk, trying to escape the violently stabbing pixies, climbed up the mast, hoping to get hold of one of the seeds from the flowers to throw. The fairies kept up their pursuit, stabbing and stabbing, until Thaduk tucked under the petals of one of the great, pink flowers, double-fisted potions of healing and invisibility to give himself some breathing room.

Leo continued to assault the captain, dogging her heals and slashing with his iron blade. Pivoting, she transformed herself entirely into a being of water and body-slammed him with the force of a tidal wave. Not to be outdone by such tactics, Leo sang again, using his power over the waves to slow and weaken the water-fae, forcing her back into her humanoid form.

Seeing the woman temporarily solidified, Thaduk grabbed a nearby trailing vine that passed for rigging on the living mast, hoisted his spear and swung down like an orcish reckingball. The spear rammed strait through the woman’s gut with a spray of viscera and the orc’s continuing momentum bore her to the deck. Leo’s triumphant shout of joy took the form of another blast of wind, swirling about and sending the last of the pixies flying to splatter against the desk and mast, or simply blowing them out into the storm—never to be seen again.

Seeing their captain smeared on the deck, the last of the elven sailors, reduced to only eleven in number from their original ninety, quickly surrendered and laid down arms. By comparison, only two of Dümplom’s small boarding force had been killed in the exchange. Leo offered the faerie sailors a place on the Dümplom, which they accepted, rather than go down with their damaged ship.

Rummy came up to report that the breach had been sealed, but the Dümplom was still in bad shape. Leo and Thaduk picked up the not-quite-dead captain and dragged her onto the Dümplom as well, planning to feed her to Fishguts in the morning. Caddis, whose sight was finally returning, sent Chumlet and the gunners down to empty the Flower-ship’s hold of anything useful, then skuttle her. Once everything salvageable was loaded aboard, they shoved off and watched the Flower-ship sink into the bay.

The storm, so fierce only minutes ago, seemed to dissipate as soon as the battle ceased. What remained of it somehow did not touch the Dümplom as it turned away from the Flower-ship’s wreckage.

Scanning the horizon, the party could see no sign of the second ship. Figuring that their presence had already been reported, Caddis gave the order to turn the Dümplom south, opposite the direction the other ship went, and they limped away as fast their smashed-up ship could carry them…

To be continued…

---

The Exodus: Session 35

Khut's feeling...

CARDS
Chinua & Dust
Human Relationship Series: Truth vs. Exageration
Ganbaatar
The battle with the Old Empire was won…
We are on the move…heading north…a week has passed…
There is a strange sense of waiting from the tribe…
The earth seems to move and shift underfoot…
When we wake there appear to be hills where there were none previously…
The land becomes more lush as we go north…
For the first time in ages we are not starving…
Our scouts have run into merchants, travelers, and things…
Strange people who travel up and down the rivers on floating platforms…
Strange, strange, boats that can go UP-RIVER…
The people keep their distance from us…call the land the Hronrad…
We piece together some maps
The woods to the east are crawling with “Nihil Blight”…
We start with a scene of utter chaos and panic…
We are clearly under attack…there are sounds of gunpowder explosions…
Our staunch, clear-headed veterans, panic and go to ground…
Rattled by the whole ghost-town and one-in-seven dying thing…
Clearly ready to shoot at anything that pokes its head up…
Ganbaatar goes berserk and the Holy Mountain Beasts start stampeding…
Khut sends a shrieker arrow right past a HMB’s nose…
Turning the herd…a little…
Khadagan wheels his beast and rides full-bore at the unseen foes…
There is a cheer from the troops…followed by a loud banging sound…
Cresting the ridge he sees the long line of a river snaking away…
Vadim tries to invoke friendship in Littlefoot…
And almost gets himself stomped…Littlefoot is hardcore panicked…
Ellen-Dear raises a cloud of fog in front of the beasts…
They shy from the East (for the scary sound)…
The West from the shrieker arrow…
The North from the fog…
Turning them due south back into the camp…
Iron-Dear, Ithunn, and Sorq dive out of the way…
Iron-Deer recognizes the weird gunshot sound as ice cracking on the river…
Breaks Like Wind calls up a giant light-show…
A huge golem of ice heaves itself up out of the center of camp…
Hands like slabs, face blank as a slate, gouts of steam…
It bows…in time with the cracking of the ice…
Breaks bellows: “The spirits of this land greet Drowned River”
Ado leaps for Littlefoots reins…misses…spooks them…
And the Holy Mountain Beasts run hell-for-leather to the north…
Through the wall of mist…and they are gone…
Towards the “Blight”…
Ganbaatar starts floating around in the air inexplicably…
…probably Sorq’s doing…
Breaks, Khut, Ithunn, Ado, and Sorq go running after the loose HMBs at full throttle…
Khut tracks them in short order to…the edge of a blighted forest…SUPLIES!
Barren pines…no fire, no borers, good soil…twisted from the inside…
Obligatorily creepy…
With a giant jagged hole in the forest where the HMBs entered…
Vadim, Khadagan, Ellen, and Iron-Deer catch up on some herdbeasts…
Ithunn reminds us that the HMB’s feel safe in the forest…graze there as babies…
Ellen-Dear points out that the forest is clearly nec-romanticized…
No spirits involved…some creepy elven magecraft nonsense…
Khut pulls his second-most-prized-possession and head in…
We all head in…it’s foggy…obligatorily creepy you might say…
Vadim points out some things that are indistinguishable from normal plants…
But clearly are not…
So we get jumped, at five to one odds…they die…
There is some fire…and Iron-Dead turns into a bear…
Khadagan checks out the plants to see if they can be home-grown…
We find a body in the rubble, a centaur, swathed in Empty Circle finery…
Tattoos cover its skin…prison tattoo style (charcoal in a wound)…
a steppefolk death prayer…
yaghuth anagram for amnesia…
old empire sigil of the portal to Hades…
Sorq burns the warbler symbol for death into his skin as an addition…
Iron-Dear says he was clearly collecting…
and thus must be a member of the Nihil Sept…
Ellen-Dear says the tattoos match the death-magic infusing the wood…
possibly a self-sacrifice…
Not gaunt, well-fed when he died, came in from the north-east…
Vadim finds some loot in his pack:
* 1,100 old-imperial copper pieces
* 7,000 yaghuthan silver pieces of exchange
* 2,700 gaav-shaharan rose nobles
* Skull-carved mug (250gp)
* Opal Statuette of a Yaghuth w/ defaced trunk (250gp)
* Glass birdcage of warbler manufacture (250gp)
* Steppefolk fur tapestry (250gp)
* Wool rug of Naiman-tribe manufacture (250gp)
* Old empire Jade ring set w/ small gems (250gp)
* Empty Circle Cloth of Gold Sacrificial Robe (250gp)
* Tattoo (Scroll of Cloudkill)
* Potion of Fire Giant Strength
* Elixer of Health
* Potion of Superior Healing
We get back on the trail of the Mountain Beasts…
The ground becomes uneven as we head north…
Ravines…once stands of mountain laurel…
Snow covered with a thin layer of blackened leaves and needles…
Iron-Dear notices a heat-shimmer in the distance…
a well hidden campfire or kiln…no smoke, but plenty of heat…
Dead-north, Khut sees that something else has taken up pursuit of the HMBs…
Enormouse five-toed hoof-tracks, with signs of vestigial claws…
Scoring marks on the trees, like tusks…pointed the wrong way…
We head after the HMBs at full speed…
Khut runs up a tree and ninja-runs through the tree-tops…
He hits a branch, its wet and slippery, and falls into Ithunn’s arms…
Except its not a branch…its a bone…twenty-feet long…
Like a massive, massive femir…
From an animal that would have to be at least two-hundred feet long…
We hear the high-pitched rage-scream from Littlefoot and Thumper…
We start to feel sick…like a low vibration felt in the bones…
And then there is a full hunting pack of beasts…
Like tapirs with tusks and claws…about nine feet long…
Two already hanging from Littlefoot’s flank…
AND there are thirty or fourty Holy Mountain Beasts in the valley…
AND Holy Mountain Beast bones as far as we can see…
Both a breeding ground and a hunting ground…
Khut plants an arrow in one…it twists insanely fast…but still gets hit…
and two giant ones (4x the size of the others) turn and charge…
and eighteen or so little ones trying to bring down the HMBs…
Breaks Like Wind screams, berating the frost spirits into caring for once…
Creating a dome of mirror-like ice covering all the baby HMBs…
One of the big ones charges Khadagan and catches him in its mouth…
It swings its tail at Sorq…Ado jumps on for a very distracting ride…
The little ones bring down one very old Holy Mountain Beast…
Ithunn looks at the HMB go down…and becomes sooooo happy…because MEAT!
She punts a small one into the air…and Littlefoot sends it flying…
Then lands on it and crushes it with a double-footed axe-kick…
Khut sends another arrow flying and knocks the second one off Littlefoot…
Khadagan, in the big ones jaws, stands up, pries its jaw open and holds it…
Vadim runs in with a wave of cackles…and they climb all over it…
Ellen-Dear rolls out his bedroll, dumping a small army of microbots…
Shaped like little figurines of the party…
And the big ol’ spear-tusk is aggressively dead…
Sorq walks into the middle of the smaller ones and calls in the pixies…
Ado steps into the middle of the the elderly HMBs and drops a Beacon of Hope…
Iron-Dear knifes the living daylights out of the second big one…
Then Breaks sprays some grease right under its feet…
And it skids out, slides down the hill, and falls prone…
It tries to stand, but Ellen-Dear just laughs and it falls down again…
Then Vadim dominates it…
The little beasts pile over the HMBs, bringing down five…
But only kill one thanks to Ado’s beacon…
Ithunn and Khut wade in together, finishing off one and stabbing a second…
Khadagan follows and tears the lungs out of the second…
Sorq runs up a downed beast and blows a pack of them off of it…
Ado drops some healing and the four wounded HMBs stand up…
AND they stand with much shaking of the ground…
The cackles and microbots pull down two more…
Ellen-Dear shoves one into the elevator with a Banish…
Breaks drops a fireball into a curve of the hill…
scorching several of the spear-tusks…killing one…
The remaining spear-tusks bring down four more and two dying…
The ground heaves…Khut goes sliding down the hill, and lands in Ithunn’s arms…
Littlewing gives them a lift…
and, from above, they see a REAL Mountain Beast…an ancient one…
The size of a ridgeline…slow…covered with moss…
Like its been sleeping for decades (and we call it Morva)
Ithunn drops on them and kills two with a couple swift blows…
Khut drops an arrow, skewering one…
pinning it to a tree…
over the fire from the fireball…
and shakes some aromatic leaves from the tree…
And the lovely aroma of cooking meat wafts through the air…
Khadagan tears into another…and Sorq finishes it off with the flames…
And Ellen-Dear cooks the last one with a fire blast…
Ado heals the two downed Holy Mountain Beasts, bringing them back up…
Vadim makes friendly with the dominated giant one…
And Iron-Dear gets all cuddly with the weird elephant-tiger-thing…
Ellen lets the last one out of the elevator…
Khut and Ithunn disappear behind a tree for a half-hour…
And come back with an unconcious spear-tusk…
“We were only beating it unconcious, honest…”
That fight ends…then a house-sized head swings down…
There is a giant blast from the nose…sounding like a volcano…
With a sound reminiscent of a mother HMB defending her calf…
The oldest Holy Mountain Beast ever…and its male…
Because apparently they don’t die of old age…
and they keep growing perpetually…
We move the camp to the valley of HMB bones…
Ithunn takes the Amazons out to go collect the massive, massive amounts of
dead Holy Mountain Beast and spear-tusk meat…
While Ithunn is thus distracted, Khut climbs up the spire…
Climbs up a floating tentacle horror…
Seeks out the Achillobator chief…
And has a long talk with him to ask for Ithunn’s hand…
Khadagan seeks out Hundreds and Ruven to make him some fancy chitin armor…
Hundreds goes white-eyed and does some very careful stitching…
Weaving strange, undulating sigils into the weft of the harness…
Sorq rounds up the would-be mage-cadets and some old steppefolk midwife teachers…
Tough, scary, old biddies start beating the children into shape…
Ado joins the Yaghuth in their meditations…
They keep hearing a ringing gong and feeling the flicker of candlelight…
Vadim scales the Holiest of Mountain Beasts…and starts collecting semen…
Invoking both Dust and Drowned River…violence and fertility in action…
He brings along Fletcher, Kitty, and Chinua…
And our females are now pregnant with Morva’s brood…
Dust and Drowned River tell us in no uncertain terms that the world has changed..
There is only fire where once there was light…
Ormazhd Bay’s light is flickering…
Odqan Talaqan’s fire is burning out…
Breaks chats with the Gray Lady and convinces her to be headmistress of the school…
Ellen-Dear meets the Yaghuth and asks them to help Iron-Dear go deep and remember…
As Khut comes out of his hut in the morning, there is a sliver of bone…
Like a knife, but no difference between blade and haft…
No signs of work…just worn into shape, like millenia of moving water…
And it cuts effortlessly through anything…
Khadagan wakes up choking to find Hundred’s hand on the side of her face…
Her eyes still trance-white, but burning red…
The suit is nearly complete, with runes covering the entire surface…
The breastplate reinforced with bronze-like ribs…
The chitin nearly alive, shifting and moving…
Then the scouts let us know that a massive Nihil-Sept army comes in from the east&##8230;


And the author said, “This is good, this thing I have done.” And he went for lunch and a drink. And it was good!

- From the ramblings of Khut

Beyond the Shore: Session 17

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

The pirate’s word
Delighted the Master heard;
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
A quiet smile played round his lips,
As the eddies and dimples of the tide
Play round the bows of ships,
That steadily at anchor ride.
And with a voice that was full of glee,
He answered, “Erelong we will launch
A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch,
As ever weathered a wintry sea!”

And as he labored, his mind ran o’er
The various ships that were built of yore,
And he said with a smile, “Our ship, I wis,
Shall be of another form than this!”
It was of another form, indeed;
Built for freight, and yet for speed,
A beautiful and gallant craft;
Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast,
Pressing down upon sail and mast,
Might not the sharp bows overwhelm;
Broad in the beam, but sloping aft
With graceful curve and slow degrees,
That she might be docile to the helm,
And that the currents of parted seas,
Closing behind, with mighty force,
Might aid and not impede her course.

Thus with the rising of the sun
Was the noble task begun,
And soon throughout the ship-yard’s bounds
Were heard the intermingled sounds
Of axes and of mallets, plied
With vigorous arms on every side;
Plied so deftly and so well,
That, ere the shadows of evening fell,
The keel of oak for a noble ship,
Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong,
Was lying ready, and stretched along
The blocks, well placed upon the slip.

Day by day the vessel grew,
With timbers fashioned strong and true,
Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee,
Till, framed with perfect symmetry,
A skeleton ship rose up to view!
And around the bows and along the side
The heavy hammers and mallets plied,
Till after many a week, at length,
Wonderful for form and strength,
Sublime in its enormous bulk,
Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk!

With oaken brace and copper band,
Lay the rudder on the sand,
That, like a thought, should have control
Over the movement of the whole;
And near it the anchor, whose giant hand
Would reach down and grapple with the land,
And immovable and fast
Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast!
And at the bows an image stood,
By a cunning artist carved in wood,
With robes of white, that far behind
Seemed to be fluttering in the wind.
It was not shaped in a classic mould,
Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old,
Or Naiad rising from the water,
But modelled from the Master’s daughter!

Behold, at last,
Each tall and tapering mast
Is swung into its place;
Shrouds and stays
Holding it firm and fast!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Two Wednesdays Later: (and the time in between)

The next few days pass without incident, such that the party is finally able to sit down and talk about something actually important—what to name their ship. Caddis suggests they use a name that implies their plans to make it fly, such as “The Icharus”.

“Moya”, suggests Thaduk.

“Albatross,” suggests Leo.

Rummy says that perhaps they should pick a fairly innocuous name, like “Potato”, to give their prey a false sense of security.

“Baiju?” suggests Caddis.

The rest of the crew quickly point out that a pirate’s success is based in large part upon reputation and intimidation, and no merchant would surrender to “The Potato”.

“Rancid Turnip?” suggests Caddis.

The discussion drags on and on, taking up most of a day as more and more suggestions are thrown out. Finally Leo suggests that, if it needs to be something intimidating, perhaps they pick something reflective of their actual past, “Moonplum’s Revenge?”

“Doomplum?” says someone.

“DOOMPLUM!” shouts Thaduk.

“What about…”

“DOOMPLUM!!” shouts Thaduk.

“Or…”

“DOOMPLUM!!!” shouts Thaduk.

It soon becomes clear that the discussion is over, and the ship shall be called the Doomplum. After a Thaduk pours a few more rounds of drinks, everyone agrees that this is, in fact, a good name and the conversation pivots to how they could capitalize on the new name. Rummy says they should dip the sails in plum wine to stain them purple. Leo and Oppenheimer begin composing a themesong (Zarina especially approves). Guillaume slightly alters his design for the figurehead, which he had already modeled on his missing love (topless of course), to have the hands held outstretched, holding a plum (on fire?).

Caddis insists that it’s spelled “Dümplom”.

“Düm’plum?”

“L’Dümplom?”

“Der Dümplom?”

“Hurr Durr Dümplom?”

“Dümplong?”

“Just Dümplom.” Finally, after a long day of arguing, everyone, content and very drunk, turns in for the night.

The next morning, Caddis, Leo, Rummy, and Thaduk sat down to write up a proper roster for their crew. Realizing how many new people they had, and their own lack of knowledge, they called in Zarina and Riaris and put together a kind of “Pirate-lympics”. The next two days were filled with s series of competitions testing the crew’s knowledge of ropes and rigging, climbing skills, carpentry skills, speed and accuracy at loading and firing cannons, boarding technique, and other necessary talents.

In the end, they managed to assign everyone, including making some significant changes. Sandara was made ship’s surgeon. Caulky, the cabin girl, was promoted to Master’s Mate, reporting to Leo and Zarina, with Tilly as senior rigger in charge of the actual labor in the tops. Chumlet was promoted to Bosun’s mate under Thaduk. Ratline Ratsberger and Henrye were put under Riaris, as gunner’s mate and signaler. And Wunorse and Zarina’s assistant, Oppenheimer, were made ship’s carpenters, and given free reign to start developing traps for repelling boarders and new munitions (in addition to helping Zarina with the necessary modifications to make the vessel flight-capable).

As days passed without further signs of threatening ships or giants, work on the ship continued apace. The squibs seemed not at all bothered by the loss of the Puritan foreman, and only slightly put off by Guillaume’s apparent taciturness and insistence on wearing armor (he’d always been weird and grumpy anyways). Only Rickety Hake himself complained particularly, since he had to more directly oversee the final work.

Worried about taking Guilleaum on the ship, or even simply leaving the demon behind, Rummy pulled Zarina aside and asked whether the faerie would help him research a way to possibly change Guilleaum’s fiery and volatile demonic nature. The two of them holed up for nine days with Rummy’s book, reading and experimenting.

The more he read of the book, the more depressed Rummy became, and by the end of their time of study had fallen into a deep melancholy—miserable and demoralized now that he understood the profound grotesquery that he had involved himself in. He took to sitting naked in the ruined hulk of the Ginger Belle stinking drunk and obsessively reading and re-reading passages from the infernal tome. Finally Zarina shoved a different kind of drink into his hand…and everything was better…sort of.

The two of them did, after nine days, find a potential cure for Guilleaum, provided they were able (or willing) to acquire sufficient fresh bodies. Before the two would-be diabolists could act, however, the choice was made moot, as, by the time Rummy stopped feeling sorry for himself, the demonic foreman burned out, his armor and bones melting into metal slag and then fading away in a whiff of caustic vapor. Thus making the point moot.

Leo and Caddis, meanwhile, spent their days watching the final repairs to their ship and considering where to go once it was done. Back to Moonplum seemed the obvious choice, but some of Captain Pegsworthy’s crew pointed out that the Imperial Navy had been seen out in force around Nova Britannia in the last weeks. “Time for all proper pirates to make themselves scarce from the Coral Sea.” Once their new ship was squibbed, they said the Captain was turning east, heading back to the safer hunting around The Republic and the Americas.

They chatted up some of the squibs, talking a few into joining the crew once the ship was ready, adding a half dozen new swabs. Leo also asked about the map they’d found on the Puritan’s body. No one seemed to have any real clues, other than to point out stories of the so-called Forbidden Island where the Emporer had supposedly imprisoned the Puritan’s god, (though no one really knew where it was or if it was even real). Puritanism, they reminded him, was illegal throughout the entire Empire and the Kingdom of Hapsburg, which meant most of the world, really, as were those black coins they were carrying.

Finally, after three weeks of waiting, the new ship was done. Everyone in the small settlement, the eighty-odd squibs, their crew, now pushing fifty, and Captain Pegsworthy’s men gathered around the drydock to christen the Dümplom. Barrels of rum were tapped and drinks were passed out to all present, and emptied and refilled many times. After the first couple rounds of drinking and cheering, Pegsworthy stepped up to the prow of the ship, bottle of plum wine in hand, and cleared his throat.

“For thousands of years,” he began, "we have gone to sea. We have crafted vessels to carry us and we have called them by name. These ships will nurture and care for us through perilous seas, and so we affectionately call them “she.” To them we toast, and ask to celebrate the Red Sadness."

A shout rang out, “TO THE SAILORS OF OLD! TO RED SADNESS,” and glasses were emptied and refilled again.

“In the name of all who have sailed aboard this ship in the past, and in the name of all who may sail aboard her in the future, we invoke the ancient gods of the wind and the sea to favor us with their blessing today. Mighty Neptune, king of all that moves in or on the waves; and mighty Aeolus, guardian of the winds and all that blows before them: “We offer you our Red Sadness, the she be struck and removed from your records. Further, we ask that when she is again presented for blessing with another name, she shall be recognized and shall be accorded once again the selfsame privileges she previously enjoyed. In return for which, we rededicate this vessel to your domain in full knowledge that she shall be subject as always to the immutable laws of the gods of the wind and the sea. In consequence whereof, and in good faith, we seal this pact with a libation offered according to the hallowed ritual of the sea.”

Again the glasses were emptied, and the assemblage shouted, “TO THE SEA…TO THE SAILORS OF OLD…TO THE SEA!” With a crash, Pegsworthy smashed the bottle of wine across the prow, and Chandra Goodwin layed a bough of green leaves on the deck.

“Mighty Chris,” the priestess cried, "who knows the names of all that which was and all that which should be, I name this ship Dümplom and may she bring fair winds and good fortune to all who sail on her. We ask that this ship be given the strength to carry on. The keel is strong and she keeps out the pressures of the sea. Today we come to rename this lady, and send her to sea to be cared for, and to care for the Captain Caddis and his crew. We ask the sailors of old and the mood of the gods that is the sea to accept Dümplom as her name, to help her through her passages, and allow her to return with her crew safely. "

Glasses were drained again with yet more shouting, “TO THE SEA…TO THE SAILORS BEFORE US…TO DÜMPLOM!” And drained again, “TO DÜMPLOM!”, and again…

The celebration ran late into the evening. As Caddis staggered, very very drunk, off to his bunk, Captain Pegsworthy caught his arm and managed to slur out, “Good fortune and sure sail await one what can crack the Tidewater Rock. All ‘Free Captains’ are welcome in the Republic. If you ever find yourselves in the Americas, come out to Nassau and we can get you proper letters," before he also stumbled off to bed.

The next morning was bright and sunny, not necessarily a good omen when your entire crew is hungover. Still, with effort, the assemblage got the Dümplom launched out of drydock and underway. Coming on the deck of his own ship for the first time, Caddis found Leo with Jessica in her lap. He messaged her and explained that they could not go home, an idea which clearly bothered her much much less than it might have three weeks earlier.

Seeing Leo starting to get fresh with his sister again, Caddis critically sowed the thought in his friend’s head that he was not really interested in Jessica that way. Later, belowdecks, Jessica would be quite put out to find that Leo simply could not get it up for her. Nor will he ever again.

The crew were drowsing at their stations, still recovering from the night’s revelries, so Leo struck up a song to help dispel the collective hangover. As they sailed, refreshed, out into the bay, the discussion again turned to where to go. Caddis asked Leo about Pegsworthy’s cryptic statement of the night before. The sailing master told him that “Tidewater Rock” was a fortress in the Falklands, famous for its advantageous position if one wanted to dominate the shipping lanes around Cape Horn and Drake’s Passage.

With threats of the navy back north, and west, the crew decided to head east, to the Spanish Hapsburg controlled port of Port Vila on the island of Efate in the Vanuatu chain — hoping to hire on more crew there, liquidate some of their stores of plunder, and take on stores for voyages further east. When Leo ordered Zarina to lay in the course, she flitted up to his shoulder to jingle in his ear. “Actually, if we’re heading east, I’d suggest a slightly different course…”

She went on to explain that she and Oppenheimer were very close to completing their plans to make a ship fly while working for Captain Pegsworthy, but were missing one key ingredient. One which could only be obtained in a very specific place and which they had not been able to convince Pegsworthy to go after. The place was, of course, her home, in Faerie. There was a passage between the worlds, just off the southern tip of the island of Erromango, no more than three days from their current position, and only about a day south of Port Vila.

The officers readily agreed to her change of course and they turned east by south-east towards Erromango. Leo left Zarina the helm and performed a weather reading, learning that there was a tropical storm heading their way. They could shelter in the bay and wait it out, steer north and try to avoid it…or…

“Sail strait into it at full speed and try to get past it as fast as we can,” Leo suggested.

Leo took the helm, summoned up a strong tailwind, and steered the Dümplom headlong into the course of the storm. Caddis sent Thaduk, Rummy, and all non-essential personnel belowdecks and told them to secure the hold, then took up position in the aft-castle and struck his best pose of defiance against the gods of nature. The storm was slow-moving, but big. A thing that would have reached them in six or seven hours, they caught up to in one and attacked head on.

The rain drove at them. The wind ripped at their sails. The waves rose higher than the top of the aft-castle. Leo laughed and sang, and sailed on. He made it look easy.

The continued on at full sail. Four hours into the storm, a line broke loose, lashing across the deck to strike Caddis. He took the blow, grabbed the rope, and used it to swing up into the tops to help the riggers.

An hour later, they came out of the far side of the storm, wet and wind-blown but otherwise unscathed. Behind the storm, the sea was calm and the skies clear.

Except the clear sky was entirely the wrong shade of canary yellow…

And the sun shining in the sky was entirely the wrong shade of magenta…

And the smooth seas were entirely the wrong shade of puce…and sparkly…

“Wow!” Zarina said, “I never expected you’d be crazy enough to take the shortcut…”

From up in the crowsnest came the weak call of “Land Ho,” followed by the sound of retching from Henrye.

And the Dumplom dropped anchor off the coast of Faerie…

To be continued…

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