29th Of Rain
We begin to explore the Dragoneye, a ship that sank in the harbor, looking for the coffin of Linech’s little daughter, Linele. Poor kid, having to grow up with a shivvel dealer for a father! Who’s to say she’s not better off in the grave than mixed up in his degenerate underworld life?
While poking around in the hold, we find no coffin, only a number of casks of black globules – unrefined shivvel, we think. We also realize that the big hole in the ship’s hull was made intentionally, not from an impact or explosion.
Before we can dwell on that fact, some terrible fish-men attack us! These fierce warriors have wicked teeth. Soon their blood in the water attracts some sharks, so we really have our hands full. Plus I can’t use my greataxe underwater too well, so I’m not at my best.
Finally when they’re all dead, a much friendlier sea creature named Quillong appears with a dolphin named Sea Dart. He says he’s a triton and that he’s been following these creatures, called sahuagin, for they’re his people’s ancestral enemies. He says that long ago, blood drinkers from the surface made a Blood Covenant with the sahuagin to come when six of them together should call using the horn of blood. The sahuagin always get some payment for answering, he says. The blood drinkers haven’t called in a long while, but apparently now they have, for the fish-men don’t usually visit the Ptolus harbor.
Quillong goes on to say that these sahuagin have taken the girl’s coffin to a nearby sea cave. They’ve also been systematically taking the casks of shivvel from the wreck. They knew exactly where to look for the stuff, he says – they must be working with the saboteurs. Our own boat’s adrift, thanks to the sahuagin who cut the line. Hope our halfling friend Seanus isn’t too worried about us up there.
We swim slowly (compared to Quillong) toward the sea cave. There we fight more sahuagin and some giant crabs. Once they have their claws on you, look out! (Barbatos saved a couple of those crab legs for his dinner.) We nab some of the fish-men’s underwater crossbows and continue on.
We break the surface at last in a high-ceilinged cavern and spy a small island with some casks piled all around. The coffin’s there too, its glass top smashed. Linele’s body has vanished but, weirder still, it looks as though she broke out of it from the inside!
As we begin to look around, pirates come running across a bridge to the island and attack us. From what they say, we learn we’re in the fortress of the Balacazar crime family! Well, that shouldn’t surprise us, as Linech thought they might be behind the destruction of the Dragoneye. But why are they enlisting the help of vampires and sahuagin?
Meanwhile, the pirates are putting up a good fight – they have dragon pistols and a lizard man ally! They wonder to each other whether “that damn girl” summoned us. Sounds like they don’t want her around… but she’s dead – isn’t she?
Once we’ve dealt with all the pirates, we see that the lizard man is in fact a slave, so we break him free of his shackles. Then we spy one more sahuagin at the shore. Right before our eyes it changes form to that of a little girl with long black hair, pointy teeth, a deathly pallor, and a terrifying laugh. No, Linele’s not alive at all!
She’s talking crazy, though. “The vampires will never get it!” she cries, hanging onto a pocketwatch. “No one must have it.” We try to make her understand that her father sent us to find her, but she just dives back into the water and disappears. Quillong thinks she’s risen as some sort of undead – a “rusalka,” he calls her – due to her body’s proximity to an evil magic item. The watch? And does Linech know what’s befallen his daughter?
We’re not quite sure what to do now. The lizard man says his name’s Salsan, though the pirates called him “Sir Jingles,” thanks to the noise his chains made when he walked. Tharn and Charnoth are furious at the Balacazars for enslaving him, and Charnoth does something nasty to a few of the bodies in bizarre litorian retribution. Salsan says he came to this place via the slave pens beneath the city a couple weeks ago and adds that he did see a number of litorians held there. Tharn’s and Charnoth’s tribemates!
Salsan says that some of the litorian slaves were going to try to run off to a city of escaped slaves deep below Ptolus. We ask him to meet us at a wharfside tavern later so he can tell us more. Perhaps he can help us find these litorians again. Even though I’ve heard folks at the Delver’s Guild say that lizard men are usually nasty customers, Salsan’s pretty nice to us. No one deserves to be a slave.
Quillong does some reconnaissance and sees that the rusalka has fled to the cave where we killed the crabs. He agrees to take the lizard man safely to shore, and we bid him farewell. Maybe one day we can come visit him in his city, Konagis, in the Deep.
Still The 29th Of Rain
Before leaving the Balacazar fortress, we burn up the leftover shivvel, then track the rusalka back to the crabs’ caverns. She’s no longer there. We follow the cavern through a tight passageway and suddenly, before we know what’s happening, we find ourselves standing on dry land again, watching some men work along the shore!
There we see Linele, too, but she looks like a normal little girl, the way she must have looked before her death. She’s playing with her little dog, Sandy. Have we somehow gone back in time? We explain that her father sent us to see her safely home. She lets slip that her father has a watch that can talk; it tells him where to find the stuff he sells and how to process it. Confused, we wonder if we’re going to have to book ship on the doomed Dragoneye to get back to the city, when the girl changes form again, back into her rusalka shape.
“I believe that you don’t want it,” she says, and agrees to return with us to her father. Then, bang! We’re back in the underwater passage! For a little girl, she has some incredible powers. Come to think of it, though, she doesn’t talk like a little girl. It’s as though she has somehow merged with the intelligence of that watch. But she says that doesn’t matter any more.
Back we go to the Docks, and we locate Seanus again, who’d been wondering how to tell Linech that he’d managed to lose us. We all return to Linech’s house, with Linele magically disguised as Barbatos (we tell Seanus it’s the wizard’s mirror image, and he doesn’t argue).
When we come before Linech and tell him our story, his aide, Oukina, says the people in purple and gold that some folks dockside saw rowing away from the burning Dragoneye were the Hussar, cultists of Unnah, goddess of blades. Then the rusalka assumes her little girl form again, and wow, is her father shocked to see her! We think he was lying when he said he wanted her back for a proper burial – he just wanted that watch! But he’s got Linele back now, so he tells his aide, Oukina, to take us down to the treasury and pay us.
Hmm, why would he allow us inside his treasury? This smells rotten, so I’m keeping an eye open for trouble. On the way, we see some gnolls standing guard, presumably over Shilukar, the dark elf wizard who’s staying with Linech. We enter the treasury room, and suddenly men with pistols fire on us! Betrayal! We make quick work of them (though Charnoth comes near death in the process). Poor Seanus is aghast.
Taking the bag of cash from the treasury (well, we earned it, didn’t we?), we stalk back to Linech’s office to confront the treacherous lout. There we discover that Linele has taken over the place, her father vanished. Calista asks the girl what does she want to do now? She must be confused. Calista offers to take her to the Brotherhood of Redemption – apparently they’re experts in showing monstrous creatures a new path. She can finally choose her own destiny. Linele agrees to go hear what they have to say. She also gives us the gold statue of Lord Abbercombe, which we plan to return to Castle Shard, since they seem to know the guy. (Wow, Calista is sure persuasive!) We warn Linele about Shilukar’s presence nearby. Diethan decides to stick around Linech’s place and keep watch on the gnolls.
Linele doesn’t seem too sure about the Brotherhood of Redemption at first, but when they assure her that they can protect her from vampires, she decides to stay with them. We can’t believe our good fortune when the doorman offers us a bounty of one hundred gold for bringing her in!
Next, we’re off to Castle Shard with the gold statue. “You’ve brought Lord Abbercombe!” exclaims Kadmus on our arrival. We’re confused to learn that this fellow, a noble from long ago, has always been made of gold. Zavere thinks Rill can restore him, whatever that means. This is a weird place.
Barbatos and Archinemus tell Zavere the whole story, and they’re impressed to hear we’ve discovered a secret entry into the Balacazars’ seaside fortress. As for the guys in purple and gold, he confirms that they’re the Hussar, adding that it’s rumored that the Balacazars have captured their goddess. While they hold her, the cult members have to obey them, however unwillingly. I’m beginning to think we were darn lucky to get out of that fortress alive. Who are the Balacazars NOT allied with?
Kadmus has the staff cook up Barbatos’ giant crab legs. At dinner, we learn that people have sighted Shilukar’s gnolls in the Guildsman District around the Delver’s Hole, the area that collapsed into the Undercity some years back. One gnoll was blue! Also on the rumor front, Zavere said that the pocketwatch may hold a demon that helped Linech find his product. Suddenly frightened at what we may have unleashed on the Brotherhood of Redemption, Calista sends word of this new wrinkle to their headquarters. Demons are not to be trifled with.
It’s been a long day, but we still have to meet our lizard man friend Salsan at the tavern by the Docks. I decide to collect Diethan from Linech’s house on the way – but when I arrive at the burrow, he’s gone! So are the gnoll guards he was watching. Hopefully, they went in and Diethan got bored and headed off to the tavern ahead of me. Yeah, that must be what happened.
