During the night, the wind dropped and the storm ceased. The howling tempest was replaced by a light breeze from the anti*. And, now that the wind and rain had stopped, the group (Sorrow [Jeff], Huilam [Jamie], El Cid [Shane], Tylin [Ian], Burrito [Darryl], and marmalading Lammy [Kevin]) rested on their shallop the Smoking Loon. They could hear breaking surf in the distance.
Immediately, the boat that was anchored close to them whose lights they watched all night - it was a top-sail schooner, hoisted its sails. They were black sails; pirates! The schooner headed towards the beached brig.
[ * "anti" = east; "league" = 1000 paces, or 1 km ]
Wanting to stay well away from the pirates, Sorrow tacked the Smoking Loon further out to sea, and zigzagged towards Fort Augmentin.
"If we 'ad taken zee damn road," muttered Tylin disgustedly. "We would 'ave arrived zere days ago."
Fort Augmentin was a walled fort, well-clear of the sand dunes. A stream ran out here from the plains, and there was a jetty out into the sea. There were no other boats at the jetty.
A group of soldiers were marching down the track from the fort to the jetty as the Smoking Loon approached. There was a tall flagpole at the base of the jetty, and a yellow & black flag was run up as they watched.
"Zat means 'plague'!" hissed Huilam, his marine knowledge returning to him with frightening alacrity.
As they neared, a few "stay-away" crossbow bolts whistled over them.
Sorrow headed back out to sea.
Huilam wrote a message in flags, and raised them up the mast. "We have plague cure."
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| Daisy Crown |
Just then, there was a loud BANG!! and Daisy Crown appeared - right on the stern. She brushed herself off (to maintain some dignity after the disorientating Dimension Door spell) and stood up.
Daisy had arrived, via her Teleport, in Fort Augmentin a couple of nights ago, but, she had been told, that very night the fort commander Captain John Moses had taken ill of some kind of plague. He went mad and died the next day. The fort was locked down, and all travellers turned away. Captain Moses was the one that the group was supposed to deliver the heavy WG trunk to.
"Why didn't you tell us - via Sly Dunbar and the conch?" asked someone.
"Well ... uh," she said. "I can't read his mind, ... but I would guess Mr Sly was worried that you would turn around if you knew."
Daisy had been watching for them each day (using the WG periscope here). Now that she was on the boat, she made sure she sighted the trunk (it was too heavy to be TPed to the fort). And then she turned her attention to their "cure".
Discussion ensued around the “coincidental” timing of the plague arriving about one day's road-travelling time after they had left Scabport, and striking down the very commander they were to deliver the magical trunk to!
“Plague, my arse,” muttered Sorrow. “There ain't no plague here!”
And they mooted about sneaking into the fort to check the actuality and efficacy of the so-called plague.
A soldier on the jetty identified himself as Sergeant Evans, and shouted through a funnel
"You have a cure?" he shouted, in disbelief.
"Yes," cried Huilam. "150 vials of cures."
This was, of course, the useless faux-magic diluted blood of Igor. Their so-called Cure-all.
The logical question "You left Scabport, with your so-called cure, several days ago before the plague was even here, and before anyone was sick, so how could you possibly know it was necessary?" was voiced.
But magical divination, prognostication, or mystical foretelling was a viable answer in a world with magic. Q.E.F.
Daisy had a right chuckle. Having been involved in the Identify of the blood vials, she knew exactly what they were: "Cure? My arse!".
Tylin thought to himself “And a very nice arse it is too.”
She was about to Dimension Door back to the Fort WG when she paused. "Tylin, want to come?"
He nodded, so she touched him, and he vanished with a bang. She vanished the next second.
Unluckily for Tylin, he appeared, three storeys up over the Wizards' Guild's cobbled courtyard with its extra-hardwearing stones, and ...just... fell. He smashed his ankle in a messy fracture. [ level two injury ]
Daisy, some servants and the another resident wizard helped Tylin into a spare room and tucked him up, with his leg raised high. While they couldn't cure it magically, they could certainly wrap it up with vinegar and brown paper.
Sergeant Evans wasn't quite sure what to do about the cure, so he sent a runner to the fort to contact the new commander, Second Lieutenant Pigeon. Five minutes later, the garrison priestess arrived. She was REAL Priestess Deidre Evans. She allowed the Smoking Loon to dock, and then cast Detect Magic on the vials. They, of course, detected as magic. So, she arranged for a cart to be brought down.
To confirm that they weren't infected with the plague themselves, El Cid and Huilam drank one vial each of the cure-all. El Cid was promptly sick and he vomitted on the road.
"A common side effect," said Huilam reassuringly. Although the druids had boiled the Igor "potion", the vials were certainly not clean, and in the tropical Scabport climate, who knew what bountiful gut bacteria were present in each vial? A veritable cocktail of salmonella, norovirus and helicobacter, no doubt. Genuine potions were magically sterile, but fake magic imparts no protection.
Burrito, Huilam and El Cid accompanied Deidre and some soldiers on the wagon. They loaded all 150 vials of Igor's blood plus the WG trunk onto the cart. They had some cock-and-bull story about the WG trunk being part of the curing consignment.
Sir Porks-a-lot, Moonlight, Sorrow and the marmalading Lammy stayed on the shallop.
The trunk was delivered to the WG building in the fort, and Huilam, El Cid and Burrito climbed off. And then the cart headed off to the barracks, where the priestess planned to distribute the vials. (No-one, including the party, seemed to know if the potions were a cure or a vaccine.)
Huilam and Co picked up Tylin from the WG, who was now hobbling on a crutch, and headed for the fort's gate.
[* = It was a level three wound, but El Cid's feat reduces this by one.]
Seeing this, and being considerably behind the group owing to his slow leg, Tylin did an about-face and hobbled back to the WG.
The three weren't hassled by the gate guards (they were only too happy to eject them), so they returned to the Smoking Loon, El Cid having to crawl the last 200 paces, as he bled out.
El Cid washed in the sea, and was eventually let on the shallop after a heated discussion about the risks of plague transmission. Moonlight and Burrito did not want to have anything to do with him, so they disembarked and planned to walk back to Scabport.
The Smoking Loon (Huilam, Sorrow, wounded El Cid and marmalading Lammy) left the jetty and headed back towards Scabport. At least they had a tail wind now.
But, by now the black-sailed schooner had finished with the beached brig, so it plotted an intercept course to the Smoking Loon, and bade it heave to.
The pirate king, leering over the gunwales at the little shallop, introduced himself as Admiral Jack of the schooner Debonair. Huilam shouted out that they had the plague, gesturing to the plague flag of Fort Augmentin in the distance. This certainly stopped them from being boarded. Jack asked if they would kindly open all the hatches so he and his crew could see inside. Now, being completely empty (sans trunk and vials) they were happy to comply. Jack left a final gift, and the schooner departed, tacking off antiwards. The gift was a crossbow bolt shot into the Smoking Loon's mast, to which was attached a promissory note "The bearer of this note promises to pay Admiral Jack of the Debonair the sum of four COIN." Huilam ended up carrying this.
 |
| Beached Witch of Endor |
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Moonlight and Burrito encountered the survivors of the beached ship. It was the brig Witch of Endor out of Two Frime. During the storm, their anchor chain had snapped and they had run aground. And then, to add insult to injury, they were all robbed by the schooner, and some of their women and teens taken as slaves. Moonlight and Burrito had some more bad news for the wretches, Fort Augmentin had the plague, so they better walk to Scabport.
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 |
| Balm of Gilead |
Later on that afternoon, Priestess Deidre arrived full of thanks. The Igor vials had been passed around the entire garrison. About fifty of the soldiers had been horribly sick (vomiting and diarrhoea), only two had died with GI problems, but at least they were all safe from the plague now. And as a gift of gratitude, she would heal his broken ankle. It was not a spell she could do herself (she was too lower level), but she was happy to use her last dose of her Balm of Gilead. Sure enough, that fixed the ankle. The garrison was happy to meet the cost of the room too.
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During the trip downwind to Scabport, Huilam contacted Sly Dunbar with the WG conch [which the party was very lucky to keep considering the DM forgot they had it and the pirates would have taken it!].
He warned that the Scabport authorities knew about the plague and they'd probably be stopped.
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| WG 1G Conch |
El Cid was starting to get delirious and was hallucinating. Sorrow's evil black eyes were smudged all over his face - like he was a oil painting and someone had smeared the eyes with a thumb.
Sir Porks-a-lot in her little cage, was looking more and more delicious by the minute. And not just delicious-to-eat. The lipstick and eye-liner that Huilam had applied (he hadn't) really brought out her inner beauty.
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Near dark, El Cid and Burrito and the some survivors of the brig arrived at Smugglers Meet, a copse of trees one hour out of Scabport. Up ahead, the way forward was completely blocked by Scabport troops. Mostly Knives. No-one was allowed to pass. Anyone who approached was shot at.
Just after dark, Tylin sneaked out of Fort Augmentin and started the trek to Scabport.
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About this time, out on the water, the Smoking Loon was trying to make its way into the Scab river. But two navy ketches approached and made them stop.
A rowboat approached with one man on the oars, and a woman in Panadine robes. She introduced herself as Priestess Sandy Carmichael and she'd been briefed by Lieutenant Chung. She was here to check the plague. She didn't seem worried about infection, so she clambered on board.
El Cid was delirious by this time. He saw a skeleton in a robe with glowing eyes float on board and converse with mister smudged eyes. But he had to protect his queen, in her little cage.
Sorrow suggested the priestess put El Cid to sleep, so she bade El Cid sleep with the Command spell, and he sank to the deck, magically down. But that spell only lasts ten seconds, so Sorrow cracked El Cid's thick skull with a belaying pin, knocking him out cold.
Sandy first cast Detect Disease. El Cid, human, yes. Huilam, elf, no. Sorrow, half-elf, no. Sir Porks-a-lot, sow, yes. Lammy, marmalading, no. Then she took samples of blood, mucous, skin, hair and fingernails off El Cid. Next she put a Cure Disease on him and a Cure on the concussion (that fixed his other chest damage too). Then she left with the soldier.
El Cid felt a lot better.
Unable to enter the Scab harbour, they took off further battlewards, down the coast a small way
They pulled themselves ashore and made camp. Hunting, Sorrow got them some rabbits. Poor infected Sir Porks-a-lot was put to the sword and burned.
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Moonlight & Burrito began a long walk around the top of Scabport to the Druids Grove on the other side.
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Tylin found a concealed vantage point outside the Smugglers' Meet perimeter and settled in to keep a watch on the general proceedings.
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