Lighthouse Family

  Present:

• Sophia Beauchamp (half-elf priest 21) - Ian

• 

  The Wispy Tapir

  Joe Manco (human fighter) - Shane
• Balder Dash (gnome wizard) - Jamie
• Kosha Pickles (human rogue) - Darryl
• Walton Formalin (half-elf mystic of 21) - Andrew
• Red Feuersturm (human temple fighter of Hob) - Chris
• MARMALADE: Grizo Muso (human thief) - Jeff
• MARMALADE: Malcolm Gandhi (gnome thief) - Kevin

By Walton

We were in Hackerton in the Wispy Tapir inn, and we had three jobs.

ONE 

Kosha had gone missing. Find him.

TWO

An associate of the Vingt-et-Un temple, Lexie O'Leary, wealthy dowager (not a priestess) wanted us to recover three items from Pug Island; the reward being 3000gp. She had recently split with her husband Connor O'Leary, and they had gone their separate ways. She had wanted three items from the marriage, and he had agreed to return them. But half a year had gone past and he hadn't. She said they were worthless, apart from sentimental reasons, and she was sure that the O'Leary family would have no interest in them:

1. Small snuff box.
2. A book on genealogy.
3. Her grandfather's old book of etchings

THREE

Oswald the mage wanted us to recover some mushrooms from the Aleph forest. If we did this, he would identify or remove the blue curse that Balder had.

Walton's "Kosha Pickles
in profile" sketch

But first, we needed to find Kosha. We strongly suspected he had gone off to find the Thieves' Guild. Hackerton was a big city and had many inns, so this task might be onerous. Hackerton was also the epitome of lawfulness, so even finding a bunch of thieves might also be onerous.

So, we decided that it might be a good idea to put up some wanted posters (with the "dead or alive" bit crossed out) to try to get a sighting of Kosha. None of us were very good artists, nevertheless, we all attempted to draw a caricature of him. It turned out that Walton's caricature of him was stunning and a perfect likeness! Then with the aid of a few Photocopy cantrips, we made a bunch of them.

Then we sallied forth to the most divey inns of the city: The Curved Arse, The Flamboyant Dwarf, The Inn of the Rude Awakening, The Wilted Turnip, and The Silver Garrote.

 

A day later and with no bites, Sophia and Balder decided to enquire in the Hackerton central jail. 

Sure enough, Kosha was there! 

He had been arrested for looking for the Thieves' Guild. Of course the "Thieves Guild" is a highly illegal organization, and the act of searching for this illegal group was, itself, a crime - almost as heinous as finding the actual guild.

Big Jim Slade

Kosha was there in a small open cell, half naked, cut and bruised. He cringed in the corner as sweaty guard Big Jim Slade leered at him through the bars, and banged his truncheon on the metal (add your own air-quotes).

Kosha had served four days of a 30 day sentence. We could get him out early, but it would cost him one lash of the cat-o-nine-tails per day not served. So that was 26 lashes.

Balder and Sophia returned to the Tapir and told us all this news. So, we bought some buttered pop-corn (actually legal in Hackerton) and all gleefully went to watch the sentence carried out.

The "Hackerton cat" had obsidian shards, acacia thorns, and real puma claws sewn into the braids of the scourge. It was wielded with deadly efficacy by the sweaty guard Big Jim himself. 

As the lashes struck Kosha's back, he screamed like a little bitch.

A junior magistrate kept Kosha conscious during the ordeal with smelling salts and ammonia fumes (in line with the pithy Hackerton saying "a lashing not suffered is no lashing at all"). Poor Kosha passed out at the end, as blood poured from his welted back. As agreed, he was released into our custody. We took him back to the Wispy Tapir and Sophia soon cured him up. He had a Major Wound, so it was quite a big curing job.

The next morning, we went to the docks and boarded the ferry to Pugtown on Pug Island. The boat was called the Murky Skiff and was captained by Hamish the Peg.

The ferry trip took two days, and was uneventful. We arrived in Pugtown, population 1050. Pugtown was in the Duchy of Furness, below the Slave Line, so slavery was legal here.

Pugtown had seven inns. We stayed at the Pathetic Mongoose.

We enquired about the O'Leary family. They were well known: Lexie's ex, Connor O'Leary had a father who was called Torak, and Connor's mother was a witch who had died five years ago. The O'Learys owned and maintained the lighthouse at the top (klib) end of Pug Island. It was a day and a half's travel to get up there, so we headed off the next morning.

 

After half a day, we arrived in a small town called Sequel. So:

SELECT * FROM inn 

INNER JOIN town ON inn.townid = town.id

INNER JOIN region ON town.regionid = region.id 

WHERE town.name='Sequel' AND region.name LIKE '%Furness'

AND (inn.rooms - inn.occupied) > 2

ORDER BY inn.quality DESC;

returned one entry: inn.name was 'Winsome Succubus' (and inn.id=7911).

inn.quality was pretty low but it was the only one, so we grabbed two rooms (virtuous Sophia Beauchamp refuses to sleep in the same room as sweaty belching boys) and stayed the night there with UPDATE inn SET occupied=occupied+2 WHERE id = 7911;

Next day, bright and early, we set out for the top of the island. On the left of the road was Mt Pelorus.

Pug Island klib lighthouse

Towards the end of the day, we got to the top of the island and to the lighthouse. It was solid and functional (the magical Continual Light was glowing all the time). Walking around the light platform we could see a solitary guard. We were not sure why he was up there, but he was doing guardy things.

The base of the lighthouse was surrounded by the ruins of an old keep and gate house.

We knocked on the door and a gruff man answered. 

"Who the hell are you?"

"Uh, we are looking for Connor O'Leary," said Sophia winsomely.

"... Sir," Walton added,

"He's busy, so fuck off," he snapped.

"We came a long way, sir." said Sophia again, batting her eyes [ Persuade ].

"Well, come back in the morning. You losers can stay in the gate house ruins. Don't crap on the floor."

"May we ask who you are, sir?"

"I am Torak," he said, and then slammed the door.

"Nice gentleman."

The gatehouse of the keep was less ruined than the rest of the keep, and had a functional roof - it was drizzling - so we made do.

During the night, about Second Watch, there were noises down the cliffs below the gate house. There were two boats, lit by lanterns, entering a flooded cave at the base of the cliffs. It was low tide. Lucky for them, the sea was not wild.

In the morning, we approached the lighthouse again and knocked hard. This time a fellow called Dorf answered the door. He was less rude and showed us inside, and up to a lounge area on the second floor.

Here, we finally met Connor. Connor had had one child with Lexie, but he was annoyed that she had claimed the child and refused to give him access. And far from wanting to give us the three "valueless" items that Lexie requested, he point-blank refused.

"If she wants them, they have value," he sneered.

We didn't make any further progress, so withdrew back to the gatehouse at lunch time, and there had an impassioned argument.

Half of us didn't want to get involved in marital disputes, and nor were we bailiffs (we had no legal standing), and the other half wanted to break in and just steal the items.  So, we had a party vote to continue, or abandon the mission (and just go straight to the Aleph forest to do the other mission).

The vote went for "Continue". 

The water tunnel seemed like a good way to go, so we crept down the cliffs and scurried along the rocks - it was low tide*.

[ * = The Known World has no moon and is an infinite plane, but it has two tides a day on a †12.5 hour cycle. The current theory for tides, by scholars, sages and recidivists, is that tides are caused by snow orcs who, twice daily, manually bucket water out of the sea into a holding pond, then let it flow back. 

† = 12.5 hours is the average. It is actually 7 sinusoidal waves at different frequencies over-layed. ]

At low tide, water in the tunnel was waist deep, so we waded in. The tunnel opened into a cave inside. There was a dock in here with a ladder, and two row boats.

Walton's Bane

As the group was waiting in line to use the ladder, Walton suddenly screamed hysterically and he could be seen being dragged backwards out the tunnel. Joe rushed in to help, sword raised, and hacked at something under the water. The roiling water filled with green ichor and out came a rubbery tentacle, as thick as Joe's thigh, cut clean through.

We all quickly left the water after that.

There was quite an extensive cave system under the lighthouse and keep area, so we took to the task of exploring it. 

First off, there was a magical harpy-statue alarm which Balder cancelled with Dispel Magic.

One room contained boat equipment: oars, sails, ropes, chains, bailers, boat-hook, etc. 

There was a set of eight cells. These O'Learys were obviously slavers or traffickers. 

We did find some steps up to the keep ruins.

In another room was a whole lot of miscellaneous gear, all in boxes, barrels, chests and vases. Balder cast a Detect Magic over the lot, and two items, silver candle-sticks, glowed. So we stole those..

It was very dire

Down one tunnel was a portcullis blocking the passage. Behind it were two dire wolves, growling. As one, Kosha and Joe nocked their bows and put an arrow and crossbow quarrel into one, before any of us could stop them. The wounded wolf backed away to the side. Joe wanted to finish it off, but clearer heads prevailed, and we were sensible enough not to raise the portcullis.

We explored some more and found a secret tunnel which would bypass the wolves. They were limited to a small section of tunnel and were sealed off with a second portcullis.

There was another store room. This one had valuables in it: pearls, paua shells, gems, and costume jewellery, some coins, etc.

Finally, we found a round room base of tower, with a ladder going up. This would be the actual base of the lighthouse.

Cold feet suddenly arose. How important was it to recover the three items for Lexie? We had already found a bunch of treasure which more than made up for not getting Lexie's fee (3000gp), so slipping away now could be prudent.

So, we took a vote. The "Flees" had it. We briefly thought that maybe our presence here would not even be discovered, but quickly discounted that. Joe's quarrel and Kosha's arrow were buried in the hide of the dire wolf; pretty obvious.

So, we snuck back up the steps into the ruins around the lighthouse, slunk out past the gatehouse, and headed out on the road, back towards Pugtown. We had spent the whole afternoon in the tunnels and it was now night. 

So we travelled the whole night, and skirted Sequel in the morning.