We’re on a prison transport ship, chained three together on benches inside cells. There are several cells of prisoners. The guards are omnipresent and grumpy--we’re not allowed to talk. But the three chained together are a half drow woman whose fine hairdo has seen better days (me), a red-headed bearded fellow who has the features of a dwarf but is a little taller and skinnier than you would expect for a dwarf (Brandt), and a pale little kobold (Nick).
We’re bound for Ironreach, an island prison where they dump “the worst of the worst”--anyone they want, really. The “prison” is just a big island, there is one fort in the south, and the coast is patrolled, but otherwise it’s Australia.
The bread has maggots, which delights the kobold, and the half-drow woman makes a deal to trade maggots for bread with the kobold. A storm kicks up, and then the ship is attacked. We hear shouting, the ship is wracked with shudders like it’s being hit--and then a ram punctures the hull in the cell next to ours--the ram is covered with sahuagin warriors. When the ram strikes, one of our guards is knocked out, and we see the keys rolling on the floor 10 feet away.
We’re in initiative now, Thankfully, the kobold goes first--summoning a horde of insects that fly over and grab the cell keys and bring them back to us. He unchains us from the wall and surrenders the keys to the dwarf? Who gets up and opens the door--remember we’re all chained together, and have to stay in base contact until unchained. I took the keys and unchained myself and sprinted down the hallway to grab marlin spikes I’d seen at the far end. Like a newb, I didn’t disengage to do this, so took a hit on the way, and hadn’t realized there was light down there so i couldn’t hide, so then i ate 6 attacks while I was down there. The kobold and dwarf had some range attacks, and on my turn I sprinted back to them to hand off the keys because apparently unchaining myself didn’t unchain them from one another. At this point cargo also starts falling out of the cargo space, causing dex saves to anything in the hallway.
The kobold threw magically charged ball barrings that exploded and single handedly blew the only lock pick in the sahuagin party out of the ship--leaving the others trapped in a cell to be picked off by the kobold and dwarf.
Then two more sahuagin warriors and a caster came down from above decks and nearly wrecked us. The kobold managed to blast one of them within inches of his life, tossing him down belowdecks, the other wasn’t too hurt, but was tossed into the storage room. Then, Kobold went from full health to unconscious in a single turn thanks to guiding bolt and some warrior hits, and my elf-rogue spent two turns stabilizing him and the dwarf dragged him safely back inside our cell before going to try to deal with the caster and free more prisoners for chaos sake. He was downed immediately by guiding bolt, and I dashed down there to stabilize him and gank the caster.
I then ran, on a 28 stealth due to a feat that lets me hide when lightly obscured, and hit the storage room. The dm had described the tinkle of glass, and I was hoping for potions. And sure enough, the other warrior was carrying around a keg and chugging potions like shots, not paying attention. Me and my 8 hp weren’t going to be able to take a dude with 30ish hp by myself, so I literally walked behind him on tip toes to search the room for remaining potions and found a box with four of them and managed to sneak out without alerting him that I was there. I got the kobold up (he was closer) and told him of the dangers, then ran and got the dwarf up my next turn, and chugged a potion myself.
The kobold blasted the sahuagin and ran away. Then on my turn I grabbed the kobold, dashed up to the sahuagin, plunked a feral kobold in front of him and sneak attacked him to death with my marlin spikes.
It sounded like the prisoners below had dealt with the other sahuagin, so we stood there chugging potions, hiding ball barrings and spell components--and then the guards showed up and ruined everything. Told us to dis-arm--which we did. Mostly. I made a big show of dropping my marlin spikes but they searched us anyway and took away all our new toys and chained us up in separate cells. Snuki the kobold was quite the toddler, flailing, struggling, and trying to lick ball barrings off the floor while they dragged him away. After a couple rolls, he actually got three.
After we’d been underway for a while, we saw a ship with red sails approaching. Imperial red--not Silvio red, sadly--and an Imperial sloop pulled alongside and boarded. We were fetched above decks, seeing the laid out seamen and blood stained deck and lines of imperial soldiers on board. Then we were brought to the other ship, in the captain’s cabin, to meet with a man in fancy Imperial robes and a fancy Imperial crest, with a nice gray hair do and beard. He tells us that yesterday, the Imperial ship, the Griffin, wrecked on Ironreach. It was carrying the crown prince of the empire. He has been captured by the gangs on the island, but if they know who he is they haven’t made demands yet. Snuki spit out a ball barring.
He pulls out three dossiers, one thin, one medium, and one thick. Sets them on the desk without showing them to us. He says he knows everything about us and knows we conducted ourselves well in this recent raid and we can either agree to save the prince--receiving full pardons and a free ride anywhere in the world--or he’ll kill us right here.
Kind of a hard bargain, so we agree and get the details. Snuki spits out a ball barring.
Though I ask why he thinks I will be any help in a place like Ironreach. He says there are other widows there, and I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about, I’ve never married. He goes over some details, showing us a painting of the prince, descriptions of his guards and companions, and tells us where to find the armor and supplies they’ll leave for us outside the watch outpost--including a sending stone for our mandatory check ins with him.
Then he tells us there is disease on the island and he will do what he can to make sure we don’t die from it, and brings in a gnome on stilts--very freaky--to innoculate us. Snuki freeeaks tf out, and then plays dead for the rest of the meeting after being shot. Oh, I just realized he properly fainted. Poor Snuki The gnome leaves with an ominous “you should tell them.” Then the important imperial guy (he’s a high ranking imperial intelligence official) tells us he’s just injected us with an exploding device and if we try to leave the island without the prince or just take our gear and don’t go find the prince, he’ll blow our heads off. So that’s nice. (edited)
We ask if they will be sending others to hunt the prince at the same time that we’re hunting the prince. He says no. We aren’t sure we believe him. Especially since, as we are taken back to the prison vessel, we see the three prisoners who probably finished off the sahuagin in the deck below ours, being taken onto the imperial ship. A ragged, kinda crazy looking, woman, a big brawny dude with imperial third legion tattoos, and another person I don’t remember at all. The woman calls out to our dwarf, calling him Steven and saying he’s married to her sister. The dwarf looks confused and annoyed.
Back on our bench, I turn to the dwarf and say, “So….Steven?” “No, that’s not my name. I don’t know her.” I introduce myself as Vivenna. He’s Wulfrim.(pretty sure, don’t have my notes handy) Snuki wakes up and says--with big eyes--that he DIED. Vivenna asks “How was it?” Wulfrim laughs.
We have a short discussion about what we’re in for. Wulfrim allowed a nobleman to die--unclear if it was on purpose or not, sounded like he put him in a position to die easy. When Vivenna asked if the man deserved it, Wulfrim said no. Vivenna said that was sad, like killing a unicorn. She said she’s in here for a case of wrong place wrong time--turns out when someone important is poisoned after talking with the only half drow in attendance people make some ugly assumptions. Here she is.
Wulfrim really doesn’t buy that she’s innocent--especially considering her performance with the marlin spikes, and she agrees that fine yes she is good at killing, but she would’ve killed the nobleman in a way that wouldn’t come back on her. She does offer Wulfim some of her rules about how to determine if someone deserves to die or not--such as wife beaters and those who kill those dependent on themselves--Wulfrim didn’t seem comforted by this at all. Wulfirm says he is an armorer--we also know he can cast fire bolt.
We are pretty sure that the imperial officer intends to kills us regardless of our success, so our plan is to make the prince love us. Wulfrim thinks the plan should be to make the prince love Vivenna--which I take to mean he has low charisma--and Vivenna sincerely hopes there is more than one kind of love than can get us out of this alive. That’s where we left off