We set our watches on the Griffon. Willfram and Snuki both conked out immediately, and both snored, so their sleep was fitful. Vivenna stayed up a little while, watching the sea absently as Circe actually kept watch. Fog rolled in, and Circe came over to chat.
She asked what had brought Vivenna here. Vivenna, a little cheekily, said, “A ship,” but then continued: “Politics. Racism. Bad luck.” Circe nodded along as if she knew exactly what that was like.
Vivenna reflected that even if she managed to get away—or even be exonerated—she still had the prison brand on her skin. That wasn’t going away. This wasn’t something that would ever disappear, even if her life turned around. In some ways that might be freeing, but in others… it left her sad.
I don’t recall exactly how it came up, but Circe mentioned something about being able to talk to dead people. Vivenna paused and said, “…you talk to the dead?” Circe nodded, and Vivenna admitted that she sometimes hears the dead as well. Circe replied, “Oh, did someone drown you in a swamp too?”
Which revealed that at some point Circe—through a misunderstanding, of course—had in fact been drowned in a swamp. But she has a heartbeat now, so she’s probably not undead. Vivenna doesn’t think she’s undead. Vivenna did ask, and Circe said she didn’t know.
Vivenna commented that it’s very ironic for her to be here, since she’s killed so many people, but “they don’t know that.”
[I do think it’s funny that neither Vivenna nor Circe asks things like “why did you kill people?” or “why did they drown you?” Possibly questions we aren’t ready to have the answers to.]
Then a merrow crawled up onto the ship and attacked us.
Vivenna woke Snuki and Wilfram while Circe opened fire on the merrow with her poison darts. We had a short, heated battle with it. The creature downed Snuki and almost carried him off, but Wilfram, Circe, and Vivenna rushed in to stop it, and Vivenna crit the heck out of the merrow. (Would have been nice if that had happened earlier in the fight—it would’ve been a much shorter encounter.)
We were able to get a long rest, and in the morning, over whatever mystery meat Circe was cooking, Vivenna asked what had become of the people who tried to drown her.
Circe said they were probably still on the mainland. When they couldn’t succeed in killing her, she was sent here instead.
Vivenna asked if Circe wanted them that way. Circe asked, “Alive or on the mainland?” Vivenna said, “Both. Either.”
Circe reflected that she had thought about it a great deal. She had conceptualized a variety of creative curses—your pillow will never be cool again, your guts turn into snakes—but in the end she didn’t actually want revenge on them. She wished things could go back to the way they were.
Wilfram and Snuki joined us, and we spent the rest of the day rigging a sail to block the hole in the side of the ship and then pulling as much cargo as we could from the hold. It turned out to be a lot of mundane supplies. A lot. No more magic items.
We loaded everything onto the outrigger canoe, sailed it back down the coast (successfully avoiding patrols), dragged the whole lot overland into the swamp, sailed it to Circe’s hut, unloaded it all, and then fell asleep on the floor of her hut too tired for words.
This was definitely more work than Vivenna has ever done in her life, and if it were real life she would be in horrible pain the next day.
We took a selection of supplies with us for bartering and set out west toward the Cinder Crew, since we figured the prince would try to go there if he were at liberty.
On the way we found the Cinder Crew skirmishing with what we assume was the Hawkhurst Gang (with whom we have unknowingly tangled before), and we jumped in to help the Cinder Crew drive them off.
Hawkhurst was routed, but Wilfram continued killing them as they fled. Vivenna noticed he was methodical and detached about it.
The Cinder Crew gang is currently leaderless but has three sub-leaders, and this particular group was led by a dragonborn who Vivenna guessed—correctly—was Brand, the mean BFF of the murdered gang leader.
Brand agreed to bring us back to their base with an introduction.
Vivenna and Wilfram stopped to heal one of the Cinder Crew members who had a broken leg and was about to be left behind, but we were able to catch up with the rest of the group.
We left off walking toward the Cinder Crew headquarters, with Vivenna using all her socialite wiles to make small talk with the gang members… and not really getting much out of them.
Such a bad Persuasion roll.