So, when we left off, Kelden had pulled Vivenna aside to give her the “get close to Melden” assignment. She then ran off to catch up with the guys—hereafter Bill and Bob—who had lost the bet.
They tried to finagle it down to 30 seconds in the cave. Vivenna/Abby very much didn’t remember a time being specified, but everyone else remembered it being 10 minutes and insisted.
So Bill and Bob went into the cave. Shortly after, we heard them arguing just out of sight about whether they were supposed to be loud or quiet. Then they suddenly cut off and the torch fell.
So naturally we went in to save them / see what had happened.
When we reached them, they were wrapped up in “cloaks” and struggling on the floor. Vivenna recognized the cloaks as darkmantles, thanks to her early childhood in the Underdark. So she foolishly ran in to stab them—and immediately got cloaked herself.
She had a bow. She should have used her bow.
Willfram ran in and I think managed to avoid getting cloaked, and Circe ran in and pulled the darkmantle off Bill. Snuki stayed back in the passage and pelted the creatures with Magic Stones, as Vivenna asked them to.
There followed a sort of comedy of cloaking. Vivenna managed to pull the darkmantle off herself… only to get cloaked again before her next turn. Eventually she gave up trying to remove them and just started stabbing.
One of the darkmantles cast Darkness, and then Snuki cast Faerie Fire, which lit up all of us and some of the darkmantles. This was especially funny for the glowing people who were just glowing legs sticking out from under darkmantles—but it did make them straight rolls to hit if you didn’t have one on your head.
Eventually we killed all of them except the one on Bob. We couldn’t get to him in time.
Bill was extremely distraught and immediately started blaming us for making them keep the bet. The bet that they made.
Bill was not in any state to be reasoned with, but Willfram squatted down to his level—Bill sitting on the ground cradling Bob—and calmly told him that if he was going to make trouble for us in camp, we could just kill him and blame the darkmantles.
Bill decided he wouldn’t make trouble, and he turned down help removing the darkmantle from Bob.
We’re pretty sure Bill and Bob belong to Kelden’s faction, just based on some of Bill’s wording while he was raging at us.
Since we were alone in the caves, Vivenna took the opportunity to tell the party about her conversation with Kelden, and Willfram told the group about his meeting with Tara. We also decided we needed to tell Circe everything, since our mission carries tremendous risk to our island reputation and she doesn’t actually have to be involved like we do.
She asked if there was any chance the ticket off the island could extend to her as well. We said maybe, if we can save and convince the prince. It’s a pretty big if.
She mentioned she doesn’t get on well with royalty. Vivenna immediately began 20-questioning her, and judging from Circe’s facial expressions as she tried not to answer, Vivenna deduced that Circe had tangled with the royals of Orlion (so not the royal family we’re trying to rescue).
Circe decided to risk it and stay with us.
We decided that Vivenna should approach Meldrin the way Kelden wanted. However, we’re pretty sure Meldrin is actually the one who was in contact with the prince, so the real goal is to confirm that and tell him what’s going on—maybe he can help us.
We briefly considered exploring deeper into the caves, but Circe pointed out that it was our first night in camp and people might notice we were gone, which is a very fair point.
So we collected the darkmantle bodies and headed back to camp, bringing them straight to the cook, who was still puttering around in the kitchen.
He was surprised to see us, because the others had gone to get us.
We were like, “What? Who?”
Then Vivenna realized: “Oh… there’s hazing, isn’t there.”
The cook reluctantly confirmed that yes, there is hazing. But since we’re with Kelden, probably no broken bones or missing limbs.
We convinced the cook to let us stay in the kitchen and help butcher the darkmantles so that when the others found us it wouldn’t look like we were hiding—or snooping. Vivenna rolled very badly while trying to teach the others how to butcher a darkmantle, but rolled a nat 20 when doing it herself.
So apparently that hunting trip when she was seven left muscle memory but not brain memory.
Most of the darkmantles ended up going into a stew.
Kelden’s people eventually arrived, with Kelden present but not the ringleader of the hazing—the ex-soldier Vivenna had noticed earlier. They gathered us up and brought us to a bonfire we’d seen earlier that evening but that hadn’t yet been lit.
They asked us to disarm. We did.
There was some speechifying about joining the crew, and then the soldier threw a punch at Vivenna. She dodged.
We chose not to fight back, and we were allowed to take hits up to our Constitution modifier. Vivenna dodged around for about three rounds before being knocked sprawling. Willfram dug deep and tanked a lot of hits admirably. Circe also went down fairly quickly after some dodging.
Snuki had hidden under a table in the kitchen long before the gang came looking for us, and they never managed to find them.
After the beating, Kelden took ash from the bonfire and marked the symbol of the Cindercrew on our foreheads, welcoming us into the gang. Very strong and very gross liquor was passed around.
Then Kelden asked where Snuki was.
Vivenna and Willfram looked around and said they didn’t know. Vivenna added that the last time she’d seen Snuki, they were in the kitchen while we were butchering darkmantles.
Kelden asked why we had been in the cave in the first place. Vivenna tried to explain about the bet and saving some of the other gang members, but Kelden seemed completely uninterested in the life-saving part and instead threw some shade about how he had given her a task and she had gone off and spent time frivolously.
Vivenna apologized and said she didn’t realize he meant for her to go attempt to seduce Meldrin tonight.
Kelden replied something along the lines of, “You know your work best.”
We didn’t get drunk with the rest of the gang. Eventually we returned to our hut and set watches.
During Snuki’s watch, someone wearing boots stopped outside the door but didn’t come in.
Of course, Snuki had built a fire and was roasting darkmantle on a spit.
This was its own little saga. Earlier, Snuki had tried to convince Willfram to use his magic fire to roast a darkmantle back in the cave, and Snuki had been crushed when we gave most of them to the cook. But we kept the one that Vivenna had definitely killed with poison.
So during their watch, Snuki tried to build a fire in Willfram’s hand to roast it.
Willfram woke up and objected.
He did eventually light a fire for Snuki—but in a much more reasonable place for cooking.
In the morning we found Snuki asleep on top of what remained of the darkmantle, which is definitely going to reek in a couple hours.
Willfram got to work improving the hut so it won’t flood if it rains, while Vivenna went to make nice with Meldrin.
His hut was locked up tight and there was no smoke in the chimney, so Vivenna found a discreet place to watch it.
Not that she has any experience with stakeouts or anything.
After a couple of hours, Meldrin returned and went inside. Vivenna waited a few minutes and then knocked.
When Meldrin told her to go away, she said she wanted to meet him properly.
He asked why.
Vivenna replied: “Because you’re one of the only people on this island who appears to have a brain.”
Meldrin struggled to find anything wrong with that statement, then opened the door and told her to come in.
She opened with the idea that they might have shared interests and could possibly help each other. She talked a bit about her suspicions regarding the island’s magic and its connection to the hill the village sits on, which pleased him—he seemed genuinely happy that someone else was curious about the island’s magic.
She also mentioned that she believed he might be able to get messages off the island.
There was a lot of careful tip-toeing around topics, but with some good rolls she managed not to spook him.
Eventually she confirmed that Meldrin is in fact the prince’s contact on the island.
He had also noticed the cushion in Kreegs’ hoard and tracked down where Kreegs’ man had gotten it—from the cult. The cult apparently has a number of new prisoners/slaves, which is likely where Meldrin had been the night before.
He’s not thrilled that the prince’s people know he’s here, but he also has his own arrangement with the prince—referred to hereafter as “the Cushion.”
He thinks we might be able to help each other.
Yes, that was exactly Vivenna’s thought.
Vivenna asked a few questions about Norvarax, the former gang leader’s death. Meldrin deflected somewhat, saying Norvarax was “sort of stabbed,” and then asked Vivenna why she cared and why she was getting involved in gang politics at all—especially why she aligned herself with Kelden.
Vivenna replied, “Well… we all make mistakes sometimes.”
Meldrin responded dryly: “Some people do.”
Vivenna dropped the Norvarax topic, but now suspects that Meldrin was either involved, knows who did it, or at least approved of it. At the same time, the subject seemed to make him sad. There was even a chair in his hut clearly designed for a large dragonborn.
Vivenna told him that Kelden wants to know what he and Norvarax were doing together, and asked what she should tell Kelden.
Meldrin suggested that maybe Norvarax had been moving his hoard.
This is almost certainly not the truth, but it’s something Vivenna might be able to use to buy time. Kelden hasn’t made any explicit threats yet, and he doesn’t seem like someone who commits violence casually—but what he might do to prove a point still feels unpredictable to her.
Meldrin proposed that he meet us at our hut at dusk, where he would “make a plan and arrange everything and it will go perfectly.” The idea is possibly to recover the Cushion tonight. He wants it for something he’s working on, and afterward the Cushion will supposedly help facilitate getting us off the island.
Vivenna returned to the hut, noticing Kelden’s people and one of Kreegs’ people watching us—not close enough to overhear, but clearly keeping an eye on things. She brought Willfram inside under the pretense of having tea with Circe and filled everyone in on what she had learned.
And that’s where we left off.
Oh—and before bed we did report to Grumpy Gills the blackmailer. Vivenna also spent some time writing.
We also devoted ourselves to the very important task of inventing a Dwarven curse word to use as a codename for the blackmailer so that no one overhears us saying “blackmailer,” which might imply that we can, in fact, be blackmailed.