Something on the Wind Adventure 3 Session 12
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On their way to their temporary, emergency accommodations with a host family on the outskirts of Saltport, Lysa spotted the lights of a ship heading into the still dangerously damaged harbor. The ship would likely run into serious trouble if they didn't stop. With only a few minutes before the ship was in danger, the party snapped into action, swimming, rowing, and flying an animal messenger to the vessel.
After some discussion, the ship halted in the mouth of the harbor. The party offered to help them unload their merchandise for a cut of their profits, and the captain quickly agreed. For the next several hours, the party helped the merchant crew row their merchandise to shore on smaller rowboats that could navigate the debris. For their efforts, the party got a handsome payment.
During their labor, Daro consumed one of his petals while talking to Gruk to try to get the reticent orc to talk about whatever had been bothering him. Anxiously, Gruk said that he's been worrying about the "sea demon". He said that Captain Harlan "has a secret" and that soon he will have to make a sacrifice to the sea demon, and Gruk is scared it will be him.
The next day a tout ran around the harbor shouting that a merchant was going to hold an emergency auction to try to offload a bunch of merchandise before it spoiled from the shipping delays. The tout said the merchant would pay well for security and administrators. The party decided to help out and got a small payment up front.
Unfortunately, the auction was more fraught with peril than the party realized. The bidding crowd included several bad actors meddling in the affair and a huge number of tired, hungry, scared, and frustrated villagers. A gecko leaping into the mouth of one of the troublemakers helped, but that only revealed that there were more things at play than they guessed. Eventually a local criminal group muscled to one of the larger wagons and rode off with a bunch of merchandise, after which the whole affair descended into chaos. The party decided it was wisest to leave the riots before they were drawn into them.
Later that afternoon the party learned that the criminals had stolen most of the fresh food, and that the village would likely descend even further into violence as people began to get seriously hungry. However, Yemoja was able to help the villagers gather and prepare some less obvious sources of food growing naturally around the harbor. Also, Daro consumed a second petal to study the harbor debris to figure out a perfect solution to the repairs that would let supply ships in significantly faster. Lastly, Gellardia bargained with the elven criminal Karo Dahn, giving him a financial incentive to be more generous with the supplies he stole. All told, these settled the villagers into a much calmer state, and finally it looked like the disaster of the storm had passed.
The next morning, the harbor was cleared enough for the smaller ships, like The Mercy's Wake to depart. The party loaded onto the sloop and set sail. They gave Captain Harlan directions to the nearby vanishing isle of Seeny Shoal, where they hoped to join the treasure hunt that Bran had mentioned in the Saltport tavern.
Soon after hitting the Ruby Passage, Daro asked Acantha to chat with the sea creatures near the boat to find out if there was anything unusual going on near the ship under the waves. She did so, and discovered that there was actually a very large area around the vessel with almost no fish. When she finally dived deep enough to find populations of fish, they confirmed Gruk's fears that "something large and unnatural" was trailing the boat, and the animals were all scattering before it.
Upon learning this disturbing fact, the party jumped into action. Daro tried to coax more information out of Gruk, but Gruk panicked irrationally every time Daro mentioned the "creature" and refused to discuss it. Nyx talked with Captain Harlan. After some polite back and forth, Harlan persisted to deny any credibility to the rumors of his cursed ship. Nyx then explained that she not only believed in the curse but also joined the crew specifically to learn more about it, to see if the party could help. At this, Captain Harlan broke down into twenty minutes of inconsolable sobbing. When he finally recovered, he simply said "I wish you the best of luck, now if you excuse me, I must compose myself." That is when the party realized that even if Harlan wanted to discuss his situation, something supernatural was preventing him from doing so. In the neighboring map room, Gellardia noticed two things: first, that the navigator's logbook was written in a surprising number of different hands, and second, that despite being a freesail ship that had no pattern to its travel, The Mercy's Wake always managed to come to the Ruby Passage of the Jewled Sea each Dreamrise around this time of year.
The party interviewed the Twins and Lysa, but they only confirmed that Gruk and Harlan were the only crew that had been on the vessel for more than a year. Lysa grew nervous the more she was questions about the increasingly sinister details of her employment: she was surprised that anyone would hire her she got her last crew lost in the deep sea for a week, and she hasn't actually been called on to do much navigation, because The Mercy's Wake never left the Isles of Splendor, where skilled nautical navigation isn't really required, because there is always a landmark within sight.
Yemoja also talked to the ship's rodents, and was lucky enough to find one that had been around for several years. The old rat did remember that "once in a generation" the people would push someone overboard. When Yemoja worried that the rat wouldn't be of more help, it said "I remember about the people-dumping because that's when the food smells funny. I always tell the young ones not to eat the spilled food when it smells funny, because they'll sleep for days and could die." Yemoja asked if the rat would warn her when the food "smelled funny again", and the rat agreed.
Finally, the party confronted Gruk again, this time with Yemoja prodding him to fess up about the monster and the curse. While Gruk proved as stubborn as ever, Acantha was able to read his thoughts with her newly acquired telepathic gifts. Indeed, Gruk's every thought while Yemoja questioned him was about his fear of the sea demon. Every year during Dreamrise, The Mercy's Wake would come to the Ruby Passage for the sacrifice. The demon would "choose" someone on the ship, and they would fall into a deep, unwakeable sleep. Then Harlan and Gruk would haul the body to the deck and toss them overboard. Gruk has never seen the demon, but there would be at terrible flurry of violent motion just under the water, and a pool of blood would spread in the darkness.
The party spent the rest of the day huddled in their common cabin, discussing what to do. It was decided that Gellardia would take this information to her Stygian patrons in the night. With as much information as they had gathered, they hoped the witch queens would know something of this curse. Indeed, the Stygians welcomed Gellardia to their feast that night, and commended the party's resourcefulness in learning so much about an old and secret pact. The price the Stygians demanded for their information was "three fingers from the next victim of Harlan's pact". Gellardia agreed.
The Stygians then explained that twenty years ago, Harlan was just beginning his life at sea with his new wife, a new crew, and a new ship. Unfortunately they were struck by a Brine Storm and the ship sank, killing all hands, except Harlan. A creature was below the waves, watching the death with satisfaction. It offereed to save Harlan if Harlan was willing to sacrifice one life to it every year in the same waters where Harlan would have died. Harlan, terrified, agreed. And thus the pact was struck. The Stygians explained that Harlan's demon is an Eldritch Emanation (a sort of lesser Strange God) named Vaelith, the One-Too-Close. If Harlan ever failed to feed it by the night of Harlan's rescue, it would consume him instead.
Upon waking, the party conferred in private and decided on their plan: they would wait until the night of the sacrifice, remove three of Harlan's fingers, and then prevent him from making his sacrifice, letting the Vaelith consume him.
But before that, they had treasure to find: that morning the vanishing isle of Seeny's Shoal was visible, as were a few ships of other treasure hunters. The party prepared to go ashore!