Session 31 - The One Where They FINALLY Got Off The Island!
5th Mar 2022 19:00 - 22:30
In-game timeline: DR1489 Eleint 10 - Eleint 20
Our "Heroes" continue planning. And re-planning. Bryn gets bored and goes to bed. Eventually, after some further discussion about the plan, our dynamic "Heroes" go to sleep too. Things will be clearer in the morning.
In the morning, things were no clearer. Except that Bree's ship left in the early morning, so at least that part of the plan happened without our "Heroes" needing to do anything. And they didn't even say goodbye to Wilhelm.
The slavers galley arrives. Walls and Wussy-Boy ask around at the docks and find out that the galley is only staying a couple of hours. Their time is limited, they must act fast!
Unfortunately acting fast is not something that this group of "Heroes" are proficient at. Bryn and Brighton help make the decision for them. Bryn says he will gather his rebel crew and jump into the water, using some water breathing potions provided by Brighton, and hang on to the side of the boat, boarding it in force (well, all 7 of them!) as soon as the ship leaves the harbour.
The following description of events will imply that the escape plan was firmed up, executed and completed with critical efficiency. The reader should be assured that this was in no way the case. The extensive faffing has been removed from the description for brevity.
Wussy and Walls head to the forge and buy a load of swords. They shove them in an empty barrel and seal it, awaiting an opportunity to carry it onto the galley. At the same time Minstrel and Pig clamber into two empty crates and also wait to be carried on board at a convenient time.
Walls and Wussy head to the docks and 'sign on' to help load up the slavers galley. They start to carry the load on board, and manage to discretely carry on the barrel of swords and the crates containing Pig and Minstrel, hiding them on the lower deck.
In the hold there are storage areas, as well as a few 'permanent' slaves looking despondent and hunched over oars, with lots more empty slaves seats next to oars, waiting to be filled, as well as a very large slaver - looking like a half ogre - watching proceedings with attentive, but none too bright, eyes.
Our trusty dock-hands manage to secrete some empty barrels near to the sword-barrel and Pig and Minstrel, though Wussy needs to use a lot of his Lucky skill to manage to do things discretely!
As the 'new' slaves, most of them ex-crewmates of the party from the Evening Mist, are loaded on to the ship, Wussy nods to Hawkeye, who acknowledges the nod and indicates that she is aware of some plan going ahead. The other ex-crewmates are slightly less friendly towards the "traitors", but Hawkeye manages to suppress any dissention.
As the loading of the ship seems to be nearing completion, and the other dock hands are leaving the ship, Walls and Wussy put another part of the plan into action. With only a single slaver - the half-ogre - in the hold, Walls tries to distract him in order to allow Wussy to leap into an empty barrel and hide. Walls does a good job on the distraction, but Wussy needs to use more of his Luck to clamber into the barrel without being noticed. Walls then heads towards the upper deck, but discretely turns into a spider when she is out of sight, and crawls back down to the store of crates.
They all then hear a lot of activity going on, and the ship casts off from the Isle - they are past the point of no return!
The half-ogre starts to beat his drum and orders the slaves to start rowing. Unbeknownst to our "Heroes", though they may suspect, Bryn, Brighton and the other rebels now start to clamber aboard, before the ship picks up too much speed for them to keep hanging on the side. Walls changes back into a dragonborn and immediately casts Charm Person on the half-ogre and manages to convince the slaver that she is a friend. She persuades the slaver to let her take over the drum-banging while the half-ogre goes for a piss.
With the slaver out of the hold for a brief time, Walls quickly releases the others from their barrels, then tries to break the manacles on the slaves with the crowbar. She fails. Wussy steps in and manages to break a manacle, but it takes a few more tries to release enough slaves for them to take over and start releasing themselves. It takes so long in fact that the group start to hear the noises of battle from above - the rebels must have clambered aboard and are having to fight the whole crew on their own!
Minstrel and Pig quickly run up top and bump into the half-ogre who is returning down the steps. It is apparent that they cannot get past him to help the rebels without defeating the half-ogre first. Pig tries to pretend they are crew members, but the slaver is unconvinced. He swings but luckily misses the elf. Minstrel leaps to the defence of his liege and responds with a stab of his sword. Unfortunately Pig then gets a little battered, but is able to respond in kind to some degree. Walls and Wussy behind them are unable to get to the creature to engage in melee, but can blast at range, which Wussy-Boy does with his Eldritch Blast.
Seeing that Pig is badly hurt, Walls grabs him and pulls him out of harm's way, allowing Wussy to step in. Wussy has been waiting for this opportunity. Whilst still limited to ONLY a single attack per action, he really makes the most of his single attack and manages to hex and smite the creature, causing a total of 28 points of damage and ensuring that the half ogre falls to the ground, dead! No longer able to pretend they are pirates, TC finally gets into his stride!
As the battle progresses above, the rebels were helped by the escaping slaves, who grabbed the provided swords and head up an alternative set of steps to lay into the slavers. Our "Heroes" pause briefly to heal themselves a bit, then head to the open deck to join the battle, which is in full swing - rebels and slaves vs the slaver crew.
Our intrepid adventurers are faced by four slavers, who break off from the main battle to engage the party.TC and Carro are hit by some early swipes. Mahtis creates a flaming sphere behind two slavers, damaging them with fire and forcing them to move to avoid further damage, and Kandi quickly casts shatter at the other two, damaging them with the thunder blast. The groups trade blows - some accurate hits from the "Heroes", along with the annoying Flaming Sphere which forces one of the slavers to move, allowing TC to take him down with his opportunity attack seemingly give them the upper hand.
In response, however, one of the other slavers knocks Carro unconscious with his hook, then runs away from the ball of flame. Kandi takes down another slaver with another Shatter spell. Mahtis and Kandi then take out the last two, with the help from another hit from TC and his trusty Dragonsboon.
As Carro is revived by TC, the group look up to see that the rest of the battle is finishing. Bryn and Hawkeye are both still alive, but Brighton, two other rebels and a few of the slaves are dead. However, all of the slavers are disposed of, and the Island is disappearing into the distance with no sign of pursuit. They have finally managed to escape!
Hawkeye and Bryn quickly take charge and organise the sailors to get the ship away as quickly as possible. Over the next few days they manage to get their bearings, work out where they are, and part-sail and part-row into Neverwinter.
Once back in harbour, Bryn suggests that they don't mention too much about their escapades to the authorities - they don't have any useful information about Shadow Isle's location so can't really provide anything of importance, plus some of the rebels who helped them get of the island are/were actually pirates and don't want to publicise this. Bryn suggests that they discretely sell the ship they are on and split the proceeds amongst themselves, including the rest of the crew - they can only do this if they don't report to the authorities, who would otherwise impound the ship. Our "Heroes" decide that money is worth more than their integrity, and agree to do this. Bryn sells the boat, which gets the group enough money (950gp between them) to pay for them to level up, as well as providing an additional 100gp each.
And so we leave our "Heroes" spending time in Neverwinter levelling up to Level 5 (level 4 druid for Mahtis). They discretely keep their radiant sisters tattoos covered for now, and keep their activities on Shadow Isle quiet. The Little Fingers are not overly impressed at their lack of finding the lockbox, but the group hear nothing more from them for now - their rescue of Bryn makes up for their failings to get the lockbox. After they have trained up, the intention is to continue the trail to Abbey Isle in search of Mahtis' sister - it is also a place that Kandi is keen to head to. Kandi mentions that perhaps finding out a little more about Abbey Isle before they head out would be a good idea. He has heard of a Father Greatshaw, based in a small town called Whitewater - a few hours' travel south from Neverwinter - may be an authority on the Isle, and perhaps they should head there first?