05/07/2022 - A whale, a fire, and a mutiny walk onto a ship

We arrive back on Ilbidor for some much needed R&R after the last adventure.

After several days shopping, the party is called to Dr T's office to speak with her. She looking somewhat uncomfortable explains to the party that she believes they are due a holiday. After the break in to the vault she has been required by the board of the archaeology guild to do course on management. She now believes that she has been working the group too hard over the last year, with nary a day off. Fortuitously the guild had received an invitation from the freed halfling-folk of Chelonia (formerly Cypropa) to come and celebrate their day of ancestors. Dr T decides to send the party for a reunion and vacation. She also directs them to speak with Master Quayl. Once again the party enters his wizards tower and is met with a riddle "My father is a dwarf. My mother is a orc. What am I?" After some time the party talk to Quayl who explain that the planes are approaching conjunction. He has diagrams and a moving model of the planescape. He suggests that the conjunction has been approaching for some time, but I has only just come to light. Such a thing is very hard to predict in advance. He does not know what to expect, as such events are rare, and this one is shaping up to be quite the nice example of study. He expects some minor planar disturbances, and suggests that magic around planar travel and magic that uses demiplanes and extradimensional space may be affected . He does give the party some returning parchment such as Dr T's which will allow the party to communicate back and forth with him if they like. He wants any notes of anomalies that the party comes across during this time.

Upon leaving, a shipmate approaches Rocky to tell him that he needs to pick himself a first mate. 3 men, the deck boy Derrick, the gnarled dragonborn Bryan and the human smith have put themselves forward for consideraion. The party decide to hold some try-outs along the voyage. Rocky pilots the ship less that gracefully out of the Ilbador harbour and blames it on Bryan who was acting first mate at the time. The party decide to test Smith thoroughly by staging a whale encounter with Elyan as the whale. Smith notices before they present the challenge that Elyan is the whale, but Rocky insists he carry on regardless. Smith orders a warning shot to be fired from the arcane cannon towards the whale to scare it off. The party find this pretty brutal and Elyan starts escalating by nudging the boat. All in all, the party were not impressed by Smith's efficient brutality. Next Derrick is presented with a major illusion fire which engulfs perhaps a third of the ship. Panicking somewhat, and with the spellcasters refusing to act in any way he orders the fresh water be rolled up to put out the fire. Rocky has a quiet word to ensure it is not used. After much panicking Derrick beseeches Elyan to be a whale again and to splash the fire. The fire does not die down and Derrick orders an evacuation and begins to load everyone into lifeboats as he concludes there is nothing he can do. Then, and just in the nick of time, Elyans splashing starts to work on the illusionary fire and dies down to a much more manageable size. Derrick starts lowering a pale of water over the side of the ship to splash upon the fire. Whalyan puts it out before he can. The party were not impressed by his panic in the face of the fire. Which as a reminder, was a third of the entire ship. Next the party talk to some crew members to stage a mutiny for Bryan. The next day 4 crew members approach the wheel where Bryan is steering decaling a mutiny. 2 of the crew members brought a canon up. Bryan faces them down asking them if they really want to do this and telling them he can see the fear in their eyes. Bryan attacks, knocking out two of the crew members before the party put a stop to the skirmish. Bryan declares he has been mutinied against before and nothing like that is ever going to happen to him again.

Rocky declares Bryan first mate, Derrick head of people management and Smith steward of battle tactics.

The party arrive on Chelonia to find Branxom missing except for one large structure. They notice a nearby settlement and find Khrom there to greet them. This is where Khrom lives now with both his fighting and his lawyering schools set up in the village. He informs the party that Branxom was thrown brick by brick into the sea. The temple was buried in a mound of clay and earth an is now a lovely feature with nice carvings of animals and mythical creatures all over it.

After the reunion the party head towards the Herdkeepers' which is the town where the celebrations will be happening.