48. Seas and Seeing

**What does the Drunken Dragon look like at the moment:**

The time since the party left Nix's company and their year in the Hells up to now has seen them sailing for months, fighting for their lives at least four times, and then spending a year in the River King's domain, where time only affected their bodies if they so wished it. As they sail away from the Pirate Republic, their appearances are as follows:

Aerendyl: He looks quite unkempt now, in a wild way. His hair is long, and resting somewhere between unkempt braids and bramble-like tangles.

Clwyd: She honestly looks like shit. She's wearing the same dress she was in when the party first met her, more stained and tattered than ever, her mithral armour visible in places beneath, and old gloves on both her hands - one concealing the nasty burn scars she received during her hellfire baptism.

Pyt: His hair now hangs to mid-back, though his beard is still kept short. His clothes are spotless, thanks to diligent use of the prestidigitation spell.

Wilfred: Sporting a year's worth of beard growth. Still wearing his desert-travelling garb purchased in Bisquay, though it's far less white and far more blood, mud, and sweat stained now.

The party are also travelling with Taylor, a disgraced Rumidian military deserter who had been kept by Mackerel for some time. He is skittish and quiet, with heavy, sunken eyes, and a gaunt face. His hair and beard are long and dishevelled.

In addition, the party are now travelling with 16 brownies, 6-inch-tall, brown skinned, homely looking folk that can only really fit one emotion in their bodies at a time, so they tend to flip flop in mood. After the party freed them from Mackerel's lair, they struck a deal to take the brownies to Bisquay, where the party know others of their kind live and a fey crossing exists should the little folk wish to use it. During the trip, the 16 brownies could repay their debt by maintaining the Drunken Dragon. The Brownies' names are Acorn, Toast, Autumn Leaves, Coffee Beans, Chocolate, Mud Puddle, Curry Sauce, Burnt Butter, Rabbit Fur, Ropes, Owl Bear Feathers, Rusty, Mahogany, and Poop, with their two elders named Chestnut and Hazel.

Pyt also now has Jude, his peryton servant. Unfortunately, Pyt can't easily dismiss and resummon the beast, so it's mostly just out chilling on the deck with everyone else when he's not flying with it. Jude is very well-behaved though.

* The waves of the Rolling Blue pick up almost as soon as *the Drunken Dragon* leaves the shelter of Sawtooth Basin.
	+ The sailors have to fall into 12-hour shifts to tackle the waters in the little ship once more.
	+ Wilfred and Taylor take the day shift. The gnome briefly tries to bring Taylor out of his shell, but is met with little more than grunts, nods, or one-word answers.
	+ Clwyd and Aerendyl take the night shift.
	+ Pyt takes to spending a lot of his time in the saddle, trying to master the peryton. He has a lot of harrowing, scream-filled flights in that first week, as he tries to get used to the speed the creature moves at, the sharp turns, and just sitting on such a thing as if he were a backpack.
* Aerendyl has a recurring trance dream that features much more recent memories than anyone he's had before.
	+ He sees the final moments of Mackerel's life, when she was impaled on the pillar of earth he'd conjured up. He hears her cackle her last breaths, and then he hears her say 'you don't know what I do for this world,' and then he sees her die again.
	+ After this he's back in the River King's company, undergoing some lessons after a day of being poisoned. The River King is asking him why witches form covens, why three sets of witches would come together to form a coven of covens, and then finally why a trio of witches might want the party to kill another trio. The answer each time, it seemed, was 'power.'
	+ The River King believed that the Siblings of Agnor might well be getting much stronger soon, and that if Aerendyl is inclined to fight them after the party have their answers, he might be wary of that.
	+ All the same, the River King thinks that Aerendyl might try and capture one of the witches to add to their little menagerie alongside the quicklings. 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained!' At the very least, Aerendyl and the party have seen what profitable things they can take from a witch's lair, and they'd stand a lot to gain from trying that again.
* In the early days of their trip, before they're too tired, Wilfred mentions to the group that it might be time for them to consider taking up monikers - he cited how Cormorant had said their were always forthcoming in his will, and how Wilfred thinks they might have been a little naive in that regard. 'There's power in a name,' the gnome said, 'people can use it to locate us, to watch us, stronger things might even use it to bind us.'
	+ To this end, Wilfred says he's thinking about the names Azure or Celeste for himself. The magic he weaves is always blue in colour, so the names are ambiguous enough to serve his goal while also allowing him to prove his identity with relative ease.
	+ Wilfred also anticipates the nature of his ally and says he's not going to call the bard 'One-Cock Pyt' no matter what happens.
	+ The group also think it might be worth thinking on a name for themselves as a whole, much like how Driscoll's lot were known as the 'Eight-Finger Pirates.' Pyt suggests 'Gristling Throb' but is shot down by Wilfred again.
	+ The group vow to think on it, hopefully coming up with some monikers they can start referring to themselves with by the time they reach Tortuga.
* Additionally, in those early days of the trip, Aerendyl took to scrying on some people in the Pirate Republic, intending to look in on the meeting between the Council of Nine that he knew was going to happen some time before the Butcher's Regatta.
	+ When he scries, Aerendyl pours out a shiny, silver, liquid metal and manipulates it into a disc floating above the ground. As the spell is cast, the surface ripples, takes on colour, and eventually becomes a window through which the target can be seen and heard.
	+ Allbloom 40: the day they left the Republic. The Butcher's Regatta was being held on Allbloom 45, and it was a fair assumption that the meeting would be held at least a day before. They decided not to try scrying anyone that night.
	+ Allbloom 41:
		- Midday: Scryed on Rascal, seeing him in his dining hall asking his advisers when the meeting was again. It's revealed to be happening on Allbloom 43, but the location hadn't been announced yet.
		- 4pm: Attempt to scry on Mary Freed, but she makes the save.
		- Sunset: Attempt to scry on Madog the Inferno. The attempt is difficult because Aerendyl only has second-hand knowledge of the man, and the spell is ultimately unsuccessful; he makes the save.
	+ Allbloom 42, day before the meeting:
		- Midday: Scry on Rascal. The location still hasn't been announced and he's getting chewed out by Nicolaus and Carmen, his no-nonsense officers, for having misplaced 'the flag.'
		- 4pm: Mary Freed fails her save. She's talking to the Jack of Bones in the upstairs of her villa. He isn't visible, but he can be heard. It becomes apparent that he still hasn't told her that the witches of Sawtooth Basin are dead and that the Republic's days might be numbered. She appears to have a great deal of faith that whatever news the Jack seems reticent to tell her could be no worse than anything they've gone through in the past, or even the hassle of tomorrow. She says to him that more and more, she's wondering if she should keep on keeping on as she has been, how she's sick of the blustering and posturing of her peers. When the Jack finally takes his leave, she sighs deeply, looks for the first time very tired and quite old, and then turns her attention to the map of the Pirate Republic before her again. Eventually she says 'fuck it,' and decides on the location for the Council of Nine's meeting by pinning the map on a wall and throwing a small hatchet at the cluster of glassy isles.
		- Sunset: Madog again makes his save against the spell.
	+ Allbloom 43, the day of the meeting:
		- 9am: Rascal fails his save. He's armoured up, with a black cloth wrapped like a bandage covering his forearm. He's walking among his ranks in the courtyard of Fort Cider, barking orders, making sure everyone is ready, and that all 25 of their flyable griffons are ready to go. He eventually reveals that the meeting is being held at high noon.
		- *The party decide to scry on Rascal from 12:00-12:10, then immediately start casting the spell again so that they can keep scrying for 12:20-12:30.*
	+ Allbloom 44: They try and scry on Elise, Cormorant's old friend, lover, and quarry. The spell wasn't saved against, but it was unsuccessful, which can mean a few things.
* Crossing the Rolling Blue was, once again, a long and arduous trip. It took a total of 29 days to cross, with Aerendyl, Clwyd, Wilfred, and Taylor sailing in 12-hour shifts the entire time, and Pyt devoting himself to aiding Wilfred where he could after his initial week spent getting the hang of flying.
	+ At the end of the trip, Wilfred has picked up 3 levels of exhaustion.
	+ Pyt and Taylor have 2 levels of exhaustion.
	+ Aerendyl has 1 level of exhaustion.
	+ Clwyd, her hellfire magic having come along greatly, is able to give herself cold resistance so the wet nights aren't nearly so draining, and combined with the benefits of having read the Manual of Bodily Health, she survives the whole trip having taken no levels of exhaustion.
	+ After these 29 days, they hit the edge of the Chelonii Atoll once again and no longer need to battle against massive waves. Nor do they need to work in 12-hour shifts, since they can anchor the boat in places about the atoll. It is a further two days of sailing before they find where Tortuga has drifted to since they were last there a few months ago.
	+ Pyt's birthday, Sunwane 19, comes and goes during the hardest of their days on this trip. He just keeps saying they'll party hard afterwards, when they get where they're going.
	+ Before reaching Tortuga, they catch sight of an Orchard Turtle, a sizeable zaratan, though far smaller than Tortuga. It has a farm on its back and would be the home of a tortle that devoted themselves to things that grow. The group, being tired, decided to just keep on sailing without stopping to chat.
* They arrive at the docks of Tortuga in the late afternoon of Sunwane 25.
	+ The docks are packed with a lot of boats, many of them quite nice vessels indeed. The party end up with a pretty unfavourable spot near the very end of the fin.
	+ They decide not to fold the boat up, since they have a lot of supplies in the hold still, and because they want to leave the shy brownies in the vessel (*and I think Taylor too, maybe? Please confirm*).
	+ Clwyd pays 15gp to the dock worker. This includes a little extra to ensure the boat gets favourable treatment by the Proprietor's men. Additionally, she finds an urchin and pays another 15gp, enough for three days of the Warden's watch on the boat.
* With most of the party very tired from the trip, Aerendyl takes the lead, getting a rickshaw to take them to an area of the Pleasure Quarter called Old Town. It's a beautiful area of town, with cobbled roads, narrow lanes, and massive villa-style houses sporting balconies and rooftop gardens. Eventually they arrive at the Villa de la Lirios.
	+ Aerendyl knocks and is greeted as 'Master Galanodel' by Cornwallace, his friend's live-in butler. The party are shown into a well-decorated, lavish sitting room and have to wait about half an hour as the lady of the house is otherwise engaged. Some of the party hear the distant throws of passionate sex occurring during this time.
	+ Eventually, an athletic human woman with a ratty, stern face comes in wearing a bathrobe. She casts an eye over the look of the group, tired and dirty as they are. In a fairly heavy Rumidian accent, she says that Pyt has a pretty mouth, and eventually greets Aerendyl with a 'how the fuck are you? I didn't know you were coming back to the area or I'd have prepared some proper entertainment for tonight!'
	+ This is Luciana.

**Mackerel's books that have been read:**

*Note: Mackerel made use of many languages in her writings. The Comprehend Languages spell, or an equivalent effect, are almost always going to be necessary to read her materials in full. The below were read during the year spent as guests of the River King, during which time he provided the effects of a Comprehend Languages spell for any that wanted it.*

* Grimoire I:
	+ The first and oldest of Mackerel's diaries. It is thick book with thin pages, and each is filled only with the barest bullet points rather than deep description. The period of time it covers is staggering in scope, though it has no convenient date markers at any points. The book features two massive stab wounds - one from Pyt's rapier, one from Cormorant's sabre - that make it more difficult to read.
	+ It tells of Mackerel's time spent as a mountain witch, and later what must have been centuries spent in and about the courts of Faerie, rising in power and rank, culminating with her gaining the position as one of Mab's handmaidens.
	+ During her time as a cunning woman of the mountain, a particular couple had come to her, a dwarf woman and a halfling man. They'd sought to conceive a child together, despite their biology preventing it. Mackerel had so twisted their words, and using her Weird Magics, had warped them both into oni, monstrous giant-kin that would seek children together for the rest of their lives, if only to eat them now. (*Later on, Mackerel would claim the pair as part of her trophy collection, keeping them in the mountain layer of her home for nostalgia's sake.*)
* The Weird Handbook:
	+ This book was Mackerel's quick reference for all the intricate pieces of Weird Magic she'd performed through the years, each of which would also be outlined within the many thousands of pages of her grimoires. Though the book apparently contains no magic of its own, just the collection of such Weird knowledge makes it unpleasant: humanoids find it uncomfortable to touch and hold, and the longer they do so, the worse the discomfort gets; eyes become dry and scratchy, skin itches and eventually reddens into rashes, hair withers and splits, nails start ingrowing and crack.
	+ It makes mention of the process of turning humanoids into oni, as above. This is a foul ritual, involving strange ingredients: 'twisted words,' 'an untold secret,' 'the blood of wicked giants,' and 'Mab's watchful gaze,' among other things.
	+ It also outlines the creation of a banderhobb, apparently a creature of shadow and flesh, useful for tracking down a target, doubly so if it possesses even a tiny piece of the creature or object in question.
	+ The dark magic that turns the skull of a dead wizard into a flameskull, sealing some of their magics within to create a bound undead guardian.
	+ The ritual for turning a willing humanoid - one that seeks vengeance above all else, but is often too weak to achieve it - into an oozing creature of stealth and assassination known as a slithering tracker.
	+ Some pages had been torn out carelessly, with only these words left in their place: 'Make No Mention of What Walks with Night in these Pages Again.'
	+ It also features a number of examples of items that, when prepped appropriately, substitute well for the components of various spells and make them much harder to counter.

**Items the Party Recently Picked Up:**

* **Manual of Flesh Golems**: This tome contains information and incantations necessary to make a flesh golem. To decipher and use the manual, you must be a spellcaster with at least two 5th-level spell slots. A creature that can't use the tome and attempts to read it takes 6d6 psychic damage. To create the golem, you must spend 60 days working without interruption with the manual at hand and resting no more than 8 hours per day. You must also pay 50,000gp to purchase supplies, though this cost can be reduced by 1000gp for each Medium humanoid corpse or 500gp for each Small humanoid corpse, down to a minimum of 20,000gp, provided the humanoid corpses have been dead no longer than two days and you have someone with proficiency in the Medicine skill assisting you in making the golem.
* **Scroll of Protection Against Fey** x3: Using an action to read the scroll encloses you in an invisible barrier that extends from you to form a 5-foot-radius, 10-foot-high cylinder. For 5 minutes, this barrier prevents fey creatures from entering or affecting anything within the cylinder. The cylinder moves with you and remains centred on you. However, if you move in such a way that a creature of the specified type would be inside the cylinder, the effect ends. A creature can attempt to overcome the barrier by using an action to make a DC15 Charisma check. On a success, the creature ceases to be affected by the barrier.
* **Scroll of Feeblemind**:
	+ Rules for spell scrolls: A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class's spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible. Casting the spell by reading the scroll requires the spell's normal casting time. Once the spell is cast, the words on the scroll fade, and it crumbles to dust. If the casting is interrupted, the scroll is not lost. If the spell is on your class's spell list but of a higher level than you can normally cast, you must make an ability check using your spellcasting ability to determine whether you can cast it successfully. The DC equals 10 + the spell's level. On a failed check, the spell disappears from the scroll with no other effect. The level of the spell on the scroll determines the spell's saving throw DC and attack bonus.
	+ Tl;dr for feeblemind scroll: On bard, druid, warlock, and wizard list so all four can use the scroll. DC 18 spellcasting ability check to use when below character level 15, and the scroll is destroyed even if the check fails. DC 18 Int save from target when the spell is cast from the scroll.
* **Iron Flask**:
	+ Legendary item!
	+ It's a sizeable iron flask with a brass stopper, but it is also currently sealed with a padlock.
	+ You can use an action to speak the flask's command word, targeting a creature that you can see within 60 feet of you. If the target is native to a plane of existence other than the one you're on, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or be trapped in the flask. If the target has been trapped by the flask before, it has advantage on the saving throw. If a creature succeeds on its saving throw, it cannot be sealed inside the iron flask for 24 hours. Once trapped, a creature remains in the flask until released. The flask can hold only one creature at a time. A creature trapped in the flask doesn't need to breathe, eat, or drink, and doesn't age.
	+ You can use an action to remove the flask's stopper (once the padlock seal is removed!) and release the creature the flask contains. The creature is friendly to you and your companions for 1 hour and obeys your commands for that duration. If you give no commands or give it a command that is likely to result in its death, it defends itself but otherwise takes no actions. At the end of the duration, the creature acts in accordance with its normal disposition.
	+ The iron flask the party possess contains a creature, though they don't know what it is!
* **Chained-Up Book:**Actuallya mundane, non-magical book, though it does also have an unidentified creature sealed inside.
* **Other books**: Manual of Bodily Health (inert); book on Rumid the Great; book on Meenlocks; Pliny Set (101 leather bound volumes; complete works of the Great Twelve; worth roughly 20,000gp to the right buyer); sack full of scrolls that Wilfred thought were worth taking; Mackerel's 16 numbered grimoires; massive book with tiny writing (transcript of everything said in Sawtooth Basin in the last year; all but impossible to make sense of).
* **Mackerel's Ointment**: This clay pot, 3 inches in diameter, contains 10 doses of a thick, creamy mixture. The jar and its contents weigh 1/2 pound. As an action, one dose of the ointment can be swallowed or applied to the skin. The creature that receives it regains 2d8+2 hit points, ceases to be poisoned, and is cured of any disease.
* A trunk with 50 gallons of Freetown Rum.