Episode 43:The Crusty Station Brawl

The Heroes of Bingle have arrived at the Isle of Rum. But instead of finding the family of Tritons they are searching for, they stir up chaos and disorder inside a port city tavern!

##### **DM/GM Intro**

It started as a simple Dungeon Run, but it is anything but simple now. As they progressed on their grand quest, Siv, Fahima, James, Uggo, and Lily, finally reached the entrance to a fabled Dwarven fortress where answers to some of their biggest mysteries were waiting to be revealed. But before they could step through the door, they were magically transported back in time to a new place in unfamiliar clothes working in the service of an old enemy.

They opened their eyes as sell-swords under the employ of the infamous Whitebeard, whom previously the Team killed in battle along their journey to the Dwarven stronghold. But now, in this time and place, they were helping him collect a bounty by transporting a strange pale skinned prisoner across a desert island.

They came to learn that the man in chains was called  Cho'Ran, and the price on his head set by the Shaxen Gao Empire. He claimed to know where the most precious treasure of the Dynasty was being kept and offered the information to anyone who would spare his life and help rescue his wife and son who he said was also being hunted by the crown. He promised riches and power beyond imagining and offered proof if the Team could get him to the water. Unfortunately, other groups were also in pursuit of Cho'Ran's bounty, including a group of reptilian Yuan-Ti, who chased the Team across the desert to the very edge of the island. As the death-defying chase ended, Cho'Ran used a magical item to transform the dry arid desert landscape into a flowing island of waterfalls which he offered to Whitebeard as a gift. The pirate was persuaded by the promise of more lucrative riches and changed course for the Isle of Rum where Cho'Ran said his family was waiting.

In the meantime, the Heroes of Bingle set about learning more about their predicament and allying themselves with the crew. Lily began to sow seeds of discontent, asking the pirates to question their cruel treatment at Whitebeard's hands. Siv bonded with the ship's boatswain, Loudmouth, planting the idea that Cho'Ran's treasure was cursed, while Fahima began to investigate the animals that the ship was transporting in cages, observing their mistreatment and lack of care.

When the ship had to stop amidst strange, pink globules attaching themselves along its hull, the Team was tasked with clearing off the parasites in the open sea. They descended into a complex crab-shaped submersible called an Apparatus of Kwalish to clean the bio-luminescent barnacles from the keel. But even as they figured out to work as a team to operate the unruly machine, their activity in the water attracted the attention of a massive  shark. As they hurried to finish the job, the shark bit and chewed on the iron sub, cracking and threatening to sink it.

The Team decided to abandon ship, and Fahima was the first to leap from the crippled apparatus onto a rope ladder descended from the deck of Whitebeard's vessel. No sooner had she landed on the bottom rung when even a larger shark, a Megalodon, rose out of the water, swallowing both the first shark and the entirety of the submersible whole. Fahima could only watch as her friends were dragged down into the depths inside the gullet of the enormous predator. Luckily, Whitebeard's men launched a harpoon into the side of the creature giving chase as it fled.

Inside their Apparatus of Kwalish inside the Megalodon, the remaining heroes started attacking, ripping and tearing into the fleshy interior of the beast. With iron crab claws extended, they transferred enough energy into the Spin function of the sub to cause tremendous damage, forcing the shark to regurgitate the entire vessel to the surface in one whirling, nausea-inducing eruption. However, on the deck of the ship, Whitebeard gave no mind to the well-being of the sell-swords in the sub, seeing a chance to defeat the wounded shark and take it as a prize. Fahima secretly used her pet Phoenix Meep to burn through the harpoon cable, allowing the Megalodon to get away and saving her friends.

In the ensuing days, the Team continued to wrestle with the possibilities and responsibilities of time travel. James cast Sending to his mentor, Hermil Fesh, at Nightstone Abbey, who assumed that the currently ten-year old James Quillus had somehow managed to cast a Third-level Evocation, and Siv attempted to forge a lasting memory in a sea of uncertainty by kissing Lily for the first time.

Eventually, after days at sea, Whitebeard's Itch arrived at the Isle of Rum. Grey skies loomed overhead as the pirates pulled into port at Bostor, the largest town on the Isle and the next step of their adventure.