37. Cherry Threat

* The party's morning conversation is interrupted by Rascal coming into the room, revealing that he's heard Aerendyl talk about the possibility of killing Rascal and taking his seat on the Council of Nine, Wilfred saying that he thinks Rascal is allied with the Rumidian Empire, and the group collectively mentioning their intention to kill the witches of Sawtooth Basin if they can.
	+ The party are taken through Fort Cider - where they see soldiers doing drills and griffons being kept - and given food.
	+ Then the group and Rascal talk some more.
	+ Rascal wants to shake up the Republic a little. He doesn't like the current situation where several council positions are essentially locked in place because those councillors deliver tribute to the witches; he thinks this flies in the face of the spirit of the Republic, the notion that one's reputation and strength are the only things that should matter.
		- Gaia Gold-Eater delivers the tribute to June the Maiden.
		- The Jack of Bones delivers the tribute to the Night Mother.
		- Mary's position on the Council of Nine is also essentially secured because of the Jack's tribute, since they have an unwavering alliance.
		- The new guy, the Inferno, has said he's fine with delivering the tribute to Old Mackerel - a job that all the others have historically alternated between themselves, but all loathe.
	+ Killing the witches, Rascal thinks, will do the wonderful job of making these councillors have to fight for their seats like the rest of them. Further, he thinks it will spur the Republic in an interesting direction.
	+ He wants the Republic to start targeting and plundering the Night Isles. In his words, Shandy is weaker than she's been in living memory. 'Eight-Finger Driscoll succeeded in upsetting the balance of the world; and with her forces retreated to her inner islands, and with Svavil hammering her, there's never been a better time to strike at Mother Shandy!' Not everyone on the Council of Nine agrees with his sentiments. But Rascal thinks the death of the witches will make the Republic more aggressive by necessity.
	+ When Cormorant challenged Rascal on his ideas, arguing that the witches are the reason the Republic can exist at all without Rumidia or the Pirate Lords coming to claim it as their own, he asked him why Rascal would want to do all this. The Griffon Knight responded that he thought it would be one hell of an adventure, which is what flying a black flag is all about.
* The party are told that Dogtooth had allies on the Cherries, all cannibals, and that these friends of his had already come to attack in the night. Rascal's forces had stopped that attack, defending the party's boat in doing so. They would soon attack again, and Rascal - while still wanting to be a friend to the party - had little interest in doing things for 'freeloaders'.
	+ Down at the docks of Many Apples, the party briefly interacted with one of Rascal's senior officers, a woman named Carmen.
	+ She and her men had five men from the Cherries in chains. She handed over custody of them to the party and took her leave.
	+ Aerendyl activated the magic of his horns, casting *detect thoughts* from them in quite a flashy way. He spoke threatening to the cannibals, all the while priming their surface thoughts to be easily plucked from their minds by his spell.
	+ Pyt then *viciously mocks* one cannibal to death.
	+ The next Pyt has Jolene latch onto before ordering her to kill the man however she sees fit. Wilfred tries suggesting she do it humanely. Jolene looks at the gnome blankly, still clinging to the chained man's shirt. She looks from Wilfred to Pyt. The bard just tells her to do what she needs to do. She looks back at Wilfred and stares at him with nonchalance as her scorpion tail rises and falls, again and again and again, ruining the cannibal's face with barb and venom both.
	+ Pyt checks if any of the remaining trio feel like talking yet. The one at the end, a man named Arthur, starts nodding his head and screaming into his gag.
	+ Pyt kills the other two quickly and then the interrogation shifts to Arnold once he calms down a little.
	+ Between Pyt and Aerendyl, the group gain some intel on the Cherries and their inhabitants:
		- There's a cove on each rocky island, accessed by the waters between them. These waters feature strong currents.
		- Weird sea creatures live in the waters, and the captains of the coalition that live on the islands keep them fed so they'll stick around.
		- The cannibal coalition consisted of five crews. Their captains are: Captain Pearl, Captain Bolt, Captain Conch, Snake-Eye Jake, and Captain Dogtooth (deceased).
		- Captain Pearl is currently raiding Rumidian waters. The rest are in residence at the Cherries. Normally, at least one galleon stays out on the water while the others stay on the islands.
		- Snake-Eye Jake is on the Right Cherry, and his crew contains no magic users.
	+ Cormorant wants to help Arnold. He takes him to Fort Cider, hoping to give the young man a new life. A standoffish old solider at the gate, Nicolaus, kills Arnold once he confirms that Cormorant has bestowed him into the company of the fort soldiers. Nicolaus's only words are that they won't have cannibals and turncoats in their ranks.
* The party then sail to the far side of the island of Many Apples.
	+ They see that the deep bay is the only place to land a ship on the volcanic island.
	+ The rest of the island, beyond the bay area and Fort Cider, is home to a large number of orchards and homesteads.
	+ Wilfred has been stressed all day as a result of his exhaustion and only just getting over land sickness. After an argument with the party regarding him wanting them to fly a pirate flag, them never opting to make friends when they have the chance, and how he isn't really up for a fight that same day, he goes below deck for a time. When Cormorant goes to fetch him, he catches the back end of the gnome casting a spell, muttering a sentence to himself incomprehensibly, waiting a little while, and then ultimately looking dejected.
	+ They modify Driscoll's pirate flag, covering the rapiers with bone-shaped cuttings from one of their throw rugs and sewing it all in place. Then they fly their new Jolly Roger.
	+ Cormorant convinces Wilfred to join them in attacking the Cherries that same day. Wilfred ultimately agreed, with a good measure of reluctance.
* The party sail up and through the quarter-mile gap between the Cherries.
	+ Clwyd and Cormorant do battle with the wicked currents, managing to maintain full control of the ship despite the unpredictable waters.
	+ Wilfred fully ignites the first of the two rope bridges that connect the Cherries high overhead. The second one he partially burns.
	+ Aerendyl spots that there's at least one galleon in each island's cove.
	+ The group are attacked by a pair of sea cats - apparently the sea monsters that had been mentioned. The huge, seal-like creatures were able to fully leap over *the Drunken Dragon*, sitting low in the water as it does. As they did so, they'd attempt to bite down on one of the party with their leonine-jaws, ultimately aiming to drag them overboard and underwater.
	+ Aerendyl is the only member of the party who ends up underwater for a time. He's able to escape readily enough thanks to his *fey step*.
	+ The skirmish ends as quickly as it started, with the sea creatures eventually retreating when they've been hurt enough.
* The party opt not to press their attack on the Cherries any further. They return to Many Apples.
	+ Clwyd and Pyt go and see Rascal.
	+ They catch him tending to his griffon, named Wahoo. He's speaking very affectionately to the creature - lots of 'who's a good girl?' and 'yes you are!'
	+ He tells them that they'd be giving up a chance to boost their reputations, the only thing that really matters in the Republic, if they didn't press their attack. Further, the cannibals would likely be coming to retaliate again that night, and Rascal didn't much like the idea of having to fight enemies the party made because they didn't want to attack now and he'd defended their ship the night before.
	+ After the duo tell him that their boat folds up and need not be protected again, Rascal proposes that the party join his men in defending his ship, the Rose, that night. They agree.
* The party go out into the waters of the bay in the Drunken Dragon and wait for nightfall, leaving another of Rascal's higher-ups, Diego, and his men, aboard the galleon docked in the bay.
	+ Night comes and Aerendyl manages to get in a full trace-rest.
	+ In the dead of night, the group hears the rousing of troops and clashing of metal behind them, back on Many Apples.
	+ They return to the shore, with Pyt looking through Jolene's eyes as she flies ahead, seeing that a strike force of pirates had snuck onto the island and were harrying Diego's men. The soldiers, for their part, were well drilled and fought in formation. Individually, the attacking cannibals were the better fighters, but the discipline of Rascal's ranks compensated.
	+ The party rushed ashore, folded up their boat, and plunged right into the middle of the skirmish.
	+ They did battle with Captain Conch and some of her most capable. Aerendyl briefly called down lightning and made extensive use of a magically conjured whip of bramble thorns. Clwyd invoked her pact magic to manipulate the shadows around her and the minds of her enemies both. Wilfred kept his distance, speckling the battlefield with fire where he could. Pyt burned the scimitar out Conch's first mate's hand and catapulted it off into the darkness. After much fighting and Aerendyl briefly giving under Conch's rapier, Cormorant got the killing blows on her, her first mate, and the ogre named Bloody Bones, who was toting a ballista-sized crossbow around and loosening siege arrows with abandon.
	+ Only one of the attacking pirates was left, a boy in his late-teens named Moonie. He threw down his crossbow and said he'd tell them the cannibals' plan if they let him go. They agreed and he proceeded to explain that this forward attack was a distraction - though it had gone much worse for them than Conch said it would. The three galleons were all on their way to attack.
	+ They let Moonie go and he gratefully disappeared into the night.
	+ Wilfred went and told Diego what they'd learned and the soldier sent word to Fort Cider.
	+ The party collected themselves, their fight not quite over for the night just yet.