07. The Island Hatchery

The party awoke in Longreach with one day until they were to set sail for Shandy's island hatchery. They took in the simple pleasures of the island: the bells chiming overhead; the bathing pool with crystalline water, filled with stingless, orange jellyfish; and the mountain of booze in the drinking hall.

Clark spent the evening learning the rules of dragonchess from an elderly half-elf. While he did so, the pair shared an earnest conversation about reasons to be on the water flying a flag. The man finished the evening saying he hopes Clark finds a crew he feels he belongs in soon. Vic spent much of the day looking for King, eventually concluding that he was off-island on his own. The genasi returned in the evening to have a whispered chat with Laylin which Vic tried to listen in on. She mostly just heard the word 'Brineskimmer' thrown around a few times.

*The Matricide* set sail the next day, with King joining them on the mission. After most of a day's sailing, King invited Malak to come below the waves with him and check on a 'real beastie.' Malak agreed, and was shown Brineskimmer, an enormous sea dragon. She was engrossed in arranging her collection of ship hulls around her coral lair. Malak also saw a large number of sahuagin corpses stored around the place. Content that Brineskimmer was too busy with her recent spoils to bother them, King returned to the ship with Malak.

In the evening, Elio encountered a dark elf woman by the name of Rhythm in the crow's nest. She was playing short tunes on a harmonica and moving around some magical lights in the air, amusing herself. Rhythm didn't really hold much weight in the title of 'pirate lord' that some have given Driscoll. She acknowledged that Eight Finger, the Fury, the Hellchild, and the Leviathan were all truly powerful people, but felt that they all only laid claim to a small patch of cursed water that most people didn't want in the first place.

*The Matricide* soon reached the Night Isles, Shandy's territory in truth. The crew's mood shifted, everyone acting a lot less jovial, focusing more on their work. They continued to sail even after the sun went down here - different rules apparently being in place for different parts of the Wilds. Three days passed, with the eyes of all the crew searching the horizon the whole time. The night before the assault on the island, the party gathered to try and come up with a plan of attack but didn't settle on that much. Elio overheard Rhythm sat on the ship's figurehead, whispering to a small bird on her finger, '...Mother Shandy that Driscoll's coming to kill her dragons.' He snuck away without alerting her.

Driscoll went over the plan in the morning as the island came into sight. He, Laylin, Wick, and King were heading straight to the centre of the island and taking out the dragon they knew lived there. He was sending a team to scour the near side of the island, killing what they could but mostly waiting to help drag a large dragon corpse back to the ship. A skeleton crew were being left on the Matricide, keeping her afloat and watching the horizon. Apparently, they were expecting company within the day, and the ship would ring their bell as much as they could when they spotted it. The party were to take a portable hole, sail to the far side of the island, and just push through as fast and thoroughly as they could, emerging back on the near side where *the Matricide* would be waiting. Displacer beasts and sun stags were great prizes, as would be a dead dragon if another one really was on the island - Rhythm had found some green dragon scales when she had done the reconnaissance before. A dead dragon was also the party's only way of proving for sure that they weren't working for Shandy. Anything else they killed would likely piss Shandy off, so Driscoll was all for it, though they couldn't make anything useful from the corpses. After the plan was conveyed, Elio approached Driscoll and told him about what he overheard Rhythm saying last night. Driscoll laughed and told Elio he had asked Rhythm to tell Shandy what they were doing. It was all part of the plan.

The party sailed to the far side of the island, traversed into the bowl of the caldera, and prepared themselves for a long day. Clark took to tracking, and the group soon encountered a giant wolf spider. Pyt ended up head-first in its narrow, trap-like burrow and took a few bites to the face while he mocked it to death. Vic climbed down into its web-filled den and tried to extract a large creature that had been trapped in there. Ultimately, it was taking too long, and she opted to forget about it. Clark took to tracking again, and he soon found a great deal more success. The party came across two majestic sun stags drinking from a pool in the forest. Wilfred put them to sleep and the party piled on them - damaging the pelt of the first one in their desire to kill the thing for certain before it has a chance to get away. Pyt was more clinical with the second, killing it with his rapier through its eye. The stags went in the portable hole, on top of the wolf spider corpse, and the party pressed onwards, using Flekk to make sure they are continuing to head towards the centre of the caldera.

Arriving at a river, the party was briefly accosted by a water weird before backing away. They travelled upstream, to a rotten bridge flying Shandy's flags. Elio burned them as the group slowly made their way across the old wooden structure. Malak went first, followed by Clark. The pair, in their heavy armour, caused a number of the planks to fall away but otherwise made it across unscathed. The others began to follow, but just as the party were separated, Vic spotted a displacer beast in the shadows of the tree line. She and Starth did battle with it before it eventually fled. Starth was the last one to attempt to cross the bridge. A large number of the planks had fallen away under the weight of the others by this time, and Starth fell in the river as the plank beneath him gave when he tried to jump. The water weird, invisible under the surface or the river, constricted Starth and began dragging him downriver. The party scramble to help the monk, slinging spells as they ran. Malak, Elio, and Vic took to the water to try and help. Starth eventually got away from the creature thanks in part to Pyt's inspiration. The creature briefly grabbed Vic before she too escaped and the party collected themselves on the other side of the river at last.

While the group took a moment to rest, a pack of dire wolves approached from further in the woods. The party managed to sneak away without alerting them. As they approached the centre of the island, they heard the confrontation going on there. Many creatures were scattering from it, including some interesting-looking winged beasts. Clark and Flekk tracked them to a clearing and the group saw they were a pair of perytons. The party began fighting them, eventually killing one, but then an 8-foot-tall black dragon soared in and started squirting acid everywhere. The remaining peryton immediately fled and the party shifted gears to deal with the dragon. The fight was fierce, with Vic going down once, being brought back from the brink, and then the dragon sadistically squirting acid on her again. Ultimately, the party managed to damage the creature enough to make it flee to its cave without any of them perishing in the ordeal.

They tracked the creature back to its cave, rested again, then scaled the wall of the caldera and entered. Wilfred had a brief conversation in draconic with a voice in the dark that asked if 'Mother' had sent them and if they'd brought more treasure. The gnome tried subterfuge, using illusion magic to make coins appear on the ground, but the dragon - which was revealed to be a small, green dragon - wasn't fooled and a fight broke out. Malak dealt a huge burst of damage to the creature and it was forced to flee, but not before breathing its lethal poison breath over those who had gotten too close. The dragon dove under the water in the cave and some tense moments passed as the party readied spells and attacks for when it reemerged. But It didn't come back up.

Malak dove into the water and was assaulted by both the green and the black dragon, the pair having been hiding under a rock in the pool. He made it back out the water and told the group they were down there. Starth and Vic pushed into the cave and shouted loudly that they were going to take the dragons' treasure - a meagre horde of coins and trinkets that Shandy had given them. The dragons emerged from the water in fury, and Starth nearly fell to them. Somehow, the party persevered, with Wilfred felling the green dragon with his recently acquired firebolt cantrip, and Pyt taking down the black one with magic-imbued whispers.

At the start of the fight, Vic had heard the bell on the ship ringing, so the party knew they had to move fast. They bundled the dragon corpses into the portable hole along with the treasure and collected the few magic items on the corpses and bones around the room - victims who had been sent to give treasure to the dragons previously. Rushing back to the coast, the party saw a larger dragon's head - a red one - stabbed onto a spike on the shore with Driscoll's flag flying next to it. Some of the party threw jars of goblin fire into the forest and then all of them rushed to the water.

Hurriedly getting into the folding boat, they headed to *the Matricide*, which hadn't been going full sail, having waited for the party. Behind Driscoll's ship, a large boat flying Shandy's colours above a flag of four horseshoes was rushing through the waves. In-between the two boats, an armoured centaur wielding a huge glaive, Zephyr, was galloping on top of the ocean, heading straight for the Matricide. He jumped up on deck, knocked someone overboard, and jumping off on the other side before rounding to charge at the party. He made a quick pass, jumping over the Drunken Dragon, but missing with his swing due to Pyt's bardic magic. The party saw a heavily injured King practically fall into the water after the unconscious man who fell in. Pyt inspired the genasi as he climbed back on deck one-handed, using teeth and elbows and sheer tenacity to get his comrade to safety.

On deck, the party saw the chaos. People were wounded everywhere from Zephyr's continuing passes. Driscoll had flown into a rage, with eyes only to kill the centaur. King tried to talk him down, but he wouldn't listen. Pyt went and had words with Eight Finger as well, while Elio healed King with what little he could. Laylin stalked up on deck from below, shoving protesting pirates off her, bandages covering her limbs. She punched Driscoll in the face and screamed for them to get the fuck out of there. As the drums begin to bang below deck and the oars moved, a huge living galleon appeared on the horizon, paws attached to tendrils on each side of it clawing through the water: the Hearth and Home. Laylin couldn't believe Shandy had come herself. As the Matricide built up speed and started to get away, it being clearly the faster of the ships, Zephyr jumped off his vessel again and started rushing towards the boat. Wick, heavily injured though she was, got dragged to the back of the ship and managed one last fireball before she passed out.

Driscoll stalked past his protesting crew, held out one of Shandy's flags tied to a snapped off mast-top, and lit it on fire with his sword, staring out at his enemies as their colours burned beside him.

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