The Escape from the Midnight Sonnet

**Gox.2Taro.5284:**

The group is taken into the lifeboats of the Midnight Sonnet to be brought on board. Hayworth, one of the human crew-mates of the ship, pats down the members of the group. He finds a dagger on Elseth and coins on Aratak; Hayworth also pauses for a moment while patting down Kel, but does not find anything hidden on her. With Johann preaching being passive in this scenario, the discoveries during the pat down do not cause further chaos, and the group is led to their cells. Most of the group is placed in the left cell in the hold, while Elseth and Calla are placed in the right cell, which also has one other prisoner who is hiding their face by feigning sleep. This partition led individuals to decry racism, and aim it at the guard who was placed at their cells. The words said caused this guard to cry silently.

After a little time had passed, a guard pulled the four humans from the left cell and led them to the second floor of the boat, into the meeting room. There is a table in the room at which three individuals sit; Admiral Dexas Sondros, Questioner Calumnia, and Hayworth. Sondros takes the lead on the questions for this group, focusing on Kel for a good amount of the questions. He asks how the group found the body, and if they tried to decipher the letters scrawled into the ground. Kel explained the events of 48 hours ago when she went searching for water and food with Elseth and Calla. She also explained that they did try to think on the word, but did not come up with many things. The words floated around in the meeting room are humans, thus the group being together, and horns. At the statement of horns, Sondros asked if the group had anyone with horns, which of course they did. Through the course of the questioning Sondros explained why Ambassador Flarence Koss was on the Galloping Kelpie. Koss was going to the Kingdom of Prax to negotiate a peace treaty between the two Kingdoms regarding the Dural Channel, and because of his murder the Griffin of Makle declared war on Prax. Sondros also revealed that it had been three days from the sinking of the Kelpie, while the group had only been conscious for two days. This revelation led to a large amount of confusion as no one had an answer for the unaccounted 24 hours. The final question Sondros asked was if anyone had connections to Prax. Of this group, only Aratak and Guy had connections to Prax. Guy had lived in Prax originally before moving to Iaphoth to study the arcane, and Aratak had lived in the Northern part of Prax, near Stebesh City, for a bit of time. With the questioning complete the group was led back to the cells and the second group was taken to the meeting home.

The questioning of Johann and Zoomus depicted the stark contrast of personalities between the two Aasimar; Johann with his passive and fatherly demeanor and Zoomus prepared to be argumentative. During this questioning Sondros repeats much of the same information and questions from the first round of questioning; the only new question he asked was if Johann and Zoomus had anyone who could vouch for them being on the Kelpie and for why they were there. Johann told them that they could ask his family and friends back home and that they would be able to vouch for him, while Zoomus told them that no one would officially know where she was. After that question was answered the group was led back to the cells and the final group of Calla and Elseth were led to the meeting room.

During this round of questioning Sondros sat back and let Calumnia take the lead. Calumnia asked the two if they had anyone who could vouch for them and their reason to be on the Kelpie. Calla told them that they could ask Luren who helped her get to Kratena in the first place but that was the only person who could. Elseth then explained that he had basically no friends and no living family left, so there was no one who could vouch for him. They were also asked about why Aerissa had the seal, which Elseth explained they felt it was the best shred of physical evidence they had and being stuck on an island unsure of whether you will survive lead to some questionable decisions such as trusting Aerissa with the seal. This answer was met with scrutiny, and people believing that, despite the low odds of surviving, they would keep a level head in the scenario. The final question was posed at Calla, who was questioned about her scroll case. She explained that it was her journal and that it would have information about the time on the Kelpie. Calumnia asserted that they would not look through the journal now, but that it might be read during the trial as evidence. It is important to note that Calla and Elseth were the only two to not receive the information regarding the unaccounted 24 hours of the group. As they were leaving Elseth asked Sondros if he could tell them anything about the prisoner in their cell, and Sondros responded that it was a suspected pirate they had captured.

With everyone returned to the cells, Calla expressed her stress over the journal to Elseth, saying that it had things in there she would not want people to learn about. While Elseth was calming Calla down, the other prisoner spoke up and said that she had an idea of how to get off the boat. Intrigued, Calla and Elseth asked to learn more, first asking for her name. She told them her name was Montag and she was captured by the Midnight Sonnet while doing some plundering. Montag explains to the two that she has been digging an escape route through the ballast and there is a small hole in the hull that the group could get out of. Immediately there were a few problems; 1) that everyone needed to be in one cell, 2) that everyone's equipment was kept up on the main deck in the captain's office, and 3) communication was near impossible between the two groups. By sheer luck, Johann cast whisper to Elseth at an opportune time and the group began an arcane conference call to further work out the details of the plan. It was decided that Calla and Montag would stage an argument and fight to get the attention of Petros once Stagg had gone into his trance. Once Petros was in the cell, the group would render him unconscious and Elseth would disguise himself as Petros. Elseth, in his disguise, would led a group consisting of himself, Johann, and Calla to the top deck to retrieve the items and the lifeboats while the rest of the group lie in wait in the cells. Once the lifeboats hit the water the group in the cells would escape through the hole in the ship, and during this time Tia would use her arcane rope trap to ensnare the rudder. This would help immobilize the boat for pursuit, and if the top deck plan went poorly they also planned to light the sail on fire to assist with this. With, what they believed to be, a decent plan in shape; the group sprung into action.

Once Stagg had gone for his rest, Calla began the first step of the plan by letting her anxiety fully take over, pacing back and forth in the cell and muttering to herself about her worries. Montag began to act agitated before stage punching Calla. This drew the attention of Petros who Elseth was eventually able to get into the cell to separate the two, and when he did Calla and Elseth both landed punches on him and he was knocked unconsicous. Montag took the keys from him and released him and also got rope to tie up Petros. While this was happening, Elseth got a good look at Petros and disguised himself. With the disguise set and the groups ready; Elseth, Calla, and Johann began to go upstairs. Almost immediately they had problems with a guard on the third deck who Calla and Johann had to knock out and move to the bottom deck. Elseth was able to cover the sounds by deceiving another guard that he had simply fallen on the ladder. On the next floor the group began to become unsure of which plan was best. Elseth scoped out the top deck and noted that there were a good number of guards that way, but he was unsure if the group could easily make it through the crew's quarters. The group decided to go around the deck and try to get into the meeting room, but the door was locked and they did not want to waste the lock pick, so they decided to risk it by going up the ladder to the top deck. They were almost immediately noticed by another crew member, but Elseth was able to play it off by stating he was taking them upstairs because fights were breaking out in the cells and needed to be dealt with. With that lie successful the group was able to make it into the captain's office and retrieve their supplies. As they went to leave they panicked as they heard the door to the war room open, but they learned it was only Aerissa, who Calla convinced to quietly go back into the war room. On the groups way to the lifeboats they were noticed by another crew member, and the group was just barely able to lie that this was a psychological punishment for the misbehaving prisoners. Elseth was also able to convince the guard to go downstairs to help Stagg with the problems downstairs. With that the group felt they were basically in the clear, but at the last moment the crew-member helming the ship spotted them and sounded the alarm, so the group jumped in the lifeboats and Johann lit the sails on fire before they dropped the boats. The groups re-united in the water, but as they were making their escape they saw Admiral Sondros cast a spell on himself and jump down onto the water. He began to sprint towards the group on top of the water, beginning to produce a fiery orb in his hand. But before he could finish casting his spell, a crew-member shouted down that the Sea Wraith was attacking. He looked at the group before turning back to the ship. The group looked back to see a ghostly ship attacking the Midnight Sonnet, and to see Aerissa standing on the deck staring out at them. Feeling guilt and shock some members wanted to go back to save Aerissa and help defend the ship, but others did not know how they would do that. Aratak claimed he had a way onto the ship, but would not inform the group how, which swayed some people against him. Eventually defeated the group continued rowing on, unsure of what happened to the boat and Aerissa and where they would go next.