Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Thirteenth Session

Thirteenth Session (16 page pdf) – “Shatterhull Island” – The PCs follow a treasure map to the wreck of the Sandspider. But who will plunder who’s booty? Only time will tell…

Welcome back to Reavers on the Seas of Fate!  Long hiatus due to summer vacation. But we’re back and played an extra long session to get going again.

Our PCs have ownership of a pirate ship and a crew (half pirates and half escaped Chelish slaves) and Sindawe had a treasure map that’s been burning a hole in his pocket.  Serpent really wanted to go back to Riddleport and get the magic boots he’s had being made there for like four months, but he got outvoted due to the lure of TREASURE!

Early on in the session, they joked that maybe someone was sending out loads of maps to the wreck. I have a good poker face, thankfully, because that was the exact setup.  I adapted “Shatterhull Island,” a mini-adventure from the D&D 3.5e Stormwrack supplement.It was a hag coven that sent out magicked maps, and used their coven powers like vision and dream to lure people in.  One hag appeared in Sindawe’s dream as Mama Watanna a couple times.

When they approached the island, the hags used illusion to obscure the sharp rocks to the south of the island.  Only Wogan making a DC30+ skill check let him see there was something wrong with the wave patterns and make a Will save. The ship managed to avoid being shattered on the rocks due to quick action with an anchor feather token, but was in a bad spot.

Cue the hot woman, Amber, running from ogres! The PCs were of course suspicious of this.  But she had a mantis tattoo, and Mama Watanna had a mantis with her in the dream… And Sindawe is never one to resist sexual advances too much, so they banged in the wreck of the Sandspider while the rest of the group cooled their heels. “She’s so strong,” he noted.

Then a hag attacked the ship to lure the PCs off and more ogres “kidnapped” Amber. The hags knew they needed to all be together to use their uber powers. The PCs dutifully went up to the cave lair and fought the cool, weird zombie ogres – the hags believe a creature’s strength is in its hair, so they shave the corpses and make hair ropes to bind driftwood to their limbs and sew their mouths shut.  The PCs kept collecting the gemstones from their eye sockets, never figuring out they were hag’s eyes. It took them a bit to realize there was more than one hag.

There were gold coins (Infamy points) spent… They forcecaged Sindawe but Wogan spent a coin to let him avoid it. Alas. I would have been content to keep them all in a cage with the hags charming them to love them up while they dined on their crew. I’ve been reading a lot of A Song of Ice and Fire so don’t think I wouldn’t do it… But they managed to hack down one hag, and once one goes down and all the Super Coven Powers go away, they are meat for the beast.

Although it’s funny, Ambraga (Amber) was a low level witch, and when Granny went down she got her back up with a Cure Light Wounds – Serpent freaked out and was giving up; he was sure that they were just all immortal or something.  It’s funny the little things that can demoralize even experienced players.

They are about done with the island; they just have treasure and intel to gather up and then figure out some way of getting their ship out of the rocks safely. Then it’s back to Riddleport! And Tommy should be rejoining us next time (the player’s been on hiatus so it’s really just been Wogan, Sindawe, and Serpent with souls for the last bit).

We all had fun; we played extra long, like 8 hours, but we got the whole adventure done in one session – I’ve got a bad habit of letting them really stretch out.