Seventh Session (11 page pdf) – “Nip and Tuck” – The Teeth of Araska limps away from port and tangles violently with both privateers and venereal disease. Each takes its own toll.
If you’re familiar with historical seamanship, returning to sea after shore leave means one thing – bad cases of VD. Wogan has his hands full with diseases sexual and normal – the crewwoman Zita nearly dies despite a bunch of healing magic!
They love wavecrawling, and some things they investigate and some things they don’t. They take a merchant ship, the Sharon’s Grotto, and get a bunch of mint, mustard, nuts, and coffee, which they regret after the ship’s cooks have gotten their hands on that combination for a while.
- Ship doing target practice? Avoid.
- Electric eel following along? Ignore.
- Floating poorbox with 12 cp in it? Loot it and wonder.
Then they tangle with some privateers in the Broadsword. As they are taken over they send a messenger falcon (oh I wonder where these guys are from) but this panics the pirates so much that Serpent spends a precious Infamy Point to burn the message off its leg. The ship’s mage flies away with some more success, but a much shorter range. They send threatening message spells after him.
Bonus Game Content: Crewman stats of the Broadsword (captain, mage, and three classes of crewman, all elite Grey Corsair types)
And that’s a wrap! Taking two ships takes a while. The Teeth of Araska is banged up so they head for a secret cove Sempronia knows of to repair…
Geek Related 
I’ve never done a wavecrawl with my group — although it’s on the wish list — but I’m certain they would also make strange choices about what they investigate and what they ignore, because once they get into a game their grasp of what’s sensible seems to fly out the window. In my current Call of Cthulhu game, for example, they beat up some chap’s nephew and could not understand why he was upset about it when they talked to him later.
Yeah, I find that the blessing and curse of sandbox over a more purely story-driven approach is that the PCs can hook onto whatever it is that really piques their interest! Which in the case of a soon-to-be-released session is bondage gear made from faeskin leather. Be forewarned!
Still loving this, and fighting the urge to download the lot and binge!
How did you manage the spectral hand – lightning bolt thing? Is that a Pathfinder change? (We’re still on 3.5)
Hmm, I think the session summarizer (Chris/Sindawe) might have meant Shocking Grasp, given the 6 points of damage it delivered and that it then chased Samaritha around. That’s a guess though, I think maybe he opened with a lightning bolt and then sent over the spectral hand with shocking grasp, he had both… Here as a bonus I’ll attach a PDF of the Broadsword crew to the summary!
In fact, I should do that more, attach the sheets for the stuff I used… No reason not to, I’ll try to remember going forward!
Aha, that makes sense. Though a spell to let thou cast as if you were somewhere else, à la Spectral Hand but not just for a touch spell, would be completely awesome 🙂
Weird, my spellchecker changed you into thou 🙂