This week, Nick gives us the miss. He claims that he's got Haunted Trails construction to do, but we all understand that he hates us all. Chris (Drake Sangaree), Dan (Romeo Vestini), and Bruce (Marcel Gasoin) all show up on time, while Tim (Louie) promises to show up "soon", and actually manages to beat his estimate. Paul is in charge for the second week in a row.
Everyone actually got 4 experience points from the last session. Romeo gets 400 experience points, except that everything costs him 100 times as much.
The characters run helter-skelter away from the snake and into the jungle. Surprising everyone, Mariana Octavia finds her tongue and shouts out to Drake Sangaree, "I saw some caves in the rocks!" Everyone runs that way.
The characters, Mariana Octavia and the Captain all manage to reach the base of the rock outcrop along with one surviving crewmember. To nobody's dismay Father Parillo does not reappear after his slurpy demise in the guts of the Big Snake. The group is actually rather better-equipped than they might have feared, as Gunther managed to grab most of their equipment (including a wide assortment of weapons) from the ground at the native camp. The characters re-equip themselves.
The group then faces the problem of finding a way up the rock face to reach a cave. Drake suggests that the characters skirt the rocks until they can find a path up to a cave, which sounds like a better plan than trying to scale the rock face. With some luck, the characters find that they still have two lanterns in their rather motley collection of equipment. They light them up and head along the rock face.
Within a few minutes' walk, the characters manage to locate a possibly-natural path leading up to a cave. The cave mouth is about 20 feet wide, and stretches back into the hill farther than the characters' lanterns reach. It is obvious that the cavern has been enlarged and cut out to eliminate irregularities. Mere moments of inspection determine that there is also a large pair of doors in the back of the cave. Though Marcel Gasoin is quite upset at the notion of opening the doors up, pointing out that he and several other characters remain crippled by their wounds, the rest of the group is quite enthusiastic about the plan. Drake Sangaree and Romeo Vestini open the doors anyway, learning through process of elimination that the doors hinge up, apparently using sophisticated ball bearings. Marcel's protestations remain unheard.
Drake finds that the corridor continues on beyond the doors for at least fifty feet. A few feet down the corridor, the floor surface changes from rough stone to polished wood. The characters bicker for a while, then finally decide to camp behind the doors, with a wedge placed into the mechanism to keep them closed and a lantern burning to provide a watch-light..
It finally dawns upon the characters that Mariana spoke. She spoke in Avalon, and explains that she wasn't allowed to speak before because the "Father" would have killed her. She also offers the bombshell that he wasn't really a priest: he merely stole the robes from another man on the lifeboat, a man whom he killed.
She claims that she was the Captain's daughter on the Dancing Wave, which was off looking at uncharted isles to find Syrneth artifacts. The expedition was funded by the Inquisition for reasons obscure to her. In the course of their search, they located the island the characters are now stuck upon, and named it Calebria. A small group went ashore to explore, but never came back. Mariana now suspects (in a leap of logic that staggers only Gunther) that they must have been killed and eaten by the Big Snake or it's pet natives. After the Captain gave up on the landing party, he set the Dancing Wave to circling around the island. During this circuit, they found a partially-submerged cavern near the shore. They sent another group into the cave, including Esteban Parillo. This party did come back, bearing incredible stories of artifacts and a strange sailing ship. They weren't able to penetrate back far into the cave because place was lousy with traps. They did gather up whatever artifacts they could carry, and headed back. Notably, they weren't able to free the ship from it's moorings.
The expedition's troubles started when one of the crew discovered how to make music with one of the artifacts, a large silvered sphere. Some days later, a Sea-Snake of such scale as to steal the breath from strong men made an appearance and savaged the ship. The Captain, Mariana Octavia, Esteban Parillo (the navigator), and a few of the crew escaped in one of the ship's boats. Esteban Parillo then proved himself to be a vile weasel of a man by slaying everyone else in the boat, save for Mariana. She speculates (with what knowledge the characters refuse to speculate) that his intentions towards her were less than honorable. They drifted for some time before they were found by the Montaigne of the Bountiful Wife, who took them prisoner in the hopes of forcing them into revealing the location of the island.
Interesting though her story may be, it fails to spark any particular action, considering that the characters are all badly wounded. As an alternative, they rest for the evening.
The characters decide, with some input from the Captain, to travel back to the Native Sacrifice Site the next morning, then look for the ship. That night, all their Dramatic Wounds heal.
The next morning characters head past the native's clearing to see what they can retrieve. The determine that the Giant Snake Balls have been removed (Romeo gladly exclaims "at least it can't reproduce!"), but all of the characters' equipment is still there. They gather everything they can up and head back towards the ship. They see one group of natives, but hide from them. Apparently the natives aren't as keen-eyed as they were a couple of days ago.
The characters get back to the beach to find that the boat isn't there anymore. Drake, thanks to his spyglass, is able to see that the ship is still there. The characters light up a fire to try and attract the attention of the crew. There is no evident action from the Succubus for an uncommon long time, but eventually the characters are able to spy a small boat rowing in to the shore.
The boat proves to be manned by Josef Chevaille, the surgeon; Ben Benuto the cook; Pierre the ship's gunner; and a motley assortment of crewmen. Seeing that most of the ship's officers are on board the boat, Drake yells out, "Aren't you worried the ship will be taken by the mutineers?" Josef responds, "Haha! We are the mutineers! Put down your weapons and surrender!" Marcel offers, "Come closer, we can't surrender properly at that range!"
The situation gets a touch more serious when the crewmen produce a tremendous number of muskets. The characters scurry for the safety of the jungle line. Drake shouts back at the mutineers, "We're going to leave now. The Captain has the real charts!"
Once the characters have reached cover, the Captain claims that he owes the characters something. Drake largely ignored his comments, and suggests that if he'd been a bit lighter with the acts of random buggery upon his crew, they probably wouldn't have mutinied at nothing. The conversation continues with the players making successive references to various socially-unacceptable acts, and the persons to whom they would like these things to be done.
The characters head back into the jungle, bound for the cave with doors. To their surprise, they find that the jungle is fairly bountiful, with succulent monkeys and juicy breadfruits and poisonous snakes all about. At this moment, the Captain decides to take a moment to reveal that his patron is a Vodacce noble named Luigi Giorgio. By incredible coincidence, this is the noble with whom Romeo Vestini has a running feud. The Captain, hardly perturbed by this revelation, explains that Giorgio is staying with a Montaigne noblewoman, the Duchess of Rachitisse.
After some time, the characters reach the cave of doors.
The characters head down the passageway for about 100 feet, until they reach a branching. They elect to go south and east until they are no longer able. Drake leads, with a lantern. Romeo is near him, using a musket as a probe. Marcel is behind them. Marisela follows, with the Captain and the surviving crewman in the rear.
Drake locates a section of wooden floorboard that has some give in it. He pries at the thing, and finds that it has been weakened by insects. It appears that there is a drop of about 30 feet underneath the rotten planking. The rotted area looks to extend for at least three or four feet. The planks lie upon lateral supports that (at least in this area) are probably as riddled with bugs as the planks.
Drake heads back to pull up some good planks to build a bridge. He manages to get some 20-foot lengths that look pretty durable. Marcel, who happens to be the smallest of the group, "volunteers" to test the bridge. He gets across with some creaking and cracking, but no significant injuries.
Unfortunately, it turns out that all of the risk and danger was for naught, because the other end of the earlier branching loops around, giving another way to get to the same place. The characters continue walking generally south and east, encountering a series of dead ends. They also find a carven stone door that can't be opened, but which Drake discovers can emit quantities of dirty-looking gas when fooled with. The characters retreat, investigate a few other sections, and find nothing else interesting. Drake gives Gunther and the crewman the job of carting around the planks for later use.
The last available location is across another section of rotting planking. Drake offers that he would prefer to avoid balancing his way across a section of rather questionable planking, so Marcel gets sent to fool with the door. Marcel finds that several ways of jinking with the mechanism don't have any useful effect (except for making clicking sounds). Drake suggests manipulating it the way he manipulated the other door. Marcel tries this, and discovers that this produces a cloud of noxious gas just the way it did when Drake tried it.
Everyone backtracks a long way until they find a circular chamber with a pit in the center. A pulley is stuck into the side of the wall, apparently a fairly recent addition. Romeo wanders a bit farther and manages to find some stairs down in an adjacent chamber. The characters quickly make their way down the stairs to see what they can find.
They find a square chamber dominated by a pit sixty feet wide and sixty feet deep. Another room is visible on the other side of the pit, but there is no obvious way to reach it. The characters eventually made their way back up to see if the gas has cleared (it hasn't), then make camp.
The characters make one final attempt to bypass the gas-trap doors: Marcel tries stuffing his floppy sailor hat into the gas vent. It quickly develops that the floppy sailor hat doesn't do anything to the gas flow. Everyone runs. Along the way, Louie pushes a torch into the gas cloud, and discovers that the torch is simply extinguishes.
Romeo latches a rope to the pulley and heads down 100 feet of pit. The other characters yell down to ask if he has found a good place. He shouts back in a broken Italian accent that it is a great place, and that he's going to open up a disco there. Laughter ensues. Everyone stares at each other in silence for a moment. Additional laughter ensues.
While the other characters argue as to what exactly Romeo might have been talking about, he wanders around trying to find things. He manages to locate a substantial pile of random organic trash mixed with assorted metal bits. Unafraid of the possible disgusting consequences of playing in filth, Romeo eagerly scavenges through the mess, grabbing whatever peculiar objects he can find. The most interesting object he locates is a pair of black goggles.
With only a trivial amount of consideration, Romeo decides that he has locates a stash of Syrneth artifacts, or more likely a stash of Syrneth trash. He figures that even the Syrneth's leavings will be worth a few hot Guilders, so he collects them all and brings them back to the pit so the other characters can pull them up for recovery.
Having decided that gathering Syrneth trash is a lot better than dodging noxious gases, the other characters join Romeo. They head east, where they find a dead end with a door and a round indentation in it. Drake puts his hand in it and finds that the stone inside has some give to it. He puts a chunk of wood in and pushes. The wall pulls away, leading into the bottom of the 60' pit they had seen sometime earlier. A large stone wheel with a notch in one side is set into the wall. Turning it to place the notch at the base allows water to flow into the pit. The characters figure that the water will fill up the caves and eventually allow them to float over to the other side.
The characters' plan to get across the flooded pit by having one swimming character take a line across, allowing the remaining characters to pull themselves across, works fine. The room on the other side proves to be pretty much featureless stone, save for a small door in the wall. The passage behind the door goes a fair distance, then up some stairs to another carven stone door. We hate these doors. Everyone stares at the door for a while in silence, until Drake speaks: "We open the fucker."
Behind the door is a featureless section of corridor that quickly proves to be a corridor section the characters have already traversed.
The characters return to the original hole in the floor to discover, rather by accident, that there is a corridor underneath the corridor. The corridor proves to lead to a room containing a table and a sleeping pallet. The sleeping pallet has been used recently enough that there are still bugs in it.
There are several objects on the table, including a T-shaped piece of metal a few inches across and a hoop perhaps a foot across. There is also a small array of little metal implements that might be eating utensils.
Having finished wandering through the caves, the characters depart the complex and return to the coastline with the idea of retaking the Succubus. Their plan starts out with a raft, constructed thanks to Louie's Survival skills and the other characters' Knotwork skills.
The basic plan is a simple cutting-out expedition. The characters paddle out very carefully, then climb aboard the ship. Louie once again proves himself a hero by picking an angle of approach completely hidden from the sentries. Once on board, he fells a sentry with a thrown knife, showing Romeo how it's supposed to be done. For his part, Drake discovers that shooting your men occasionally is good policy: the sentry he confronts surrenders without a fight. Marcel is much more straightforwardly brutal, cutting a third sentry down with his cutlass.
About this time, things start t pick up. The fourth sentry raises the alarm and is skewered by Louie for his troubles. In exchange the last sentry shoots Louie with his musket, firing even as Louie's knife is in the air.
Knowing that the jig is just about up, the characters decide to try for a decapitation strategy. They rush the Captain's cabin hoping to savage the mutinous officers. Unfortunately, they quickly discover that the Captain's cabin is empty, as is the Master's cabin next to it.
By the time the characters emerge, there are masses of mutinous crewmen pouring up from the belowdecks, led by Ben Benuto and Pierre. The characters, confident in their abilities in a way only heroes and sociopaths can manage, brandish their weapons and charge.
Drake and Marcel engage Ben Benuto in a vicious struggle. Louie charges into the crew, slashing left and right and felling nine crewmen in the first few seconds of the fight. The crew respond by pouncing upon him and delivering first a Dramatic Wound, and then another vicious strike. He evades a second Dramatic Wound by burning two drama dice. He presses the attack, chopping down another six crewmen.
Romeo engages Pierre, the Master Gunner, in a brief but decisive duel. They trade a couple of blows until Romeo manages a clean strike to slices the gunner nearly in twain.
Faced with the deaths of both of their officers and almost twenty of their number, the crew surrenders. The characters find that only eighty of them survived the massacre.
Noticing that neither Josef Chevaille nor the Boatswain are among either the dead or the living, the characters as the crew where they are. One crewman meekly offers that Chevaille took the Boatswain and ten crewmen into the watery caves. Others agree with his statements. The characters then press upon why exactly the crew decided to mutiny again, especially considering that they continued to do what they had been doing before. Some of the more forward members of the crew point out that Chevaille was quite well-respected, and when he told them to mutiny they saw no reason why they should not. The other surviving officers went along with Chevaille like sheep.
After suggesting and discarding several plans involving the execution of one or more crewmen, the characters finally decide that they can't reasonably expect to maintain military discipline with the current crew. They settle upon retrieving Gunther and Mariana Octavia from the shore, then setting him and ten "trusted" crew to watch over the ship while the rest of the crew get locked up in the hold.
With the Succubus secured, the characters row into the submerged cave to find that the surviving mutineers are chinking away at the thick chains holding the Syrneth ship to the dock. The Syrneth ship is massive, with no visible masts and a design that appears to be straight out of Jules Verne (appropriately). Josef Chevaille is on the docks, supervising his men. They have the Boatswain tied up nearby.
After Louie fires a few shots off to get Chevaille's attention, the characters negotiate. By the end of the discussion, Chevaille has agreed to surrender in exchange for a promise to have the mutiny pretty much forgotten. He and his accomplices are also entitled to a share of the proceeds.
The doors on the Syrneth ship are quite unusual, and might actually be watertight. Likewise, the chains holding the ship to the docks terminate in simple metal disks that stick to the metal of the docks without bolt or hook. The ship remains closed to the characters until Romeo manages to locate a five-lever control panel near one door. He moves all the levers from the top to the bottom, and the door opens. The characters enter the ship, feeling very much like savages in a cathedral. There are complicated control consoles all through the ship, and the characters are unable to determine what any of them actually do. The design of the ship is such that the characters aren't even able to reliably determine where any given console is within the ship.
Romeo and Louie set to trying to figure out ship controls, with the Boatswain (who turns out to be the most literate person available to the group) writes down simple notes on what each control appears to do in Eisen. They hope to find a control that will release the mooring chains. They discover that most of the controls appear to do nothing. Some of them do unintelligible things. Nobody is able to find any controls that have any useful effect. Louie finally gives up and tells the crew to go back to simply cutting the chains loose.
While everyone else fools with the Syrneth ship, Drake goes to look through the complex. He finds a room with some doors that make "pop-pop-pop" sounds. He ignores the sounds, walks up to a door, and nearly gets inundated by flame. He figures that just standing in the room starts the popping. He gets a big rock and throws it into the room. It takes four hours for the flames to finally go away. Drake elects to wait a bit longer for the area to cool down. He checks the temperature of the doors and the floor by urinating upon them. He finally manages to get through one of the door, opens it, and heads through, following the corridor behind the door.
By this time, the rest of the characters have finished their various activities and have joined Drake. The entire group heads down the corridor until they reach an intersection. Around that point, three crystal globes fall from the ceiling, shatter and emit clouds of gas. Suddenly possessed with an urge to do something foolish, Louie throws a torch into the gas cloud. It explodes. Everyone takes damage. Everyone retreats back to the docks.
At long last, the crew manages to cut their way through the mooring chains and free the Syrneth ship. Under the characters' watchful eyes, the crew slowly tows the ship out of the cave with small boats and sets up a towing rig linking it to the Succubus. The Syrneth craft proves to be much heavier than the Succubus, which makes the towing job harder, but which doesn't dissuade either characters or crew. Once the towing rig is complete, the Succubus sets course for Vodacce, leaving the island of Calebria behind.
The session ends with the characters in control of the Succubus and in possession of the Syrneth ship. They are towing the Syrneth craft back to Vodacce, hoping to offer it to Romeo's liege lord in exchange for exorbitant rewards.