CoD 1: Session 09: Beach Captive

 Pre-scene Notes

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Scene setup/conflict: 

Party wakes up to being captives to the Blue Horizon’s residual crew. They have set up fire and are eating their crabs in glee.

Altered scene: Inquire Love. This was a difficult verb-noun combo but I wanted  avoid re-rolls. This was the reason why Filli had a strange note at the end of the last scene. Both as author and part of Soloplay journaling, I’d thought adding a small part in a previous scene isn’t a problem. Obviously can’t do that as a GM as I would avoid retconing anything that has happened in the collective memory.

Scene: 

The party was tied up, seeing the residual crew of the Blue Horizon all eating one giant crab each, as well as the feast of the monstrous Crab King shared in the middle. The other crabs were bounded by Filli’s nets to their side. The Captain was munching a crab leg while examining a necklace of the description from the merchant in his hand. The party, with the cliff against their wall, whispered amongst themselves. Their backpacks and equipment on the side, reachable with a dash, the starving crew probably lured by a full meal to think too much. The sun had set, but only barely and it could not have been long since they were knocked out. 

The party did not touch the crew in the last battle, and I deemed the party to only have had the equivalent of a short rest. I did not confiscate their equipment to make things easier - they were still level 1.

I had used the same map, but simply made a blue jpg, and applied it as a GM Info layer on Roll20, basically as a filter for night time, changing opacity as required for brightness. 

“How’re you guys holding up?” Yankovic whispered.

“Worst for wear,” Zar said but used Lay On Hands on himself to recover more. “But don’t look as bad as you.”

Spotting what Zar had done, he smirked, “Sure, waste your magic on that. I only have enough for one more blast, what about you Filli?”

I guess with this, I’d basically normalised magic in this world. Adventurers knows, use and tries to learn magic if it helps them. For the likes of Weird Elf, who fought through multiple Xanthia church wars and has a high Wisdom score, he would know a lot about people using magic, especially considering he’s a Cleric spellcaster himself. I think for having a Cave that goes to other dimensions being firstly thought of as a lucrative mine by the Empire, this isn’t a far stretch.

“My brain had never felt so strained in my life,” Filli could not see the injury on his hand behind his back from the oiled Fire Bolt, but the searing sensation could let him guess the damage. Looking at the bandaged Captain over by the fire, almost as if by instinct, the Captain looked up as well and they locked eyes. Filli was pretty sure looking at the old captain’s coat buttoned up around the new captain, his attack had revealed more than the captain would have liked. 

I had Filli do an Investigation Check. Got a 16, which was arguably high so I’d let him have the information for the sake of the altered scene. 

“Well, well. Seems like our sleeping beauties had woken up. Had a good sleep?” The Captain threw away the half eaten crab leg and sauntered over to the prisoners smirking, looking down at Filli, and kicked him round the face. “I’d left you three alive so I can torture you myself. You know, if it wasn’t for the three of you, maybe  I won’t be captain this early, so maybe I should thank you. However, you just had to go and be brave and tried to burn my face off.”

“No, I aimed for your chest. A lady would look bad with a scar on her face.” Filli revealed the gender of the androgynous looking tomboy without restraint.

As a GM, after the Investigation check, you can tell the PC the information of what Filli felt when he pressed the Fire Bolt to the Capatin’s chest and see if the player makes the connection. I had the new Captain as a bearded man before this, expendable for the PCs’ escape, but that altered scene really changed things. It was hard to address the Inquire word rolled with Mythic, so the Inquire would be on the gender of the Captain, as a possible future love interest for Filli. 

“Shut your trap!" Another kick, but this time betrayed by actually causing damage, further affirming Filli’s deductions. He nodded at the enquiring look from Yankovic. 

The gender thing was also a good get-out-of-jail free card to help the PCs escape… I would expect players in a DND campaign to jump on the wagon without a skill check.

“Yeah, you big guys over there getting ordered about by a little girl who’s still to go through puberty.” Yankovic tried to rail them up, considering they were a lawless bunch. Considering they were going to eat them when they had ran out rations on the ship, and the succession to the command had probably been bloody, these people probably had no loyalty to each other.  “What sort of men are you?”

“What’re they talking about Le Barge?” One of the more ambitious midshipmen confirmed Yankovic’s guesses. Very directly he shouted, “We followed you cause you said you were discharged from the navy and knew a thing or two about sailing. Drop your pants and we can still take a swash together. Otherwise, we’re not going to take orders from a pussy on this deserted island.”

Picking up the good news at the Blue Horizon crew’s misunderstanding of not knowing they had reached their destination island, Zar immediately took advantage, “Le Barge is it? Untie us. We’ll help you.”

“Six against four is much better odds than against one,” Yankovic chirped at the rapid turn of their fortunes. 

“And you’d just said you won’t be captain without us. We really have no grudges with each other…. Just sorry about the Fire Bolt.”

Still wrongly perceiving they were marooned, Le Barge cut the ropes from the three prisoners and reminded them as the lunged for their weapons. “And remember the odds of three verses six is also worst than four, considering you’re not even a full three. Let’s hope that bravery of yours had not ran out little man.”

An NPC character sheet was born just with so little information. Ex-Navy and wannabe captain. So I had her class as a Level 3 Battlemaster Fighter with Dex focus, concentrating on support boosts as a commander. As the party was hurt, I’d also coincidentally made her class feature choices give temporary HP. She is now basically the crutch and although the party is in a bad shape, hopefully this will be a more than even fight. 

With her Rally call, Filli went with his strange new ally into battle. She went round a midshipman and slashed at a scout, who parried with his crossbow. The midshipman, enraged and without mercy for his former captain just a moment ago, slashed down and struck her arm. The other scouts mutually moved back to align attacks with the midshipmen. The terrain worked against the party as the scout moved south behind some beach rocks to take cover behind. 

Yankovic hung back, still feeling the effects of last battle and looked for an occasion where he might have to use his last remaining magical powers. He dug out the church standard-issue light crossbow and fired, hitting the scout that moved away to take a shot. Filli coordinated and finished him off with a Fire Bolt, standing at the front to guard the advance as he was in the best shape out of this companions. He managed to parry a strike but was slashed with the another, barely staying on his feet with gritted teeth. Le Barge shouted an alert for him, just moments before an arrow almost went through Filli’s neck, if he had not leaned back just in time. The arrow still seared his chest, causing him critical injury, but Filli once again remained standing through the searing pain.

Zar seeing his companion shot, ran to the left round the rocky covers with his javelin, and threw it with all his might at the offending scout. The javelin speared through the scout’s side but he looked as if he can still shoot a last bolt. He raised his arm to take aim again...

Thinking on what the Red Princess would do, instead of going forward, Weird Elf went back and climbed up the rock ledge behind him. From this vantage point, he took shot at the scout aiming in retaliation to Zar and let loose, finishing him off. The two who did not get on for once turned to each other in unison and nodded in comprehension.

I’d rearranged Yankovic order here for novelization/journaling purposes to make it flow better. Mechanics wise, Zar’s attack left the scout with a few HP and Yankovic shot his crossbow at it to finish it off when his turn came after Le Barge’s. 

“Unhand him!” Le Barge sounded every part like a captain as the others surrounded Filli, who were aiming to take out the smallest of the group first. Turning and slashing, she parried and riposte critical damage to the midshipman who led the revolt.

With renewed vigour in aid of Le Barge, before the lead midshipman went for his revenge attack,  but Filli’s Fire Bolt exploded at the back of his head. With only three enemies left but showing mercy, Filli bellowed, “Drop your weapons and live!”

This was me just wanting to end the battle before more bad luck befell the party, but Filli failed his skill check.

Not even slightly considering surrender, the two front-liners slashed at Filli, which he dodged and parried with gritted teeth. Zar went on to throw another javelin to down the last scout. Filli screamed amongst attacks from both sides, “Why don’t you want to live? This isn’t a deserted island!”

There were some misses from both sides amongst this, but I skipped the journaling. It was Filli again and I gave him another skill check considering another crew of theirs died since the last attempt. This time the roll was high. 

“Huh?” Finally the key bit of information dropped and the two midshipmen froze. Le Barge was also none too pleased but took the chance with Zar to disarm the remaining two enemies. “What the hell do you mean?”

“This is the island that the Blue Horizon was supposed to go to, the one with the Cave of Dreams.” Filli explained, putting his spear behind his back. “After escaping the ship, our lifeboat brought us here this morning. It seemed the ship was not very far away at all, but in the fog, we just did not see it.”

The two midshipmen looked at each other, and started laughing and crying as if they were maniacs. Le Barge slumped down on the ground, punching the sand. “Damn it to hell! This is what I get to follow a captain that knew more about drinking than sailing!” 

“So what by Xanthia had happened anyway since we left the Blue Horizon?” Yankovic came down to join them at the beach, helping Zar in tying the two remaining midshipmen up. 

Le Barge was the only one with enough mental fortitude to have recovered enough after ten minutes to rely what happened. After the crew of the Blue Horizon put out the fire, although it wrecked the ship to barely sail-able condition, the crew fractured without a captain to rein them in. Especially  the consensus were divided on food. Many of them, now that the passengers were gone, wanted to start sacrificing the crew. Le Barge was on the opposing side when eventually a fight broke out, causing many deaths on both sides before she finally reasoned with everyone to call it quits. She sailed the ship as best as she could with the limited and weak crew, doing well to have navigated back in the fog to the destination island. Finally having to abandon ship due to its condition, only seven of them made it onshore. They woke up on a beach further down, and were almost eaten by those crabs in their sleep. They managed to weaken the King Crab, and chased them down here. The rest the party knew.

“We’d only let you lead because you said you were in the navy. Didn’t know you were just a little girl! See how these three played us!” One of the tied midshipmen spat at her feet, now having recovered.

“She got you where you needed to go at least, much better than you could’ve done.” Weird Elf shoved him on the head. “Alright, now what do we do?”

“Well the Blue Horizon was a charter by the Roses, and their head here said she was going to investigate it. I think it is best to take all three back to her.” Zar commented, much to Le Barge’s trepidation. 

Filli tried to calm her like cat, “It’s fine. Just tell Elodia what happened. She seems nice and if you  had no part of the idea for cannibalism, there shouldn’t be any punishment. You weren’t really the captain of the ship either, so the losses shouldn’t be on you.”

“Yeah, I’m just part of the crew,” Helena bowed and threw away her captain’s hat. “That’s enough of make belief. Fine, I’ll accompany you three back to town. Where else are we to go? Live like castaways on a beach while being just a walk away from town?”

“Well let’s not forget to take the crabs with us, it’s one gold a pop after all.” Zar looked almost like he was smiling at the prospect of gold. “Actually that necklace as well. We overheard you say that was from the Crab King?”

“Maybe the crab swallowed it after the noble dropped it?” Filli suggested.

“Maybe your luck is turning Zar, this is three birds with one stone!”

Scene close-out: 

• Chaos factor up to a 5. I figured there were both a coup and a fight, even if it had ended within the PC’s control, it was chaotic. I could’ve raised the chaos factor by two in last scene’s fight as well, so the cool down shouldn’t be abrupt. 
• ! party thread: Update mission that there were 10 crabs left (-7 for food eaten by the crew while the party were unconscious, including the King Crab meat)
• ! party thread: Found blue necklace for noble
• + party thread: Report back on both missions to get gold
• - party thread: Escape from the 7x Blue Horizon crew 
• ! party thread: Update find out what happened to Blue Horizon to report to Rose

Post-scene Notes

Thank you for reading!