We made it back to Jailynn and everybody had a chance to do some stuff. The Rogue continued to explore the sewers with an eye towards making it a base for her thieves’ guild. The Fighter picked up his splint mail. The Holy Paladin set out to start a temple to his god but was reminded there was already a temple in town. It was suggested he could start a fighting school within the temple which he decided to pursue. Being a god of war, it probably already had some fighting aspects but under his leadership; it’ll be better. The Wizard checked in with the head of the mage school. It turns out (i.e. Andy added it to the world history) that the school was originally founded by an Eladrin 100’s of years ago. Anyway, they had tea. The adventuring mage in Long Bridge was known to visit here so perhaps we can get work from him from here. The last he heard, he was researching/searching for a powerful wizard staff, lost to the centuries. The Wizard put our name into the local mages as well as men that can get things.
The Swashbuckler Paladin went to the docks to check on rumors. He observed a ship come in that obviously had taken some battle damage. After asking some of the crew, he found that they had been attacked by pirates. This particular pirate had been known as a “gentleman” pirate in that he didn’t damage ships or kill crew when possible however this time he took many crew and the remainder barely got away. The damaged ship’s captain was posting a job on the board and the Paladin and whomever he was able to round up along the way took the job before the ink was dry. The captain thought she knew what island they had been taken to. She had enough crew to sail but needed fighting sorts to attack the island and rescue her men including her fiancé. The usual, we get what we find, fee was agreed upon. We sailed on the morning tide.
There were concerns about the sailing by the heavily plated teammates but the seamanship skilled teammates were happy to be at sea again. The crew knew what they were doing but our folks helped out and despite some poor weather, we reached the island without issue. Except that right after we dropped anchor and started discussing a plan, we were attacked by Sahuagin. There was a 4-armed large baron leader, a spell caster plus a bunch more. The Swashbuckler told the sailors to get below and we took them on. It wasn’t too tough. Only the Holy Paladin got racked up. Once the leader went out, the caster sank back down and the few still alive, fled. A short rest later, we worked out a plan.
The captain felt the pirates were on the north side of the island. To cross, we could go straight through the jungle, to the right past the volcano or to the left along the shore. We chose to the left, staying just in the jungle to sacrifice a bit of speed for cover. Unfortunately, we still had to go into jungle at the end to get where were needed to go. Our sneakers spotted some lookouts on the high ground who seemed to be watching both the sea and a path between a cave and what turned out to be the watering hole. They then saw a party with barrels for freshwater heading that way. The barrel carriers were pirates, not prisoners, by the way. About this time, we noticed something big in the jungle stalking us. We investigated but didn’t find it/them. But then we were called to by a jungle girl. Turns out her shipwrecked on the island years ago and she was the only one left. She told of many dangers on the island including the pirates and some large lion-like beasts. She also said that there was a tentacle demon in the sea that the pirates had recently started worshipping. She agreed to help us if we promised to take her off the island. We agreed but because she had vaguely reptilian eyes and the Paladin’s detect evil power couldn’t quite get a read on her, some continued to view her with suspicion. We decided we couldn’t assault the pirates without a long rest to reset some powers so we went back to her cave to rest. On the way, we stopped at some temple ruins. It seemed like it was a sacrifice spot but based on the age of the bloodstains, it hadn’t been used in years. We all blew our skill rolls but the Wizard got a second roll on a second skill and manage to determine it was some sort of reptilian god which cast more suspicion on the girl. But we lived through our long rest.
