Session Date: 1/13/2023
Our orders form Marquis are written out and sealed for us to request things such as food and quarters if necessary.
We head to Traeg Breda - Braum takes us there in a wagon, and we arrive in the late afternoon. The port itself is smaller than Ayrvit, but it is busier due to the large barge ferries that of sheep coming and going. This port also handles communications with the other islands. We are going to Skerry Sheptulloch.
The earliest ferry is half an hour before dawn, whereas if we went now we would have only two hours of daylight on arrival. We choose to go in the morning and we can stay at the tavern in The North Inn, or we can choose to impose upon the richer homes. We can opt to display our orders to the inn for free room and board, just as we can with peoples’ homes. We choose to pay for rooms at the inn. They are solid, if maybe a little drafty, but they are comfortable.
The ferryman that takes us to Skerry Sheptulloch is Alvid. He’s about the same age as Kerran and Calthel. While the two were going up, Alvid was either lazy or in trouble. All of us catch up a little bit, and then we all head out. There is a shepherd going with us, of the name Filcap. He murmurs about dark times, mentioning that a lamb is born wrong and it is a very bad sign. He won’t say why it is bad, but just that it is. Sarras does her best to reassure him that all will be okay.
Ships compliments Alvid, who dismisses it. It’s clear that Alvid is almost uneasy that Ships is impressed by this, and Ships apologizes for the surprise and tips him 5sp.
We arrive at Skerry Sheptulloch. It’s basically a low lying meadow filled with sheep for grazing.
Filcap leads us to an enclosure near some windbreak trees at the northwest to a shepherdess that almost feels like a parody thereof. She is curvy, bodacious, long lashed, etc. Her name is Besolda. She watches over several sheep and therea re two lamb enclosures: one with normal lambs, and the others.
We investigate the weird lambs, there are maybe a dozen.
- Instead of regular fairy fingers, they are larger and are crab claws
- One has hooves cloven into crab claws
- They have patches of pearlescent scales
- The eyes are different:
- Sarras notes that the lambs are desecrated
Calthel does an Arcana Check (19):
There are signs of aquatic aberration: young animals being born are more susceptible to this. If there are no adults showing signs, and 25% of the lambs are, then it is not an overwhelmingly strong influence, especially given the fact that Sarras is not seeing any ground desecration.
Sarras has a few questions:
- When lambing, are they here or elsewhere?
- They try to do it here, but sometimes they wander off.
- Are there any other areas they spend large amounts of time?
- No. They rotate the enclosures by brand and mark, and they rotate them evenly across the island.
- They are all on the island?
- Yes. The best sheep with the best milk & cheese are from here.
Ships does some investigating of his own by looking at the beaches and he notices several areas at the northwest where there are grooves or traces in the sand. They do not make sense to have been from the tides, nor for a ferry to have run aground. Calthel tries to detect magic and finds nothing. Divine sense finds a spot about 50 feet out that has been desecrated.
We tie some rope around Kerran and get a fire started, as well as requested some blankets from the shepherds. We ask Kerran to swim out to the area that is desecrated to see what is going on out there. While he is swimming, Sarras notices a wave that hit a rock in an unnatural way. The waves continue to break strangely and it isn’t long before Kerran is attacked. Sarras uses her channel divinity to scare the monster off and we pull Kerran back in.
Kerran describes what he say: a coppery, brassy lobster-like crawfish-like creature that is 15-18 feet long, 8 feet tall, and 10 feet in girth. It has numerous wriggling tendrils around its mouth.
Calthel does an Arcana check and realize it’s an aberration called a chuul. They are drawn to eldritch sources. They poison and paralyze their prey with their tentacles. They wind up essentially being the mooks of aquatic eldritch beings and are not generally dissuaded by size. Calthe’s understanding is that it was drawn here by an eldritch power of some sort. It may have made things worse, but it wouldn’t show up here and just hang out for no real reason, but Calthel isn’t sure if they arrive in flocks or something else.
He suggests that perhaps it was coming up to feed on the sheep, but they have only been on the island for a week or two weeks, and the lambs started a week ago.
It occurs to the group that Alvid the ferryman is still here. He could in theory keep the boat above the spot in question, and someone could dive straight down to investigate.
We have everyone move the sheep across the island tot he other paddocks so they are further away from this, and we talk Alvid into helping us with this. Ships points out an area that appears to have a cave.
Kerran and Calthel swim down and find the seaweed is thinner there, with a crevasse that is 5’ or so wide with clear markings around the area showing the chuul was clearly here. Kerran goes in and suggests Calthel stay out so he can swim up for air if needed. Kerran finds one path that is sure through this.
About 30 feet back it curves up and Kerran can breach the surface into a small dome-shaped cavern that looks like sand cemented together. It is clearly constructed and not natural. It has a 15 foot radius, a little over 5 feet tall, and half the area is packed with stuff, including decomposing humanoid bodies. The scrapes in the cavern were not the careful scrapes of the chuul and there is also no way it could fit in here. There are coins around the edge of this sleeping hollow.
The circle is not magic, but there are two sources of magic in the corpse pile. One of them is conjuration while the other does not have a school. Ships searches the bodies and find…
- leather pouch glued shut by sediment (no school)
- sealed scroll case (conjuration → find familiar)
- belt with four sealed vials (300gp, 1 lb)
- two poison
- two antitoxin
- three bottles of wine (30gp, 6lb)
- coin (54gp, 31sp, 5ep)
- 300gp diamond
- brass bell (1gp)
- pouch of pixie dust (single cast of fly, 1 minutes)
- a small meteorite
- a tin spoon
- a waterlogged book
- an onion
- soggy scraps of paper
- a bone button
- a brass ring
- a flas of water
- a preserved basilisk eye
- a set of merchants weights
- a smoking pipe
- a flask of oil (1sp)
- a rabbit’s foot
- a signal whistle (5cp)
Divvied up this way:
- Calthel
- leather pouch glued shut by sediment (no school)
- sealed scroll case (conjuration - find familiar)
- belt with four glass vials (300gp, 1 lb)
- two poison
- two antitoxin
- a flask of water
- Ships
- three bottles of wine (30gp, 6 lb)
- a flask of oil (1 sp) (for the group)
- a smoking pipe
- Kerran
- 300 gp diamond
- a small meteorite
- Sarras
- a brass bell (1 gp)
- a waterlogged book
- soggy scrap of paper
- a brass ring
- a signal whistle (5cp)
- Giacomo
- pouch of pixie dust (single cast fly, 1 minute)
- a preserved basilisk eye
- a rabbit’s foot
- Split
- coin (52gp, 31sp, 5ep)
- 119 silver to all, 1sp 2cp to Alvid
- +3 gold to everyone
- +4 silver to everyone
- coin (52gp, 31sp, 5ep)
Based on the silting, the creature has not beein here in the past few days .Sarras confirms that this is the source of the defilement 100%, and the defilement is fading.
We get out of ther eand then sit down with Kerran and discuss what he previously saw while sailing: the same thing he previously described to Calthel.
Kerran’s story:
*Last November, while traveling alone at night in a sailboat between Compass Tor and Aberly, his sailboat snagged on what first appeared to be an uncharted shoal. However, it was then boarded by a swarm of creatures which resembled albino crocodiles with crayfish legs and octopus tentacles. They ranged in size from about cat-sized to about wolf-sized and there were at least a dozen of them. They caused some form of magical confusion on him, and attacked him. During the fight, he remembers the distinct sense of being observed from both above and below by something vast and formless. While he drove them off, he doesn’t remember how - only that none of them left behind any blood or bodies, and the wounds he suffered simply resemble those made by octopus arms. When he returned to Aberly, he was feverish, and the court is reasonably convinced that he was simply bit by some manner of venomous octopus - hardly a case for alarm.
Sarras and Calthel also send an update to the Marquis about everything. We send the local guard to watch the island, and we decide not to shut things down yet. We advise the shepherds to no longer u se that paddock and fold. If the chuul returns, then we will shut down the island and evacuate.
Calthel summons a familiar:
- celestial raven form
- it smells of incense (if 15+ feet away then not noticed)
Celestial names typically sound Latin or Greek, but can be Celtic, Welsh, Gaelic → Siobhan