Session Date: 12/21/2024
The Cove
Arseid had been cursed with sickness - she feels like she has permanent sea sickness. Serina and Atheya help Arseid walk despite her illness, and Trouble makes an attempt to make the corpse easier for Arkuda to carry (to not real avail). Trouble leads our merry little band on the way down to the cover where we think the sea may be calm to send this corpse off and cure Arseid of her curse. As we continue, we see a ship on the horizon - it’s a regular ship and is clearly not Pietra van Riese’s, but it is possible that it is of her fleet.
We make it down to the cove. Trouble makes lovely origami flowers for a small funeral service, and the body is put to rest. Arseid’s curse passes and she almost immediately feels better.
We take some time to look around at the small pier that’s here. There’s evidence that there were people here recently, and there is evidence of fire. It’s clear that care was taken so that the pier itself didn’t burn, and as Serina thinks back, the ship seemed to be made more of metal. We all think, and Atheya recalls her father mentioning a dwarf-adjacent people called the azer. He called them burning dwarves to be dismissive, but she isn’t so sure they’re specifically dwarves. There’s more to them than that, and it’s weird that they’re sailors.
Back at the Ship
We make it back to the ship and Harpax and mention the other ship to Harpax, who starts to get people moving so that we can follow. Serina thinks about it and realizes that they were likely headed to Dominia. We set sail to head toward that way. Trouble starts singing on the way, singing in a normal voice rather than their goblinsong voice.
A fog descends and before we know it we are in the midst of a very dense fog. Atheya pulls her compass out and we are still on the correct heading and keeping track as well as we can in the Sea of Sorrows. Serina is aware that this is not the mists - we are not about to be teleported. Atheya can hear voices in the fog, and possible crackling of a bonfire - definitely the sound of fire. Atheya mentions that she thinks we found the ship that we were trailing, and points in the fog in the direction of the noise.
We do our best to navigate quietly so that we can follow the ship and try to avoid being noticed. We finally get a glimpse of the other ship and notice that it seems to be steam powered. There are moving points of light on the ship, and we realize that those are the azer. As we move, they look as if dwarves were made of bronze and constantly on fire. Fire is what forms their hair and beards per se. When they move on the ship they leave patches of red, and then the metal cools down. It’s clear that they do not see us yet, but we are aware that they sent out the draugr and eels at us.
On leaving the fog we see the isle of Dominia, and the asylum. It seems as if the island is in a perpetual state of rain that may occasionally evolve into storms. There’s a small volcano on the island as well.