Session 17 – Ocean Voyage

[avisarr]

Session 17 – Ocean Voyage

Day 32 - Clear Skies and Calm Seas ( Drellis Phase Day 6)
The Titan was limping badly. Both ships had been damaged. The sixth crow was released and flew due east. (This indicated that land was still far off).

Day 33 - A Death on Board ( Drellis Phase Day 7)
A valued and experienced member of the Titan crew died. From wounds suffered in the battle with the thallasians. He had been fighting infection for days. Both crews assembled on the Titan for a burial at sea.

Day 34 - Calm Seas ( Drellis Phase Day 8 )
The Titan began to leak. The crew begins to pump water out of the hull. It was just a matter of time now before they were forced to abandon the Titan. Neither captain wanted that as it would be awfully crowded on the Third Wind if they lost the Titan. And they would not have enough room for all the stores.

Day 35 - Calm Seas (Drellis Phase Day 9)
Callister released another crow. His second to last crow. It was a desperate ploy to find land. It flies east but also north. This was a good indication that an island may be nearby. Encouraged, Callister alters course to follow the crow.

Day 36 - The Hive Spider Island
Land! The captains and crews of both ships rejoiced when the crow's nest cried out, Land! It appeared that Callister's gamble had paid off. The two ships came upon a modest island, perhaps two miles across. The ships needed fresh food and water. The Titan needed to find a shallow lagoon where it could roll on to its side and have some serious repairs mde. The two captains decided that this island would be a good place to stop and rest while the Titan was fixed up. This was an uncharted island. It was not on any of their maps.

The two ships find a sheltered lagoon on the east side of the island and they enter it. On the beach in the lagoon, they find a wrecked ship. Old and abandoned. Again, strange colors and an unfamiliar flag. Odd scratch marks on the wood. No bodies, just blood stained wood, bleaching in the sun.
The Third Wind puts down anchor in shallow water in the lagoon. The Titan is "rolled" (that's where they put the ship in very shallow water and then use ropes and weights to pull it over almost onto it's side. This pulls the damaged part of the hull out of the water and the crew can then work on repairing it.

While repairs were being made, the Third Wind crew split up into groups. Some of them helped with repairs on the Titan. Some of them lounged about on the beach having picnics. Some of them stayed on the Third Wind.

Rothgar, the phellysian archer, led a small group of sailors into the jungle of the island on a hunting foray. They hoped to bring back a wild boar for a feast on the beach that night.

Several hours passed and they had not returned. The heroes gathered up their weapons and headed into the jungle. They soon found a large trail where the vegetation of the jungle was cut to pieces. There were blood stains here and there and obvious drag marks where something had been hauled away. They followed the trail and came to a huge earthen bowl-shaped pit. It was composed of dried mud and it must have been about 200 feet across and 50 feet deep. At the center of the enormous depression was a cone fashioned of dried mud, somewhat like a miniature volcano. It stood perhaps 75 feet tall (about 25 feet higher than the lip of the depression). It had several caves and shelf like balconies, all crudely carved out of the dried mud.

On one of these rocky shelves was Rothgar, wounded and bleeding. He was alone. Dozens of huge, ghostly white spiders, each about 2 feet across, were dead at the bottom of the pit beneath him. Each pierced by one of his arrows. He had only 3 arrows left. The cave next to his shelf had collapsed. He was effectively sealed off. He had no way down. Several more of the large translucent spiders were crawling across the outside of the mound, trying to get to Rothgar. He was fending them off with his sword.

The players leapt into action. Martin, Mutaki and Ugida fried the spiders with spells while Callister threw a rope to Rothgar. They quickly hauled Rothgar up out of the pit and fed him a healing potion. Only moments later, thousands of the white spiders began erupting out of the mound from all of the cave exits. They spilled over the shelves and filled the pit and were soon chasing the characters through the jungle. The heroes ran as hard as they could. This was a terrifying flight through thick underbrush with the occasional quick glimpse of a wall of rolling spider bodies behind them.

The players burst from the jungle out onto the beach at a dead run startling the crew members who were sleeping on the beach.
"Hoist the sails!" cried Callister. "Cut the anchor! All hands to the ship!"

The crew hesitated only a moment and then the very jungle exploded as a horde of ghostly transculent spiders burst through the foliage and flooded the beach. Men shoved the longboats into the water and began paddling frantically for the Third Wind.

The heroes, realizing that they would be overrun if they tried to swim for the ship, started to circle the lagoon. The sails of the Third Wind billowed out and the ship was already moving. The heroes sped about to the far side of the lagoon hoping to meet the Third Wind as it passed through the neck of the lagoon. The heroes fought the spiders as they ran.

Dozens of crew from the Titan leapt onto the Third Wind as it passed. But many more perished. Thousands of spiders engulfed the Titan and the Third Wind was forced to flee. Even so, at least a 100 spiders clattered to the deck of the Third Wind and the crew fought them off. Just as the Third Wind began passing through the lagoon entrance, the heroes dove from the cliff into the rigging of the Third Wind and jumped to the deck. The crew and heroes fought together to fling the spiders from the deck into the ocean. After a few moments, they had flung the last arachnid into the sea.

It was a tragic loss. Almost two thirds of the men working on the Titan had been lost. The remaining crew and soldiers huddled on their last remaining ship, the Third Wind. The Third Wind sailed out to a distance of about a mile and dropped its other anchor. There it waited. Callister watched through the spyglass as the horde of spiders covered the Titan hull.