Game Night June 3 - Wandering Sea Cave Savage Humanoid Encounter

"A mountain rose out of the sea with a cavernous opening..."

After the battle with the Purple Wyrm, the Tomfool Free lancers were in dire need of ship repairs. They ended up harvesting the great spine of the beast and fusing it to the broken timbers of the main mast for support, and mounted the sea serpents skull on the ships prow. (Harvesting its skin for hull repairs was deemed impractical after repeated attempts.)

While the ship repairs were successful, they could not replace the lost rowers, and this led to the ship drifting through a week long spell of rain with little to no wind. They spent their time time trying to catch fish and drinkable water. The chibi’s grumbled at the salty mix the heroes squeezed out of the sodden sails for them to drink. It is a wonder none of them became ill, but it was due to the amazing sandwiches of Thokk the half orc barbarian master cook, or “Cookie” as he insisted on being called. Tunaisse with mayon, mm. His apprentice wizard assistant Ismelda no doubt helped.

Finhals Cave

On the 7th day out, the wind picked up into a gale and the rain continued, forcing the ship to ride out a storm, until the 8th day, when the skies opened up. The strong winds continued and the ship began to make good speed throughout the day. Around noon, a dark shape on the horizon rose out of the ocean ahead, which Poppy’s keen eyes soon picked out as a lone mountain jutting up out of the water. They cautiously kept their distance, fearing rocks and shallows, but the water around it was clear and deep. A dark scar resolved itself into a cavernous crack opening up one side of the mountain, into which the sea flowed. Tacking into the wind, they came around and lowered sail.

Though the crack seemed large enough to admit the Ship+3, the ships officers decided to take a rowboat in, and leave the chibi fanaton and humans aboard. The five remaining ex-slaves assured them they would defend the ship and await their return, and that they could not sail without the aid of the chibi, who were intensely loyal to their new masters.

Sailing into the crack they saw that it was an old hollow volcano and their were structures built upon the far wall. A circle of dayling illuminated the inner protected bay, and across the deep water a long stone dock was carved from a wide inner shelf of stone with steps going up into the ruins of stone buildings. They discovered tumbled and broken stone buildings many centuries unused, with little record of who once called this place home. Searching further into the ruins, they noticed at the back of the cavern 4 cave mouths leading deeper into the mountain. It looked like there were once bronze bars blocking them, but now only the ruins of stubs stuck out of the stone. As Poppy and Felipe cautiously advanced, keeping a sharp ear, they could hear the distant sound of… hooting. \

Now thats a sea cave full of savage humanoids all right!

The hooting quickly became louder and more savage sounding until from the mouths of three caves disgorged throngs of howling, hooting orc savages led by enormous bloated ogres with spiked clubs. The battle was swift and fun and towards the end of it the ghost of Sharia made an appearance and helped turn the tide of victory. (Thanks to our good friend Khar suddenly returning after a gaming sabbatical known as SHOOL. She will not be using the lame revenant Sharia-as-seeker that I had the printer spit out, though the ghost of Sharia made a fine accounting of herself during the last half of the battle with the savage humanoids.) Each character was able to do what they do best – slaughter hordes of brutes. It was glorious.