====== Tof-240313-eric ====== - We're on a boat! - Specifically, [[The Gaping Maw]] - The dragon, [[Vistrathian]], decided not to come with us right now - He doesn't want to be in a confined space - He also wants to go find his mom - The undead puppy, who we named [[Zup]], is with us - [[Ell]] was able to remove the bugs and parasites, and [[Zup]] is now more healthy (although he has some exposed bone) - [[Zup]] doesn't seem to get along with [[Milhouse]], but they avoid each other so that's fine - [[Fish-Kicker]] and I are pretty sure we've seen [[Zup]] teleport - One week has passed since we fought the cult and adopted [[Zup]] - We haven't heard of any other cult activity in the city since then - We do hear of some weird, possibly cult-related, events in other cities - There is some especially weird shit going on in [[Harrogate]] - We also know that the cultist that [[Milhouse]] is tracking suddenly moved to the northeast - We also wanted to try to go find [[Johan]] who is out raiding - We're still having to wait for a week before we can set off - [[Guanyin]] finally comes to talk to us - They've been investigating the Kraken cult, and have heard of weird shit happening in a lot of places - She wants us to investigate for them, starting in [[Hapcheon]], a city in [[Kamangara]] to the East by Southeast of [[Binsogim]] - [[Guanyin]] wants a first-hand account of what happened there, so they can assess the threat level - I agree to go and investigate - She agrees we should kill any cultists we encounter - We set sail - Going for two days, things seem smooth so far - It almost seems a little suspicious - The next morning, the sky seems off - There’s something about the way it’s glowing, as if the sun’s first light were permeating the entire sky - The light is definitely artificial, it seems to wobble and shimmer and shadow where it should not - The longer we look, the stronger it seems to get - There’s smoke at the edge of our vision, too - We see a brief vision of ourselves, sailing through a sea of thick black icor - I check my Kraken Compass, which is pointing to the east - Some of this black seawater splashes up on the deck, but doesn’t hit anyone or our items - I cast detect magic and examine where the water splashed up - The magic lingers a bit after the visual fades, but I can’t identify the type of magic that it is - We continue on, in spite of the possibly bad omen - The smoke still seems to be there, even after the rest of the vision fades - The air also feels unusually warm - I send [[Fish-Kicker]] up to the crow’s nest to take a look - He sees the remnants of two burning ships, one of which is directly ahead of us and the other to our starboard - I call for us to swing hard to port - We can now see the other ships, somehow our vision had been clouded before - The ships are in very bad shape — masts knocked down, sails and flags burned, and carnage everywhere - Once the ship is clear, I have the crew drop anchor - I order [[Crawn]] to pick two and take a boat over to check the ships - I want to see if either of those ships belonged to [[Johan]] - [[Drex]], [[Ell]], and [[Fish-Kicker]] notice that a body floating has some sort of starfish thing attached to its face, and it then goes upside down and sinks like a stone - I look to see if other bodies have similar things on them - There seems to be too few bodies in the water, but we spot a survivor clinging on a barrel - [[Drex]] uses his rope of climbing to head down for the survivor - We're able to pull up the survivor, who is unconscious and does not have one of the weird starfish on him - I use lay on hands to heal him, but it doesn't seem to do anything - [[Drex]] and [[Fish-Kicker]] look him over, but [[Drex]] falls unconscious when he touches the guy - [[Fish-Kicker]] realizes that he has some of the black ichor inside him, in his wounds - We try cauterizing one of his less lethal wounds - There's a horrible smell that comes from the wound, and a scream comes from the man -- but it doesn't sound like it's only coming from him - A small drop of black ichor leaps out of the guy's wound and rolls off along the deck - [[Crawn]] is able to blast it - I cast protection from good & evil on the guy - [[Ell]] and I get splashed by the weird ichor that sprays out of the guy - There's some sort of black ooze creature - We fight it, but my sword attacks seem to make the creature grow - It dives down into the hold - [[Fish-Kicker]] uses control water to move it back out and throw it into the ocean - He's also able to get the gunk off me and the others - I am now able to heal the survivor - He seems to be doing better now - I tell him which ship we are, and that we're sailing out of [[Binsogim]] - He says he's from "The Good Ship," which I've heard of before -- it's actually a real name - They're sailing out of Zhengheim, which is part of [[The Sogim Council]] - He says they came across another ship that was burning, they were headed to [[Kuga]] - They found one survivor - It sounds like their survivor was also infected with that black goo - Fire seemed to hurt it, but magic did not - [[Milhouse]] comes up asking what is going on - We explain the situation to him, he doesn't trust the survivor - He says he managed to get rid of the black water creature below, but he kept a sample of it - We go below to check the ship and make sure there aren't any other problem areas - We don't find any, so I head back up to talk to the survivor - He says his name is [[Skavney]] - He's a cook - His uncle is Chef Exposition! {{tag>notes:session camp:TOF}}