Chapter 3 Adventure Log

Chapter 3: The Incident at Inish Bora

One week after escaping RedRiver, the party is found by a ranger named Orik, who leads the party to a camp of soldiers from Tyn. The soldiers are in rough shape, their numbers having been cut down in recent battles, and have had to retreat. Orik brings the party to the commander of these forces, a hairy grizzled veteran who updates them on the latest news and assures the party that they can get the refugees and Radcliffe’s uncle Bez’rin to the safety of the Honeycomb.

The party hands over maps showing movements of reserve troops, and the commander passes on news that Deacon Brodie has requested Patrick’s assistance at the abbey at Est Harbor.

Orik leads the party through occupied territory to a farm. The farmer has been smuggling people into and out of the occupied cities for the past few weeks. The party rides with the farmer to the abbey south of Est Harbor, avoiding an encounter with Vermese soldiers on the road.

At the abbey, Father Hubbins passes on a message to Pat from Deacon Brodie, who has traveled to the island of Inish Bora in the Craggy Islands, to prepare powerful weapons for shipment. He trusts only Pat to bring his friends to help secure the weapons and bring them to the mainland. The note includes an encrypted message: if Brodie is not at the rendevous point at Oyster Bay, the party must find and secure the weapons. To find a weapon, find a Miller.

Hubbins instructs the party to row his skiff to Hammer Rock, where a sloop disguised as a fishing vessel will take them to Inish Bora. The party finds the sloop captained by a young woman named Captain Bonnie, with a burly half-orc first mate called The Grudge.

The Sloop Jombi sails for Inish Bora. Halfway there, the group spots a skiff adrift on the ocean with no passengers seen. Bonnie convinces the party to stay on the plan, afraid of missing her payment from Brodie, and they leave the skiff behind without investigation.

At Oyster Cove, something is clearly wrong when Brodie fails to show up with the cargo. Consulting Bonnie’s map of Inish Bora, the party requests she sail to the beach under the island’s mill and wait there. At that beach, another bad omen is spotted, a large hulk of a ship is beached, it’s ancient planks swelled and rotten. Bonnie identifies it as a Vermese slave galley, never seen this far north. The ship is missing it’s mast and smells of death. The party bypasses investigation of the galley and climbs the beach to the mill. The windmill is left open. The party investigates and encounters two zombies on the ground floor. The party dispatches the zombies but a fire is started in the aftermath of the battle. Cries of help are heard from the old miller, Grady, at the top of the mill. Grady and the party are able to extinguish the fire. Despite the message from Brodie, Grady knows nothing of the weapons, but after a heated exchange agrees to accompany the party to the town of Kilderra Harbor where he can sleep in safety until the strange events blow over.

Approaching the Harp and Mermaid Inn at Kilderra Harbor, the party confronts two more zombies accosting a woman in an alley in front of the Inn. The occupants of the Inn initially miss the scuffle as they fiddle inside. The zombnies are wearing the attire of the Knights of Pallmoor Gates, a team assigned to protect that city before it was overrun at the start of the war.

Once the party defeats these zombies the woman gains entrance to the Inn and begins yelling at her “husband”, Ben Doolin, for picking this night to start drinking again after 10 years. Ben puts the woman to sleep* while the party talks to the innkeeper Cormac, who rewards the party with a bottle of 20 yr aged Boradew whiskey for saving the woman. While Cormac doesn’t know any other mill owners on the island, he does offer that there was a family called the Millers that lived on the island for generations, but the last Miller died 25 years ago at the end of the war when her sons were all killed in battle and the woman took her own life.

The party travels to Highchurch and the old graveyard to find the Miller tomb. Ben Doolin, the island’s teamster, offers to help transport them there and load the cargo they seek. Parquinryde initially refuses to get on his cart and has to be coaxed.

At Highchurch, on a hill in the center of the island, the party discovers the church door is also left open. They go around to the rectory and enter the Father Toole’s living quarters. There they find two cups of cold tea on a map of the cemetary with family names listed. They find the Miller tomb and prepare to explore it, first checking the changing room adjacent to the priest’s quarters. They are surprised to find a ghoul who attacks them, wearing the robes of Father Toole. The party is able to dispatch the ghoul quickly and find a gold key in the wardrobe of the changing room, but decide not to explore the church further and head for the tomb.

The old cemetary at highchurch consists of above ground tombs built above the hard limestone. The party finds and opens the Miller tomb, just as 6 skeletons appear amongst the tombs and attack. After a pitched battle, the party returns to the tomb.

In the tomb the party discovers a hidden ramp leading underground to a locked door. The gold key unlocks the door which leads to a series of chambers. The first chamber houses two sarcophogi which contain casks of alchemist fire, a highly flammable substance. These are the weapons Brodie needed to retrieve.

Clinton and Parquinryde decide to go retrieve the cart while the rest of the party start unloading the casks to the surface. When Clinton returns to the cart, he finds Ben Doolin isn’t who he says he is, but rather a Doppleganger sent by Baron Rottlich to trick Brodie into leading him to the weapons cache. As Clinton and his dog battle the doppleganger, “Ben” starts to morph into Clinton. (It would have worked too, if not for the stupid dog.)

Meanwhile, Porkins hears the commotion and leaves to see what the problem is, only to be accosted by another ghoul in the graveyard. Radcliffe and Pat return to the surface to find the ghoul tearing into a paralysed Porkins and manage to save him by killing the ghoul. Radcliffe goes to help Clinton as the doppleganger abandons the fight and flees, turning into Parquinryde. Radcliffes hits him with a bolt and the doppleganger turns into his natural grey lanky alien-like body, apparently dead.

The party finds caches of other pedestrian weapons and the magical Silver Spear in the chambers, as well as a dead halfling with a ring bearing the symbol of the infamous “Bad Company” adventuring group out of Zella’s Vineyard.

Just then, four more zombies enter the chamber. Weak and without healing spells, the party makes a last stand. In the battle Clinton’s flame spell ignites the gas in the chamber leaked from the alchemists fire casks. The party backs into a chamber and closes a stone door as the casks explode, killing the zombies.

After the flames dies down the party is able to retrieve 10 casks and a crate or normal weapons, as well as the silver spear and the items on the dead halfling. They return to the Sloop Jombi, pay the fare back to mainland, and unload weapons back to the abbey.

Epilogue
The party recuperates with the priests at Est Abbey, who begin healing Porkins nasty case of ghoul fever. While the party was not able to find Deacon Brodie, they did retrieve weapons that are used to destroy a fleet of 5 vermese war galleys as they sail to reinforce the north, giving the city of Tyn a fighting chance. Father Hubbins is able to contact people on the island to retrieve the cache of standard weapons to help arm the islanders against any other invasion, and promises to continue to search for Deacon Brodie.

As Porkins, nearly recovered from his wounds and evil disease, watches the burning boats in the galley, he begins to ponder his own mortality, and is overcome with a desire to speak to his father, last seen in the city of Lakewood. Perhaps it is time for a return to that fair town…