Session 6: Three Days of Madness Upon Turtle Island’s Swaying Bones

Ah, dear reader, gather close and let me warm the air with a tale of three days lived precariously on the swaying bones of Turtle Island—a place where the wind smells of brine and trouble, and where even the simplest task is but a mask worn by chaos.

Day 1: The Errand That Lured Fate by the Nose

Our story begins with an impatient knocking—no gentle tapping, but the sort of pounding that suggests the door has personally insulted someone. Zarrik Goldbite stood there, gleaming like bad omens carved into a smile. Drex, self-appointed maestro of mischief, required tables and chairs for his grand celebration, and naturally, he thought our gallant band perfect for fetching them.

Down into the lower markets they travelled, where every rope creaks with a threat, every fishmonger yells like a battlefield sergeant, and the whole place simmers with the scent of frying oils and frayed tempers.

Now among this merry chaos strode Barry—proud centaur, rescuer of the innocent, and utterly unprepared for the physics of fish stalls. He spotted children playing dangerously near the cliff’s lip and charged forth to save them. His hooves met fish oil. His dignity met oblivion. He slid—legs splaying like a startled foal—straight toward the abyss. Only a last-moment scramble saved him from a heroic but messy demise. The children, of course, were never in any danger at all.

With Barry’s pride only partially dented, the party reached Wriggle’s Carpentry, where Wriggle—a goblin tuned perpetually to panic—was engaged in a shouting match with two Cinderblade thugs. Steel thickened the air. One wrong word would have birthed a brawl.

And then Adeline stepped forward.

Sabre drawn with a whisper, dagger poised like a rumour ready to spread, she delivered a glare so cold the thugs nearly frostbit. Whatever bravado they carried melted into apology as they backed away, suddenly very interested in being elsewhere. Wriggle nearly melted too—but from relief.

With the furniture in hand (rickety enough to sue for structural negligence), the party headed back. A drunken ogre wandered into their path. Goblin children dropped seawater onto Silas with the accuracy of trained assassins. A fish stall collapsed in spectacular protest.

Then came the scaffold bridge.

Its ropes, cunningly cut earlier, awaited only a little weight. Silas and Rhazh’Korr stepped upon it carrying a table, and down they plunged twenty feet—splintering wood, profanity, and flailing limbs raining below. Miraculously, they survived. The table did not.

Back at Serpent Haven, Drex greeted them with booming laughter—and when Adeline brushed his surface thoughts, she found only one, sharp and gleaming: “I’ll use you.”

A lovely sentiment.

Day 2: The Screeching Tempest Over the Silver Nets

Morning brought not peace, but Brodun Saltbraid—whose beard seems forged from old anchors and rusted fishhooks. Sea Harpies had descended upon a fishery, and Drex wanted the matter handled.

Down precarious walkways the party travelled, platforms groaning like elderly men rising from chairs. Mist rolled below, hiding the endless fall that awaited the careless.

The fishery loomed out of the fog—just in time for the first harpy to shriek overhead. Nets tore, beams cracked, and fishers fled as the creatures descended in ragged-winged fury.

Silas, in the chaos, cast a spell that soared heroically past its intended target and struck an innocent fisherman instead. The poor man fell instantly. His son witnessed the tragedy and fled from Silas as if death itself followed wearing wizard’s robes.

Two more harpies erupted from the fog. Feathers flew like shards of shadow. The party fought hard, balancing between rescue and survival as the platforms shuddered beneath their boots.

At last, the creatures fell, defeated. The fishery shivered but endured. Splitlip Korran offered salted fish by way of thanks—a fine meal if one enjoys chewing regret.

Drex was delighted by the tale, naturally.

Day 3: The Dance of Gliders, Fire, and Falling Fools

The third dawn drifted in with the scent of burnt aether and the appearance of Fint Marlowe—a halfling whose grin suggests he regularly commits tax fraud. The mission: escort a cargo skiff from south to north.

The skiff was a patchwork marvel held aloft by hope and questionable craftsmanship. The sky was dark. The crew uneasy. Everything promised disaster.

The journey took the party through the outer rim of Turtle Island, where scaffold towers loom like skeletal giants and mist churns below like a hungry maw.

Then came the ambush.

A net crashed down first. Then the Gobgliders—three of them—roaring out of the clouds, their engines sputtering indignation. They swooped low, hurling crude bombs, metal darts, and insults in Goblin that I shall not translate.

Chaos erupted. Tie‑downs snapped—though Barry and Rhazh managed to save several tumbling crates. The ship’s captain was slain by a harpy, and in his death throes pulled the wheel hard, sending the skiff veering toward the island face-first. Only Silas’s quick leap to the helm saved them from becoming a very artistic smear.

And then—ah!

Rhazh’Korr proved the gods do indeed enjoy a madman.

He leapt from the deck onto a Gobglider mid-flight. The machine, quite sensibly, objected. Both plummeted downward in a spiralling duet of terror. Rhazh fell a full hundred feet into the sea below—and lived.

I have seen miracles. This was not one. This was stubbornness triumphing over mortality.

When the last Glider fell to ruin and the skiff limped into the northern scaffold, Drex waited with a smile broad enough to suggest he’d expected half the party to die and was absolutely thrilled they did not.

Someone is plotting against them. Of that the party is now utterly certain.
Drex? He thinks it’s wonderful.

Thus concludes my chronicle of three days upon Turtle Island—the errands, the screams, the plummeting, the unintended manslaughter, and the glorious mad leap that shall echo in tavern songs long after the bruises fade. Until the next tale, dear reader—may your footing be surer than Barry’s.

— Dorian Frostquill