Session 4

You wake up in morning, and leave your tortured and emotionally scared captive tied up and begging for his life in the bedroom where you slepped for the night. You decide to take Ned at his work, allow him to retrieve his clothing, and arm him with a blade so that he can fight beside you and seek his revenge. You head down to the ground floor and ecide to enter the lower level via the stairs in the kitchen as opposed to ther trapdoor in the living area. You carefulyl make your way down the stairs and find yourself entering a wine cellar. Shoulder-height wooden bottle racks line the north and west walls here. There appear to be no intact bottles left in the racks and shattered bottles cover the floor. Against the east wall, at the foot of the stairs, rest two large metal storage bins that appear to be empty. In the center of the room lies a human corpse clad in plate mail; a longsword lies by the corpse's right side, and a large shield covers its legs.

Johama approaches the corpse, and carefully prods it with his longsword, lucky, as rot grubs slither and gather where you touch the body. You decide the burn the grubs and only when you are certain no more remain, you relive the corpse of its plate mail armour, shield and longsword, eagerly snapped up Johama. Even though the plate mail is dented and ban ged up, you are certain it will provide better protection than your current armour. You carefulyl search the cellar and locate a secret door in the southern wall obscured by the two storage bins.

You open the secret door in to a torchlit chamber that was once a large cellar, but it has since been converted into living quarters. Ten crude beds stand along the south wall, each with a wooden locker at its foot. A long wooden trestle table ringed by rickety stools dominates the center of the room. Metal cutlery, cups, and dirty plates sit atop the table. A cookstove is installed near the table, and evidence of recently cooked meals sits in pots atop it. A large ham hangs from a loop of twine near the stove. A sturdy set of stairs leads to a trapdoor in the ceiling above. There are two wooden doors in the east side of the room.

You are not alone!

Two smugglers move into to engage you hand to hand whilst a third hangs back, carefully aiming his longbox at you and lets loose. Combat ensues and Ned charges through the door way to help you engage the enemies. After a short, but hard fought combat, you emerge victorious, not without the assistance of Ned, who provied to be somewhat more skilled with a shortword than you predicted......who is Ned realy?

You carefully search the room and notice that the door to your left appears normal, but the one ahead has a wooden bar across it, held in brackets on the frame and the door itself. The word "DANGER" is scrawled on that door in the Common tongue using chalk. You examine the bar and notice that it is damaged, as if something has been trying to get out of locked room. You decide to first search the door to the north and unlike the barracks, this small room holds comfortable furnishings and appears to be well cared for. A comfortable-looking bed in the northwest corner has a wooden locker at its foot. A small wooden table stands against the east wall, with a padded leather chair beside it. On the table, a brass three-branch candlestick with three burning candles provides the room with bright light. The candles, though not fresh, are far from spent. Under the table is a small wooden box and an unlit bullseye lantern with a movable shutter over the lens. On a shelf above the table sit three books. In the northeast corner is a closed wooden wardrobe.

You carefully search the room and find three books and various topics (worth 10 gp each), a full length coat (5 gp) as well as a bullseye lantern. You also find a secret compartment in the desk that contains a spell book, and a small wooden box cotnaining 12 candles, flint and steel and a piece of parchment that contains information on how to use the lantern to create signals, you assume, to signal a boat. Your search of the cellar also netted you a total of 7 gp and 15 sp.

You then debate long and hard as to whether or not you should open the barred door, curiosity wins the day, and you throw caution to the wind and open the door. Light spilling in from the large room behind you barely shows that the chamber is only about twelve feet across and the corners are filled with shadow. What little you can see is dingy and dirty. As you enter the room, siz skeletons animate from the dark and attack! A fight ensues, and with 3 seletons dispatched, with Johama and Aemi wounded, a Skeletal Alchemist appears through a blue-outlined secret door at the rear of the room! The Sleletal Alchemist attacks and hits Aemi with orb of acid, then uses claws against Jo but misses. The hard fought combat ends with Beza smashing the Alchemist and dealing with killing blow. A careful search of the Alchemist locates a "Pouch of Holding", deftly pocketed by Beza, and a highly polished black stone with an arcane symbol. it feels cool to the touch and Aemi believes it is magic and someone could attune themselves to it. Each skeleton had a partial gold rib (6 x gold ribs worth 5 gp each). You search the room revealed by the secret door and find an alchemist's laboratory containing lots of alchemists apparatus, chemicals, golden items and a book (The Philosopher's Stone).

Aemi decvides to attune to the stone and finds it to be a Cursed Luckstone. While carrying it, you can get Advantage with 1 ability check, once a day. The curse is that you cannot get rid of the stone (without Remove Curse), and if the stone is used, the next 2 ability checks are with Disadvantage. Xigran realises that his "Restore Balance" ability allows him to nullify disadvantage twice a day, if within 60', effectively nullifying the consequences of the Cursed Luckstone.

A further search of the cellar rea rveales a secret door in the southern that opens up into natural caverns and caves. You carefully make your way through the tunnels, but clumsily fall foul of some green slime, taking some damage in the process. Eventually you find the smugglers waiting for you, five in total plus their leader, who assume to be Sanbalet. Sanbalet opens up on th eparty with magic missile and wounds Xig badly. After a hard fought battle, you eventually overcome the smugglers, killing their leader, at which time, two of them lose the will to fight and run through the caverns towards freedom. Ned, after fighting well during combat, runs after the smugglers, whilst you finish off the remaining fighters. Johama falls during combat, but is stabilised by Aemi and Xigrana dn Beza run after the fleeing smugglers in the same direction as Ned. You find one smuggler dead, and kills the other with a well placed arrow to the back.

You begin your search, and load the waiting skiff at the mouth to the tunnells with the contraband, stolen brandy and silk. You also search the bodies of the fallen, and find that Sanbalet is wearing ornate mail armour made from the scales of some long dead sea creature. Aemi attunes herself to the armour and it is revealed to be MAriner's Scale, which gives the wearer a swimming speed equal to walking speed and if the weasrer falls to zero hit points, they rise to the surface at 60 feet per round, a rare find indeed! IN additon, you find a pipe of rememberance, the smoke does not disspiate and after ten minutes, the smoke recreates the smokers heroic deeds, then dissipaites again.

You also search the dead smuggler you found, pressumably killed by Ned, and find a note "Next time don't be late. G", and you suspect Gellan Primewater to be the leader of this band of smugglers. This note, along with the information provided to you by Ned is irrefutable.

You search high and low for Ned, but you do not find any trace of him. Will he reappear at some point in the future, will you ever meet him again, only time will tell.

There is only only one place yet to search, the attic. Beza eagerly climbs through the gaping hole in celing, followed by the party and you are attacked by 6 stirges, defeating them easilty as Xigran makes good use of a sleep spell. upon searching the atac, you find a porcelain doll with two jade gemstones for eyes worth 10 gp.