Chapter 2-5
The party returns to Hilda at the docks and find her talking to a human man wearing fancy clothing and a silver dragonborn. She introduces them as Octavian Rockforth, a salesman who will be helping them set up shipping deals, and Moldra who introduces herself as the ships new cargo manager.
As the party fills in Hilda on what’s been happening, Moldra chimes in about what she knows of Allissandra Santos. She takes care of people and is an extremely kind woman, but the numbers in her congregation have been dropping for some reason. Similar to most priests in Caius, she devotes herself to the circle of all nine gods.
Hearing this, Hilda offers to give her safe passage on the ship if Alessandra needs to get out of the city safely.
To the Church
The party makes their way to the church, keeping an eye out to see if they can spot anyone keeping tabs on them. Not noticing anyone, they arrive at a run down church witk a crumbling exterior and several broken stained glass windows.
Inside, they find a tiefling woman with red skin and filed down horns speaking with a small boy. She sees the party enter and sends the boy away with a small loaf of bread. She greets the party and introductions are made.
The party explains what The Abandoned want her gone - in any sense. She is saddened to hear it has come to this. She was aware her congregation was being pressured to leave, but she wanted to do good here and make a difference. She refuses to leave the people who need her help. She explains she graduated from school at the Church of Caius monastery and was assigned to this location immediately after. She wanted to gain respect for herself and her people by making a difference to people needed help.
Schmead suggests Alessandra go on a Pilgrimage instead of staying here in Port Revelry. She could help many people and find her own way too. The party truly likes this idea and commends Schmead on the suggestion.
When asked if she’d be willing to leave, she mentions that one man in the neighborhood is extremely sick and desperately needs her care. She’s all he has left and he is dying. He’s an old dragonborn named Torkin who has sores all over his body, which the party believes may be similar to the halfling man and the rats in the sewers.
Meeting Torkin
The party goes with Alessandra to meet Torkin. Torren sends Garrus to deliver a note to Hilda, requesting she come pick up Alessandra and take her to safety after they finish here. She knocks on the door out of courtesy, knowing the man isn’t able to answer for himself. She lets the group in and notes that she looks after his house while he cannot. In the upstairs room, the dragonborn man lies unmoving aside from labored breathing covered in sores. Torkin has been becoming less responsive and been getting worse each day. Alessandra claims it started a few months ago, but in the last week or so he became fully unresponsive.
Looking closer at the sores, these aren’t the same as the ones the halfling man had in the sewers but they are very similar. Jasiri uses divine sense and finds that, Torkin is beginning to show signs of becoming undead. Jasiri informs Allessandra of what he’s learned and she attempts to channel divinity, causing Torkin visible discomfort, but no other effects.
Schmead begins to ritual cast detect magic. After 10 minutes, a faint glimmer comes from the sores as well as the water bucket at Torkin’s bedside. It becomes obvious that the water from the nearby source is tainted. Schmead asks Allessandra if she’s able to make holy water, which she claims she can, but may take some time. He mentions his tribe used to make their own which was just medicine and water mixed together. Schmead gives some of his talismans to the man to help him heal and rest.
Jasiri uses lay on hands to try and cure the disease and it seems to make a tremendous difference, the pain seems to greatly subside and he wakes and is able to tell them more. He says it feels like something was eating him from the inside out. Torren asks him if there are others suffering from the same condition and Torkin mentions two other neighbors of his who could be in the same position - a kind halfling man named Edgar, and an older woman across the street named Gertrude. Torkin calls the party good people and is glad to have friends to look out for him.
Allessandra thanks Jasiri for his help and for doing what she could not. Outside the house, they find Hilda waiting along with two other individuals, who she introduces as two of the deckhands that will be joining the crew as well. Cronus [Author note: “Bro”nus], a massive muscular goliath, and Skwawk, a kenku who seems unable to speak outside of bird-like caws.
As the party moves to investigate the neighbor’s homes, Schmead reaches up to tug on Jasiri’s cloak and tells him “he’s really cool.”
Visiting the Neighbors
The party approaches Gertrude’s house across the street first, knowing that Edgar is likely dead in the sewers. Using his handy-dandy housekeeping tools, Vaelyn manages to pick the lock on her house.
Vaelyn and Hazel inspect the kitchen and discover the food is just starting to rot and go bad. The rest of the party venture upstairs and open the bedroom door to find the woman has become undead and begins to slowly approach them. They briefly discuss whether or not they should kill her, eventually, deciding against it. Excalibur shuts the door behind them which seems to be sufficient enough to prevent the woman from attacking the party.
Torren leaves Garrus at the house to ensure noone suspicious comes looking for Gertrude.
The party goes to Edgar’s house next and find no signs of life (or un-life). Looking around for more information about him, they find that he lived alone, maintaining an unused guest room. Jasiri takes a shoelace from one of Edgar’s dirty boots to make a new braid.
Visiting the Neighbourhood Well
The party ventures to the neighbourhood well to inspect it, suspecting that the tainted water originated from there. The party suggests marking the well to prevent further use. Perhaps with a black flag to indicate death.
[Author paraphrasing of everyone’s disappointment at Vaelyn not being the edgy boy we all thought:] Everyone: “Vaelyn, you’re a goth. Give me a piece of black cloth.” Vaelyn: “I’m wearing forest ranger attire… Greens and browns??” Everyone: “BUT WE WANTED GOTH!”
Schmead casts detect magic again at the well. The party suggests Schmead get in the bucket or Vaelyn’s backpack to descend into the well to confirm that the source of the magic is from the water and not something specific to the well. Schmead is reluctant to descend by himself, but Vaelyn climbs down with him so he’s not alone. As they near the bottom of the well, Schmead realizes that the water is corrupted by the same dark magic that lingered around the bucket of water in Torkin’s home. The water filling the well seems to be affected by the same magic, indicating the source of the problem is somewhere further upstream. Based on the flow of water from the river that likely acts as the cities water source, it seems certain that the source resides somewhere between the river and the well.
Using spare broken planks lying around, the party boards up the well and mark it with Torren’s ink: “DO NOT USE BY ORDER OF THE PROTECTORATE”.
Calling the Cops
The party briefly returns to the Guild Hall where Charlotte, the receptionist the party met that morning, is informed of the situation at Gertrude’s home. She agrees to go to the town guard to report the incident on their behalf, recording Jasiri’s name as the contact.
The party returns to Gertrude’s house to wait for the guards. Jasiri suggests talking to the guard alone, not wanting anyone else to get in trouble should the interaction go badly. The party argues they have nothing to hide and shouldn’t be in the shadows during the investigation. No one seems to trust the guard and is suspicious of them.
When the guards approach, Jasiri, Excalibur, Torren, and Schmead remain outside to speak with them. Meanwhile, Hazel transforms into a spider to keep an eye on the guard inside the house, and Vaelyn watches from a nearby roof.
Jasiri explains to the guard that the party discovered the situation when doing a wellness check on Gertrude. The guards question why he’s permforming wellness checks and Jasiri said he was given the job from the Protectorate. The guards ask how they know the water itself is plagued and Jasiri claims someone else at the Protectorate used magic to identify it. The guards seem to buy these explanations [DM note: successful deception checks] and don’t ask further questions.
The guards step inside to investigate. Hazel watches them as they open the upstairs door to find Gerturde and are terrified by what they see. They quickly shut the door and discuss what to do, seemingly trying to decide if they should handle it themselves or call for backup. They decide they ought to get a Justicar involved, and leave the home.
They tell the party they will bring in a Justicar, which makes Hazel now heavily dislike being involved in the situation. The guards get Jasiri and Torren’s name. Excalibur begins giving a lengthy series of numbers as his name, before the guard cuts him off, celarly not interested in trackign the whole thing. They see Jasiri’s backpack start to move and he convinces them his back is just itchy. [DM note: if only I could roll higher than a 1]
As the guards leave and block off the scene, the party questions why Jasiri lied, to which he gets defensive. Insightful members of the group decide this is a learned behaviour - Jasiri explains he can hold his own but he’d rather avoid conflict, and if lying helps to do that then he will.
Back to the Protectorate
Returning to the guild hall, the party requests to speak with the local leader of the Protectorate to discuss their findings. Charlotte takes them upstairs to meet Patrick Rothford, the head of Port Revelry chapter of the Protectorate. The party informs him of the situation they discovered in the Dock Ward. They ask if he might have a map of the sewers so they further investigate the source of the issue. Patrick says that he does have that diagram, since it is useful to have when planning city protection, but discourages the party from looking into this further. Concerned that he does not seem eager to resolve the problem, the group recognizes that this reaction is not due to malintent - it is due to bureaucracy. He explains that he doesn’t want to send the party to their deaths when he has no idea how dangerous the situation is. Also, if this is not an official job he will not be able to pay the party if they complete it. He commends the party for taking the steps to inform the guard of the situation. If a job is to come from what they discovered, it will come from the town guard, so he recommends they wait a day or two.
With time to spare, the party takes a look at the job board. A local merchant known as Cornelius Stodeley, requests protection over his home while he is away at an event the next evening. The party decides to take the job and Charlotte provides directions on where to find the requester to get more information.
The home of the merchant is located in the wealthier part of town. Must less downtrodden than the wards they had been in up to this point, they see their first Warforged while they walk. Finding the home, the party knocks on the door and meets with the butler who allows them inside and fetches the lord of the house.
Cornelius explains that this house has been the target of the Crows on several occasions and he will be unable to protect it while he’s away tomorrow evening with most of his personal guard. He claims there is nothing particular in the house that needs to be protected, but wants all of his things to remain where they belong. The party agrees to the request and will return the next evening.
Returning to the Stormbreaker
The party decides to return to the ship for the night. The group finds Hilda at the docks speaking to another deckhand that will be joining their crew - an older dwarf named Kuzzim.
After rowing back to the ship, the party finds that a lounge area has been cleaned up for Alessandra who was waiting for the group to return. She informs them that after what Jasiri did to tie up her loose ends, she will take them up on the offer to go on her own pilgrimage and join the crew as the ship’s chaplain. She plans to say her goodbyes the next day and return to the ship permanently.
The party ends the day and settles in for the night.