Beneath the Missing Sea Episode 7

The Second Retreat from Brost

Episode 7, featuring a lot of fish innards and a very large explosion.

Played October 6, 2023

The Party for Episode 7

• Frosty the Pig playing Neville Branston-Rothschild
• Igneous playing Fiske
• Seba playing Malakar

The next morning arrived with some changes. Fiske, inexplicably, showed up, explaining that he had been experimenting with the purple lotus dust he'd found weeks ago and that he didn't remember what happened or how he got there. Potent hallucinogen indeed. Esgorman and Manqoba decided to help shore up the survivor's camp and hunt down some food, but Ava Parson's bodyguard decided to join up with the Crab Wranglers to help them, possibly on the bidding of the druid herself. So Fiske, Neville, and now Malakar formed the party today.

They had a few loose ends in Brost which they reviewed before setting out. Fiske wanted to explore the sea caves beneath the town where they'd last been weeks ago while Neville was determined to deal with the large singing monster in the back of the warehouse. Finally, there was one part of the warehouse they had yet to explore but which had an entrance from the outside that they might scout without dealing with the monster. Since the monster was so much closer (that they knew at the time) they went ahead with scouting that.

From the door of their shelter, they had basically a long straight shot to the altar where it slept, so Fiske grabbed Manqoba's bow (and the diving armor) and took a shot at it. The arrow slammed into the side and sure enough, the monster was awakened. They retreated back inside and left it to pace fruitlessly. 

Exiting out of the hold-outs camp, they approach the side door. It was barricaded up but they quickly worked their way through to find a room full of the same type of copper vats they'd just shot, including the spot where one was obviously missing. They decided to ransack the place and dump all of the vats over. For the most part, they found rotting fish, foul water, and corpses pierced with fishhooks. But in one vat they found a big pile of smelly eggs filled with giant tadpoles. Far too large to be any frogs they'd ever heard of, they decided to carry the mass back to Ava so that she could examine it.

Ava quickly declared that it was as they'd deduced: it was anglergoblin eggs. The excited druid dumped them in some water and eagerly began portioning them out for various experiments. She explained that this might help her to develop a cure, but that ultimately she'd need something from the source: pure blood from the Leviathan. She wheeled over to a chest, unlocked it, and tossed them a large bag of coins for the eggs and for whatever they needed to get the blood and kicked them out of her lab.

By this time they no longer heard the monster so they decided to lower Fiske down the well while wearing the diving soon. It descended pretty far but eventually, he found a place very familiar: that exact sea cave beneath the town that he'd wanted to explore. The rest of the PCs soon joined him and he dove into the water, albeit that now contained no mysterious light. While hunting around on the bottom he did discover a barnacle-covered shield which he brought back up with him.

The shield was a random roll. The lights they'd seen so many sessions ago where anglergoblins, something I figured they'd pick up as soon as they met some. They didn't put this together until now how lucky they were not to have disturbed the water.

They ascended back up and decided that they absolutely needed to kill the monster. Many (many, many) plans were discussed. None of them seemed likely to kill the thing before it could get its hands on them, so Fiske proposed visiting the eccentric dwarf inventor to see if he might help. Vorst was delighted to blow something up and handed them a large bundle of explosives. How much? Enough, according to the eager prepper.

Reaction roll: 11

They headed back to the warehouse. Fiske stripped off the armor and snuck forward to drop the lit explosives into the tank and then ran. The monster awakened and began to climb out...but not quickly enough. 

Between health and armor the monster had about 50 hp and i rolled percentile for the effect of the bomb. So even with all that they had a coinflip to end up with an injured but very angry fish monster. Roll: 82.

It evaporated. I then checked to see if it took down the building as well. That roll was much lower, so it only blew out the nearby wall. It sent Fiske flying and he took a few points of damage.

Examining the wreckage, they find a few things:

• People had been throwing jewels and gold into the tank with the monster and this was now scattered around the room to be taken.
• The monster had somehow putrefied all the remaining food.
• The explosion had left a big hole in the side of their bunker and night was soon approaching.

So the Crab Wranglers gathered up the valuables as payment and helped load everyone onto carts for the second retreat to Coiner's Shelf. The trip was uneventful so before they went to bed they had a final word with Ava, letting her know that there was a local alchemist selling a purported miracle cure that helped against sea rot. She was interested, but only because the cure she was working on might need the brewing resources he evidently had available.

The day ended with Malakar shopping for a coat and Fiske deciding to go on a hallucinogen-fueled bender.

Statistics

Days Passed: 42
Total Party Members: 7
Hexes Explored: 9
Caves Explored: 3
Dungeons Explored: 0
Players Participated: 7
Megafauna Captured: 2
Skirmishes Survived: 8
Foes Vanquished: 1 feral dog, 6 anglergoblins, 1 anglergoblin shaman, 1 albatross, 4 sea plagued, 1 sea monk (this session)
Treasure Obtained: 2018 previously + 231 from Ava + 157 from altar = 2406 + 1 barnacle-encrusted shield
Wages Spent: 570 coins
Tragic Deaths: 1

Map

No updates

Episode 7 Notes

New player! Seba playing Malakar, a tough warrior introduced as Ava's bodyguard.

This session required a couple of GM decisions, the first being how to handle a giant explosive in an enclosed space. But more than that, the players spent a lot of time thinking about how to kill the monster, perhaps even a third of the session. I hope they had fun because I've been in sessions like that which just seemed to drag as the GM pointed out again and again that convoluted plans were unlikely to succeed, but I'm not sure how I might have handled that otherwise. I repeatedly emphasized that they didn't have to fight the monster and that they had many options and tools they might find elsewhere, one of which they eventually decided on. I don't know, I like sessions that constantly move forward but I know some people like "beach episodes" and shopping, something which I dread, so maybe it's just me.

The other issue I'm having to deal with is that a number of the most consistent players have been out recently or will be in the near future, and while I've found enough new blood to keep the game going, I worry about the loss of institutional knowledge. The module features enough threads to get tangled in. While good shared notes have been kept, they're a lot of reading (not as much as these posts though) and I don't honestly expect people to read them all, which in any case wouldn't suffice for actually having played that day.

If anyone is interested in this module, it's part of a sale bundle at the moment: Bundle of Holding