Diary of Captain Nomed Oppenheimer - Entry Number 23
Tuesday, November 25th, 907 TA
All hail Java, Lady of Chaos. She who can fell a fleet with a single word. In a single night, we have caused enough confusion to the alliance between Winters, Stormcrow, and the Overlord that an opening has appeared. Simply reunite a dying man with his son, and we gain his allegiance, (and our sails).
Knowing the location of our sails and getting to them were two separate issues. They were located underneath Baron Winters’ desk, and we had an idea of how to open the lock, but the last foray in to the place had been too much for our poor thief Finn. He acquired some acute arsenic poisoning, that we reasoned had come from a small opening underneath the Baron’s bed. Without him for the foreseeable future, we could not do the same trick twice of sending him in in gaseous form. Without him, we realized that we would need to sow discord amongst our enemies in order to gain entry into that room.
It was then that I had my brilliant idea to forge a pair of documents. The first one was for Winters, detailing that Stormcrow had been sent by the High Sea Baron to kill him, and included the details about the arsenic being pumped into his room as proof of her treachery. The second one was made out to the captain of the Overlord’s men. This one detailed the plans of the High Baron to take the Overlord’s ship and to betray the Overlord at the first opportunity. With these missives made, we had Java go invisible and deliver these letters to their respective marks. She dropped the one for the Overlord on the head of one of their soldiers and made her way into Winters’ room to deliver his. When she arrived in there, she saw a sickly baron distraught reading a letter. Java was able to read over his shoulder, and the letter came from his son, Jamie, who had renounced his title to marry a girl that had come with the Overlord’s ship. Java dropped the letter behind him and made a slight noise to grab his attention. Winters read it and judging by his reaction when he found the poison being funneled into his room, he took the letter rather seriously.
With the seeds of confusion planted, we moved forward with trying to create struggle between the factions. The first order of business was to use several of Chironomous’ zombies packed with my grenades to explode underneath one of The High Baron’s ships. As soon as the explosion occurred, multiple ships moved out of their hiding spots to close the bay. With the ships on high alert, Java had a chance to shine. She moved between the ships, shouting that the opposing ships were traitors and that they needed to fire. The panicked sailors were all too eager to oblige. Carnage ensued as the ships began to fight, despite their leaders begging to stop the conflict. By the time the battle had died down, one of the ships had been sunk, and several others had been badly damaged.
Stormcrow must have deduced that we must have been the cause of the chaos, as after the ships had stopped firing, a murder of crows rose up from the castle and headed straight towards our ship, despite us being invisible. We moved away, trying to get out of sight of the castle and the other ships, so that when the crows finally reached us, we could fight her without anyone coming to her aid. She was on us quickly, and immediately summoned a giant squid to attack the ship, while she attacked from above. What she did not count on however was a zombie dragon coming at her. She fled before she could be eaten by the beast, and the crew managed to beat back the giant squid.
With our plan at least a partial success, we decided to wait until morning to make our next move. During the night, a few things of note happened. The first, several fey emerged from the woods surrounding the town of Hidden Skerry, started causing havoc around town, and shortly after left with a young woman in tow. The second thing was a ghostly image of a young elf walking along the top of the keep. The third was strange lights began to shine from some ruins deep within the woods. These items of note culminated at about 3 AM, when we decided to send a letter to Winters asking for a parlay. He agreed and removed the guards from the top of his keep allowing us to send a few of our crew to talk with the beleaguered baron.
We negotiated with Winters for the return of our magical sails. He was dying, too much arsenic had entered his body from the poisoned vent. We offered to restore him to new, and he thought that was quite tempting, but instead, he simply asked us to bring his son back to him. He wished to speak with Jamie Winters one more time before his death. We agreed, and after him telling us that his son had left in a trance very similar to the young woman who had left with the little fey during the night, we endeavored towards the mysterious lights in the center of the forest.
We flew above the island, landing on a lake next to the location of the lights, which we found were coming from a lodge. As we landed, from the woods emerged the same entranced woman, and she was making a determined dash towards the lodge. We stopped and subdued her, removing an onyx ring from her hand that when used could turn anything to onyx. She was desperate to get to her love, whom she said was Jamie, and that she knew he was in there. With that knowledge in hand, we headed into the broken lodge, which seemed to be a hunting ground for previous barons to hunt orcs. The place was in disarray, except for a single small room in the back. Inside the room was Jamie Winters, in the same kind of trance, waiting for something. No sooner had we arrived, then a huge monstrosity began to emerge from a nearby tapestry. The horror of mouths and limbs seemed to be too much for our party, and so we scooped up the soon-to-be baron, sealed the room behind us with some boundary chalk, and made our way back to the Wench. With a few light slaps from Wrane, Jamie came to, and with him in tow, we are now on our way back to the baron to fulfill our end of the bargain.
So close now to our sails. So close to securing another ally in our struggle to stay afloat. Hopefully we can leave here with our ship and our skins mostly intact.