Second star to the right...

Yeah, so writing over the weekend didn't happen. Spent most of it with a raging headache because of the back and forth rain and cold here, which my sinuses do not appreciate even a little bit. Makes keeping my thoughts in order a bit tough, so I figured I should wait till my brain was more together. Anyhow, continuing on from Friday's post:

The party located Adam Prime's tomb within a fairly unassuming and plain graveyard, not the place you'd expect a national hero to be buried, but they weren't going to argue when it was a fairly simple task to locate it. The tomb itself wasn't all that large, just a small mausoleum make of worked stone with no real adornments or decoration. The inside looked similar once they'd broken in, just a plain stone sarcophagus set on a small dais against the back wall, the entire room only 15 foot to a side. Adam was given the "honor" of examining the actual sarcophagus, on which he found the only real ornamentation to be a small carving similar in shape to a ring he carried on a leather thong around his neck, the first ring he'd ever stolen. It was the signet ring of a minor noble's son, stolen when the little git had been drinking a bit too much and being a bit too loud about his superiority to his 'lessers." Adam had kept it as a memento, but the lock on the sarcophagus looked too similar to be coincidental. He fit the ring into the lock, heard a click, and stepped back as the entire dais shifted away into the wall, revealing a magically lit stair beneath.

At the bottom of the stair was a small room containing but a single chest, and that not even locked or trapped. Adam opened it to find a seemingly random selection of junk, a torn piece of black fabric with some white sewn into it, a red beanie cap, a walking stick, a bag of marbles, etc. No actual treasure was to be found, and after examination, the items from the chest weren't even magical.

Faced with failure, the party found a decent-looking tavern on the docks and set to drinking, looking to develop a matching set of hangovers before the long journey home. After a few drinks, a man approached their table saying "I believe you have something that belongs to me, mates."

At this point, I need to take a quick aside to point out that I've spent way too much time in recent weeks watching Once Upon a Time. It's a fun show on ABC and watching it wouldn't be a bad idea, especially if you have access to Netflix so you can start at the beginning. If you already watch it, then you know that the most recent story arc has involved a particular sea captain of renown, a man with an aversion to clocks, a hatred of crocodiles, and a very well-known nemesis who is perpetually young. That said, following any gaming story of mine will reveal that I love to take inspiration from all sorts of things. I never run a shot-for-shot copy of anything, but I do take a lot of liberties with other creative ideas that I like. Another example is that this campaign has involved a great deal of fae, up to and including Grey's mistress/girlfriend, a dryad by the name of Holly Berry (I had to, don't look at me like that), and I've wholeheartedly stolen the concept of fae from Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, including the two faerie Courts and the wildfae. For those wondering, the party is entirely in bed with the Summer Court, though that hasn't yet come back to bite their collective asses. Story for another day however, so I'll get back to the most recent session.

Looky, looky...

The stranger sat down with them, introducing himself as Captain Jones, and again stating that he felt they had something of his, a piece of black cloth. A bit tipsy at this point, the party became somewhat paranoid (normal operating procedure for these guys) and wanted to know how he thought that. He offered to lead them outside for a moment and show them, which they agreed to. The entsupposed to access that tomb would have been able to, which meant he was perfectly willing to ferry the group to the actual resting place of Adam Prime's treasure, which he himself has buried. He finally introduced himself again, this time giving them his more common moniker of Captain Hook, revealing his missing left hand which he'd concealed in his coat up to this point, capped with a silver hook.
ire group stepped out of the tavern and down the docks a block or so, where the captain stopped a gestured to a docked ship. The wind whipped up, unfurling the ship's flag, the traditional skull-and-crossbones with a slice missing, perfectly matching the cloth they held. They admitted they'd stolen it from Adam Prime's tomb, though the grave robbing itself didn't seem to bother Jones at all. He claimed to have been a long-time friend of Adam Arlington, to the point where he'd been asked to safeguard Adam's remaining wealth upon the man's death. He mentioned that only someone who was

I realize I'm being more long-winded than necessary here, so I'm going to try to speed things up a bit. The party boarded his ship, the Jolly Roger, and they left immediately. After three days, they were woken with a sudden lurch of the ship, then made it to the deck to find Hook standing at the wheel laughing into a storm as the ship swirling it's way into the Maelstrom, a half-mile wide perpetual whirlpool in the middle of the Sea of Storms. The ship almost pitched over as the water sucked it down, the party all but flung overboard, when suddenly the storm was simply gone, the ship righted, and the party finding themselves staring at placid blue waters and sunny skies with barely a cloud. Hook gestured to a series of small, tropical islands, welcoming them to Neverland.

At this point, the party spent a day and night at the shanty-town the pirates inhabited, then sailed with Hook to another island in the chain where he claimed to have hidden Adam's treasure. Three days of hacking their way through thick jungle got them to a massive slab of stone long overgrown with vines and moss. At Hook's direction, Adam and Thrusk hefted it out of the way, an underground ruin now accessible. They descended, exploring a bit till they came to a room with obvious signs of habitation, which Hook claimed shouldn't have been there. They heard voices in the next room and charged in after taking a moment to set up magical preparations. Small, primitive humanoids (picture halfling-sized native americans) were in the room, and fought back with spears and slingshots.

I'll pause here to acknowledge the amazing combat performance of the group caster. Zur spent his moment before battle buffing himself with spells that gave him a pair of extra arms, and made his swords much more likely to critically hit than normal, among other things. During the battle he focused on a single redskin, but managed two different crits in successive rounds, the first a slash to the face so bad it made the creature permanently lose charisma points, and the second a decapitating blow, sending the creature's head across the room. Given that he's usually in the back and slow enough to not accomplish much beyond buffs in a lot of combats (and the party druid has a tendency of killing whatever Zur sets himself up to go after a moment before he strikes almost every time), this particular combat was really fun and a huge ego boost for him.

The rest of the session was fairly straightforward, one of the redskins escaped into the jungle through a different access point into the ruins, and the party was unable to track him through the thick jungle, so they finished exploring the area, locating the hidden cache Hook had left well enough hidden that the redskins weren't able to find it. The deal they'd made as a group was that any magical items found in someone's Prime tomb would be the property of that person, but any straight valuables (coins, gems, etc) would be split evenly among the party. This particular cache was a good deal of coinage, and a single magical item in a fancy box, a version of the Deck of Many Things, to be exact. The deck was secreted away before Narus could pull more than a single card, and the effect wasn't anything immediately visible, so Adam has agreed to leave it be till later.

And that's where things lie for now. I haven't entirely decided what's next, though I have a few days still before next session, and I do have several ideas for a bit further out, including the group's first encounter with the forces of the Bone Queen, and a surprise visit from a representative of the Winter Court, but I'll get more into those once they happen. Don't want to spoil anything!