Beholder Group - "I Love It When A Plan Comes Together" - Session 23 The Eye of Kronos

2nd Apr 2020, 7:45 – 11:55pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, 1489DR, Eleint 20th. End of session, Marpenoth 8th

The group separate for a brief time, to search the three hag rooms and the main hag cavern. Each of the bedrooms contains a stone chest, trapped, as Devon discovered. He did manage to get in his though, and cleared out the loot, before returning to the main cavern and finding that Drogan had got the key to the chest. D’oh! Drogan also had another key, from the other dead hag, and while Devon ran off to open the other chest using that key, the others loitered in the main cavern.

It had been a while since the first sahuagin had escaped from them, and they now find out the consequences of his escape. Another sahuagin appeared from the pool in the hag’s main room and attacked Dwarrowsteel, missing with its first blow. Which turned out to be its only blow, as Alwaith and then Dwarrow brought the sahuagin down easily. The group were, however, worried about further enemies arriving, and shouted to Devon to hurry up.

They were right to be worried, as two sahuagin commanders emerged from the same pool to attack. These were a lot tougher, and although the party did bring them down, with Drogan and Devon taking the glory, it wasn’t before the party took some damage.

Even more concerned now about what was to come, the group decided to abandon the last chest, not risk the possible exit out of the window, and instead run out back the way they came. More sahuagin emerged from the pool in the corridor, and Drogan raged to ensure they were taken down quickly. Hits from the whole party made short work of them, but the party didn’t hang around, and headed back to the pirate village as Drogan caught site of more sahuagin emerging behind them.

Running through the brothel, finding it deserted, they emerged in the village to discover fighting in the streets. The slaves, and friendly pirates were trying their escape. Poisoning some of the pirates had proved to be a benefit, as the slaves had managed to fight their way to the docks, though losing some of their number in the process.

The party head straight for the docks, in order to help out the slaves and get to the row boats to escape. They didn’t quite manage to get to the quay before being challenged by a group of pirates, and needed to battle again. They managed to defeat the pirates, though did receive some injuries in the process. Alwaith made good use of his shadow blade spell, and Drogan, using his last rage, did significant damage, though as usual Devon stepped up from his place of hiding to take the final kill on two of the enemy. Seeing no other battles where they could help out, the group ran for one of the boats, joined by Greyfingers who was the only survivor of the slavers’ raid on one of the guard towers, and jumped in. Drogan grabbed the oars and rowed towards the decoy boat anchored offshore, just as they spotted more enemy emerging from Bree’s ship, to overrun the village.

As they rowed towards their, hopefully, escape ship, they spot Hawkeye and presumably some other slaves, arriving at the ship in another boat and clamber onto the ship. However, they also spot another rowboat, containing Bree and others, heading towards the same boat, and seemingly likely to arrive there before the party. Dwarrow calls upon the Blessings of Berronar and imbues Drogan with additional strength, which enabled him to row faster and reach the ship at the same time as Bree. Both groups clambered on board to face off each other, complete with Hawkeye and a ‘friendly’ pirate, who were the only survivors from the presumed battle with the ship’s guards.

The two groups attacked each other. Bree had the help of his Will-o-wisp, a pirate captain and two pirate bosuns. The party had the help of Greyfingers, Hawkeye and a ‘friendly’ pirate. It was a tough match, lasting an almost unprecedented (for this group) seven rounds! Bree saw that Drogan was gunning for him and managed to levitate above the battlefield, firing pot-shots at Drogan and sometimes Devon, when Devon wasn’t able to hide easily. Bree’s crossbow bolts were poisoned, and managed to inject poison into both Drogan and Devon, despite their resistances, which severely hampered their fighting (and hiding!) skills. With the rest of the party busy taking out the pirates and pirate captain, Devon focussed on Bree, managing to score some good hits, but, after being electrocuted by the Will-o-wisp, Devon faltered and Bree, spotting an opportunity, floated back down to engage Devon and managed to knock him unconscious.

Meanwhile other battles were going on. The pirate bosuns were proving to be an annoyance rather than a problem, but the pirate captain was another story, with great skill with the longsword, and he managed to kill the ‘friendly’ pirate. Drogan came close to dropping, but Dwarrow stepped in to cure him at just the right moment. Alwaith made excellent use of Toll the Dead, primarily on the Will-o-wisp, but also using it to finally take down the pirate captain. As Bree prepared to completely finish off Devon, with his 2 attacks on an unconscious opponent, Drogan stepped in and, spitting blood and curses at Bree, took him down with a devastating blow, despite being poisoned. The battle was won!

But they still needed to escape. They hoped for more crew to man the ship, but, looking over the side, saw Brighton and some other slaves in another rowboat approaching. As the party reached for some rope ready to help them up, they could only watch as the small rowboat was overrun by sahuagin, who dragged Brighton and the others into the water. They did not emerge. No other rowboats appeared, so the party had to assume all other rebels, including Bryn, were killed in battles on the Island.

The group and their very skeleton crew got the ship moving. Having a good head start on Bree’s ship, and with Bree’s crew being without their captain, the party managed to get away, sailing off into the night.

They had escaped Shadow Isle. Complete with the Eye of Kronos! They managed, somehow, to navigate and sail back to the nearest large port, which happened to be Neverwinter, and they reported their findings and their escape to the authorities. The naval militia were grateful for the information, and set off to try to find the Shadow Isle, though with the Island still able to be moved by the turtles, and with one hag still alive to presumably be able to produce the concealing mist, their chances of finding it were not high. However, the chances were probably the best they had been for some time now, so the militia were definitely keen to take their opportunity.

Devon handed over 15% of the spoils to his contacts, and the box they asked him to retrieve from The Emperor of the Waves. The whole party accompanied Drogan to Brother Carston of The Veil to return the Eye of Kronos, and to receive their reward. The group were suspicious of Carston, and decided to cast Zone of Truth to question him, but he seemed genuine. However, after handing over the gem, and receiving their reward, the group were surprised by Ripley and a couple of associates, who burst into the room, murdered Carston and took the gem. They believed Ripley when she said that Carston was a member of the Order of the Black Sun and he was about to bring the Eye of Kronos to the enemy! She went on to explain that the Order of the Planes in Luskan were hoping to use the Eye and the previously obtained planar portal, to help in the efforts to stop the second Corruption, due in just a few months time. She requested that the group help them in a short while, after the Order of the Planes has completed their studies. In the meantime, she encouraged the party to continue with their efforts to find out more about the Order of the Black Sun, and maybe to help undermine the Black Sun’s plans by continuing to follow the trail left by Belak.

After some deliberation, and consideration about how to actually do this, eventually settling on the idea to return to ‘Belak’s’ druidic circle and using his amulet to transport to the Corin-heim circle, the party then decided to put these plans on hold, and instead to take a detour to help out Dwarrowsteel in his quest to rid the Abbey Isle of the evil clerics of Shay. To do this, they gifted the captured ship to Hawkeye, on the condition that a percentage of the profits from her new freight company be given to the party, and that she transport them to the Abbey Isle. On the understanding that profits would be slow to arrive, given that she needed to set up the business, fix up the ship and hire a crew, Hawkeye happily agreed.

In the meantime, the party all LEVELLED UP to level 5!