The Story So Far

The Crew of the Queen Robyn is a player group operating on The Moonshaes, with plot centered on seafaring intrigue in the service of Queen Alicia Kendrick. The premise of the campaign is that all of the player characters are privateers, and joining the campaign involves being recruited to serve on The Queen Robyn.

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oldgrayrogue
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The Story So Far

Post by oldgrayrogue »

For session recaps.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Logbook: Eleasias 19, 1381 wrote:The queen has assigned us to work on writs of capias for fifteen members of the White Hook. This seems to have been enough to draw attention of many would-be sailors. Seven have joined the Queen Robyn's crew, and one pledges service to avoid punishment; some lesser noble wanted to stretch his neck for smuggling.

The Queen Robyn received supplies and repairs at Caer Corwell.
Logbook: Eleasias 22, 1381 wrote:The Queen Robyn has docked at Iron Keep, where her crew has gone in search of members of the White Hook in their trade. Their charges are mostly kidnapping, but there is no small suspicion of slave trade.

Addendum:
The Queen Robyn left Iron Keep before resupplying. Her crew returned with three children purchased from the White Hook, having also had to fight mercenaries to return to port. We gave priority to safety, and set sail for Caer Corwell.

It seems that Barney arranged the purchase of more children with intention of trapping those directly involved in the slaving. He selected a fairly-remote beach on Gwynneth for the exchange, though it sounds like the White Hook intends to capture more children for it. We will likely be out of range of conventional support from her majesty's men, and likely out of their good graces for additional threat that may be visited upon Ffolk children this tenday.
Logbook: Eleasias 23, 1381 wrote:Once the Queen Robyn was at sea, the men found opportunity to talk to the recently-freed children about their captivity. No new names were listed, though it is clear that Lukas of the White Hook is heavily involved in moving the children. One reported disagreements between him and the crew, so his leadership may not be unquestioned.

It seems that there is an almost-active neglect of the children in captivity, as those we found had not been fed and were stored more or less like sacks of grain. One shudders to imagine how many are lost to such a strategy, and I loathe to contemplate the consequences of baiting a trap with requests for more.
Logbook: Eleasias 25, 1381 wrote:The Queen Robyn has docked at Caer Corwell for resuppy. No repairs performed or needed.

Captain Yusef is to meet with the seneschal about the costs of recovering the children and one of her majesty's judges about the gang's current writs.

Crew is given a day of leave, and is to regroup to investigate methods of trapping the White Hook at the exchange expected on Eleint 5.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Logbook: Eleasias 28, 1381 wrote:The Queen Robyn remains docked at Caer Corwell, while her crew seeks information about the White Hook in town. It seems that between talks with the barkeep and the harbormaster, they have identified two suspect ships: one sloop named the Blue Gull and one caravel named the Witch's Tit. It seems likely that if they sail together, the Tit is the flagship, though it sounds as though the Gull would be too small for much more than island hopping.

Our hopes remain with the capture of many of this gang in our false exchange, and our prayers to the children who may be harmed by our gambit.

Addendum:
I have been given word that the guard in Corwell have identified the homes of the children we returned from captivity, and they are being returned to their families.
(note the inserted entry in the previous post, as well)
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Re: The Story So Far

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Logbook: Eleint 2, 1381 wrote:The Queen Robyn's crew met the White Hook on a crabber's beach, by the meeting we'd previously set. Nester, one of their leaders, met us and revealed that our plan had been guessed. They found the purchase of all of their stock, with an excuse of supplying perverts, and specifying another place to meet to be too much. In retrospect, they were the ones to offer first, and we might have guessed that we were caught then.

The Hook had captured a father and daughter pair, staging them for death by fire and water respectively. The Queen Robyn's crew reacted heroically, with nearly all of her members coming terribly close to death; but both were saved, and all of the Hook on the beach were killed. The Witch's Tit struggled to respond, and did not have crew enough to tow us to boarding; it seems that the Queen Robyn's archers were superior in a fight, but the Queen is damaged by arrow fire. The Witch's Tit struck her colors at noon on Eleint 2, and the survivors of her crew are kept captive. She was badly damaged by ballista fire, and we will hug the coast to bring her to a port.
Logbook: Eleint 5, 1381 wrote:We returned to port in Corwell, towing the Witch's Tit. We had opportunity to review the bodies and the writs, and it seems we have fulfilled seven of them, which pays two hundred gold coins. It will be some days until we learn the fate of the Tit, though the Queen's orders give us rights to unidentifiable booty-- of which there is plenty. We will be at Corwell until the Queen Robyn is repaired, which will likely take a tenday.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Eleint 12, 1381 wrote:The most of the crew went in search of rumors in Kingsbay. The Queen still needed many of her planks replaced, so Shane, Barney, and Yusef stayed to see to the crew needs during the ship's repair. The others left for Kingsbay, and have not returned.

We do not yet fear the worst, but it does not bode well.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Eleint 19, 1381 wrote:Most of the crew sent in pursuit of the White Hook has returned with victory today. It seems they managed to divide the forces of the remaining enemies, felling half at land and half on an undercrewed ship.

Barney fell while boarding the Gull. The noose we saved him from does not record a next of kin, so the state will see to his last rites.

Nioniel also brings word that the White Hook had hired a group of mercenaries, six men strong, to kill us in protection of themselves. While they might be convinced to stand down for news of their slain paymasters, it will surely be difficult to convince them that their paymasters are dead.

The crew is granted a day of shore leave, and accommodations are covered in celebration of victory. On returning, we are to plan a solution to the mercenaries.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Eleint 26, 1381 wrote:Her Majesty has charged us with the settling of threat posed by sahuagin off of Snowdown Island. We are told that their threat is starting to become disruptive to shipping between Gwynneth and Alaron, but is particularly unfortunate for the population in Westphal.

We were attacked by them en route to Westphal, but the crew repelled them without losses.

We docked at Westphal where we spent three days seeking information and tactics, with one among the locals offering directions to meet with a sea elf. I can do little to comment on the usual nature of the sort, having never actually met one myself. The crew reports that they met her, though, and she informed them of the sahuagin's connection to sharks, which we hope to use to leverage the threat to disadvantageous ground.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Marpenoth 10, 1381 wrote:Nioniel, Vug, and Remmy have gone missing.

They left six days ago in hopes of finding information about Sahuagin's suppliers. We will need to organize to find them.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Marpenoth 17, 1381 wrote:Word has arrived from Corwell that our three missing members: Vug, Remmy, and Nioniel, have been found in Caer Corwell. They write that they escaped captivity after being taken on the beaches of Snowdown by the bounty hunters that the White Hook had hired, and brought down to Skaug to be sold once there was no bounty to collect; they earned their freedom by "police" action against their captors, no doubt Skaug dislikes bounty hunters.

This comes with word from Sweets that the sea elf we've been relying on for information tried to misdirect us, trying to send us northward, and Sweets seems confident that it was intentional. We will need to see what comes of our future interactions with this woman.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Uktar 2, 1381 wrote:We recruited two members from inside Trapper's Hold in Corwell, both having the supplies and look of adventurers. One, Raven, describes herself as a sorceress, and Darius, who describes himself as a problem solver.

We set sail from Corwell to Westphal after resupplying, and came upon an seemingly-abandoned ship with stricken colors, and were attacked by sahuagin on approaching. No casualties, seven count of sahuagin slain.

We assembled a boarding party of Vug, Darius, Raven, and Remmy as commander; the ship proved to be trapped, and while Darius disarmed many of the traps, Vug is credited with charging into many of them and catching the ship on fire by the final one. The boarding party also engaged four sahuagin among the traps, slaying four with no casualties.

We recovered the ship's log. The "Summer Wind," but we do not yet have information about why they may have been attacked, but the fire could not be controlled and we broke from the ship and let it burn.

Vug abandoned his weapon when fleeing; combined with the report of his reckless behavior on the Summer Wind, he is assigned to spend Uktar 3 cleaning the Queen Robyn's sausage crates and is instructed to exercise greater caution in the future.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Uktar 9, 1381 wrote:The Queen Robyn's crew refilled its ranks while docked at Callidyrr, though we spent more time than we might have liked at port for it. Once we'd acquired the information we sailed for, we learned that the sea elf we had been dealing with was likely a malenti-- a sahuagin who looks like a sea elf.

We had some days to mull over how much information we'd fed our enemies while sailing south. At the beach, we nearly captured her; three men managed to pile onto her and pull her out of the water, but she was too slippery for even that, and broke free on the shore, then broke for the sea; the escort that we confirmed she had upon her calling for it blocking her escape. Most, if not all, of those sahuagin died, but not the malenti. They treated her like a priority, as I suppose we would expect.

The Queen Robyn remains docked at Westphal, where we are confirming our firefighting supplies and repairing our ship after the sahuagin attempted to grapple it from below.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Uktar 16, 1381 wrote:Sailed from Westphal toward Iron Keep in pursuit of a merchant ship called the Black Scale, believed to still be a supplier of the sahuagin, but were intercepted by an unmarked ship full of northmen, who we defeated without losses. Privateers, likely, but we can't say why or from where.

We diverted course to Corwell to turn their ship to the crown's care, and then sailed to Iron Keep. It seems that the Black Scale took exceptionally long to reach Iron Keep, or it did not sail a direct route, as we arrived three days before them.
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Re: The Story So Far

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Uktar 20, 1381 wrote:The crew created a plan to capture the Malenti, beginning with coordinating with catching and negotiating with the Black Scale for help. We leave Iron Keep to catch the Black Scale and talk.
Uktar 21, 1381 wrote:We easily caught the Black Scale at sea. Darius took to the front to negotiate with them, and was able to haggle an agreement where the Black Scale sends a significant force and keeps the pearls and corals usually traded for with the sahuagin, and half of their armaments. Provided they send a force adequate to the share they take, we stand to do quite well on the beach.
Uktar 23, 1381 wrote:It is a good thing that we hired on the help that we did. The sahuagin learned from our fumble, and sent many more creatures than they did to protect the malenti last time. We had the superior force, and won the day. The Malenti and her new guard are all dead.
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Re: The Story So Far

Post by Zelknolf »

Our new assignment is investigating unfortunately-literal ghost ships and skeleton crews among the seas interior to the Moonshae islands.

Our first month of search has been mostly fruitless. Some small scraps of information suggest that people whose absence would not be immediately noticed are being taken and killed, and less-protected graveyards seem to be getting robbed, but the latter is hearsay, as we never visited personally.

The pattern of complaints implies that Oman's Isle will be the center of the trouble, but our visits revealed little, and we resolved to take a stab in the dark and check the coasts of the Korinns for signs of anyone making use of the uninhabited ones.
It seems we are blessed to once again have an elf on board, as she spotted caves that were seeing heavy use inside. The away team cleared both caves, and found evidence of the dead being animated quite often inside, including some bodies which have not yet been animated, one of which was an enormous squid. The caves have been cleared, and the squid dismembered, but nothing that looks like leadership has been identified or put to rest.
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Re: The Story So Far

Post by Zelknolf »

Our days have been spent on investigation, consulting with mage and priest about the nature of undead invasions and how to stop them. It seems that we would be looking for either spell casters or spell-casting items that are responsible for all of the animated dead, but the question of how the ghouls, ghasts, and shadows have come to be, and how they are directed, is a thornier issue that we don't have definitive answers to.

It seems, still, that deep strikes meant to destroy magic or magic users will be needed to win this fight.
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