Terrors of Skyhorn Lighthouse

 

This Week's Bad Decision Guild Adventurers

• Amok the Goliath Scouting Rogue (they/them)
• Nimrod Crowguile, esquire. a Corporate Lawyer of Kas Enterprises,
  a charismatic male Vuman warlock of Kas the Bloody Handed
• Gaffy the Blue, a female Vedalken Watcher Paladin
• Chumbawamba, the always loyal female pet wonder warg
• Nimbat/Nimowl/Nimpod, Nimrod's enthusiastic, ever-helpful bat/owl/octopus familiar
• Lucinda the female Twilight Cleric Tortle -- she was hibernating as she was strapped to Chumbawamba's back.  She did not wake up at any point.
• Dormin, Nimrod's trusty shadow spirit
• Princess the Tressym -- a winged cat who rode Amok's shoulder and can impart poisonous scratches on her enemies
  
  

The party is currently at level 6.  They will reach level 7 after two more adventures.

The Adventure

Contracting a Ship and Setting Sail

The Bad Decision Makers were at the docks negotiating passage with the human female Captain Sheila Coppertree of the Annabelle Lee to search for the uncharted island where they could get information needed to seek out the location where they could decode the code from the Orchid Guild's sewer lair.  

Captain Sheila Coppertree demanded 10000 GP for the group's passage.  But she said she would waive that fee if we go to the lighthouse to free her friend Captain Hest who she believed to be a prisoner at Skyhorn Lighthouse.  The group agreed to Captain Coppertree's terms.

As the ship's lines were about to be detached from the dock, two burly sailors named Gasper and Nino approached the ship and accused Captain Sheila of cheating them at dice.  They demanded her ship as payment and threatened violence.  Gaffy and then Nimrod attempted to negotiate.  But they and their two hidden compatriots responded by attacking the ship and every one of the Bad Decision Makers with daggers and crossbows.  

The altercation ended after Gaspar was slain, Nino fled after being nearly killed, and Nimrod eldritch blasted their two hidden henchmen into the harbor water.  Amok recovered 15 GP and a set of loaded dice from Gaspar's body.

The Annebelle Lee then set sail for the lighthouse.  It had to make haste before port authorities would arrive to ask about the dead scallowag on the dock.

Trouble on the way to the Lighthouse

Part way to the lighthouse, a large rogue wave sloshed into the ship.  Everyone aboard the ship was able to maintain their balance except for Nimrod, who fell prone when the wave landed on the ship and revealed itself to be a powerful water elemental with hostile intent.  It immediately attacked Gaffy.  Nimrod cast protection from good and evil on Gaffy.  But this did not help.  The elemental surged around Gaffy and kept her confined within it.  Gaffy, Amok, Nimrod, and Chumbawamba fought the elemental until it disintegrated.  Amok recovered 6 beads of force from the elemental.  Each bead was a  small black sphere measuring 3/4 of an inch in diameter and weighing an ounce. 

The elemental punctured the ship's hull below the water line before it boarded the ship.  Now the ship was taking on water and all available hands were bailing water as the ship limped toward the dock at the lighthouse.

Arrival at the Lighthouse

The Annebelle Lee's crew beached their ship upon reaching the lighthouse dock.  The crew set about patching the hull while Captain Sheila urged the team to look for signs of Captain Hest at the lighthouse.

The team climbed the hill to the lighthouse and found that the lighthouse's iron door to be locked and barricaded.  Amok and Gaffy strained together to push the door open and clear the barricade as Nimrod tapped his shining boot on the ground, cleared his throat, and looked on impatiently.  

Immediately upon entering the building, three slimy eel folk attacked the Bad Decision Makers.  They put up a good fight but were ultimately defeated.  Amok then found a door in the floor of one rooms that revealed a passage way under the lighthouse to the ocean.  But they decided to clear the remainder of the lighthouse before following that passage.

The Master of the Lighthouse

The team cautiously climbed the stairs up to the chamber atop of the lighthouse tower.   Therein behind another heavy iron barricaded door they found the lone lighthouse keeper, Lucien Skyhorn -- a male human druid, the last of his line, and the last of his druid circle.

Lucien gave the team 4 potions of  healing water and each humanoid got a good berry.  Lucien asked the team to retake control of  his family's bowl of summoning and commanding water elementals from the Eel Folk.  He said the bowl was in the tunnels below the lighthouse.  The eel folk were using the bowl to attack every ship in the area.

A Dark Dock Under the Lighthouse

After the team left Lucien to find the bowl of summoning water elementals, they found themselves hanging precariously onto a broken ladder that led partway down into a watery sea cave before ending twenty or thirty feet above the water.  A small dock with a rowboat was on a beach around 50 feet away from where the ladder used to enter the water.

No one wanted to fall into the water and swim to the dock because they would be very vulnerable to ambush at severe disadvantage by the Eel Folk whilst swimming.  So Amok used Amok's crossbow to fire a rope at the dock.  Then Nimrod had Dormin swim through the water past the dock.  Dormin was to be a distraction as everyone else used the rope to reach the dock.  

Nimrod then used his wand of shadows to teleport to the dock and securely tie off the rope.  [Actually, Nimrod inextricably forgot he could effortlessly teleport instead of risking failing his acrobatics check while sliding down the not yet very secure rope.  Teleporting would have been smarter and more plausible than having a not particularly strong or dexterous corporate lawyer using his soft, delicately manicured hands to slide down the rope while dressed in expensive but restrictive law office appropriate attire.]

Dormin found three huge hunter sharks and tried to lure them away from the dock.  Nimrod tied off the rope and then cast his eldritch blasts to support Dormin.  Unfortunately, this was not enough to ensure Gaffy's safety. She fell into the water almost immediately upon transferring her weight to the rope.  Sharks mauled her repeatedly as she swam strenuously to the dock in her heavy plate armor.  Gaffy fought back and killed one of them before she got close enough to the dock for Nimrod to pull her out of the water almost too late for her to survive.  Gaffy would have been dead if she had been in the water only seconds longer.  

Even as he was seeking to kill the sharks, Nimrod could not help but admire the sharks' cruel efficiency as they mauled Gaffy.  He even saw a bit of himself in them. Memories of his legal training at Kas School of Law flooded his mind, particularly the Law of the Sea course where sharks were compared to corporate lawyers who provide a necessary service by relentlessly pursuing their prey and cleansing the waters of unsightly corpses.  Nimrod felt truly inspired and a bit teary-eyed as he gazed lustily upon the bloody red water.  But Nimrod's sanguinary fascination lasted only a moment before he snapped his attention back to helping his struggling friend Gaffy.

Amok was strong enough and dexterous enough to cross the rope easily.  Then, as if by divine intervention, the sharks dispersed from the area following the bloody sacrifice of one of their own, coupled with Gaffy's instinctual masterful mimicry of Orca warning calls, ultimately causing the predators to flee in terror.

Taking Captives (Back)

With everyone safely on the beach, Gaffy healed some of his shark wounds as Amok started lock-picking the heavy iron door on the beach a few yards away from the dock.  Nimrod used this time to transform Nimpod the octopus into Nimbat.

When the door was ready to open Gaffy stormed in followed by Amok and Dormin, and lastly by Nimrod.  Amok left Princess to watch the dock area.  Within the large dark room they were shocked to see three groups of four gaunt, bedraggled captive sailors.  Kelp ropes securely shackled each prisoner.  The prisoners had been fermenting in their own excrement, mud, and kelp for days.  (This filthy, smelly, mucus-like encrustation made casual gender determination impossible.)

Only two eel folk were in the room and they appeared to have been surprised by the team's arrival.  Both Eel Folk immediately ran to a closed heavy double door at the south end of the chamber.  One died before reaching the door, inflicting some lightning damage on Gaffy and Amok as it died.  The surviving eel warrior reached the door and screamed an alarm in its tongue.  Gaffy managed to decapitate it without incurring another electric shock.

Nimrod and Amok cut the prisoners loose as Gaffy recuperated from his electric shock.  One of the prisoners quietly identified him/her self in a cracked, parched voice as Captain Hest of the Jade Lion.    This captain said all the cargo in the adjacent northern room was from the Jade Lion.  The captain also said there was a room beyond the double doors into which the Eel Folk had been taking members of his crew one-by-one to their loud and torturous deaths.

It was clear to all Bad Decision Makers -- except Nimrod at first -- that the prisoners would be useless in the battle beyond the double doors.  So Gaffy advised the captives to go to their ship that Nimbat had seen tethered in the direction of the sea cave entrance.  Then they might be able to ride that ship to the Annabelle Lee and Captain Sheila at the island's main dock.

Before the prisoners shuffled away, Captain Hest gave each party member a mariner's coin.  When presented to a nonhostile sailor, a mariner's coin grants advantage on all charisma checks. The holder of the coin also has advantage on skill checks related to sailing.  Captain Hest also said showing a mariner's coin to any sailor it will grant its owner safe passage.  A true sailor would see a mariner's coin as "a sign of friendship, forged in salt and iron."

Beyond the Double Doors

Gaffy opened the door and stationed herself there to bar escape by any enemy.  Amok, Dormin, and Nimbat streamed in.  Nimrod stayed 10 feet beyond Gaffy.  But Nimbat was keeping Nimrod aware of the enemies lurking in the corners.

Two Eel Folk immediately ran toward the door.  Others edged toward the door, perhaps in hopes of stealthily striking from the shadows.  The bowl of water elemental summoning was 75 feet away on the far end of the room.  A very powerful looking Eel Folk boss was 50 feet away from Gaffy and was motioning to run towards Gaffy.  A water elemental 10 feet from the summoning bowl.  An Eel Folk warrior at the bowl was forcing a captive sailor to attempt operating the bowl.

Nimrod had already assumed his form of dread.  So he immediately cast hunger of hadar centered around fifty feet past Gaffy.  This engulfed the boss Eel Folk and the water elemental in a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors. A 20-foot-radius sphere of blackness and bitter cold appeared, centered on a point with range and lasting for the duration. This void was filled with a cacophony of soft whispers and slurping noises that could be heard up to 30 feet away. No light, magical or otherwise, could illuminate the area, and creatures fully within the area were blinded.

Amok, Dormin, and Gaffy fought the normal Eel Folk as Nimrod used repelling blasts to push the Eel Boss deeper into the hunger zone.  This went on for a while with the hunger zone continuously wearing down the elemental and the boss while Gaffy and Amok took electrical damage as they scored kills of the lesser Eel Folk.  During this time, the water elemental unexpectedly changed direction and exited the hunger zone to attack the Eel warrior who was threatening the captive sailor next to the summoning bowl.

Gaffy went down after the boss Eel hit him.  Nimrod popped a goodberry in her mouth after Gaffy failed one or two saving throws.

Nimrod had the finishing blow on the boss Eel.  The boss was using non-lethal blows while attacking Gaffy and Nimrod.  But Nimrod chose to continue using lethal blows until because it deserved to die as a result of all the money and lives lost during the Eel Folks' war on local shipping.  This war had cost Kas Enterprises a lot of money and deeply embarrassed Kas Protection Services.

Amok had the finishing blow on the water elemental as it about to possibly kill Nimrod.  She