House of Cards Contributions Log

Paul’s Writeup of Ghost Ship

posted by Ginger at 01:17 PM, July 08, 2005 | Filed under : Swan | Comments and Followups

Paul, who lurks House of Cards, wrote up his version of events from the recent Swan game at ACUS. I’m posting it under the cut. Other folks who were present should fee free to comment and/or correct, or post their own writeups.

Le Cygne: Ghost Ship

Gmed by: Ginger Stampley and Michael Croft

With:

Olof Dahl: Canter, the Air Mage and Gun Officer
Glen Seymour: Acting Captain Valence
Liz Trumlich: Chime, Owner of Le Cygne
Michael Curry: Skate, the Bosun
Kris Kunkel: Montene, ex-hostage
Paul Weimer: Abdullah, shipwrecked trader from The Land of Peace
Rich DiTullio: Jafar, Abdullah’s older brother.

With the last contact the Cygne had resulted in the rescue of the traders from the Land of Peace, the ship had, for days, drifted into a dangerous and lifeless fog.

Such a fog, and the danger of crashing against an unseen shore, had slowed the Swan to a near standstill. So, the sight of a ship, the Marie Sea, equally stilled in the fog drew the interest of the crew of the Cygne. Drawing alongside the mystery ship, which showed no response to call or hail, and no signs of life, Abdullah and Jafar were asked to investigate the mystery vessel.

Of her own accord, Montene joined them, crossing over onto the vessel, which was covered in a strange red goo that seemed to be coming from the fog itself. Between the three, the ship was investigated from top to bottom. The mysteries grew by the minute. Sounds of animals in the hold drew Jafar and Montagne, but they only found skeletons. Abdullah saw a figure steering the ship from his vantage point at the crow’s nest, only to find no such figure when he descended to meet the individual. A sense of creepiness and dread enveloped the remainder of the Cygne’s crew as well.

After some debate, Captain Valence decided to have the mystery ship move away from the Cygne. Skate, Montene and Abdullah unfurled the sails on the Marie Sea and returned to the Cygne as Canter summoned a wind to try and blow the mystery ship away.

The Marie Sea did not budge.

Some more attempts to get away from the ship, or to destroy it, failed utterly. The sense that this was truly a ghost ship became readily apparent, and was confirmed when Chime swung over to speak with the ghost Abdullah saw. The ghost proved to be the former first mate, Spray, who had fallen out with the crew sometime ago.

After Chime’s discussion, and discussion among the officers of the Cygne, the Cygne finally went underway, carefully, in the fog, coming to a tropical island of some sort. With a wreck in the harbor that clearly was the real Marie Sea, the crew reluctantly decided to explore the island in search of an answer to the mystery fog and its red goo which was slowly but surely covering the Cygne in its deadly embrace.

The crew rowed over to the island and began to explore. The primitive huts were encased in red goo, and there were pillars of the goo itself, hardened into a resin. Abdullah’s sword proved sharp enough and wielded well enough to slice one of the pillars, revealing that the pillar was, once, a human. Abdullah’s sword also proved good enough to cut into one of the huts, revealing spartan living conditions, and a brief respite from the fall of red goo.

As the crew explored the area around the harbor, a scream pierced ears all around. The crew members, led by a running Abdullah, ran toward the noise. With a wolf loping across the path slowing him down, the source of the scream proved to be a shaken but otherwise all right Montene. However, she told the assembled crew that a man, no wolf, was her antagonist.

As the crew debated the mystery of a possible lycanthrope on the island, man in tattered clothes, and a beard appeared. Not the individual who had accosted Montene, the man brought the crew to shelter, a cave where he and his remaining fellows were surviving as best they could.

From these survivors, the crew learned that they were the last survivors, the knights with them having investigated strange lights from the highest point on the island, whereupon they disappeared and the fog with its goo began in earnest.

After some debate, the crew decided to stay the night in the cave, and in the morning head up to investigate what drew the knights to their possible doom. The men in the cave were to head to the ship and safety.

Some experiments before the crew headed up to the island summit proved an inescapable fact. The red goo hardened into a resin within a day, if the Cygne remained here much longer, the ship would be made unseaworthy and the crew stranded to their doom.

Up the mountain the crew ascended, watching carefully for trouble. Nothing untoward revealed itself until the crew discovered a building, a 3 story affair that was amazingly free of the omnipresent red goo. After some investigation, the crew finally knocked on the door. A man answered, with a strange cadence to his voice. Worse, the man said that we were expected for dinner by “The Master”, but that the crew were “early.”

Trying to leave, The crew discovered that the door resisted exit, and that they were, to their horror, trapped within the Master’s building. Not content to rest in their appointed rooms before dinner, the crew split up to investigate the building. Captain Valence led the Land of Peace brothers upstairs, finding a mysterious door that resisted entry, the lair of the “Master”. Valence tried to talk Abdullah into breaking down the wall, but in the end the strong trader was dissuaded by his brother from such foolishness. The trio did discover, however, that whatever held the crew inside the mystery house, it was keyed to them, as objects thrown out of a window were permitted to escape, while they were not.

In the meantime, the rest of the crew investigated the basement, discovering not only a trove of cargo from many, many ships, but also a cauldron ringed by magical sigils of some sort. With the crew assembling downstairs, and the captain examining the cargo, the mystery of the cauldron was pondered by Canter and the rest of the crew. The fact that the knights had become zombies of some sort, and done so by means of the cauldron, was now inescapable.

A subject, however, was needed. Abdullah was sent upstairs to get a zombie by means fair or foul, but upon trying to chopping one, he became frozen stuck to the zombie by the blade he wielded. This effect soon extended to the mage, who tried to free Abdullah from the effect, and Jafar, who tried to free the latter by means of a rope.

So the three remained, frozen, until a zombie’s ringing of a gong summoned us all to dinner, and freed the paralyzed trio of crew members. A man with a white forked beard, the Master, the Necromancer responsible for the edifice the crew were now within, greeted us and bade us to enjoy the fruits of his table. The crew’s reaction to the food ranged from acquiescence on the rules of hospitality to outright refusal to allow anything to pass their lips. For those who did partake of it, the food was excellent.

And then came the Negotiations. The Master explained that he would free the crew, if they returned something that they possessed that belonged to him. He would not name the thing, it seemed almost like a geas not allowing him to do so.

The crew tried to get more information out of the Master, but were only successful in delaying the final reckoning until morning.

The crew tried to sleep, doubling up in rooms for security’s sake. During the night Spray came to visit Canter and Skate, since the former was his brother. Ghost, apparition, or something else, Spray told the two what he could, but was convinced that the Master did not want the Compass, which to that point was what the crew thought the Necromancer desired.

In the morning, the crew assembled for breakfast. Hunger struck the crew members who had not eaten previously, and on full stomachs, the crew confronted the Master once more. Arguments and recriminations abounded between members of the crew. Finally, Chime revealed a necklace, something she had gotten from the previous ship owner, an item of magic and power and immortality. A deep secret of hers, she was scandalized at not only revealing it, but the prospect of losing it.

The Necromancer was not amused, and the item turned out not to be what he wanted at all. The crew, confused and uncertain at what the Necromancer truly wanted, looked at each other. Finally, Jafar proved to have the answer to the problem, and handed the Necromancer a ring from his hand. Not a mere bauble, the ring contained a Marid, a water genie. Cursed and a dangerous item for a pyrophilic dweller of the Land of Peace, Jafar was not that disappointed in giving it up to secure the freedom of himself, his brother, and the rest of the crew. Via the Marid’s power now at his command once more, the Necromancer used it to return the crew back to the Cygne, and the ship away from the dangerous island and its fog.

And so, no closer to home, but with new crew members, the Cygne and her crew set off for their next destination…

1 Comments

Liz
Jul 8, 2005 3:56 PM

Chime never did eat.

Chime is very upset about this little visit. There was no... trade, no profit. All we got are a bunch of nasty bearded old men for the crew (they did come join the crew, didn't they?)

And she had to tell everyone about her necklace, which means sleeping lightly from now on.

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