Journal Entry 12 - Not a witch hunt

After our interaction with the shambling mounds.. we sailed back to the main channel, it was still some 60' wide.

Some of the way along, there was a southbound channel that appeared to have been recently widened by man or creature. The channel itself is about 40' wide. It was relatively short, joining another east-west channel 80' away.

Willie (with invisibility ring) investigated, up he flew, striding bravely.

All appeared ok, so we sailed into the channel, Willie continued to investigate.

About half way along he spotted something shining in a tree. Willie fired.. but to no avail, the shiny thing disappeared.

Then our boat suddenly hit a snag, the boys Leroy and Jenkins went overboard. Cacafonix and Krudd pulled them out, and we were able to row back to free the boat.

We sailed around the snag, and found others designed to trap boats, we noticed they were one way - to stop boats going south.

Egert our brave and accurate scribe continued mapping.

We reached the other east - west channel. Willie was first to spot an 'unusual' crocodile to the north. Also 300 yards to the south we saw 2 Suahgin paddling away quickly in a canoe. The crocodile in the other direction started to approach us, Willie, still invisible flies towards it.

Then it spoke!.

In a rough voice it told us its name, ‘Cathack’ saying he was a scout for the crocodile clan. He doesn’t like the Suaghin or the 'hags to the south'.

He then dipped into the water.

We turn around and head south with a slight current.

Willie rejoins the boat. And we sail south, towards the end of the day. Willie flew back to the boat and did regular aerial patrols. In the evening he sees the ocean ahead of us, perhaps 4 hours as the crow flies.

At night we moor in the middle of the channel and set watches while sleeping in Hut a la Leomund.

At around 4am a flight of a dozen or so stirges approaches. We bravely shelter in the hut, they lose interest and fly away.

We continued the next morning southwards, again with Willie flying regular patrols.

The channel turned towards the west. After 3-4 hours Willie saw a new channel southbound and a shack by confluence of the two channels.

There were 3 figures in the yard by the shack. The shack and figures were similar to the ones we met in the basin to the south, where we saw the pirate schooner offloading slaves.

We decide to sail past them.

Egert strode to the bow of the boat as if trying to discern them from afar, but to no avail, we were still hidden behind a bend in the river.

Standing tall and resolute he turned to face the party.

“I will not have this sacred quest, assigned to us by our to degenerate into some lowly, partisan witch hunt. We should not sally ourselves with such base, lowly motives”.

Willie was again flying ahead and was able to view them through the goggles.

He saw them as we suspected revealed as hags, nay witches.

Egert responded, “What? Witches?, my fireball spell has a range of 150’ I can attack when in view. When vanquished, we will pillage and loot the remains”.

Krudd speaks up from the stern of the boat, “Egert, remember last time? We loot and then pillage”.

With the decision made we decided to attack.

As we rounded the bend, we cast several spells at them, not able to withstand our Shock and Awe assault; they fled into the river.

Egert, Krudd and Thorvald landed to investigate the hut. We saw bunk beds, a fireplace and a butcher's block. On the block was a small human foot, truly we were doing the work of our .

Krudd examines the bedding and finds a pouch.

3 red gems, with an unhappy aura. A spider also drops out and Krudd flicks it away.

Krudd then saw a trapdoor. Opens it and sees tunnels going towards each channel. Following his careful instructions, we took what of value we had found, and torched the hut.

We sailed on, 2 hours onward we started to recognize the channel, and expected to see ahead the basin with the southern coven.

Willie approached from the North East, and saw a schooner with humans loading cages with 8 or so humans onto the boat from the shed, this was the reverse of before.

We discussed what to do. We have appeared to have fulfilled our scouting mission: search the channel finding Suaghin or alternate passages to the sea. But could we do one more thing? If we had a fragment from the boat we could scry it from afar.

Willie, our most stealthy, nay smallest member would approach the boat flying unseen and take something. Most of the attention on the vessel was focused on the loading into the hold and gang plank at the stern of the boat. So he was able to approach the bow, take a belaying pin and withdraw, all unnoticed.

To Be Continued…

Back to The Mosquito Coast.