Shattered Star: The Most Dangerous Soup

Game Date: 2/7/2015
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 15
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Carlie Nackle (Chere) - Gnome Wizard
Maruca (Daniel) - Human Ranger/Cleric/Rogue
Sa'oa (Angela) - Elf Monk/Warlock
Shemus (Cliff) - Elf Ranger
Slancio Brioso (Thomas) - Human Bard

The Session:

Last session we nearly finished our trek through the swamps, looking for a lighthouse called the Lady's Light, home of the next shard of the Shattered Star.  As we resumed our journey today, we found the remains of an ancient battlefield.  We searched the area, and saw a suit of armor and a helmet floating towards us.  Not knowing if it was friend or foe, we waited for it to attack first.  Which of course it did.  We took out the helmet quickly, but it rejoined the battle as a floating skull.  It still didn't take long to finish off.  The armor itself had a lot of hit points, so it took a bit longer to defeat.

During the battle Jasper got confused, and kept trying to attack Bjertha.  Maruca nearly died, failing two death saves before we finished off the armor and healed her.  After the battle, we took a short rest and explored the area.  We found about 600 gp worth of muddy gold trinkets.  Note, the armor was an Invisible Stalker, and the helmet was a Wisp.  We received 550 xp for the encounter.

Our guide Jasper led us to a small island, on which sat a small hut.  We greeted the owner of the hut, Maroux the swamp witch.  She was an old half-orc with one eye glazed over.  We asked her for any information she could give us about the Lady's Light.  She offered to help us, but gave us a task first.  She was in the mood to make some soup, and for that she needed some seaweed called Kelpie's Hair.  She told us to go to a nearby shipwreck, where the seaweed grew in abundance.  Being genre savvy, we used a scroll of Water Breathing before attempting the deed.

We swam towards the shipwreck, and Carlie began using Mage Hand to pick some seaweed.  Seven undead pirates emerged from the ship, led by their captain.  It reminded us of an iconic scene from Pirates of the Caribbean.  The pirates didn't take a lot of hits to kill, but the captain was pretty tough.  We took them out one at a time.  Carlie killed the captain with a Thunderwave, and Slancio finished off the final pirate skeleton.  We looted the captain's weapon, a nifty-looking +1 rapier with scale hilt and a blade made of coral.  It glows with an enchantment that keeps it clean, and inspires the wielder with great confidence.  We let Slancio keep the rapier.  We received 175 xp for the encounter.

We went back to Maroux's hut and had some stew.  While Bjertha found it to be quite tasty, Slancio and Shemus had trouble keeping it down.  We stayed the night, and Maroux drew us a crude map, and gave us some info about the Lady's Light.  Apparently some knights came through recently, led by a woman named Oriana.  They were also on a mission to loot the lighthouse.  They took advantage of the rivalry between the local bullywugs and trogs, pitting them against each other and using them to take control the lighthouse.  Maroux doesn't know how that turned out, so who knows if what we'll face once inside.

We set out.  We passed through the Trog area, thinking maybe we could befriend them.  However, the Trogs had been so badly defeated that we couldn't even get a response from them.  We kept going until we reached the bullywug village.  Since we knew Oriana's knights were female, and our party was fairly female-heavy, we concocted a plan.  We disguised our male members as slaves, and hoped to convince the bullywugs that we were there to join with Oriana.

The name dropping didn't work.  As we reached they bullywug huts, we tried to communicate with them but just got blank stares.  They regarded us warily as we walked the long way around their village, blocking entry but taking no hostile actions.  We gave the village a wide berth and kept going until we reached a cave.

Inside the cave we saw a large carving of a multi-headed frog demon.  Four bullywugs were crouched around a pile of colored stones.  They threw javelins at us as we approached.  It was a pathetically easy battle.  The bullywugs wound up at the bottom of the initiative, and we nearly wiped them out before they even had a turn. 

After the fight we looked at the stones they'd been protecting, and found a lot of copper, silver, gold, bloodstones, agates, garnets, and a platinum necklace.  This fight netted us 33 xp.  We ended the session there.