Session 7: In Which Halden Spends Quality Time With His Grandfather, And We Learn Our Lesson About Dark Magic Tunnels of Doom

7/17
Recap:

• We sleep on the beach (with watches! to keep away dark forces of deathly doom!) to regain spells, etc.
• Third Watch: Aed & Janan hear a bizarre shriek. Aed wakes Stavros and Janan sneaks off to investigate.
• We hear the shriek again. (ohnoes!)
• Janan approaches the ocean and finally recognizes the sound, remembering that it is mating season for the eels of Gorzam.
• The following morning, Aed teleports us back to Xanadu.
• While arguing what to do about ded!Halden, we are noticed by guards, who, naturally, notify Sigrid of the crazy people carrying the prince's corpse!
• She is Not Pleased.
• Soern cannot revive Halden until the following day, for unspecified spell slot related reasons.
• Halden LIVVEEESS! But is not stumbling around in search of brains, only in search of beer.
• We then go to Gorzam in search of Blank (teleportation instead of tunnels being seen as the better part of magical travel).
• Uncle Grisby's Tavern!
• Uncle Grisby has no knowledge of Blank's current whereabouts.
• We know that Blank and Sebastian set out for Gorzam at the same time but on different ships. Blank & co. never arrived, but Sebastian did.
• We find this suspicious, and go talk to Sebastian.
• Apparently, according to Sebastian, Blank got distracted by something and said that he needed to go do something else.
• After some somewhat confusing discussion, we go off to the Pirate's Cove (with passwords provided by Sebastian) to rescue Antonio, one of Blank's Admirals and Sebastian's younger brother, from the bad!pirates (i.e., the probable rum smugglers who are not honest enough dishonest men to put their dishonest drinks on the honest black market! ...um...)
• Janan, forgetting about the passwords, attempts to charm his way in.
• This fails.
• In a way that should classify it as a total!fail (TM).
• Kheriim attacks one of the two guards, then Stavros attacks the other one, engaging us all in battle. One guard manages to call for assistance, so then we had to fight those too.
• We defeat them: yay us!, and decide to let them live if they promise to become honest fishmongers. (Why yes, Kheriim was the one to check their motives. However did you guess?)
• We then go to get Antonio from his cell with their admittedly coerced assistance.
• After locating Antonio, we also locate R(?what's his name?) the leader of these dread rum smugglers. Kheriim sends an elemental into his room to wake him up (really, with the way she summons these fire elemenatals, you'd think she and Janan would be better friends...) and after he is chased out of his bedroom by fire! we interrogate him.
• While talking, R says it doesn't matter if we kill him because "Don Maurice" will resurrect him.
• He refuses to answer any further questions so we decide to forcibly take him back to Xanadu.

Notes:
Most Skaraavan women are actually "men," where "man" means someone who has been horribly subjugated for at least a year and then escaped on his own and killed at least three dread magic-eating birds with his bare hands.

Quotage:
"There is sprite at the end of the tunnel!"-Foole, to Artemis re: her thirst on the way to D&D

"THOSE are the shrieking toads. They always croak louder when they're about to feed..."-qwerty, re: cryptic comments between maggie and oddysey regarding what turns out to be the shrieking eels of gorzam

"You can't argue statistics with an angry mother."-foole & qwerty to oddysey re: her rational arguments against Sigrid's rage at Leif and everyone else

"I can be a pirate!" -Artemis, Kheriim
"...technically."-qwerty

"You know, bondage is a good look on you."-me, Janan, to a shackled Antonio

"Oh!I know that game!"-Artemis, Kheriim, re: mind stab
"That's not a game."-foole, Aed
"It's an excellent game! Verrik children play it all the time!"-Artemis, Kheriim
"..This explains so much."-me, Janan