Defending Joy

Weneon is sitting in a smoked-filled room somewhere in the Underways. He is with a group that call themselves the Crimson Cloaks. Their leader is Maklyn, a thief posing as a guard of Oeble. Sigar is another member of the group. The former private investigator Cherril from Thur is their fourth accomplice. Maklyn recalls quickly how the group’s last four heists were very successful, but also marked them amongst the guards in Oeble. Their next target is the post office, and a shipment of value papers that just arrived there. Weneon plays basketball with Manasa before the heist, and Manasa starts suspecting that Weneon has a thing going on later on. He figures out that Weneon is about to rob the post office and wants in on the action. Weneon declines and loses Manasa somewhere in the streets of Oeble. Weneon then proceeds with the plan and at midnight him and the rest of the Crimson Cloaks break into the post office. They crack the safe and seize the value papers. Weneon, however, stumbles across a stack of two envelopes: one addressed to him and one to Mycha. He reads his letter, written by Feda, the lawyer of the Emberspirit family, informing him about the death of his grandfather Xanzin Emberspirit. The letter then informs him, in a procedural and bureaucratic tone, that he has one year to claim the family obligations in Emryss. A set of three bounty hunters have just been released to capture Weneon and bring him back to Emryss. Weneon and the rest of Crimson Cloaks divide up the treasure, and Weneons find Mycha in-front of the necromancer’s house to hand him his letter from his sister.

The Uninvited are floating towards the MS Joy, the ship of General Taylor. Around the float the remains of Aran’s ship. On the rescue boat are, besides the party, also Terrania, Zendekay and three unconscious sailors. The water underneath them suddenly starts to bubble up, and a giant octopus appears on the surface. The octopus holds two persons in his tentacles: one is a dragonborn paladin, Lea, and the other one is a human archer named Achiki. Both of them have oxygen bubbles around their heads as they emerge from the depths. The bubbles burst and they breath in, while fighting the octopus off. The octopus then attacks the boat and sinks it. Terrania and Zendakay take cover, away from the battle, and the Uninvited help Lea and Achiki fight the octopus. As they are about to defeat it, three slitherin seekers, corrupted waterelementals, take hold of the bodies of the three sailors in the water. They attack the party and try to take over their bodies. During the fight, a deep scion appears from the sea and claims that he is not done with the experiments on Lea and Achiki, as he tries to grab them back into the depths. The Uninvited and Lea and Achiki defeat him, and successfully board the MS Joy.

As the party tries to recover from the battles against Chernobog and the deep scion, Kilijan notices how Aran is about to fall unconscious on the deck of MS Joy. As he is about to do so, he makes his cape of leaves appear for Kilijan to see. The party gets their cabins and tries to rest. Kilijan visits Zendekay. They talk for a moment about what happened. She tells him that she was part of General Taylors crew. He tries to kiss her, but she refuses. As he is about to leave, she holds him back and undresses in front of him, telling him to close the door. Weneon is visited by Terrani in his cabin, who thanks him for saving her earlier. He tells her that she saved him first from the cannon fire. She want to kiss him, but Weneon evades her attempts, to which she laughs it off and says: “I wonder who is on your mind right now?” She then plays a game with Weneon by rolling up a blunt. She tells him they have to take a deep draw or answer questions about themselves. They go back and forth a few times. Weneon learns that she is from Bojou, a indigenous city in the Somber Islands, and that she cannot return there, since she started to work for the Border Kingdoms “imperialists”. Manasa and Lorkhan get drunk in their cabin. They talk about the happenings earlier, and are interrupted by Willfried. Surprised that he is alive, he tells them: “Of course I am alive, I am a fucking turtle.” They proceed to drink and Willfried tells them about how the indigenous people of the Sea of Swords see the Border Kingdoms as colonizers. He then tells them that the one who sank their ship, Chernobog, comes from a long tradition of martial artists that combined teaching from the far east and the far north: “He is the last in a line of students of the White Lotus”, he tells them and fails to understand why he resorted to a life of pirating. Mycha is visited by Zendekay. He noticed that she was intimate with Kilijan earlier. She wants to apologize to him about how she acted towards him. She explains that, when she saw how foolishly but bravely he jumped aboard to save Manasa without any regards for his own life, she realized that she was wrong. They proceed to talk about Mycha’s sister. He tells her that he needs to stop her manic behavior. Zendekay tells him to look at himself first and not to just too harshly about what he heard about her. “People who saw you fighting the monsters today, might think about you and your crew of the Uninvited of being maniacs in their own right.” Mycha tries to tell her that it is different and starts explaining to her in a philosophical manner why it’s different. Zendekay stops him and starts shouting that she is sick and tired of old men telling her how to interpret the world around her. “Whole my life I had to listen to old farts like you, telling me in some kind of poetic way how to interpret the world around me. If you can’t tell me in a straight what it is you want from your sister, then don’t start rambling about some philosophical bullshit.” Lea and Achiki are invited to the captain’s office. General Taylor greets them and asks them to get him up to speed of what happened to them, and how they suddenly appeared from the bottom of the ocean. They explain to him that they were part of a crew of a merchant ship lead by Biggle Smith Santos. They were attacked a few months ago and their ship sunk. Taylor confirmed of having heard of the incident. Lea proceeds to tell him that she was recruited to spot potential fiendish behavior during the voyage, while Achiki was responsible for taking down flying predators which might attack the ship. General Taylor finds it strange that a paladin was enlisted at sea, and is concerned for a moment. Lea then tells him that the ship was attacked by deep scions and that Achiki and her were held in a layer deep underground. The deep scions were testing something on them, but Lea is unsure to what end. Achiki recalls that it had to do with some kind of force field or portal deep in the ocean. Taylor thanks them for their cooperation. He is glad that they managed to free themselves from captivity, and tells them that they seem to have a chain-like connection with each other. He then tells them to feel at home on his ship and proceed to get dinner.

The party assembles on the dining deck for dinner. Serge and Mycha are the first at their table. They talk for a bit and Serge tells Mycha that he would not trade any job for being part of General Taylor’s crew. Tristan arrives and congratulates Mycha on their combat skills earlier. Mycha asks to go talk to General Taylor, and Tristan leads him to him. The rest of the Uninvited arrive at the table. Everyone except Kilijan sit down and start having dinner. At their table is also Serge, Terrania, Zendekay, and Willfried. Mycha talks to General Taylor, asking him to explain where they are going. General Taylor explains to him that they are enroute to Graviheer. Mycha tells him that he heard a lot of the city, but never visited. General Taylor tells him that it is the most beautiful place in the world, and that only few outsiders have the honor of visiting it. Mycha mentions that his grandfather told him about visiting it once, to which General Taylor said, I don’t know about that, but it is certainly a possibility. As they are about to talk some more, they hear shouting from the deck. The rush out and see Lea looking towards the sky. “What is it?” General Taylor shouts, to which Lea replies: “Something strong and fiendish, my divine sense is going crazy.” As they all look up towards the sky, the suddenly see two pit fiends hurling like comets towards the ship. Taylor says to Mycha: “I might have the firepower to scare away Chernobog by threatening to sink his ship, but we don’t have the might of those magical weapons you carry to fight of these beasts.” Hearing this, Mycha rushes to the dining deck and calls for the rest of the party. They assemble on the deck and tell General Taylor to evacuate his crew. He thanks them and leaves to the lower decks with the rest. The pit fiends land on the ship and attack the Uninvited. The fight damages the ship and Manasa and Lorkhan fall unconscious. As Weneon is about to heal them, a female passenger, Maiko, sneaks out of the lower decks and lays her hands on Lorkhan and Manasa. She heals them and tells Weneon to damage the pit fiend as much as they can, and then give her the sign to banish him. She then stands up and focuses her banishing spell on the one remaining pit fiend, waiting for the signal. The rest of the crew, however, manage to deal with the second pit fiend, and save the ship from being sunk. They then figure out that the pit fiends where sent by the deep scions to return Lea and Achiki to them. General Taylor concludes that the appearance of the pit fiends must mean that the dee scions succeeded in their effort: opening a portal to Avernus at the bottom of the sea. Tristan and Serge thank the Uninvited, and General Taylor approaches Lea and Achiki. He invites them to join his crew, since they lost the one they were part of. On the horizon, a mass of land is seen in the distance. “Graviheer”, Taylor pronounces. “In the morning we will arrive.” He then turns to the Uninvited. Tristan and Serge stand behind Taylor and he tells the party: “The invitation to join my crew is also open to you.”