The · Travelogue · of · Migueleeto · Tugnutz

June 5th 1589 RI - Trapped Under Parrot Island...  
          
         The two days following the party’s infiltration of the Vanderboren vault under castle Teraknian were astir with activity. To begin with, Migueleeto noted with concern that the party’s patron, the noblewoman Lavinia Vanderboren, was noticeably upset with the underhanded actions of her brother, Vanthus Vanderboren. After giving her some time to recover from the shock of discovering her family vaults near emptied by Vanthus the day before, the party approached her and asked her to intimate to them some background on her kin.

            Lavinia explained that she and Vanthus were quite close growing up, since their parents were often away. They grew to rely upon one another as they grew up, as well as getting into a fair amount of trouble together too.  After one particularly intricate prank involving several elixirs of love being emptied into the nearby water tower, Lavinia was sent off to the Thenalar Academy for the next five years to get a formal, structured education befitting a lady and Vanthus was shipped off to one of the family’s plantations to learn the value of work. A year ago, when the Vanderboren children were reunited at the family manor, they both had changed.  

            While Lavinia thinks that she benefited greatly from her time at school, Vanthus, on the other hand, spent his years away from home nurturing his bitterness. Upon his return, Vanthus no longer had time for his sister; he slept all day and spent his nights with those Lavinia referred to as “associates of doubtful character.” Eventually, he moved out of the manor altogether, rumor having it that he took up with a lover in Azure District – although Lavinia was unsure of any details regarding this.

            Upon the tragic death of their parents, Vanthus returned to live at the manor, but by this time, he had changed even more so. Gone was the easy-going sense of humor and in its place was a bitter cynicism and a morbid streak that sent chills up Lavinia’s spine. After several arguments between them, Vanthus struck Lavinia with his fist. Lavinia was in shock, and for a moment she thought that Vanthus was shocked as well, but an instant later has was back to his new self - all scowls and menace. He gathered his belongings and left, and Lavinia had not seen him since.

            The party’s main concern now was tracking down Vanthus Vanderboren. Their first step was gathering information on Vanthus and his purported lover in the Azure District. After spending a few hours (and quite a few more coins) around Azure District, Janna reconnoitered from the local loose-lips and rumor mongers that Vanthus had indeed been seen around some Azure taverns recently, in the company of one Brissa Santos, a somewhat notorious pickpocket turned semi-legitimate artist who had her fair share of brushes with the law. Like Vanthus, no one had seen Brissa lately…

            From there Janna suggested that the party continue their search for leads on Vanthus in the notorious district of Shadowshore, perhaps the most infamous of Sasserine’s districts. The strip of land nestled in the shadow of Champion’s District had long been a haven for thieves, thugs, and criminals – and seemed to be the perfect place to find Vanthus. 

            It seemed as though the standard methods of inquiring about ones whereabouts in Shadowshore do not yield equitable results as they do in other districts, for the party not only had to spread about a fair amount of gold to ply the locals ears and tongues, but the Juggernaut also had to forcibly “shut down” a tavern when things got rough. Despite these inconveniences, they were able to track Vanthus’ recent activities and also connect him with a known smuggler named Penkus, a figure known in Shadowshore for his drunken binges and violent temper. They discovered that as recently as a few weeks ago, Penkus and Vanthus were spotted arguing with the proprietor of a local boat shop in Shadowshore called “It Still Floats.” The owner, a pessimistic dwarf named Panchi, admitted after being awed by Juggernaut’s gear, that he had sold the duo a boat and that they seemed rather excited as they loaded the craft with an abundance of lamp oil, lanterns, and rope and sailed off heading west.

            Late on the evening of the 4^th of June as Juggernaut was shaking down two Shadowshore locals who had been looking at the group suspiciously in the bar they just left unmanned, the party was approached by a nervous-looking half-elf with messy black hair, a ragged suit of leather armor and filthy hands. This upstanding citizen, one Shefton Rosk, claimed to know where Vanthus was hiding out and offered to sell that information to us for a mere five gold coins. Suspecting a trap, but feeling a bit overconfident after turning out a Shadowshore tavern, the party accepted his offer and paid the sniveling little man. Shefton informed them that Vanthus has been living for the past few days in an abandoned complex of smuggler’s tunnels below Parrot Island, a nearly island, little more than a rocky outcropping surrounded by 30-foot-high cliffs save for on the eastern shore, where a narrow beach held the only access to the island’s interior.

            Ready to close their net on Vanthus, the party made way via their dingy to Parrot Island at first light the next morning. The isle was thickly vegetated, the trees above serving as the roost for hundreds of noisy, brightly-colored parrots. Janna led the party along a partially overgrown trail into the island’s interior. The trail terminated at a small clearing in the center of the island. At the southern end of the clearing the party uncovered a stone trap door, which opened up to a deep shaft leading down into the darkness below the island. A sturdy-seeming rope hung from an iron hook near the top of the five-foot-wide shaft, trailing down out of sight. Migueleeto’s keen gnomish eyesight penetrated the depths of the shaft and he noted that it was almost 30-foot-deep and looked as if it emptied into an empty room below.

            One-by-one, the party scaled down the shaft, with Migueleeto strapped into the specially modified saddle-harness on the Juggernaut’s back and a sunrod affixed to his warforged, adamantine composite body armor. The shaft opened into a ten-foot-square room with a brick-lined tunnel with a curved ceiling leading away to the west. The party began to grow accustomed to the light conditions and started to discuss marching order, when a horrible sound came from above them in the shaft – snick…

            The freshly-cut rope fell down the shaft amongst the party members upward- staring faces. Above, at the top of the shaft, they saw, outlined in the mid-morning sunlight, the wickedly grinning visage of Vanthus Vanderboren, whom they recognized from the portrait over the fireplace in the dining hall of Vanderboren Manor. He shouted down at the astonished party members, “I’ll be sure and tell my sister about the incompetence of the help she’s hired.” 

Then with an evil laugh, Vanthus shut the stone trap door. A few seconds later, as the party attempted to scramble back up the shaft unsuccessfully, they heard the sound of large rocks being rolled on top of the trap door and abject terror set in.

After several minutes of the Juggernaut unsuccessfully attempting to batter the trap door open from his precarious position wedged at the top of the shaft, the party decided to have a look at the rest of the complex below Parrot Island, in hope of finding another means of egress. As the party explored the extent of the complex, they found that it consisted of several rooms that were once used as barracks, meeting rooms, and storage for smugglers. Much of the complex’s chambers were either suffering water damage from the incursions of the sea or were even partially flooded. Unfortunately for the party, a group of a dozen-or-so of these smugglers from some centuries past still prowled their old base of operations. 

These once-living pirates had been transformed, probably from some horrible curse, into ghastly creatures whose mottled, decaying flesh was drawn tightly across clearly visible bones. Their mostly hairless skulls had massively oversized jaws and eyes glowing red with unholy hunger. These creatures sustained themselves on an eternally insatiable craving for living flesh – they even attempted to ignore the Juggernaut to get past, over, or through him to prey that had meaty bodies. These ravenous, zombie pirates traveled in small packs of three to four individuals in the complex and after their first encounter with them and experiencing first-hand their potent bites and their ability to grapple potential “meat” to the ground, the party was able to deal with them.

Deep within the complex, the party found a partially submerged chamber that was home to a small cadre of monstrous crabs the size of large alley-dogs, who crushed the party with their vise-like claws and almost drug Janna to her watery death before the party could be rid of the cruel crustaceans. 

Immediately after Croak dispensed nearly all of his Kord-given healing magic to restore the party, they encountered premiere undead of the complex, a disease-ridden, corrupted cleric of Olidammara, who immediately ensorcelled the Juggernaut with a supernatural fear that sent him running away in terror (unfortunately with Migueleeto, strapped to his back, with him). As Croak and Janna defended themselves against the unholy menace’s spells and claws, Migueleeto made a leaping dismount from the back of the enchanted Juggernaut and ran back to the chamber to assist. In a headlong charge, the gnomish artificer drained the final two charged from his prized wand of lightning bots into the foul creature, blasting it back to whichever hell had spawned it.

After the spell affecting the Juggernaut had worn off and he returned, the party investigated the hallway form where the blasphemous creature had sprung – it revealed a small series of sea caves. Fueled by what must have been powerful submerged currents, the water lapped and splashed against the walls of the twisting natural cavern that led off to the west. A sandy slope descended from the door down to the edge of the subterranean tide and dozens of purple and red sea urchins glistened in the shallow divots along the floor and lower walls of the cave, their spines glittering with water.

Within the sea caves, the party found two things of supreme interest: primarily, Janna discovered that near the bottom of one of the deep tide pools, a five-foot-wide tunnel traveled a twisting course to the northwest for about seventy-feet before emerging from the sea bed in Sasserine harbor between Parrot Island and the gate that separated Shadowshore from Cudgel District.  Finally, a means of escape! Secondarily, at the back of the sea caves, they found landing with a closed door leading west. The party deigned to investigate beyond the remaining door before attempting to escape.

Beyond the door was a small chamber rank with the cloying smell of rotten meat rising from a bloated, seeping body slumped in the middle of the floor. The corpse’s dark, almost black flesh bulged against it studded leather armor, ready to burst at the slightest touch – an intricate tattoo of a dragon clutching a flower barely visible on the body’s shoulder against the diseased flesh. Clutched in its dead hand was a crumpled scroll. It read:

     

 

            After a moment of silence for poor Penkus, the party moved on, carefully searching his dead body for valuable loot and investigating the chamber. The luck of St. Worgul shined upon them, as they uncovered a well-hidden, concealed door leading to a secret, treasure vault filled with an abundance of loot; including gold, gems, magic potions, a wand, object d’art, and an enchanted elemental gemstone.

            Being thoroughly convinced that the dungeon was cleared not only of its foul denizens, but of any clues and valuables as well, the party went about escaping from under Parrot Island. While Migueleeto and Croak stayed behind in the hidden vault, Janna (who could breathe water as well as air) and Juggernaut (who had no need to breathe at all) made their way through the twisting tide pool tunnel and out into the harbor. Thereafter, it was an easy matter for them to make their way back to the clearing atop Parrot Island, remove the rocks covering the trap door and affect the escape of the entire party. 

            After spending nearly two days battling undead and monstrous crabs within the tunnels below Parrot Island and being concerned for the safety of their patroness, Lavinia Vanderboren, the party hurried back across the harbor in their dingy, leaving Parrot Island behind...

June 2^nd 1589 RI

 

            Early the next morning, the party awoke and made their way to Vanderboren Manor, expecting a meeting with the Mistress of the manor and breakfast. Again in the splendid dining hall, over a hearty morning meal, Migueleeto narrated in discriminating detail the events and the discoveries of the previous night’s mission and handed over to Lavinia not only her father’s lost signet ring, but also the scroll with the idiosyncratic lines of cryptic text and the one hundred platinum coins which the knave Soller Vark had intercepted from being properly paid to the harbormaster.

            Mistress Vanderboren, astounded with the lofty level of success the party had achieved in a matter of mere hours, immediately offered to hire the foursome as personal retainers for a fee of one hundred gold pieces a month. After the companions graciously accepted Lavinia’s offer, she asked them to perform their first duty as her newest employees – to accompany her to Castle Teraknian and assist her in gaining access to the Vanderboren family vault.

          

 

 

 

            Castle Teraknian exists outside of the seven districts of Sasserine, yet exists to serve all of them. Below the castle are the King’s Crypts – burial chambers for the Teraknian line, who founded the city and whose long line of lord-mayors ruled it for centuries. Also housed in the basement of Castle Teraknian lies the Noble’s Vault, where Sasserine’s nobility can store valuables away from their personal estates. Each of Sasserine’s noble families has a vault within the basement of Castle Teraknian, and none but the nobles are ever granted access to the Noble’s Vault. 

            As the group travel via coach from the Vanderboren estate to Castle Teraknian in the High Market of the Noble District, Lavinia explained that, although she had never personally seen her family’s vault, rumor held that the vaults of the noble families were sometimes quite extensive and possibly trapped. In fact, she seemed to remember her father once recounting some details about their vault and she suspected that the Vanderboren vault is relatively small, but that there may be a construct guardian housed within. 

            To reach Castle Teraknian, Lavinia and the party had to take a ferry across part of the harbor and once inside the structure, stopped to speak with municipal clerk who verified Lavinia’s identity and noble status. From there, they were directed down a spiral staircase to a large chamber below Castle Teraknian. 

            Over a dozen hallways radiated out from the central vault chamber, each leading to an iron door. Following one such hallway, Migueleeto noted that the iron door at its terminus was emblazoned with a simple rune – an eight pointed star, the symbol of The Seekers – and a silver plaque above the door with Vanderboren written in flowing script. Migueleeto gulped in nervous anticipation, wondering what the Seekers had to do with the Vanderboren family and what would lie within the vault. 

            Lavinia used her father’s newly returned signet ring as a “key” of sorts to open the vault door, inserting it into a small depression above the door handle and releasing the lock on the ensorcelled portal. With Lavinia standing aside, the party plunged into the darkness of the Vanderboren vault.

            Within, two fifteen-foot-wide alcoves each with a marble pillar flanked a central chamber with five pillars set into the walls and a domed ceiling over a polished green marble floor.  Above their heads, the party noted the all-to-familiar eight-pointed-star engraved upon the ceiling.  

            As the coterie spread out through the chamber to investigate, a sudden attack from a creature resembling a three-foot-long serpent made of dozens of circular iron bands fitted together to form a cobra-like body which was stealthily hidden came around one of the pillars. The creature, apparently the aforementioned construct guardian of the vault, attacked the party with cold, calculating efficiency as Lavinia watched, horrified from outside the vault doorway. The creature, although not a living viper, still emitted a debilitating venom from its fangs that sapped the very strength from its victim’s sinews, as Migueleeto could attest to first hand upon being bitten by the creature. Although Janna, Croak, and the incomparable Juggernaut landed many blows upon the construct, it seemed to be resistant to much of their damage, with many hits simply glancing off its iron hide. Migueleeto, with his knowledge of such creatures, cast forth a portion of his arcane power to damage the creature with a touch of his hand. His infusion caused considerable damage to the iron cobra, completely bypassing it resistances. After a few more damaging infusions from the artificer and a couple well-placed hits from the rest of the party, the construct fell, shattering into pieces upon the floor of the vault.

            After recovering from the melee, Janna and Migueleeto began to painstakingly search the vault for some sort of secret door or chamber, since there was little else of interest to be found within the camber. As the minutes passed, Janna suddenly exclaimed that she had found something - the half-pillar that lined the central portion of the vault-chamber had a small, well-hidden switch where it joined the vault wall. Once Migueleeto was satisfied that it was not trapped, Janna activated the switch and the snake motif on the pillar animated, their serpentine bodies writhing to the sides to form an archway leading to another chamber.

              One the other side of the newly revealed portal was an octagonal room, supported by a single large pillar in the center of the chamber with dozens of deep grooves running along its sides. The seven other walls of the inner vault each bore fantastically detailed bas-relief carvings of exotic monsters: a tentacled monster with a glaring red eye and a mouth full of teeth, a looming dragon, a fish-like creature with three eyes and four tentacles, a two-headed giant wielding a pair of immense clubs, a spherical creature with four eyestalks and a bulging central eye over a drooling maw, a gorilla-like beast with a fanged maw and six eyes, and finally a towering black spider with seven eyes. On all of the carvings, the various eyes of the monsters were set with glittering red stones. The ceiling, only ten foot above, featured an, all too familiar, eight-pointed star radiating out from the grooved pillar in the center of the ceiling. The arms of the star were all black, save one which was colored red, pointing to the open doorway where the party gawked.

            The entire group, including Lavinia, was astounded by the nature and appearance of the chamber – without even being yet able to glean its purpose. During the next hour, filled with intense periods of investigation and searching as well as few breathless seconds of random experimentation, the companions determined that the central pillar and the star on the ceiling were, in fact, a cleverly designed combination lock with the grooved pillar acting as an immense stone tumbler that could be rotated and thus change the position of the “star” on the ceiling. As the pillar was rotated the star turned to land the red leg onto another face of the octagonal room, clicking into place. 

            It was finally surmised that the strange coded text that was written on the parchment hidden with Lavinia’s father’s ring on The Blue Nixie was, indeed, the combination to this enormous lock. Using Janna’s experience with locks and a combined breadth of knowledge concerning the physiology of various monsters real and imagined, they turned the pillar a number of “clicks” equal to the number of eyes that each creature possessed on the list, turning alternately to the right (sunrise) then to the left (sunset). 

            As the final segment of the combination was completed, five secret alcoves in the walls twisted open to reveal some twenty chests and coffers within. However, as Lavinia soon discovered, chest after chest and coffer after coffer had been recently emptied and were devoid of the valuable funds she so desperately needed. As she grew more and more distraught, one of the alcoves seemed to be unlooted – revealing several chests which contained thousands of coins as well as a large number of ledgers and documents. 

            Upon inspection, many of the documents denoted debts owed to the Vanderboren family by various guilds and other noble families in Sasserine. Also within an iron coffer was a log of sorts written in Sylvan by Lavinia’s mother (Lavinia recognized her handwriting). The journal included maps of several jungles, coastlines and other unknown tropical locations as well as sketches of strange, exotic fauna and flora.

            After collecting all of the valuables within the Vanderboren vault, Lavinia marched back upstairs and demanded from the clerk to know who had visited the family vault recently. The sputtering clerk responded that over the course of several visits in the last month that the vault had been accessed many time by none other than her very own brother – Vanthus Vanderborren…

June 1^st 1589 RI

 

            It started just like any other day for Migueleeto in Sasserine, he and Juggernaut were prowling Azure District searching for hulls to scrape the barnacles off of to make a few silver pieces. Luckily, they found a caravel that was in need of their unique services. Their latest job had even garnered them the unexpected attention of Keltar Islaran, who spewed forth insults and curses at the pair as he passed by the berth where Migueleeto directed the ships crane-operator to lower the warforged alongside the ship. The nature of the old harbormasters interest in the unusual pair was not apparent, but Migueleeto figured that the ancient codger must like them, since he had not yet had them removed from the harbor and, for the most part, allowed them to go about their business without molestation.

            After Keltar passed, Migueleeto’s instruction of the ship’s crane man was once again disturbed by the approach of a wizened halfling woman who bore a message for him and the Juggernaut. The halfling, aptly named Kora Whistelgap, introduced herself in an annoyingly over-occurant, whistle-laden cadence and handed over the missive. Contained within was an invitation to Vanderborren Manor at the behest of one, Lavinia Vanderborren, to discuss an opportunity that she had for the two of them. 

            Figuring that a noble of Sasserine would pay considerably more than the tight-bunged first mates in Azure District, Juggernaut and Migueleeto quickly told the gap-toothed messenger of Lavinia Vanderborren, that they would accept her mistresses offer and be in attendance that very evening.

           

Upon making their way to Merchant’s District that evening, Migueleeto and Juggernaut happened upon two other unusual denizens of Sasserine: Janna, an aquatic woman (a race known as the Aventi) whom Juggernaut had encountered in his time working beneath the surface of Sasserine’s waters, and Croak the Web-footed, a strange, diminutive frog-man (known in these parts as a Grippli) who venerated Kord, the god of strength. As the odd foursome made each others acquaintance in the streets, they were interrupted by the unexpected, hysterical entrance of a horrified alley cat, who was immediately set after by a small group of rabid stray dogs. Without plan or conversation, the group assembled a defiant front against the mad dogs, polishing-off the pooches while protecting the petrified pussy. 

            While recovering from the short, but brutal skirmish, the four discovered that they all shared a common destination; Migueleeto, Juggernaut, Janna and Croak all had received missives from Lavinia Vanderborren and were all on their way to Vanderborren Manor. Traveling there together, Migueleeto couldn’t help but feel the not-no-subtle hand of fate closing upon the group, even though he was slightly disappointed that he may have to now split his fee four ways instead of two…

            Once at Vanderborren Manor, the party was escorted inside to a spacious dining hall, where they met Lavinia Vanderborren, recent heir to the Vanderborren estate and fortune. Lavinia explained, over a sumptuous dinner, that along with inheriting the Vanderborren estate, she has inherited a substantial amount of debt that her parents had amassed as well. Lavinia elucidated that she was sure that sufficient funds to resolve the family debts were housed in the family vaults below Castle Teraknian; however, access to the vault could only be gained by a Vanderborren with one of their signet rings, which were emblazoned with their family crest. The current location of the two existing rings constituted further problem from young Lavinia, as her recently deceased mother’s ring had been lost from some time and her recently deceased father’s ring, which he never wore, was secreted away in a hidden location aboard a ship he owned, a caravel named The Blue Nixie. 

            Lavinia explained that the problem therein lies with the harbormaster, who had seized the vessel holding it for four months of mooring fees that had not been paid. She has paid the back fees to the harbormasters man who he put in charge of The Blue Nixie, a brute named Soller Vark, yet when she went to secure the return of the ship, Vark’s men would not surrender it, claiming that she had made no such payment. Vark has since denied ever receiving the payment and complaints to the harbormaster have fallen on deaf ears. 

            Lavinia then offered the group 200 gold coins each to go to The Blue Nixie, find out what Vark is up to on her ship, return her harbor fees to her, and secure a mean by which she can attain access to her family vaults.

            As the party graciously accepted Lavinia’s offer, some of them noted the presence of the stray cat from the encounter earlier in the street, sitting on the window ledge, patiently and attentively grooming herself…

           

       

            Late that evening, after taking a short period to equip and ready themselves, the strange group made their way down to pier 5, where Lavinia indicated that The Blue Nixie was moored. Much to their surprise, however, they found that the ship was not, in fact, moored there, but instead she was anchored about one hundred feet out into the harbor.  

            Despite smelling trouble, the party decided to commandeer a dingy and make their way stealthily out to The Blue Nixie, to see if they could ascertain what was afoot. As the Juggernaut rowed the small boat nearer to the Nixie, Janna slipped overboard and, much more in her natural element, swam noiselessly around to the stern of the ship. Meanwhile, Migueleeto summoned up a minor magic to place an aura of magical silence on the rowboat, thus allowing them to slip up alongside the Nixie without being detected. 

            Even with these remarkable precautions and strategies, the approaching trio on the dingy were still spotted as they drew near The Blue Nixie. As Juggernaut continued to row closer and closer to the side of the ship, the lookout onboard the Nixie continued to shout warnings at the trio, while Janna was able to scale the stern of the ship undetected. 

            All at once, combat broke out, the lookout fired upon the crew of the dingy as they attempted to board the Nixie, Janna stealthily attacked another guard on the ship’s quarterdeck and more crew were summoned up on deck. Next, from within the wardroom, Soller Vark joined the fray, calling down below decks to some of his crew within to “burn them all”…

            As Juggernaut and Janna engaged Vark in a twisted, deadly melee on the deck of the ship, Croak and Migueleeto proceeded into the cargo hold to find that one of Vark’s crew had set fire to the hold, which was stocked with dozens of cages full of rare, exotic animals (all of them highly illegal). The growing inferno had caused the imprisoned animals to go mad with fright, including one extraordinary creature that burst forth from its large cage, a spider-legged horror the size of a pony, its body dark brown with yellow stripes, its furry legs long and spindly. The front-most pair of its ten legs reared up threateningly, their tips flattening into terrible discs studded with dozens of hooked suckers. Its monstrous head was shockingly oversized, dominated by a pair of immense mandibles that chattered and clacked with enraged hunger. 

            The monsters first action upon escaping the bonds of its sundered cage was to attack the smuggler who had set the fire in the hold. The ill-fated pirate was ripped in half from a single snap of the creature’s massive mandibles.  Croak was forced to cease his attempts to put out the fire below decks to defend himself from the terror, as Migueleeto launched crossbow bolts erringly at the beast and yowled up through the cargo hatch for Juggernaut to make haste and assist them. 

            Meanwhile, Juggernaut and Janna had not quite finished dispatching Soller Vark on the deck of The Blue Nixie – in fact, the little, bald pirate boss had somehow managed to bull-rush the unstoppable Juggernaut over the side of the ship. But after being unceremoniously disarmed of his rapier, Vark decided to quit the battle and jumped overboard, swimming for shore. 

            A freshly dunked Juggernaut and Janna hurried below-decks to find that the raging horror had dealt Migueleeto a near-fatal blow and was causing havoc below, while the fire still raged and the caged animals struggled against their bonds. After being reinforced with the combat prowess and the Juggernaut and the agile ripostes of Janna, Croak was able to finally bring low the blood-soaked monstrosity with a mighty cleave of his small greatsword. Then, after putting out the fire in the cargo hold, Croak even found time to staunch the wounds of his companions who lie bleeding to death on the floor of The Blue Nixie’s hold. 

            Despite the grievous wounds suffered at the hands of the smugglers and the maw of their deadly contraband, and thanks to the healing magic which Croak conjured from Kord, the party set about searching the ship from bow to stern and deck to bilge. The party noted that The Blue Nixie was being made ready to make sail and that it’s cargo of illegal creatures lead credence to their suspicions that Soller Vark was a no-good scoundrel. Searching within the captain’s quarters revealed a large trunk with Lavinia’s absconded payment for the harbormaster within, and after an exhaustive search over every nook, cranny, panel and floorboard, they found within a hidden compartment in the headboard of the captain’s bunk, a scrap of rolled-up parchment threaded through a ring – a signet ring with the Vanderborren family crest upon it. Upon the parchment was an odd few lines of script:

 

 

 

 

            Confused but intrigued, the party returned to the deck of The Blue Nixie and planned their next move. While the Migueleeto did not want to abandon Lavinia’s ship in the middle of the harbor unprotected, Croak wisely pointed out that the party would not want to be found by the local authorities aboard a ship filled with illegal, exotic creatures, where a number of killings had recently took place. The party agreed that retreating to a safe place (Janna graciously offered the use of her shack in Azure District) for the night and returning the money, ring, and news of what had happened on her ship to Mistress Vanderborren first thing in the morning was the best course of action. As the party readied one of the Nixie’s longboats to cast off (their previously acquisitioned dingy had long-since gone adrift as none of the party had the presence of mind to secure it to the Nixie during the battle), Migueleeto reluctantly gazed back through the darkness with his acute gnomish sight at Pier 5, hoping against hope that he would see someone who could watch over The Blue Nixie until morning when they could return to have the ship properly brought in to dock. Sitting on the edge of the pier nonchalantly, were three cats, one of whom was the stray the party had saved earlier in the day.

            Migueleeto sighed and did it anyway – as the party shoved off in the longboat and headed off into the inky blackness of night, the whisper gnome called forth a special magic of his race and sent a whispered message across the winds to the ears of the cat, some one hundred feet away. He murmured, “Watch over our ship tonight, kitty, and I’ll have a nice saucer of milk for you tomorrow…”

            The cat jumped straight up into the air and shot off into the night…

The City of Sasserine lies perched on the edge of the known world, the last stop before the endless expanse of the Amedio Jungle. It is a hub for trade and home to more than fifteen thousand souls – a bastion of civilization in a realm plagued by piracy, disease, violent weather, and monsters.

 

Sasserine itself is governed by a group of noble families called the Dawn Council, each representing one of the city’s seven districts. Likewise, each district has a common faith shared by many of its citizens. Sasserine is in every way a city of industry. All seven districts feature large arrays of shops ranging from simple groceries to specialized buildings like potion shops and magic item bazaars.  There is little that cannot be purchased openly somewhere in Sasserine with the exception of hard drugs, dangerous monsters, slaves, and other criminal services. One who seeks illegal wares can still find them for sale in the city’s seedier sections. 

 

In Migueleeto’s search for a patron, he happened upon the Seekers. This loose-knit society of explorers, adventuring-scholars, and fortune hunters scouts the world for ancient secrets and lost magic. The Seekers remain a secret society, working in the shadows and pooling information to benefit themselves. 

 

Although unaware of the location of the actual Seekers Lodge in Sasserine, Migueleeto made contact with a member of the Seekers, one Erlow Trigerus. Erlow, also a purveyor of the magic arts, assured the young gnome that his induction into the Seekers in forthcoming, but only after Migueleeto proves to Erlow that he has a driving ambition to discover the lost secrets of the past and is willing to share – to a point – information that could help other Seekers on the path to discovery, illumination, and enrichment. 

 

 Migueleeto has begun keeping a journal, which he calls his explorer’s travelogue, and is prompt in turning copies of it in to Erlow on a regular basis – although he has had nothing too exciting to scribe into the journal as of yet.

Migueleeto is a young Whisper Gnome born to Krisablonna and Moreefeous Tugnutz. Moreefeous worked for the city watch of Sitticus where he built and enchanted golems to help guard the city. After dozens of successfully implemented construct guardians in various vaults, dungeons and gates throughout the kingdom, one of the golems created by Moreefeous went berserk, killed 3 guards and destroyed a wing of a museum before it could be put down. 

 

Moreefeous was imprisoned for life to pay for the crimes of his creation, despite his claims of innocence. Krisablonna was so incensed by the audacity of the courts verdict that she died on the spot when he was sentenced. Migueleeto attempted to get his life together and continue his father’s work after the tragedy, but found that he was blackballed by the community and that no one would pay for his services. 

 

So, in a brief visitation through bars of iron, Migueleeto bid his father farewell, vowing that after he made his own fortune elsewhere in the realm, that he would return and free Moreefeous one way or another. Migueleeto then sold the remaining equipment from his father’s workshop that had not been confiscated as evidence by the state, closed and locked the little building up, and purchased passage on a ship to the far-away city of Sasserine. 

 

Upon arrival in Sasserine, young Migueleeto fell in love with the city. The bridges, the districts, the smell of the sea all appealed to the gnome. He attempted to make his living doing odd jobs between Azure and Champion’s Districts with little success. He was not strong or skilled enough to repair machinery at the docks without using infusions, and he was not an experienced enough artificer to use infusions properly and profitably. Migueleeto languished in his inability to “make a fortune” overnight and grew depressed - until the day he met the Juggernaut…

 

Migueleeto and the Juggernaut, a hulking warforged new to Sasserine as well, struck up an instant friendship, both being strangers in a strange land. The gnome found that he related much more easily to the “living construct” than to other folks in Sasserine, since he had spent so much time as a gnomeling around his father’s golems and homunculi. Migueleeto also discovered that the Juggernaut’s composite body was a prefect receptacle for his infusions. The two of them teamed up and soon became well-known odd-couple around Azure District, not only for the unique way that they worked together (Migueleeto and the Juggernaut would regularly offer to clean barnacles off ships hulls without having to have them dry-docked by lowering the Juggernaut into the water with the ship’s crane, since he had no need to breathe) but also in the humorous manner in which they interacted with each other and with those around them. 

 

Migueleeto is now looking for a patron for himself and the Juggernaut; someone who can give them the footing they need in the city to make their fortune. He really doesn’t care what it is they will have to do, since he’s certain that between the Juggernaut’s sheer strength and with his gnomish ingenuity, there’s nothing that the two of them cannot accomplish.