Freeday 21st of Planting, 643
Lizard Pirates
At breakfast, Vayne introduced us to her sister, Avery. Avery is almost identical to Vayne, and they sat down with us and told us that their family used to be wealthy a few generations ago and into artworks. They would commission portraits but over time their fortunes waned and they had to sell the portraits until they only had one left.
They had come into contact with a very powerful man who wanted to buy the final portrait and offered a lot of gold. They refused. One night after that, the portrait vanished. They believe the man stole it. They now know he was the Duke of Caltan's Roost.
They want us to retrieve it but they don’t have much to offer as a reward. Vayne told us that we can chose from the lost and found box if we like.
We got a description of the painting - 3x4 ft, white wood, intricately carved frame, portrait of a tall elven man with short cropped white with a tinge of blue hair. Artist was Flinra
After breakfast, we headed over to the Westford Trading Company and met Alf, who has heard about what happened at the Temple. He offered a move to “Friend” of Company in exchange for a favour. They have been getting some goods pirated from their ships, and they wanted the pirates taken care of and the unopened crates returned.
Alf took us down to the docks to the O’Than, a small ship with two sails - one large and one small. We met Captain Elva, a half orc with a parrot called Jenny on his shoulder. Elva told us that they had lost a number of ships, crew members and goods - he believed it to be a targeted attack on the Westford Trading Company.
The attackers are pirates according to reports of survivors; they are not aggressive when they find out that boat is empty, but very aggressive when boat has goods.
We loaded some empty containers onto the O’Than and sailed out to the islands that Westford use for their “trading”.
As we left the bay the number of ships around droped off and wind picked up. Jenny (the parrot) sang sea shanties, and Tooms started to look distinctly green. After about an hour we lost sight of the mainland, and after another half an hour we spoted a group of 6 islands. All fairly rocky, and the closest had a hut and some sheep on it. Elva informed us that this is the group of islands that Westford use. They have one island that they use the most and we decided to head there.
Similar to the others, this island was mainly rocky with a few trees and some brush, wedge shaped with lower end of the wedge leading to a natural harbour. We dropped anchor and waited a few hours with no interruption. After this we raised anchor and headed to the Shepherd’s Island. On the way there we were ambushed by two lizard pirates with two crocodile-style lizards who swam through the water to reach us. Two more lizard pirates appeared from the lower hold of the ship.
After defeating the attackers, we tied up the fourth pirate (missing a leg after our battler) and attempted to interrogate it. It didn’t seem to understand so we untied the pirate and let it go. Grun became an octopus and followed the pirate to an island, where is headed to a cliff and dove under the water, surfacing in a cave.
Grun returned to the ship and brought Tooms and I into the cave.
We explored the caves, finding other pirate lizards, and as we got to back of the cave system we were attacked by two very large lizard people, who were screaming at us to leave.
After a long battle, where Grun summoned a bear to fight with us, we finally defeated the lizards and found five crates which we drag back to the ship. We also took the severed tail of the large purple lizard as proof of our encounter and headed back to Underbrow docks.
Friend Coin
We returned to Alf who was delighted that we had recovered his crates and invited us into his back room, his living quarters, offered us food and drink, and extends the hand of friendship of the WTC to us. He them palmed a steel coin to each of us, with a logo on one side and a stylised dragon on the other.
As Captain Elva left, he wished us well and told us to see him if we need any work.
Grun and I retired to the Cleft Boulder for drinks while Tooms took a walk around town, to get his bearings a bit more.
Whilst at the Cleft Boulder, Strot told us of pit fights every 10th day and tells us that we can take part if we wish. We also head more about the Hartess mine shutting down suddenly and decided we should investigate.
Grun and I met Tooms back at the Silver Oak, and Vayne greeted us all as friends and offered more food. We decided on desert - a nice apple crumble and headed to bed.
