27: The Yellow Boat

 

Bezahltag 19^th Sigmarzeit

After getting rid of Catrina and her plague babies, you explored the cavern and found that it led to the cavern you had previously found, with the derelict boat in it. And you carried Max to the temple of Shallya where Marit mixed some sort of green concoction for him, and said he should take it three times a day and it would deal with most of the symptoms of his Blood Rot infection. And then you left everything for the Shallyans to deal with.

You went back to Frau Koester’s for bed, and found that she had moved some rat catcher called Rolf in for the night, but luckily, as Berta wasn’t around, he could sleep in her bed, with his dog, Sniff. And during the night Max didn’t die in his sleep.

Guiltag 20^th Sigmarzeit

In the morning, you had gruel, and Max had to mix his medicine with it to make it palatable. You were telling Rolf of some of the stuff you had got up to, which, sounded like you made most of it up, when Frau Koester told you she had a message from Johan Rotter that he wanted to see you at the Hangman.

At the Hangman, Rotter told you that his first choice jobbers had gone missing on a crate delivery, and had taken his boat with them, and he was angry about it, and promised that if you got his boat back, he would make you his first choice troubleshooters, and pay you ten guilders. He also lent you his old boat which wasn’t in as good repair as his newer yellow one.

Being Wastelanders, both Rolf and Balden said they could sail, although neither of them were keen on it. Rolf tried first, and sent the boat straight across the canal and into the wall. So Balden tried and he wasn’t much better. But the two of them eventually worked together and managed to get the boat sailing in the right direction.

You crossed the Rijk and headed up to Ostmuur which is where the other crew had been told to deliver a crate to Dahl Import Export. The boat was leaking quite a bit so you had to keep bailing it out, but Max inspected it and decided that it probably was seaworthy as long as you didn’t have too strong winds, and luckily today it was perfect sailing weather, if a bit drizzly.

At DIE you spoke to a black-suited clerk called Rick Basse and he denied that there had even been a delivery. But you felt that he was lying about that. So you tried to lean on him, and Rolf threatened him with a rat infestation, but Basse stood up to that. But then Dietrich grabbed a pile of his paperwork, and made it rot before his eyes and he feared he might do that to all the important ledgers, so he admitted that there had been a delivery.

Basse said his boss, Hermann Dahl, was grieving and that he didn’t need to be disturbed. But he had sent Rotter’s team up to Dahl’s summer house, about ten miles away, on an island in the bay, a couple of days before, with the crate.

So Balden and Rolf tentatively sailed out into open sea, keeping as close to the banks as they dared, and after a couple of hours you found the island with an old house on it. When you got to the door Dietrich magically opened that, too, although it wasn’t clear whether it had been locked in the first place.

And inside you were greeted by the housekeeper, Gretl. She said Hermann wasn’t seeing anyone, but you told her that Basse had sent you, so she went upstairs to get him.

Hermann, a youngish man, wearing black, told you he had received the delivery and the delivery crew had been fed and sent on their way. And he got Gretl to confirm the story, but you got the feeling he was a bit uneasy about the crate, or something. And he offered you some of Gretl’s chicken stew, before you left.

But he noticed that Dietrich was a wizard and started asking him questions about the afterlife and communing with spirits, and got more interested when Dietrich said he was an amethyst wizard.

You felt things were a bit off, and you didn’t trust the stew, but Sniff was enthusiastic about it, so you tucked in. And while you were eating, Hermann invited Dietrich up to his room, and showed him a body lying on his bed. He explained that it was his recently deceased wife, Helena. And he showed him some strange artefacts, a black mirror, a black candle, and a skeletal forearm wearing a ring, and a scroll with magical writing on it.

He said that he was going to use it to bring his wife back, although he knew it was dangerous, but he decided the gods must have delivered an amethyst wizard to him to help him. And when Dietrich explained that this was too dangerous, and that he would never get his real wife back, Hermann begged him and offered him a thousand guilders. Dietrich made his excuses and left, and Hermann said he would do it himself, anyway.

Max went for a wander round the house and garden on the pretext of needing the latrine, but was watched by the gardener, and couldn’t find anything suspicious or incriminating.

When Dietrich got to the kitchen he told everyone Hermann was mad and explained what he was going to do, but he didn’t tell them about the thousand guilders in case that was too tempting, and you resolved to stop him. Gretl said that he was a good master but was just grieving, but Max explained to her that Helena could never be brought back and Gretl admitted that he was probably right.

And she also revealed that she had given the other crew rum with their stew and they had got very raucous, and demanded more rum, and then taken the entire keg. And had disappeared sailing in the exact opposite direction. She hadn’t wanted to trouble Hermann with this detail, as he had enough on his mind.

So you went up to Helena’s room and Dietrich pretended that he was going to do the ritual after all, but then you surprised Hermann and Rolf head-bagged him and Heinrich knocked him out with a rolling pin.

You decided to lay Helena’s body to rest in front of him, and so tied him up and the gardener dug a grave in the garden. You had some sort of burial ceremony, and hoped that that would help Hermann realise she was not coming back, and you left him crying over the grave.

You put all the magical paraphernalia in a sack, but couldn’t decide whether it would be safe enough to just throw it out to sea, so you kept it. You sailed further away from Marienburg, and Balden did a decent job of it, helped by Rolf. And after an hour or so’s sailing you spotted Rotter’s yellow boat resting against the marshy shore. After a sail-by you spotted it moving, and some large tentacles, and decided it had been colonised by a bog octopus.

You decided to approach the boat from land, and so tied your boat up about fifty yards away. You watched the bog octopus for a while as Balden tried to summon power from the ambient magic of the marsh. And eventually he managed to magically entangle the creature, and Max fired a pistol at it, hitting its huge body, but Rolf’s sling missed, and Heinrich tried out his longbow for the first time, but his arrow missed.

The octopus broke free of the magical entanglement extremely easily and slipped away into the water. Immediately, Rolf jumped onto the boat and tried to steer it away from the shore, and Dietrich joined him, while Heinrich and Max covered them, and Balden ran for the other boat.

Rolf’s sailing skill hadn’t improved, however, and a long tentacle reached around his leg and held him fast, while he managed to avoid a second tentacle.

And another tentacle went for Dietrich, but strangely he had dreamt this exact moment, after he had been on Belladonna Firaglio’s dark wine. And through the dream he knew what the tentacle was going to do, and he avoided it. And it made him think that the wine could help him do this again.

Balden reached the other boat and tried to set sail, while Max and Heinrich were shooting at one of the tentacles, and Dietrich smashed it with his staff, but despite all this, the tentacle was still intact.

Despite the tentacle’s great strength, Rolf managed to break free of its grasp, which was unfortunate as Heinrich had levelled his long bow at the thing, and missed it, and hit Rolf squarely, sending him to the floor of the boat, badly injured. Dietrich grabbed him and jumped back onto land.

And then another tentacle grabbed Dietrich, wounding him, and dragging him to the ground. But in an heroic effort, Rolf managed to get to his feet and tried to drag Dietrich away.

You needed to cut the tentacle that was holding Dietrich, and Max shot it with his pistol, and deciding not to try another longbow shot, Heinrich drew his sword and tried to cut it. And he said a prayer to the local Nordlander forest spirit that had helped him before, and it guided his sword arm and he broke through the tentacle and Dietrich was free.

You all legged it as fast as you could towards the other boat, and by then Balden had managed to set sail, and soon you were all sailing away from the yellow boat, and heading back to Marienburg.

And as you sailed back, you bemoaned the fact that you had done all of this for nothing, hadn’t found the crew, which you assumed were long dead, and hadn’t managed to retrieve Rotter’s boat, and you wondered what you were going to tell him.