Chapter 5: The Sea Ghost

Written by Skarth Diem to Dronaet Klingstone

Once we’d caught our breaths after the frenetic fight, we set about checking the rest of the ship. It was pointed out to me that the name “Sea Ghost” was inscribed on the mount for the steering wheel as well as on the stern.

Ms Kelshann suggested we toss the bodies of the dead smugglers overboard, but Mrs Fisher wanted to keep them and take them back to the village. I assume she wanted to perform some religious ceremony for them or something.

Mrs Fisher checked the bodies for valuables and then moved them into a nice line in the centre of the ship so she could clean the blood off the decks. The rest of us proceeded to search the ship, first to see if any other smugglers were hiding away, but also to see what else we might find.

During the fight, Ms Kelshann had opened a cabin door at the front of the ship and discovered a small group of lizardfolk. They had seemed frightened and offered no violence so Ms Kelshann had told them to stay there and shut the door again before returning to the fight. We went and spoke to them very quickly. There were three of the lizard people. They told us they were passengers on the ship and had paid for some weapons for their people which the smugglers had pledged to deliver. We asked them to stay where they were and we left them there while we continued our search.

The other door at the front of the ship led into a kitchen, which is apparently called a galley when it’s on a ship. Behind that were a couple of storerooms – one containing food supplies and the other containing equipment and supplies for looking after the ship. Down a set of stairs behind the galley were the crew quarters and an entrance into the hold. The crew quarters smelled very bad. There was little fresh air and it looked like too many of the crew had to sleep in there, and that they weren’t in the habit of washing very often. We got out of the crew quarters as quickly as we could and stepped through the hatch into the hold. The hold contained many barrels of expensive brandy and wine, as well as quite a few bolts of silk cloth and some crates of mining tools. We looked around but didn’t see any signs of the weapons that the lizard people had mentioned.

We returned to the deck and started exploring the back half of the ship. There were two upper cabins. One cabin had clearly been occupied by the wizard and we found a spellbook and some wizard things. It was the cabin I had seen her come out of so I suppose that wasn’t a surprise.

The other was the Captain’s cabin and we found some papers – there were 3 nicely drawn maps of the coast. There were three letters – each written by a woman who spoke of the Captain as her husband. One of the women lived in Korvosa, another in Veldraine, and the third in Palin’s Cove. I thought that was interesting because it told us three ports the ship must have visited regularly. I thought maybe if we want to continue to pursue the smuggling operation, we could speak to these wives and find out who he spent time with when he visited the ports. There was also a crudely drawn map of Saltmarsh and the coast to the southwest, including an X that marked a small inlet about ten miles from Saltmarsh. Next to the X was written, “Rendezvous Spot” in a very scrawling script.

There were also a couple of locked boxes in the Captain’s cabin, one of which turned out to have a considerable amount of money in it. And he had some nice quality clothes and belongings – as did the other main people on the ship. This smuggling business was apparently quite profitable for them.

Down the stairs at the back of the ship, we found the cabins of the Bosun and the First Mate (which I have now learned are titles and not names). Again they had some nice things, and they had locked boxes containing some money. In the Bosun’s cabin there was a very odd-looking spear. After some careful searching, we found a hidden compartment in the back of the First Mate’s cabin. It contained bundles of newly made weapons including a very fancy looking shield.

We looked in the same place in the Bosun’s cabin and found a second hidden compartment. Inside the compartment was a prisoner shackled to the thick beams that shaped the hull of the ship. It was a humanoid figure but when we looked more closely we saw the high pointed ears of an elf and the colouration on the skin that indicated this was a sea elf. We removed the shackles from him and quickly learned that he only spoke a few words of the common tongue. Ms Riellian spoke to him in elvish and he seemed relieved to be able to communicate more freely.

The sea elf was named Oceanis, of the Manaan people. After a lengthy conversation, which Ms Riellian had to translate for us, it turned out that his chief had noticed this ship behaving strangely as it moved up and down the coast and had asked Oceanis to investigate. During that time, he had observed the ship visit the three ports, Korvosa, Veldraine and Palin’s Cove. In Korvosa, he saw them loading bundles of weapons aboard the ship and in an attempt to get a better view he was captured. He estimated that this was some 7 to 10 days before we had found him. The spear we’d found in the Bosun’s cabin turned out to be his and he seemed pleased to reclaim it.

We returned to speak to the lizard people and Oceanis followed along with us, keen to breathe the fresh air and also keen to find out more information for himself. We introduced ourselves properly to the lizard people, they were called Mirik, Ahuak and Varastrix, though Mirik appeared to be the only one who spoke very much Common. They also had a small creature with them called a pseudo-dragon which seemed to behave something like a playful puppy. It was also the size of a small dog, though it was clearly draconic.

Mirik confirmed that the weapons we’d found in the hidden compartment were for the lizardfolk and Mirik and his friends were there to escort the last shipment to their village – which was near the place marked on the crudely drawn map we had found. The Lizardmen didn’t seem to understand that the smugglers were doing anything illegal and were quite insistent that the contract be completed. He made it clear that they needed the weapons for their village so they could protect themselves from some threat to the village. We asked Mirik what the threat was and he was very vague and avoided answering.

Having checked the ship quite thoroughly, the decision was made to sail the ship back to Saltmarsh. Those in our party who could work the ship were quite confident that they could do that with the aid of the two marines who had come with us. I mostly tried to stay out of the way. My head was spinning from using too much magic and my stomach was churning from the alarming movement of the ship as it went over the waves, so I spent the majority of the journey clinging to the side of the ship and resisting the urge to expel the contents of my stomach over the side.

Despite being so physically uncomfortable, I was quite fascinated by the things they had to do to make the ship move through the water. It seems surprising to me that such a large thing would float, let alone move in the direction anyone wanted it to. Mrs Fisher tried to explain it to me but in the end, I took more comfort from Mrs Fisher’s confidence in the ship than in my own feeble understanding of how it worked.

After travelling for some time, with me clinging onto the rail at the side of the deck, I saw the sky begin to brighten in the East. I began to feel alarmed that we would not be back onshore by dawn. I’ve always done my dawn ceremony before a tree and there was no chance of finding a tree out here in the ocean. Mrs Fisher confirmed that they would not attempt to bring the ship into the dock until there was sufficient light for everyone to see clearly. I started to panic. How could I do my morning ceremony without a tree? I would’ve even settled for a shrub, but there was no growing plant onboard the ship. In the end, I decided that I would settle for the old dead tree trunk that was being used as the mast of the ship.