Freeport Campaign

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 750
• Treasure: None to speak of

Well rested after their ordeals from the previous few days, Spike, Richard, and Balama visited their usual contacts to investigate the available options for bringing Chow back from his boat on the Black River of the Dead. Richard already had the ability to raise the recently dead, but the destructive magic that had dessicated Chow would require even more powerful magic to negate. Peg-Leg Peligro suggested that an old pirating acquaintance of his, an aged dwarf named Ivan Blackfathom, might still be found distilling rum in the small fishing village of Poisson, some distance southwest of Freeport. The dwarf’s name struck Richard as somewhat familiar, and Peg-Leg verified that Blackfathom was indeed a longtime follower of Harrimast who had brought countless scalawags to the faith. Given the circumstances of Chow’s demise in continued defense of Freeport, the retired dwarf might be convinced to perform a true resurrection, provided the party could come up with the 25,000 gp in diamonds necessary to complete the spell.

Will Teach informed the group that they would face similar costs if they could even find a wizard able and willing to wield the reality-warping spells necessary to bring Chow back by arcane means, as the magics involved tended to drain significant amounts of the caster’s own lifeforce. As he knew of no wizards in Freeport with such a degree of learning, he suggested looking to the mainland, perhaps in the capitals of Eisen, Montaigne, or Castille.

The group decided almost immediately to visit Ivan Blackfathom, and so set about calling in favors and selling off some of their more powerful magical loot in order to secure the requisite pile of diamonds. In the course of their month of fundraising, the group also made some progress toward a couple of longer-term goals and tied up some loose ends that had been bothering them for a while.

Spike discovered that deposed King Albigensius IV of Avalon, whom the party had raised after his assassination at the Last Resort, had apparently been removed forcibly from the throne by his cousin Cosmus as a result of intractable religious differences. It seemed that Albigensius was a devout follower of Naryne, the Dark Sister, the goddess of nobility. Cosmus, himself a devotee of the Great Church, which revered all the Lords of Heaven, had used Albigensius’s faith to whip up the peasantry in a mostly peaceful populist revolt against the “haughty upper crust who only seek to keep themselves in power at the expense of the common man.” Given the circumstances that led to the former King’s ouster, Spike found himself somewhat less disposed to offer aid to the man in the future.

While asking around town about the situation in Avalon, Spike also happened to talk to Will about what was going on with K’Stallo/Thuron. The former High Priest of Tinel had set about repairing and refurbishing the sunken Temple of Yig beneath Black Dog’s caves on the north end of A’val. He had eventual hopes of restoring civility and sanity to the surviving degenerate members of his race, and was employing the Jade Serpent and the various other artifacts of Yig to that end. Will intimated that it would be unwise to approach K’Stallo at this critical juncture, but that when the priest thought the serpentfolk were finally ready to make contact with the people of Freeport, he would appreciate the Freeport Four acting as emissaries between the two potentially hostile groups.

Meanwhile, Kolter made contact with the party again, letting them know that he was ready to try arranging sources for the materials he needed to produce the spiffy black explosive powder he had demonstrated for them months earlier. He already had contacts for the charcoal and sulfur he needed, but did not have a line on the quantities of saltpeter he would need. He occasionally managed to pick up limited amounts from the Wizards’ Guild and various alchemists around town, but those dribs and drabs were not nearly enough for sustained production. He said that the substance generally could be extracted from swamps, from beneath the guano in caves that housed large groups of bats, or from beneath the mounds of droppings that accompanied large populations of birds. When he mentioned this last possibility, the group immediately thought of the tribe of aarakocra whose scouts they had rescued from the strange pirate slaver several months ago. Kolter seemed excited at the possibility of reaching some kind of arrangement with the birdmen, and asked the party if they would be willing to accompany him on a trade mission. They agreed, and set off within the week.

The aarakocra greeted them cordially, and after some lengthy negotiations agreed to let the party or their employees visit the island twice a year to mine saltpeter in exchange for a suitable amount of gems, metal spearheads, and other trade goods. The birdmen also pointed out a few nearby islands with bird populations sizable enough to generate saltpeter. In celebration of the new trade agreement, the party and the aarakocra shared a feast that evening, including a Heroes’ Feast from Harrimast provided at Richard’s magical request.

Kolter, quite pleased with the party’s performance, offered them another potentially lucrative trade opportunity. He had approached the Freeport Admiralty with an idea for mounting larger guns on ships, and they seemed receptive after a couple of demonstrations. To move to the next phase of the operation, Kolter needed to make contact with one or more bellfounders, to see if they could tweak their manufacturing processes to produce stronger, elongated bells, called “cannon,” to his specification. He didn’t know of anyone in Freeport with the capability to make such things, but he knew that ships’ bells had to come from somewhere. He had the names of a few people on the mainland, and asked the party if they’d be willing to accompany him when the time was right. Again, they agreed fairly quickly. Spike, Richard, and Balama had recently decided to make a grand journey to numerous ports around the Inworld Sea both to establish trade contacts and simply to see more of the world around them, so Kolter’s plans seemed to fit in seamlessly with their own, at least for the time being.

By this time, Peg-Leg had used his divine magic to make contact with Ivan Blackfathom and confirm that the dwarf was indeed still alive in Poisson, and that he was willing to cast the true resurrection to bring back Chow, as long as the party provided the necessary diamonds. To that end, the group had managed to sell Spike’s Mace of Terror and Chow’s Dagger of Venom and convert the proceeds into a large, carefully guarded sack of gems. Thus prepared, the group set off to Poisson.

They arrived at the small fishing village an uneventful three days later and met Ivan at Seamus’s Tavern. The ancient dwarf said that upon further consideration, he’d agree to bring Chow back on two conditions: one, that the party would investigate the Poisson lighthouse, which had gone dark a few days earlier, and two, that the party would take Ivan and most of his stock of rum back to Freeport. He planned to leave the distilling business in the hands of his assistants and return to his homeland, and Freeport was the first step in the that direction. The group agreed immediately, and offered to do him one better by taking him to his hometown as part of their grand tour. He got a bit misty-eyed and said that a last great voyage sounded perfect, and that even if he didn’t make it back to his homeland, having a deck under his feet for a few weeks would be worth it.

After a few minutes lost in thought, Ivan led the group to his office. He removed diamonds by the handful from the sack that the group handed him and arrayed the gems into a vaguely humanoid shape on an empty table. Without further preamble, he began his ten-minute entreaty to Harrimast to return Chow from wherever he had ended up after his silent boat ride with Mormekar. As the casting progressed, the diamonds on the table began to dissolve into gray smoke that gradually coalesced into Chow’s mortal form. Chow coughed once and opened his eyes in time to see Spike and Richard catch Ivan as the dwarf collapsed unconscious to the ground. They relocated the priest to a cot in the back room and returned to check on their friend.

Chow told Spike, Richard, and Balama that while he had had several enlightening and fulfilling conversations with his ancestors during his sojourn to the afterlife, he was glad to be back. He thanked his compatriots for sacrificing their time and material wealth to bring him back for more adventures with them, and told them that if similar actions should unfortunately become necessary in the future that he would do anything in his power to repay the favor.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS