Character Baseline#

Cassiopeia “Cassie” Vexwell#

• Player: Saelora.
• Pronouns: she/her.
• Ancestry: Star Genasi. Her father is a tiefling, accounting for Cassie’s tiefling-like horns, tail, and overall appearance.
• Current class: Rogue 1 / Alchemist 1.
• Background and trade: Sailor: Navigator; Cassie works as a smuggler.
• Stellar Guidance: “You are guided by a guardian in the heavens. You cannot become lost as long as you can see the stars.” This replaces or modifies the Navigator background feature.
• Planned class direction: Alchemist, using a third-party class rather than the official artificer subclass.
• Homes: Cassie owns Vexwell Manor and plans to renovate it. In Saltmarsh itself, she stays in one of the Empty Net’s nicest rooms, arranged through Gellan, with a clear view of ships entering and leaving town.
• Family: niece of Linus Vexwell, an alchemist whose philosopher’s-stone experiment left him an immortal skeleton. Her unnamed tiefling father is Linus’s brother and has been away on an island for roughly three years.
• Appearance: blue skin, horns, a tail, galaxies of stars visible in her eyes, and faintly glowing crackles across her cheeks as darkness falls.
• Dress: fine but practical pirate/smuggler fashion—a tricorn hat, long-tailed coat, and heavy leather boots.
• Presentation: guarded, observant, and extremely quiet with strangers. Cassie’s reserve breaks around Linus: their shared enthusiasm for bombs makes her animated, demanding, and openly delighted.
• Equipment seen in play: cutlass, rapier, light crossbow, firearm, Vexwell keys, and a messenger-style Bag of Holding inherited from Linus.
• Current situation: The task force has defeated the crew of the returning smuggler ship and begun searching it, though several rooms and a conjuration-trapped captain’s chest remain unresolved. Morwenna has freed a half-starved sea elf named Oceanus, heir to Myth Nantar, who ends the session by recognizing Kilkarrin as his “dear sweet almost brother.”E5E5E5

Cassie and Vexwell Manor#

Vexwell Manor is now Cassie’s property. Linus remains secretly beneath it, the council believes he is gone, and Cassie intends to renovate while preserving the haunted reputation that may keep unwanted tenants away. Its concealed sea cave gives the smuggler and navigator a private coastal access point worth watching closely.E3E3E3

Episode 3 also makes Cassie’s two social registers explicit. Around Linus she is animated and almost valley-girl casual; away from family she returns to a gruff, economical smuggler manner. She is willing to speak at length when money, ships, or a useful cover story demands it.E3E3E3

From a distance, you would be forgiven for mistaking Cassie as a tiefling.

Character and build#

• Star Genasi: Cassie’s celestial traits include star-filled eyes and faint glowing crackles across her cheeks after dark. Her tiefling father accounts for her horns, tail, and tiefling-like silhouette.
• Rogue 1 / Alchemist 1: Cassie is level 2.
• Sailor: Navigator / smuggler: Cassie has the Navigator background, works as a smuggler, and is an accomplished sailor with her own sailing-ship rights and merchant business. She reads shipboard expectations quickly enough to identify the crew’s likely watch side and choose a less visible approach.E4E4
• Stellar Guidance: Cassie is guided by a guardian in the heavens and cannot become lost while she can see the stars. This is her modified Navigator feature.
• High Intelligence: the table explicitly treats Cassie as having 18 Intelligence.
• Darkvision: Cassie has 60-foot darkvision.
• Investigation / locks: Cassie notices physical evidence, locates hidden compartments, helps open locks, and applies her water-vehicle knowledge when looking for shipboard smuggling spaces. On the captured vessel she searches the crew chests and recognizes a guide to privateer-friendly ports.E1E5
• Medicine: Cassie can rapidly assess causes of death, malnourishment, and restraint injuries.
• Thieves’ Cant: Cassie immediately recognizes Sanbalet’s long-and-short lantern signals as a thieves’ signalling code and reads their operational meanings.
• Languages: Common and Primordial, described as the languages of her parents.
• Sneak Attack: Cassie uses an advantaged cutlass strike against one of Linus’s skeletons, though its resistance reduces the slashing damage.
• Weapons observed: cutlass, rapier, light crossbow, and a firearm. During the ship battle Cassie finally lands a cutlass strike on Bloody Bjorn for 11 slashing damage after Kilkarrin revives her.E5
• Twinkle: Cassie has a homebrew light-producing spell called Twinkle; it has been discussed but not yet cast in play.
• Bomb-making: Linus teaches Cassie the three simplest recipes: acid bombs, Alchemist’s Fire / firebombs, and frost bombs. All use distilled green slime nicknamed Steve; frost bombs add seawater or salt and fresh grave dirt. Crypt or mausoleum dirt produces a much stronger necrotic explosive that Linus considers beyond her present ability.E4
• Water vehicles and boarding: Cassie is proficient with water vehicles, directs coastal travel, understands how a sailing crew expects visitors to approach, and holds her own sailing-ship rights.E3E4E4
• Celestial presence: Divine Sense registers faint celestial energy from Cassie.
• Persuasion: Cassie turns Gellan’s 1,000 gp hush payment into 1,200 gp by demanding a larger discretion fee.
• Smuggler reasoning: Cassie correctly explains that Primewater-marked goods found with smugglers were either stolen or supplied and then falsely reported stolen; either way, returning them openly should produce a reward.

Current condition#

Cassie ends Episode 5 conscious on 2 hit points after being knocked unconscious three times during the ship battle. Kilkarrin, Hummus, and Bellouve each bring her back or stabilize her at different points; she consumes one healing potion during the fight. The vessel is secured and its search is still underway.E5E5

1. What is the full extent of Cassie’s business with Gellan Primewater? They worked together throughout her first month back in Saltmarsh, expect further dealings, and Gellan knows enough to describe her sailing-ship rights and merchant business to the council. The exact arrangement—and why he chose her for the manor investigation—remains unstated.E1E3E4
2. How much does Gellan know about Cassie’s edited report? Cassie returns his goods for hush money, then tells the council that nothing was recovered and Linus was not found. Gellan is present for the report and does not expose either omission.E3E3
3. Why was Cassie concealing her access to the manor? The Vexwell connection is now public, but Cassie’s original reason for hiding her keys and family knowledge has not been stated.E1E1E2
4. What work did Cassie’s father do with Linus? Linus says he taught Cassie’s father forgery, and Cassie recognizes one of the old ship charters, but the brothers’ larger business remains unclear.E1E2
5. Where is Cassie’s father, and why has he remained on an island for roughly three years? Linus sent him a letter five years ago; Cassie has not seen him in about three.E2
6. Who or what inspired Ye Secret of Ye Philosopher Stone? The book appeared after a dream, its author is illegible, and following it left Linus and his volunteers skeletal rather than properly immortal.E2E2
7. What became of the drowned adventurer’s brother? Ned is rescued and the manor’s smugglers are killed, but the dead woman’s brother is still missing; Ned believes captives may have been sold into indentured servitude.E1E2
8. Where is Sanbalet’s missing spellbook? A concealed compartment shaped for it is empty, although Sanbalet himself dies in the caverns.E2E2
9. What is the full reach of the smuggling and indenture operation? The manor cell is cleared, but the signalling code includes a ship, the sea caves provide access, and Ned believes prisoners were being sold onward.E2E2E2
10. When did Cassie previously hear Hector T. Crowley’s telepathic voice? She recognized it during his cellar ultimatum, but the earlier encounter remains undescribed.E1
11. What is leaking from Dr Vicker’s ruined tower, and what has it done to the swamp? Green slime, black goo, and acidic ooze are flowing downriver toward the Mere of Dead Men.E1
12. What will Cassie do with Vexwell Manor and its hidden sea cave? The council recognizes her ownership, she plans to renovate, and the concealed coastal entrance is exceptionally useful to a navigator and smuggler.E3E3E3
13. What ship, rights, and trading operation does Cassie control? Gellan calls her an accomplished sailor with her own sailing-ship rights and merchant business, and Cassie says she can import Linus’s replacement equipment, but the vessel, crew, routes, and legal arrangement have not yet been described.E4E4
14. Who is Oceanus, and why does he call Kilkarrin his “dear sweet almost brother”? Morwenna finds the half-starved sea elf chained in a hidden compartment. He identifies himself as heir to the throne of Myth Nantar and recognizes Kilkarrin immediately, but the session ends before either connection is explained.E5
15. What is inside the captain’s magically trapped chest? Detect Magic finds conjuration on the locked chest, and Identify reveals a Stinking Cloud-like spell attached to it. The available captain, first-mate, and bosun keys do not open it; its contents remain unknown.E5

• Vexwell Manor and its deed — Saltmarsh’s council recognizes Cassie as the owner. She plans to renovate while keeping Linus’s survival secret.E3E3
• Vexwell keyring / key strap — keys for the manor’s front door, Linus’s writing desk, and the cellar trapdoor.
• Bomb supplies and recipes — Cassie knows how to make acid bombs, Alchemist’s Fire / firebombs, and frost bombs. The session does not state an exact prepared-bomb count.E4
• Bag of Holding — a messenger-style bag given by Linus and passed directly to Cassie by Kilkarrin. It initially contains assorted grenades, mostly acid grenades.E2
• Bottle of Steve starter — a large stoppered bottle containing a portable culture of the green slime used in Linus’s bombs. Cassie must feed it scraps every day and replace what she removes.E4
• Porcelain sailor doll — dressed in a sailor’s uniform with two jade eyes worth 10 gp each. Morwenna finds it in the attic and gives it to Cassie with the eyes still in place.E3
• Rare unicorn-label wine — Cassie keeps the surviving bottle as a homecoming gift for her auntie. The table describes the vintage as ordinarily costing or requiring trades worth roughly 50–100 gp.E3
• Episode 3 cash received: 280 gp — 240 gp from Gellan’s contraband payment and 40 gp from the council reward.E3E3
• Two footlocker purses — Cassie takes two of the ten equal purses as her fair share: 14 gp and 30 sp in total.E2
• False privateering / diplomatic papers — Cassie conceals Sanbalet’s bundle of legal documents inside her jacket for possible future use.E2
• Current tide and naval almanac — covers roughly one hundred miles of the Saltmarsh coast and is kept openly in Cassie’s bag.E2
• 14 silver pieces — recovered from the giant-weasel burrow during Episode 1.
• Grog Hogs — a book Cassie recognizes as a guide to ports and taverns friendly to privateers and similar sailors. She takes it from the captured ship’s crew quarters.E5
• Shipboard body-search share — two hook hands, Bloody Bjorn’s imitation-captain tricorn, and five long-lasting hardtack biscuits counted as rations.E5
• Empty divided crystal decanter — its second healing-potion dose is consumed at the start of Episode 2.
• Weapons observed: cutlass, rapier, light crossbow, and firearm.

Episode 1#

Episode 2#

Episode 3#

Episode 4#

Episode 5#

Cassie’s explicitly stated Episode 3 proceeds: 280 gp, plus the intact sailor doll and rare wine. Across Episodes 1–3, her explicitly assigned currency is 294 gp and 44 sp, before any unrecorded spending and excluding unsplit party treasure.E1E2E3E3

Promised Rewards#

• Renovate Vexwell Manor — Cassie now owns the property and intends to repair it while preserving the useful haunted reputation and hidden sea access.E3E3E3
• Rebuild Linus’s laboratory equipment — Sanbalet sold much of Linus’s apparatus. Linus will prepare a list; Cassie says she can use her importing business, alongside one of his old contacts, to acquire replacements.E4
• Find the drowned woman’s brother — Ned has been rescued, but the other missing adventurer may have been sold through the smugglers’ indenture network.E2
• Finish securing the smugglers’ ship and trace its network — the crew is defeated and two survivors are held, but several rooms, the trapped captain’s chest, the Luskan superior, and the captive-selling operation still need investigation before the vessel returns to Saltmarsh.E5E5E5
• Understand the Vexwell family’s work — learn what Cassie’s father and Linus did with ships, forgery, alchemy, and the ambition commemorated in their portrait.E1E2
• Find or correct the philosopher’s-stone formula — Linus’s version grants a skeletal kind of immortality, and the mysterious source book remains unexplained.E2E2
• Investigate Dr Vicker’s tower later — the ooze pollution still threatens the Mere of Dead Men but remains separate from the immediate manor aftermath.
• Understand Oceanus’s capture and Kilkarrin connection — learn what Oceanus was investigating, what Myth Nantar is facing, and why its heir recognizes Kilkarrin as an almost brother.E5
• Investigate the island treasure map — identify the marked islands and what the X is meant to indicate.E5

The first session establishes Cassie as a guarded local with a deeply personal connection to the party’s first assignment. She reveals that connection through what she knows and the keys she carries, while saying almost nothing aloud.

The council reports that a woman’s body washed ashore near the Carpenters’ Guild. She and her brother had gone to investigate the supposedly haunted manor of Linus Vexwell several weeks earlier. Local investigator Ned Shakeshaft followed them the previous week and is also missing.

Anders Solmor, Gellan Primewater, Eda Oweland, Eliander Fireborn, and Manistrad Copperlocks authorize a five-person band to investigate criminal or paranormal activity. The group’s special investigative and arrest authority applies only to active cases approved by at least three council members. The party will receive 200 gp for investigating the manor and making any necessary arrests or eradications.

The council members each supply or abstain from supplying a candidate. Gellan Primewater selects Cassiopeia “Cassie” Vexwell. No reason is given for why Gellan chose her or whether he knows the full significance of sending a Vexwell to Linus’s manor.

Cassie has blue skin, horns, and a tail. Galaxies of stars fill her eyes, and faint glowing crackles become visible across her cheeks as darkness falls. Her clothes are finer than common workwear but suited to a prosperous pirate or smuggler: tricorn hat, long-tailed coat, and heavy leather boots.

From a distance, you would be forgiven for mistaking Cassie as a tiefling.

At the sea-god’s temple, Wellgar and the gravekeeper Craig show the group the young half-elf woman’s body. Cassie and Morwenna’s Medicine checks establish that she drowned. She is malnourished and emaciated, dressed in an oversized, torn makeshift tunic, and bears premortem rope or manacle injuries around her wrists and neck.

The injuries indicate that she had been held prisoner, broken her restraints, and tried to make it back to land. She died only hours before the body was found. Gentle Repose has since been cast on her.

Cassie knows that her uncle Linus Vexwell’s manor stands on Crafter’s Cliff roughly four miles south of Saltmarsh, near the Leap. She does not volunteer this family connection to the group.

Wellgar remembers Linus as an eccentric but pleasant man who visited every few months for supplies, debated souls and afterlives, and played a formidable game of dragon chess. He has not been seen for more than five years. Reports of ghastly wails eventually gave the abandoned house its haunted reputation.

The body had been found about three feet farther inland than even high tide could carry it. After an initially poor search, Cassie helps trace the route through and out of the water. A bloody handprint on a dock pillar shows that the woman pulled herself beyond the tide line under her own power.

The discovery confirms extraordinary persistence rather than someone moving the corpse. Sand remained under her fingernails and her lungs were full of water; she had reached dry ground but still died of drowning or its immediate respiratory effects.

On the road to the manor, the party sees the collapsed remains of Dr Vicker’s tower partly submerged in a lake. Green slime and black goo leak from the old laboratory, thickening the water and flowing downriver into the swamp and the Mere of Dead Men.

Local pumpkin farmer and former wizard Magic Rosoff says the tower has leaked oozes for years. Residents petitioned Saltmarsh to send a cleanup crew, but none came. Morwenna immediately suffers acid damage after stepping into green ooze, confirming the hazard is active.

Cassie reaches the manor ahead of most of the group. The front door is locked, but its lock bears clear signs of having been picked by someone inexperienced. Cassie uses her own key to unlock it, then leaves the door slightly ajar before going back for the others so they will not know she had access.

While circling the manor, Cassie notices an unusually large burrow beneath a rosebush that has overgrown the garden wall. Four giant weasels erupt from the grass. A strong Nature check tells Cassie they are faster than she is, so she holds her ground and attacks with her rapier rather than trying to flee.

Cassie wounds two of the animals and takes 4 damage. Bellouve then lands an extraordinary long-range crossbow critical: the bolt passes through one giant weasel and kills the already wounded one behind it as well. Kilkarrin shoots another while running toward the garden, and the party eliminates the last attacker before Cassie is overwhelmed.

As soon as the fight ends, Cassie goes onto her hands and knees and crawls into the burrow beneath the giant rosebush to see what the weasels had collected. She finds 14 silver pieces among the shiny objects inside.

The manor interior is damp, mouldy, vandalized, and apparently long abandoned. Against that background, two fresh sets of large boot prints stand out. One trail leads away from the stairs; another crosses the entrance hall and continues through the room ahead. Cassie walks through part of the second trail before the others point it out.

Cassie remains almost entirely silent. More than two hours into the session, the table observes that she still has not actually spoken to any of her new companions.

The party finds three relatively valuable books among the mouldy remains of Linus’s library: works on the magical properties of gemstones, the magical properties of herbs and flowers, and the metaphysics of mathematics. A damaged note slips from the third book; only the words “Beyond skeletons” remain legible.

Linus’s writing desk has several open or forced drawers and one locked central drawer. Cassie produces a small leather strap or ring holding several keys and attempts to conceal the action with Sleight of Hand. Bellouve notices anyway, but says nothing.

The correct key opens the drawer. Cassie then immediately recognizes the desk’s concealed mechanism and presses a hidden catch, revealing a secret compartment.

Wrapped in cloth inside the secret compartment is a crystal decanter divided into two chambers, each containing red liquid. Cassie tastes it and identifies both chambers as ordinary potions of healing—two doses in one bottle.

Cassie does not use a dose on herself despite having been injured by the weasels. Instead, she silently offers one to the badly hurt Morwenna, who drinks it. Cassie retains the remaining dose.

The desk contains old receipts and invoices for chemicals and laboratory equipment, all signed Linus Vexwell. Among the shipment paperwork, Cassie recognizes a familiar ship charter from her father’s time. The records are several years old, and the session does not yet explain the charter or the brothers’ business.

Above the fireplace hangs a portrait of two red-skinned tiefling men with the inscription “Vexwell Brothers will take the world.” Cassie does not closely resemble her father, in part because her own skin is blue, but Bellouve connects the Vexwell surname, the portrait, and the keys. Morwenna begins to reach the same conclusion. Neither confronts Cassie before the group moves on.

The boot tracks end at a concealed trapdoor. As the party approaches, a small mouth appears beside its keyhole and announces, “Welcome, fools. Welcome to your deaths.” Everyone resists the fear effect. Cassie does not recognize the voice.

The warning repeats each time someone approaches, degrading like a worn recording. The party deliberately triggers it several times and hears movement below. Cassie’s key fits the trapdoor; after briefly turning it the wrong way, she unlocks and opens it.

Cassie leads the descent with her rapier drawn. The cellar has been converted into a barracks: ten crude beds with lockers, a central table set with dirty plates and cups, a cook stove holding signs of a recent meal, and a large hanging ham. Whatever else the house may contain, this part is actively occupied.

The repeated warning has alerted three armed occupants, who prepare crossbows for anyone descending. Cassie is first in line and becomes their only clear target. One bolt hits for 7 damage, immediately reducing her to 0 hit points and leaving her unconscious at the foot of the stairs.

Cassie passes her first death saving throw. Meanwhile Bellouve drags one attacker into the party’s limited light with a thorn whip, Morwenna hinders another with necromantic magic, and Hector T. Crowley kills one smuggler with a magically augmented gunshot.

Kilkarrin pushes into the cellar, reaches Cassie, and uses Lay on Hands for 1 hit point. Cassie wakes in the middle of the still-active fight. Her retained healing potion remains in her possession.

Surrender or die.

Crowley’s voice erupts inside every nearby mind. Cassie recognizes it—she has heard the voice once before—while Kilkarrin remembers an old companion terrifying bandits through overwhelming violence. The remaining smugglers and almost the entire party are frightened by the ultimatum. The session ends before the bandits respond or combat resumes.

• Level: Rogue 1, with a future third-party Alchemist direction.
• Health: conscious on 1 hit point after Kilkarrin’s Lay on Hands.
• Held healing: one healing-potion dose remains in the divided crystal decanter.
• New money: 14 sp from the giant-weasel burrow.
• Public family connection: Bellouve and Morwenna have begun connecting Cassie to the Vexwells; Cassie has not explained it herself.
• Immediate danger: two frightened smugglers remain in the occupied cellar, and combat is unresolved.

Cassie begins the session on one hit point and ends it with a living uncle, a Bag of Holding full of alchemical possibilities, stolen privateering papers, and an earned level waiting to become her first step into Alchemist.

Still on 1 hit point after Kilkarrin’s emergency healing, Cassie drinks the remaining dose from Linus’s divided decanter. The table uses maximum out-of-combat healing for the potion, restoring 10 hit points and bringing her to 11, after which she moves behind the beds for cover.

After Crowley kills another bandit, the survivor flees through a hidden rotating wall. A wild-magic duplicate of Kilkarrin chases him and explodes in force; Cassie dives behind the fireplace and wall just in time to avoid the blast.

The party finds ten locked footlockers, each holding 7 gp and 15 sp. Cassie helps with the locks, then takes two purses—14 gp and 30 sp—as what she considers her fair share, leaving the others to divide the remaining eight.

A door painted with DANGER contains a group of armed skeletons. Cassie readies her cutlass at the threshold and lands the first strike with Sneak Attack, but the skeleton’s resistance blunts her slashing damage.

A skeletal, horned figure emerges through the glowing secret door and throws an acid bomb at Kilkarrin. Cassie retrieves a dud bomb because it interests her, then recognizes the newcomer as her uncle from the portrait upstairs.

Daddy was always better at math than you.

Linus orders the skeletons to stand down and greets Cassie warmly, telling her that she looks like her mother and that it is all in the eyes. Cassie introduces the companions whose names she knows by pointing to them; Crowley has to introduce himself telepathically.

Linus carries a black river stone engraved with arcane symbols: a philosopher’s stone he made himself. Touching it to his throat briefly restores enough flesh for ordinary speech. He describes himself as immortal, but admits that he got the mathematics wrong.

The six skeletons are terminally ill volunteers—tests one through six—who signed waivers before Linus tried to cure them. His formula preserved them in the same skeletal condition, with a gold rib binding each volunteer to the stone. The party destroys the failed subjects at Linus’s request while he waits outside.

Linus says he sent a letter to Cassie’s father five years ago. Cassie indicates that it arrived, but says she has not seen her father for about three years and that he is still on an unnamed island. Linus himself has not gone into Saltmarsh during those five years; the smugglers only confined him below the manor around three months ago.

Linus talks about his acid bombs, and Cassie agrees that bombs are awesome. It is the most animated the party has seen her: the quiet, guarded investigator suddenly has an eager conversational rhythm with her uncle.

Linus’s workshop contains alchemical equipment and several objects transmuted into gold: a human skull, an apple, a rose, five small balance weights, and 47 coins. One book is Linus’s own Alchemist spell-and-recipe book. The other, Ye Secret of Ye Philosopher Stone, appeared after a dream and bears an illegible author name. Linus also casually reveals that he taught Cassie’s father forgery, which makes Cassie visibly uncomfortable.

To carry the laboratory contents, Linus produces a messenger-style Bag of Holding. He hands it to Kilkarrin, who immediately passes it to Cassie on the grounds that it belongs with Linus’s niece. Assorted grenades tumble from it, mostly acid bombs, and Cassie studies them with obvious interest.

In the leader’s room, Cassie tries on a floor-length magical oilskin coat lined with iridescent green silk, though it is far too long for her. A written sequence of long and short lantern flashes translates into four messages: “Is it safe?”, “Everything’s safe”, “Ready to unload”, and “Come to the ship.” Cassie immediately recognizes the method as thieves’ signalling. A secret desk compartment shaped for a spellbook is empty.

Among Sanbalet’s books are illustrated erotic poetry, a current tide and naval almanac covering roughly one hundred miles of coast, and false treaties and legal documents intended to support a privateer identity and claims of diplomatic immunity. Cassie openly stores the almanac in her bag but conceals the privateering papers inside her jacket.

Linus shows the party a secret passage into natural caves with access to the ocean, which visibly delights Cassie. Morwenna spots Ned Shakeshaft chained, bruised, nearly naked, and missing his intact glasses. Ned silently warns that the scene is a trap just before hidden scouts attack.

When someone cries that Cassie has been killed, Linus immediately runs forward. He finds her alive and is plainly relieved, reinforcing that his macabre experiments and skeletal state have not erased his affection for his niece.

The caverns erupt into a prolonged battle against scouts, bandits, hobgoblins, and the wizard Sanbalet. Cassie uses the tunnels for cover, then emerges from hiding to stab a scout for 11 damage and kill him.

After being knocked unconscious and healed, Morwenna opens her miniature coffin. A female voice calls her “my sweet, sweet daughter,” black mist escapes, and shadow cloaks Morwenna as she rises slightly from the floor. The effect fully restores her and empowers her next attack.

With his force collapsing, Sanbalet raises his hands and declares himself a sovereign citizen of the Moay Isles, demanding diplomatic immunity and an appearance before Saltmarsh’s council. Cassie is already carrying the false privateering and immunity documents that reveal how manufactured that claim is. Crowley kills Sanbalet despite the surrender; Cassie’s look toward Kilkarrin suggests that she would have done the same.

Ned survives the battle still chained in the caverns. He says he was kidnapped while investigating and believes the smugglers sell prisoners into indentured servitude. The drowned woman appears to have escaped that fate, but her brother may have been transported elsewhere. Ned also warns the party away from the attic, where stirges previously drained him unconscious.

After watching Cassie struggle in melee, Linus hands her an acid grenade and points out that he has the recipe and can make more whenever she wants. Cassie’s excitement makes the coming Alchemist multiclass feel like a continuation of family practice rather than an abstract build choice.

Cassie tries to stab one fleeing scout in the back but misses. When the final bandit attempts to escape near her hiding place, Linus catches and kills him with his claws, declaring, “Get out of my house.” Every hostile smuggler in the caverns is dead when combat ends.

The table awards everyone level 2 for the next session and sets Cassie’s move into Alchemist for the coming downtime. Her lessons with Linus later make that transition part of the story. Before then, the party still intends to clear and loot the rest of the house, check the upper floor, and report its findings.E4

• Progression: level 2 awarded; Cassie’s Alchemist transition follows during the downtime week.E4
• Family: Linus is found alive in skeletal form and openly affectionate toward Cassie; her father has been absent on an island for roughly three years.
• New personal holdings: Bag of Holding with grenades, dud acid bomb, two coin purses, false privateering papers, and a current coastal almanac.
• Alchemical direction: Linus offers Cassie his bomb recipes and access to the family laboratory.
• Investigation result: Ned is rescued and Sanbalet’s entire manor force is dead; the drowned woman’s brother and the wider ship-based network remain unresolved.
• Next session: one week of downtime, Cassie’s multiclass scene, and the unfinished rooms of Vexwell Manor.

Cassie emerges as a working smuggler rather than merely a quiet investigator: she reads the value of a compromising cargo, negotiates its return, protects Linus’s secret, and makes sure that both large cash payments include an equal share for the unseen Crowley.

Kilkarrin tries his own manacle key in Ned’s restraints and succeeds on a natural 20, earning what the table jokingly treats as a reusable chance to open future manacles. Ned confirms that he saw no sign of the missing Shadowbreaker brother and does not notice the party’s skeletal host.

Linus considers using his apparent death and the manor’s reputation to scare away neighbours and acquire more surrounding land. Cassie points out that if he is legally dead, the house is technically hers; Linus agrees that this was the purpose of the deed. Cassie intends to renovate rather than abandon the estate.

The caves hold eight bolts of cloth worth 50 gp each and thirteen casks of fire brandy worth 20 gp each, for 660 gp total. The casks bear a cresting wave marked PW, which the party identifies as Gellan Primewater’s merchant crest. An eight-person jolly boat worth 100 gp provides a way to carry the cargo back to Saltmarsh.

A good longsword and black shield bearing a silver hammer and lightning-like crack carry the crest of the Shadowbreaker household—the same name as the adventuring siblings. The cellar also yields a single bottle of Cassie’s auntie’s favourite rare unicorn-label wine. Cassie carefully keeps the bottle as a homecoming gift.

The party deliberately triggers another decaying Magic Mouth, clears giant centipedes and spider swarms, and searches the surviving rooms. Smaller finds include 30 cp and two pouches of fairy dust, two blue quartz pieces worth 10 gp each, a 5 sp crystal counterweight from old alchemical equipment, one vial of basic poison, and the signal-room scratches showing where Sanbalet’s lantern had been set at the best sea-facing window.

When giant centipedes emerge from the kitchen, Cassie calmly places an acid bomb into one creature’s open mouth. She later throws more acid bombs at the attic stirges, accepting that the acid may burn through her own floorboards while wishing she had explosive bombs instead.

Morwenna walks up the wall and asks Cassie to keep that ability secret. Cassie reaches the attic by wall-jumping and pulls herself up among six stirges, which the two dispatch without a full combat. Morwenna finds a porcelain doll in a sailor’s uniform with two jade eyes worth 10 gp each and gives the intact doll to Cassie.

Cassie lifts a stained cloak embroidered with golden ivy, intending to offer it to someone whose style it suits. Yellow-mold spores burst from it, dealing 13 poison damage and then another 6, reducing her exactly to 0 hit points. Kilkarrin spends five points of Lay on Hands to neutralize the poison and another point to wake her. The cloak is moved into sunlight until its remaining spores disintegrate.

While Cassie short-rests and reverse-engineers the last acid bomb, the group identifies magical scale mail as Mariner’s Armor, which grants a swim speed and carries an unconscious wearer toward the surface. Sanbalet’s fine pipe is a Pipe of Remembrance. Bellouve’s attempt to identify Morwenna’s tiny coffin returns only an error; he throws it, rolls a natural 1, and shatters it into fragments that Morwenna collects.

Cassie reasons aloud that goods bearing Primewater’s mark were either stolen from him or deliberately supplied to smugglers and then fraudulently reported stolen. In either case the town will recognize them as stolen property, so the party should return them and demand a generous reward. The unusually long explanation makes her rough smuggler voice clear: concise and gruff with outsiders, sharply different from her animated manner with Linus.

The cave mouth is concealed from passing ships by a rock outcropping. The party takes the loaded jolly boat north; Kilkarrin rows while Cassie, proficient with water vehicles, gives directions. At Primewater’s docks she scans the vessels but does not recognize any particular ship.

Cassie presents the cargo as Primewater’s stolen goods and asks for a reward. Gellan hesitates before adopting that explanation, and the successful readers of his reaction conclude that he gave the goods to the smugglers and falsely claimed their theft. Cassie herself misses the tell, though her earlier reasoning had already identified the possibility.

The merchandise is worth 660 gp. Gellan rounds his offer to 1,000 gp so the matter can become “water under the bridge,” making 340 gp of the payment an implicit discretion fee. Cassie asks whether discretion has truly been accounted for and rolls a 24 Persuasion check. Gellan praises the month they have already spent working together, anticipates more business, and adds another 200 gp for a total of 1,200 gp.

Crowley telepathically insists on his share. Bellouve takes a 300 gp emerald ring in place of coin and pays 15 gp to each of the other four shares, including the mysterious “Devil’s Due.” The final division is 240 gp of value for each of five members; Cassie receives 240 gp. Bellouve later removes the gem, reducing the jewellery to a 150 gp emerald and a 75 gp empty gold setting.

Cassie reports that the manor was occupied by smugglers—corrected immediately to slavers—and says their goods had already been shipped away. She claims the house is abandoned and that there was no sign of her uncle. The council accepts Linus’s apparent loss, formally recognizes the property as Cassie’s, and hears her say that she plans to renovate. Gellan remains present without contradicting the omissions.

Anders Solmor is alarmed that slavers may have returned to Saltmarsh. A council majority authorizes the task force to pursue further information about slavers in and around town. The drowned Shadowbreaker woman’s brother remains missing, and the council hopes to learn who the manor cell was selling or trading captives to.

Anders pays the promised 200 gp for dismantling the manor operation in a single day. Cassie takes the bag and counts it into five equal shares, including the “Devil’s Due” for Crowley. Each member receives 40 gp, bringing Cassie’s explicitly stated cash proceeds for the session to 280 gp.

Cassie rents at the Empty Net, the tavern partly built on stilts over the docks. Its view of ships arriving and departing is exactly what she wants to monitor. Her connection to Gellan is strong enough that the proprietor, Kreb, is expected to make room for someone with her connections.

• Level: Rogue 1 / Alchemist 1.
• Health: recovered from yellow-mold poisoning and completed a short rest.
• Property: Vexwell Manor is legally recognized as Cassie’s, and she plans to renovate it.
• Lodging: a room at the Empty Net with a view of the docks.
• Episode 3 cash: 280 gp—240 gp from Gellan and 40 gp from the council.
• Other new personal treasure: rare wine for her auntie and an intact sailor doll with two 10 gp jade eyes.
• Secrets kept: Linus’s survival and the recovery and resale of Gellan’s marked contraband.
• Next mandate: pursue further leads on the slavers and the missing Shadowbreaker brother.

Cassie’s Alchemist training becomes part of the story rather than a pending transition: she learns three foundational bombs, takes a portable culture of their dangerous base ingredient, and immediately offers her own shipping connections to rebuild Linus’s laboratory. By midnight she is applying a different family skill set—signals, sailing, and smuggling—to board the returning vessel.

Bellouve uses one of the six gold ribs recovered from Linus’s volunteers as a cage around the 150 gp emerald removed from his Primewater ring. Leather, bones, and bat-like wings complete a flying Homunculus Servant. A joke about misspelling homunculus becomes the construct’s name: Hummus. The other five gold ribs remain group loot.

Cassie goes straight to Linus and demands that he show her how to make the bombs she found so exciting. Linus has reclaimed the manor’s basement kitchen area and covered it with alchemical apparatus. He answers with immediate enthusiasm and begins teaching her over the next several days.

Linus teaches Cassie to distil the green slime called Steve into the reactive base for acid bombs and Alchemist’s Fire, his firebomb. The third foundational recipe is a frost bomb made from Steve, seawater or salt, and fresh grave dirt.

He warns her never to substitute earth from a crypt or mausoleum: that produces a necrotic explosive far too powerful for her present ability. Cassie immediately starts taking notes. Pixie dust, meanwhile, belongs in glitter bombs reserved for one’s worst enemies because it gets everywhere and refuses to come off.

Linus knows stranger bomb recipes, but much of his costly equipment was sold by Sanbalet. He offers to make a list and contact an old associate in another town. Cassie says that she can import things and confirms that she has access to a ship, turning the replacement apparatus into a joint procurement project.

When Linus says Steve needs time to regrow, Cassie takes a large stoppered bottle of the slime so she can make bombs away from the manor. The portable culture must be fed scraps daily, and anything removed has to be replaced. Linus has already begun cultivating other spawn. He sends Cassie into town for a night off and asks her to bring back a bottle of claw wine.

Morwenna’s attempt to impress Hannah Rist at the Snapping Line ends when wild magic removes all of her hair. Kilkarrin learns that piracy is rising beyond the Fifth Reef after a truce ended the war with Luskan. Crowley gambles through an intoxicated Kilkarrin, earns 20 gp in card games, and receives a compulsory invitation to Gellan Primewater’s Tethyrian hold’em tournament aboard a private yacht.

Ned decodes the smugglers’ schedule and determines that their vessel will return that night to collect the cargo supposedly waiting at Vexwell Manor. His account of expected goods conflicts with the party’s claim that none were found, but the council does not press the discrepancy. It orders the task force to board the ship, capture its crew, and learn whatever it can about their contacts.

When the council calls Kilkarrin the task force’s one good sailor, Cassie looks offended. Gellan interrupts to identify Miss Vexwell as an accomplished sailor with her own sailing-ship rights and merchant business. Anders apologizes and revises the count to two good sailors.

Morwenna accepts the Mariner’s Armor despite its conflict with her motif and wears it for the mission. She also takes the heraldic Shadowbreaker shield from the manor and applies Enhanced Defense to it. The accompanying good longsword remains group loot.

The council promises 400 gp to the group upon completion, with possible additional payment based on captured or slain smugglers, intelligence, and contacts uncovered. It lends the party a small jolly boat for the approach, and Ned formally joins the task force. No division is discussed because the bounty has not yet been earned.

Cassie waits at the signal window with the codebook while Ned watches and takes notes. Near midnight, with a storm rolling in, a distant green light asks whether it is safe. Cassie flashes back Everything’s safe. The ship answers with three long signals—Ready to unload / Come to ship—and Cassie tells Ned and the others that they are clear to depart.

Bellouve pulls the jolly boat while everyone else remains still, and the party reaches the vessel without being detected. Cassie knows the smugglers will expect arrivals on the starboard side and points out the anchor-chain route around the bow. Morwenna climbs the port hull, Kilkarrin emerges from the dark water, and Bellouve remains below while Cassie and Ned prepare to use the expected entrance.

Ned changes into clothing taken from the dead manor smugglers, helping sell the approach and giving Cassie an advantage on her deception. Cassie climbs aboard and asks, “Well, where are these barrels then?” The crew replies that she was supposed to bring the barrels and demands to know who she is. Cassie answers by attacking first mate Bloody Bjorn.

Crowley shouts “Duck, idiot” into Cassie’s mind as the surprise attack begins. Bellouve Thorn Whips the deck wizard overboard, Hummus strikes the sentry in the crow’s nest, Crowley badly wounds Captain Snake Eyes, and Kilkarrin rises onto the deck from the water. Cassie swings her cutlass at Bloody Bjorn, spends her inspiration to improve the attack, and is still parried. The session ends before the first full round.

• Level: Rogue 1 / Alchemist 1.
• Alchemy: knows acid-bomb, Alchemist’s Fire / firebomb, and frost-bomb recipes.
• Portable supply: a bottle of Steve starter that must be fed and replenished daily.
• Business: described by Gellan as holding her own sailing-ship rights and merchant business.
• Current location: aboard the smugglers’ vessel beside Ned, facing first mate Bloody Bjorn.
• Condition: rested and uninjured; opening cutlass attack missed.
• Immediate next step: survive the first full round, seize the ship, and uncover its contacts and captive-selling network.

The vessel is won at considerable cost. Cassie spends much of the battle moving between consciousness and the deck, but still wounds Bloody Bjorn and joins the search afterward. The captured ship supplies both a large unresolved haul and a much stranger passenger: a sea-elven heir who already knows Kilkarrin.

At the start of the resumed fight, wild magic gives everyone within thirty feet vulnerability to piercing damage for one minute. The effect applies to smugglers and attackers alike, magnifying crossbow wounds and Crowley’s shots while the party remains scattered across and beneath the darkened deck.

Crowley shoots Captain Snake Eyes through cover and kills him. First mate Bloody Bjorn continues calling orders and repeatedly insists that the captain is merely resting, helping hold the smugglers’ morale together despite the body on the upper deck.

Bloody Bjorn cuts Cassie down early in the fight. Kilkarrin restores her with one point of Lay on Hands, and Cassie answers by landing an 11-damage cutlass strike. She later drinks a healing potion, but incoming fire knocks her unconscious again. Hummus swoops from the darkness to deliver Bellouve’s Cure Wounds, restoring seven hit points, before Bjorn drops her for a third time.

Cassie spends the latter part of the battle making death saves on the deck. Morwenna stabilizes Ned, while Cassie is stabilized separately before the surviving smugglers are brought under control.

Bellouve wraps Thorn Whip around Bloody Bjorn and drags him from the vessel. The attack kills the first mate as he falls into the blood-filled water. Hummus and Crowley eliminate more resistance, while several fleeing crew leap overboard or fall to sharks.

Bellouve uses Thaumaturgy to order the remaining crew to drop their weapons and gather at the central mast or be fed to the ocean. Crowley reinforces the demand telepathically. Two smugglers survive to be restrained on deck; the task force begins securing the vessel and gathering bodies for the council’s promised additional payment.

A surviving sailor introduces himself as Steve and asks to leave. Under questioning he admits to smuggling and raiding pirates, but denies knowingly transporting unwilling passengers. He says prisoners of combat were delivered to the pirate captain above them in Luskan, after which their fate was that captain’s business. The party keeps him as a prisoner rather than releasing him.

After the fighting ends, Bellouve remembers the healing bracelet and uses it on Cassie. It restores two hit points, waking her while Ned remains unconscious but stable. Cassie heads below deck without being told which direction the others took.

Cassie superficially checks the crew’s sea chests and finds two sets of dice, playing cards, and a book called Grog Hogs. She recognizes it as the sort of guide sailors use to find ports and bars friendly to privateers and similar professions, then puts it in her pack.

She later uses her water-vehicle proficiency and knowledge of ship construction to look for smuggling hideaways. The search has not produced a concealed cache when attention shifts to the captain’s cabin and Morwenna’s discovery.

Cassie’s share of the body search is two hook hands, Bloody Bjorn’s imitation-captain tricorn, and five pieces of long-lasting hardtack. Other searches produce Captain Snake Eyes’s black-and-gold tricorn, two wooden eyes, two improvised bottle-lens spyglasses, another tricorn, and a hollow peg leg containing 10 Luskan-minted silver pieces.

The important find is a treasure map showing a group of islands with an X. Crowley claims it with Mage Hand and has Kilkarrin take it for physical custody until the party can investigate.

A bosun’s chest contains 200 sp, a waterproof wooden spear tipped with razor-sharp shell, and a coral dagger. Morwenna takes the two weapons; the silver is not divided. A brass box in the first mate’s cabin holds another 500 sp, also undivided.

The first mate’s table holds Principles of Navigation by Da Corma and Legal Distinctions in Letters of Marque by Tazar, each worth about 10 gp. The cargo hold contains secured stacks of cloth and small casks, but their quantities and values are not spoken. All unallocated finds remain group loot.

Bellouve’s Detect Magic finds transmutation, evocation, and necromancy on Kilkarrin’s gun and gives him a strong suspicion about the telepathic voice. When he touches the weapon and asks, Crowley formally supplies his full name: Hector T. Crowley. Bellouve does not recognize the name, and Crowley considers introducing himself to the remaining companions.

The captain’s cabin contains a silver fruit bowl, silver carafe, silver goblet, and a brass-bound chest radiating conjuration magic. The remaining captain’s and bosun’s keys do not open it; Bloody Bjorn’s key had already opened the first mate’s brass box. Identify reveals a Stinking Cloud-like spell attached to the chest, but its contents remain unknown.

Morwenna opens the cage holding the bosun’s parrot. By the end of the session the bird is perched on her shoulder, is identified as Kappa Kaa, and has been promised very attentive care.

Morwenna hears movement through a wall, finds a secret door, and discovers a bruised, bloody, half-starved sea elf manacled inside. She picks the lock, gives him water, and carries him toward the open deck. He says the smugglers trapped him while he was investigating something for his city.

In the fresh air he introduces himself as Oceanus, heir to the throne of Myth Nantar. He sees Kilkarrin and calls him his “dear sweet almost brother.” The session ends before that recognition can be explained.

• Level: Rogue 1 / Alchemist 1.
• Health: conscious on 2 hit points after being knocked unconscious three times.
• Battle contribution: wounds Bloody Bjorn with an 11-damage cutlass strike between recoveries.
• Consumed: one healing potion used during the battle.
• New personal items: Grog Hogs, two hook hands, Bloody Bjorn’s tricorn, and five hardtack rations.
• Current location: below deck on the captured smuggler vessel while its search continues.
• Immediate mystery: Oceanus, heir to Myth Nantar, recognizes Kilkarrin as an almost brother.

Saltmarsh puts together an investigation band#

A half-elf adventurer washed ashore near Saltmarsh’s Carpenters’ Guild after disappearing with her brother during an investigation of the supposedly haunted Vexwell manor. The local investigator Ned Shakeshaft went looking for them and vanished as well. With possible criminals, ghosts, and three missing people involved, the town council assembled an unusually varied five-person band and offered 200 gp to investigate.E1

The resulting party consists of Cassiopeia “Cassie” Vexwell, Kilkarrin Dilario, Hector T. Crowley, Morwenna, and Bellouve Cadvemier. The council gives them limited investigative and arrest authority, but only for cases approved by a majority of its members.

The prisoner who almost made it home#

At the temple, the group learned that the dead adventurer had been starved and restrained before her escape. She broke free, crossed the water, reached the Saltmarsh docks, and dragged herself three feet beyond the highest tide line. A bloody handprint showed just how close she came to surviving, but her lungs were still full of water and she died shortly before being found.E1E1

The road to Vexwell Manor#

The journey south introduced several local hazards that had nothing to do with the immediate case. Dr Vicker’s collapsed laboratory has been leaking slime, black goo, and oozes into water that feeds toward the Mere of Dead Men. Nearby, the retired wizard Magic Rosoff quietly grows carriage-sized magical pumpkins. Morwenna discovered the ooze problem with her boots and several lost hit points; Bellouve became much more interested in buying an enormous pumpkin.

The party then discovered that the haunted manor is not merely connected to Cassie by surname. It belongs to her missing uncle Linus Vexwell, and Cassie has keys. She unlocked the front door before the others arrived and tried to conceal that fact, but the house soon began giving her secrets away.E1E1

Weasels, records, and the occupied cellar#

Four giant weasels attacked Cassie outside. The scattered party rushed to help, and Bellouve produced the fight’s defining shot by driving one crossbow bolt through two weasels and killing both. Cassie responded to victory by crawling into their burrow for 14 silver pieces.

Inside, fresh boot tracks contradicted the house’s abandoned appearance. Linus’s locked writing desk opened to Cassie’s keys and contained a hidden two-dose healing decanter, old laboratory invoices, and a ship charter she recognized from her father’s time. A portrait of two tiefling brothers labelled “Vexwell Brothers will take the world” finally helped the others understand whose house this was, though Cassie still did not explain herself.E1E1E1

A concealed trapdoor then announced, repeatedly and with worsening sound quality, that the party had come to its death. The theatrical magical warning did not frighten them, but it did alert the people below. The cellar proved to be a lived-in barracks with ten beds, recent food, and three armed smugglers waiting in the darkness.

Cassie went down first and was immediately shot unconscious. Kilkarrin restored her with a single point of Lay on Hands while the others fought back. Hector T. Crowley killed one smuggler, then broadcast “Surrender or die” into every nearby mind. The two surviving smugglers—and most of the party—were left terrified. That unresolved fight is where the first session ended.E1E1E1

The alchemist behind the danger door#

The cellar fight ended with one smuggler fleeing through a rotating wall and a wild-magic Kilkarrin exploding in pursuit. Beyond a door literally marked DANGER, the party fought skeletons until a horned skeletal alchemist emerged and ordered them to stop. Cassie recognized him as Linus Vexwell and finally spoke: “Daddy was always better at math than you.”E2E2

Linus had successfully created a philosopher’s stone and unsuccessfully calculated everything else. It made him and six terminally ill volunteers immortal skeletons. His hidden laboratory contained transmuted gold, an inexplicable book that had appeared after a dream, his own Alchemist recipes, and a Bag of Holding full of grenades that eventually passed to Cassie. Uncle and niece bonded immediately over the fact that bombs are awesome.E2E2E2E2

Sanbalet’s sea caves#

The smuggler leader’s room supplied lantern signals for communicating with a ship, false privateering and diplomatic papers, a coastal almanac, and an empty spellbook compartment. Cassie concealed the papers and kept the almanac. Linus then opened a route into sea caves beneath the manor, where the party found Ned Shakeshaft chained and walked into the remaining smugglers’ ambush.E2E2E2

The battle ranged across scouts, hobgoblins, bandits, and Sanbalet himself. Morwenna opened her miniature coffin and released a female vampire presence that called her daughter. Sanbalet eventually tried to claim Moay Isles citizenship and diplomatic immunity—the precise fraud described by the papers Cassie had taken—but Crowley killed him. Ned was freed and warned that the group may have been selling prisoners into indentured servitude. Linus finished the last fleeing bandit with “Get out of my house.”E2E2E2E2

With the sea caves cleared, the party earned level 2 and a week of downtime. The drowned adventurer’s brother, the smugglers’ ship, and the wider indenture network remained ahead.E2

The haul from Vexwell Manor#

After freeing Ned, the party finished searching the house. The sea caves contained eight bolts of cloth and thirteen casks of fire brandy bearing Gellan Primewater’s crest, while the manor supplied a Shadowbreaker sword and shield, magical Mariner’s Armor, a Pipe of Remembrance, fairy dust, gemstones, a rare bottle of wine, and a porcelain sailor doll. Cassie began using acid bombs as the obvious solution to centipedes and attic stirges.E3E3E3E3

The most dangerous thing left in the house was a pretty cloak. Yellow mold burst from it when Cassie picked it up, poisoned her, and reduced her exactly to 0 hit points. Kilkarrin neutralized the poison and woke her before the cloak was dragged into sunlight. Elsewhere, Bellouve tried to identify Morwenna’s tiny coffin, received only an error, threw it, and shattered it on a natural 1.E3E3

Primewater pays for discretion#

Cassie argued that the Primewater-marked cargo was either stolen or supplied to smugglers and fraudulently reported stolen, so returning it offered the best reward either way. At Gellan’s docks, his hesitation confirmed the second explanation to the party. The cargo was worth 660 gp; Gellan offered 1,000 gp for its return and silence, and Cassie persuaded him to raise that to 1,200 gp. The five-way split gave each party member, including Crowley’s “Devil’s Due,” 240 gp of value.E3E3E3E3

The council heard a cleaner story: the manor held slavers, their goods had already left, and Cassie’s uncle was nowhere to be found. Linus’s survival and Gellan’s recovered cargo remained secret. The council recognized Cassie as owner of Vexwell Manor, paid the promised 200 gp—40 gp each—and extended the task force’s mandate to future slaver activity. Cassie then took a room at the Empty Net so she could watch ships come and go.E3E3E3E3

Bomb lessons and a returning ship#

During the downtime week, Cassie demanded that Linus teach her to make bombs. He showed her acid, fire, and frost recipes built around the green slime called Steve, warned her away from the necrotic consequences of crypt dirt, and gave her a portable starter culture. Bellouve built the flying homunculus Hummus from one communal gold rib and the emerald from his Primewater ring, while the other investigators pursued romance, pirate rumours, and gambling.E4E4E4E4

Ned then decoded a schedule showing that the smugglers’ ship would return to Vexwell Manor. The council promised the group 400 gp upon completion. Cassie used Sanbalet’s codebook to answer the midnight lantern signal, and the party approached unseen. Ned disguised himself in a dead smuggler’s clothes, Cassie boarded beside him, and her opening question about the missing barrels exposed the deception almost immediately.E4E4E4E4

The ambush still began on the party’s terms. Bellouve pulled the deck wizard into the sea, Hummus attacked the crow’s-nest sentry, Crowley shot Captain Snake Eyes, and Kilkarrin surfaced on deck. Cassie’s cutlass was parried by first mate Bloody Bjorn. The session ended at the beginning of the first full combat round, with the ship, its crew, its contacts, and the 400 gp bounty all still in play.E4

The ship is taken—and has a hidden passenger#

The boarding action became a long, brutal fight made worse by wild magic that rendered everyone nearby vulnerable to piercing damage. Crowley killed Captain Snake Eyes, while Bloody Bjorn cut Cassie down repeatedly and kept insisting the captain was only resting. Kilkarrin, Hummus, and Bellouve brought Cassie back at different points; she still managed to wound Bjorn before Bellouve dragged the first mate into the sea.E5E5E5E5

Two crew ultimately surrendered. One, Steve, said the ship worked under a pirate captain in Luskan and handed prisoners of combat over to that superior. The search produced silver, nautical books, unusual weapons, a treasure map, and a cargo hold whose exact inventory remains uncounted. Morwenna freed the bosun’s parrot Kappa Kaa, while Crowley finally introduced himself to Bellouve after the weapon’s many schools of magic gave the game away.E5E5E5E5E5E5

The ship’s most important discovery was alive. Morwenna found a secret compartment containing a dehydrated, half-starved sea elf named Oceanus. He called himself heir to the throne of Myth Nantar, looked at Kilkarrin, and greeted him as his “dear sweet almost brother.” The session ended there, with the captain’s trapped chest and parts of the vessel still unsearched.E5E5

The fight aboard the returning smuggler ship resumed under a wild-magic effect that made everyone near the boarding party vulnerable to piercing damage. Crowley took immediate advantage and killed Captain Snake Eyes, but first mate Bloody Bjorn kept issuing orders and insisting that the captain was merely resting. The deck remained dark, crowded, and full of crossbow fire while Bellouve fought from the water and Morwenna clung to the hull.E5E5

Cassie had a particularly horizontal battle. Bjorn cut her down, Kilkarrin restored her with Lay on Hands, and she finally struck Bjorn for 11 slashing damage. After drinking a healing potion, she was shot unconscious again. Hummus delivered Bellouve’s Cure Wounds from the darkness, only for Bjorn to knock her out a third time. Ned was also unconscious, and both spent much of the latter fight being kept alive while the others tried to break the crew’s morale.E5

Bellouve eventually dragged Bloody Bjorn into the sea and killed him. Crowley and Hummus removed more resistance, fleeing sailors met the water and its sharks, and Bellouve’s amplified demand finally brought the survivors to surrender. Two smugglers were restrained. One of them, Steve, admitted that the vessel worked under another pirate captain in Luskan and delivered prisoners of combat to that superior, though he denied knowingly carrying slaves.E5E5E5

After Bellouve’s bracelet woke Cassie on 2 hit points, the party began searching. Cassie found and kept Grog Hogs, a guide to privateer-friendly ports and taverns. The bodies yielded assorted pirate curios, five hardtack rations for Cassie, and a treasure map marked with an X across a group of islands. Cabins added 700 undivided silver pieces, a shell-tipped spear and coral dagger taken by Morwenna, and two nautical books worth about 10 gp each. The cargo hold’s cloth and casks were not counted aloud.E5E5E5E5

Bellouve’s Detect Magic also exposed transmutation, evocation, and necromancy around Kilkarrin’s gun. When questioned, the voice finally introduced himself to Bellouve as Hector T. Crowley. Morwenna released the bosun’s parrot, Kappa Kaa, who settled on her shoulder. The captain’s cabin held silver tableware and a locked chest carrying a Stinking Cloud-like conjuration trap; neither remaining key opened it, and its contents remain unknown.E5E5E5

Morwenna then heard someone behind a wall and found a secret door. Inside was a bruised, half-starved sea elf chained to the ship. She freed him, gave him water, and carried him to the open deck. He introduced himself as Oceanus, heir to the throne of Myth Nantar, saw Kilkarrin, and called him his “dear sweet almost brother.” Play resumes before anyone explains what that means, with the ship search still unfinished and the council’s 400 gp bounty still unpaid and unsplit.E5