Friday September 23rd, 402 (12:40 a.m.) [9]:


     “Hold on, try this,” Konishi suggests before Ydoran has a chance to try the lock, fishing a key from the folds of the hammock beside him, “It looks like the right size.”


     Before he can use the key he spots the creature and attempts to befriend it with a tidbit of food. The little fellow sniffs the air, contemplates the morsel for a moment, then leans back on its haunches and tries to sit up on its back legs like a dog begging for a treat, never taking its eyes off the food in Ydoran’s outstretched hand. Feeling he’s earned his prize, the mini-wyrm flops back forward and snaps it out of Ydoran’s hand with astonishing speed and precision, offering a little burp in return afterward.


[Ydoran, while never having seen one and never imagining he ever would, suspects this may be a creature he read about in school. It is known as a malzmay in its native land, the outer Minalaean Islands*. They’re quite scarce there and  further east in Kara-Tur, and  exceedingly rare in most of the rest of Ostrom, and are known here as ‘pseudodragons’. A discussion of the animal can be found in Dragon #269 (if you don’t have a copy I’ve uploaded one here, page 78: http://pathtoadventure.ca/ostrom/knowledgebase/dragon-magazine-269/. I’ve set the page to private so let me know if you have trouble accessing it. Note that Ydoran may know a little of what’s written in the main body of the text from his studies, but nothing really of what appears in the footnotes. Also note that I probably won’t follow the precise details given in this article very closely, as I’d like to put my own spin on the creature to some extent.)]


[We can continue with the interaction between Ydoran and the pseudodragon, of course, but for now we can go back to the matter of the locked box to tie off that loose end]


     Ydoran takes Konishi’s key and tries it in the lock. As it slides into place, he feels a sharp pain in his hand and he looks down in horror [presumably] at blood streaming from his palm, mixed with a thick goo coating the needle that has sprung from the lock and punctured him. Konishi looks equally horrified when he realizes what has happened and shouts, “Suck out the poison – hurry!” Before he can do much of anything to help himself out, Ydoran’s head begins to spin and, within seconds, he faints dead away.


12:45 a.m.:


     Ydoran’s eyes flutter open**, and he finds himself flat on his back with the tiny dragon perched on his stomach, his claws digging into the soft flesh of the wizard’s belly as he stretches*** while Kai, crouched nearby, gives him a scratch underneath his chin [the pseudodragon, that is, not Ydoran!]. “I think he likes you,” she says. “You seem to be okay, you’ve been out for just a few minutes. We washed out the wound. Your heart still beats strongly.”


     “And we’re all rich, by the way,” Konishi says, sitting in the hammock closest to the box, reaching in and pulling out a large handful of coins. “Well, maybe not rich, but there have to be at least a thousand pieces of electrum in here. It was worth you almost dying, I’d say.” He smiles and lets the coins drop back into the box a few at a time, then closes it up again****.


     “I should get back to the room with the others,” Kai says, patting Ydoran’s new friend on the head before rising and heading to the cabin door. “Still no sign of anyone up here, luck is finally with us,” she adds while exiting.


     Feeling strong enough to get up, Ydoran stands [presumably] and the two head to the stern of the ship, the forecastle now having been explored*****. Choosing the door that the captain emerged from earlier [let’s say], they open it and find themselves, not surprisingly, in what appear to be a captain’s quarters, making up half the stern of the ship, roughly 25’x15′ in size except for a 5’x5′ walled off section to the right******. There’s a single bed with its head against the bulkhead, neatly made. There’s a writing desk against the hull, beneath the porthole, with a drawer on each side and three trays on top. In front of the trays is an inkpot, two quill pens, a small knife and a pewter, pepper-pot-like container. Against the desk is a wooden, upright chair, pulled back a bit (no doubt the captain was sitting here when the disruption on deck arose), and next to the chair is a brassbound chest. Against the hull on the starboard side is a padded leather couch, in front of which lies a bearskin rug, and underneath which lies a fairly large metal box. An unlit hooded lantern hangs from the center of the deck above.


     One of the trays on the desk is empty, another is full of bills and receipts for various marine supplies, and the last contains several letters of a personal and surprisingly intimate nature from three different ladies in three different ports (Brightwater, Blackwater and Elecann). There’s also a curious, semi-literate document requesting a further supply of ironware “as per previous consignments and at the agreed upon terms.” The signature here is in the form of a pictoglyph and shows a lizard with a forked tongue extended. There’s also a letter requesting “goods, etc.” written in the same handwriting as the aforementioned document, suspiciously containing no further details of the cargo to be delivered.


     Konishi tries the drawer on the left and finds it locked. “Here’s the key from the captain if you want to try it,” the ronin asks Ydoran, pausing for comic effect before adding, “Okay, I guess I’ll try this one.” The key works, and his eyes widen as he pulls the drawer open, pulling out four small crystal phials, each with a tidy label affixed. Written on the labels is the following:

  1. Healing wounds
  2. Healing wounds
  3. Cure-all for disease
  4. Poison neutralizer

There are also four dirty tumblers, a half-full bottle of what looks to be brandy, and another key in the drawer. The inkpot contains nothing but fine sand. There’s a grey cloak hanging on a peg on the back of the door.


     “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Konishi asks and, without awaiting a response, continues. “Feed some of this healing draught to Caleb, wake him up hopefully, and then maybe he can help get this ship going in a hurry? It’s probably too late to catch them, but you never know.”


     There’s still the other drawer (locked), the box and the chest (neither of which appear to be locked) to go through, but will Ydoran consider acting on Konishi’s suggestion before they search further?


J


* Recall that these islands can be found on the eastern side of the Ostrom map, the group which has Mystras as its capital. Interestingly, the island on which the party was shipwrecked at the beginning of the campaign was likely part of the inner Minalaean Islands. The Minalaeans have a quasi-Hellenistic culture, and name malzmay comes from the Macedonian phrase мал змеј or, transliterally, mal smay (the ‘s’ has a ‘z’ sound) meaning ‘little dragon’.


** Ydoran needs a 14 to save vs. poison. As luck would have it, he rolled a 14 (no damage). Note that his Phantom Armour provides no protection against traps, since the trap has no mind to delude with the spell.


*** Note that, since the creature can actually reach his skin despite the presence of his Phantom Armour, this would suggest it is somehow immune to the spell’s effects. There’s no damage from the claws, of course.


**** In fact there are exactly 1000 e.p. in the box.


***** The pseudodragon follows the pair for a ways, but is distracted by the disarray of the main deck, choosing to poke around there rather than follow them further, at least not right away.


****** The setup here looks to be similar to the layout at the forecastle. In all likelihood the 5’x5′ section, accessible by the nearer of the center doors (i.e. the second from the top on the right of the map I shared earlier) is another set of stairs to the hold. A quick check reveals this to be true.

Comments

  1. Ryan

    Friday September 23rd, 402 (12:40 a.m.) [9]:

    [Ydoran is enthralled by his new friend. Taking a keen interest in the pseudodragon, Ydoran intends to find out more about it when he has more free time to do so, and also try to take good care of it in the meantime.]

    After coming to to find the creature making itself comfortable as it stretches itself out on his incapacitated body, Ydoran will offer a little more food and also the gem acquired from the captain, following his unfortunate poisoning, in order to hold the creatures interest while he examines it further.

    After finding the healing vials in the captains quarters, Ydoran agrees with Konishi’s suggestion. “Yes, let’s see if we can’t rouse Caleb with these.” Ydoran will hastily make his way to his fallen companion to administer the healing potion. If successful, Ydoran will advise to follow Konishi’s plan to try to overtake Sercate before she reaches the shore, to continue the search of the ship later on.

  2. jonathan

    Some unimportant comments while Wulf rests well and dreams of large women*, just to put in some activity:

    For the curious, at the new 20/lb standard, the electrum coins would be about the size of a toonie made 50% thicker, and three times as heavy. Silver coins would be thicker, at two toonies (for the same radius), and gold thinner, at just a little thicker than one (copper would be about 2.3 toonies thick at that radius).

    To satisfy my own curiosity, James, if the Minalaeans are quasi-Hellenistic, and given that the relevant place names on the map look Greek-like, why use Macedonian (a South Slavic language) as the basis for a Minalaean word? The resultant ‘lzm’ cluster in particular doesn’t seem to match Greek phonotactics, as the place names do; nor does a final ‘y’. And just to be pedantic, the transliteration would properly be mal zmej using any of the major romanization systems for Macedonian (except for ISO 9:1995, in which it is mal zmeǰ, with a caron over the j.) Interestingly, змеј (or its cognates) is also the word for ‘kite’ (as in the toy) in many languages of all three branches of the Slavic languages.

    * A Princess Bride reference, for those who didn’t catch it.

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