Admiral's Story

Jahore Port

You begin to come to your senses wondering why your head hurts so much. You remember breaking into that Halfling rum you got in Shireton with your crew last night. But...that's all you remember.

Without even opening your eyes you know you are going to feel quite squiffy if you try to get up. So you lie still. After a moment you realize that your bunk seems hard...hard as stone. You take a breath and realize the air is damp. Not the fresh crisp damp air of the sea, but a stale unmoving air. It smells moldy and horribly like urine.

You slowly open one eye and see your face is pressed against a moldy stone floor and you see bare stone walls in your side vision. This is not your cabin on the Whisker. You quickly claim your wits and your feline instinct tells you to flip from your prone position your feet. Your are just about to do that when you realize that your feet are chained together.

Suddenly you hear some murmuring of indistinguishable words. You turn your head to see a human man, by the look of it, a middle-aged low-caste Sindhi male. He looks frail, starved, and rather confused. His feet are chained as well. It almost seems like he isn't aware of your presence in this...this...cell.

There's an iron barred door. Beyond it you see dim light coming from a wall lamp that looks like it's about to burn out. A rat frightened by your stirring tries to scurry away out of the cell.





You think about how you could have gotten here. The last you recall you were on the Whisker heading to Jahore when your first mate talked you into breaking into that special rum made by the hin, the good stuff. You didn't...you couldn't...refuse that. He said the crew wanted to celebrate the successes and spoils they've gained since you took over after Captain Ebzer. You thought that was odd, since you narrowly escaped the last two encounters, but it was rum from The Five Shires after all.

During the first of those encounters, you boarded a Minrothad Merchant ship that was oddly west of Ierendi. It turned out, that ship had already unloaded it's cargo and had some ghastly unheard of arrangement where they were on course to receive payment after delivery. Anyway, on that ship there was a formidable merchant prince (an elite special order of mages that are stationed on many Minrothad merchant ship to protect the ships goods). You somehow managed to get the crew off the Guild ship unscathed but, alas, with no spoils.

The second of those encounters went much better. You thought it did anyway...but your grumbling crew didn't seem to share your sentiment. While in port in Shireton, some agents of the Iron Ring boarded your ship, offering a 'deal you cannot refuse' as they put it. They presented a chest of gold and gems and said there are ten more of these if you would make a number of runs between Sind and Thyatis, carrying human cargo from Sind to buyers on the Island of Hattias. You cordially shared your dislike of the slave trade with the Iron Ring agents, but you said you would be happy to take the chest as a payment for their lives. You heaved them overboard and hastily set sail out of port. So it is possible the Iron Ring put a mark out on the Whisker and it's captain.

Wait...that's it! Your first mate drugged you and traded you to the Iron Ring to remove the mark. Those bastards! You bet they even excepted the deal. Curses! They have all your stuff, your sword, your gold, YOUR SHIP, and they are now agents of the Ring.

So at least you know where you are now. You are in The Port of Jahore in the canal system under the city. You had heard that the Ring uses these tunnels to traffic people. You just never thought that you would be one. The good news, if there is any, is that you are convinced The Whisker is still in port, because your scallywag crew is trying to make good on the deal you refused.

What do you do?

Admiral groans and sits up. His ginger fur is squashed flat on one side of his face and his whiskers are all crumpled from lying face-down on the stone floor. He squints at the rat, vaguely hungry, but he’s too miserable to chase it right now.

"Gutless, back-stabbing curs…" he mutters bitterly, thinking of his crew. They were murderous, thieving scoundrels, but they were also the only family he’d ever had. He never imagined they would betray him like this…

It’s more fun to feel angry than it is to feel hurt though, so he turns his mind to thoughts of escape and vengeance. Fortunately, his old captain had taught him a trick or two before he died. With a lackadaisical flick of his wrist, Admiral tries to summon Ebzer’s old sword, Reaver, from thin air.

Reaver quickly appears in your hand, following a dim magical glow in the shape of the blade that appears ahead of it.

Admiral feels a wave of unnatural strength and vitality wash over him as his captain's scimitar materializes in his hand. The blade is filthy and corroded, pitted with rust from decades of exposure to the salty sea air, but it’s still got an edge. Admiral stands and stretches, feeling quite stiff after having spent who-knows-how-long passed out on the floor. Careful not to trip over his chains, he moves closer to the door of the cell and peeks out into the corridor.

You carefully make it close to the door, the sound of rattling chains minimized as you move as agilely as possible. You peer through to see a vaulted stone area. It’s almost completely bare except the wall lamp that is soon to go out by the looks of it. There is no guard. But there is an out-of-shape wooden bench on the other side of the vaulted room. Hanging on the wall by the bench are many more chain shackles. Also, there is an empty single-human-sized hanging round iron cage barely visible to you on the left outside your cell's door. Between the bench and the small cage is a narrow archway that leads out of the area. And at the back of the vaulted room it looks like there is a wide opening to the right. You think you can hear the sound of trickling water to the left.

All the while the human is still making senseless murmurings, either unaware of or not acknowledging your presense.


Current HP: 27, Temp HP: 8, Spell Slots: 2/2

Admiral mutters a few arcane syllables under his breath and dissipates into sea fog, rematerializing moments later on the other side of the bars. He glances back at the sorry, half-starved wretch with whom he had been briefly cellmates and grins. "Pretty nifty, eh?"

Without waiting for a response, he slinks over to investigate the passageway on the left, pausing on the way to extinguish the lamp. Humans have very poor eyesight in the dark, so he hopes this will give him an edge if he gets into a scuffle with one of his captors.

The human quickly looks up as you speak back into the cell. For a moment he is wide-eyed and crazed and seems to look through you more than look at you. As you turn to extinguish the lamp you hear him shriek in a shaking voice that has suddenly gained volume and passion. "The Order of the Shadow will free us! Free us all!" His sudden outburst just as abruptly returns to senseless mutters as the room goes dark from you blowing out the lamp.

Although now colorless in your feline darkvision, you can see the hanging cage chained to a 20ft-high cracked, vaulted ceiling. The cage is indeed empty except for dried feces being fed on by some roach-like insects and tattered fragments of garments.

The stone all around the room is covered in mold and mossy growth. You still hear dripping coming from the arch to the left. When you peer into the archway you see, at the end of a twenty foot narrow tunnel that is mostly round and only about 6' tall, a moldy round door with a stone frame and iron ring in the center.



About halfway down the tunnel another opening meets it on the right. There are many thin cracks in the upper part of the narrow tunnel and rancid smelling water drips from them and runs down the round walls and perhaps an inch or so of water collects near the round door. Current HP: 27, Temp HP: 8, Spell Slots: 1/2

The sound of the dripping water gets louder and is all you can hear as you step closer to the arch and peer down the tunnel way on the left.

Admiral wrinkles his nose and ventures a little deeper into the tunnel to see what lies beyond the opening on the right.

You move into the tunnel, stirring horribly smelling water under your feet with each step. The water that drips from cracks in the cylindric walls and tunnel ceiling gathers on the floor. It is brown and filthy and gets deeper with each step. You guess at most about an inch or two is collecting at the round door at the end of the tunnel. About 10 feet into the tunnel you turn right to peer down the connecting tunnel. In dimension and in the appearance of wet, rancid, moldy filth, this tunnel is nearly identical to the one you are in. The difference is that it doesn't end with a round door. Instead, it looks like it leads to a landing area of some sort, with metal foot rails protruding from the stone of the far wall, forming a ladder upward.

Admiral grimaces, tail twitching in displeasure, as he wades through the foul-smelling water and makes his way over to the bottom of the ladder. He grabs onto one of the rungs, tugs on it to make sure it will hold his weight, and then quickly clambers up.

The tunnel opens to circular landing about 8' around. Directly in front of you are the iron foot rungs. You step forward test integrity of one of them. Clearly they could bear your weight, so you clamber up. Above you, maybe about 20 feet up there is a similar round door. With feline agility you ascend quickly.

With just a few quick steps up the ladder you catch a scent that brings you to a halt: the faint odor of millepedes. You ready yourself hoping the smell is from the small spider deterring type of arthropod and not from the muck-dwelling, beast and carrion-eating large variety. Just as you take one more step up with caution, you unfortunately find your concern for the latter is well founded.



A giant centipede, alerted by your ascent, ripples its many legs onto the ladder from a damp ledge. It hisses at you. Current HP: 27, Temp HP: 8, Spell Slots: 1/2

Admiral hisses back. Hanging onto the ladder with one hand, he leans back and slashes at the centipede with his sword.

Reaver adeptly stifles the centipede's taunt with a blow to the crawler's head that is only partially deflected by the creature's tail-end which swings around to parry the blade. The sword's solid clanking thud reveals that the creature has a sturdy exoskeleton.

Many sharp legs on the centipede's 4ft tail follow through after deflecting Reaver's full force. The giant attempts to wrap around you and grapple you off the ladder. Current HP: 27, Temp HP: 8, Spell Slots: 1/2, Current PP: 3, Pact Tally: 0/1000

Your reflexes allow you to wedge your feet securely into foot rails and release your non-sword hand while leaning back just out of range of the grasp of the centipede's sharp legs. As the creature's body swings over you, you are free to attack as you lean back in (or another way you think of).


Current HP: 27, Temp HP: 8, Spell Slots: 1/2, Current PP: 3, Pact Tally: 0/400

Admiral spits a curse at the enormous bug as it attempts to grapple him and takes another stab at it with Reaver, aiming for one of the softer-looking joints in the centipede’s chitinous exoskeleton.