Chapter 20: Coming Dawn

[Jeff]

Chapter 20

Coming Dawn

Sul, the 1st of Zaranytr 999 YK

All who are conscious:

The world is dark, but not nearly as dark as it's been for days. Better still, the light is increasing incrementally . . . slowly and steadily. The change from endless night to gradual morning has been gradual, like time moving so slow you're almost content to just wait it out. The mind is moving too slowly to feel anything but numbness. And though the landscape that's been unfolding around you is still dim, there are hints of color everywhere. Black sky became a cool grey sky, black water became a dark blue of the river—yes, a proper river. A pebbly beach, lapping water, and hard packed sand.

Adamant: Adamant was never incapacitated, but he feels like he might as well have been. The time shift is confusing. Eventually he realizes, after a long time, is . . . he's lost Calirataia! She is no longer holding onto him. A moment of panic siezes him. But there is a faint light above him, and what appears to be the colossal ribs of a beast arcing over him. They hang with mossy-looking river plants, so he feels he's lying inside the skeletal remains of a dead beast. Beneath him are hard rocks, slabs of carved stone broken into rubble, and a fair amount of bones. He sits up, realizing he's still partially submerged in water, which laps against him with . . . life. Miniscule fish dart around him. This is not Mabarian water, clear and cold but not life-sapping. And through the ribs . . . no, the frames of a ship, a wrecked piece of one, anyway . . . he sees a dim open sky gradually growing with light.

Melethos: Melethos gasps for air, coming to suddenly as if out of a mere catnap. He's wet still, but sitting in hard-packed sand. Alert now, he lifts one arm and sees his shield there, the straps loose it looks like a solid kick would make it slip free. He looks immediately to his other side and sees Kal lying there, asleep, almost spread-eagle on his back. The rope is still around them both, remarkably, and behind them both is the chest! The skeleton has let go and now lies half buried in the sand. It almost looks like the chest and skeleton have been here for several high and low tides already, though no sand lingers on top of the chest. It's clean.

And there is Streko, some twenty-five feet away, his feet in the water! He is already stirring.

Streko: When Streko opens his eyes, he sees the water first. A great length of the horizon is the river, and beyond it, land again. He turns and sees the canopy of a jungle rising overhead as well. He then spots Melethos already sitting up. And Kal, who is not awake but flattened on the ground. And the chest is here, too.

Both tiefling and halfling quickly look around and see that they're on a beach, what seems to be the west side of a river. Hopefully the same river they've been on . . . The remains of the bow of a great galleon juts from the water nearby, transfixed between some very big rocks. It looks like it's been there for years.

Adamant almost feels it before he sees that distant golden shine across the river. He sees no immediate sign of his friends, at least not from where he's sitting. But then, between the rib-like frames that form a ceiling, he sees a massive rock jutting many feet out of the water, right up against this shipwreck, and lying there is the form of Calirataia. She is not gone!

Melethos and Streko do not yet see Calirataia; she lies prostrate on the rock. Nor do they spot Adamant from where they are.

Belarin

Belarin finds himself standing with Histra's hand still in his. He looks at her. She is still wet (and so is he), but no longer quite so drawn. Both of them are standing on solid, if slanting ground. It's the same ship, he surmises, that fell away beneath their feet, and the river water is up to their waists. 

The rest of the ship is canted downward toward the bow, buried in water . . . and the shoreline. It looks like it shipwrecked against some rocks, long ago. The sound of water slapping gently against the ship and some nearby rocks is like a balm upon him. It is the sound of life. There are even some tittering birds in the jungle nearby. Histra turns and embraces him. "We live," she whispers. "Somewhere," she almost laughs.

They then both look together beside them, where the familiar shape of Shorak seems to lie unconscious and floating in the water. More remarkable: his has shifted into his natural form, his skin pale white-grey, his facial features much softer. The half-drow, half-changeling's eyes are closed. His face looks troubled like he's in the throes of a bad dream, and his hands and fingers are curled and locked that way. 

"We need to rouse him," Histra says.

All who are conscious:

It is dawn. Real dawn, and the first light of a new day.

---

Kal and Shorak are still unconscious (not due to 0 hit points, though). If anyone wants to know more about the area around them, let me know where and how you're looking.

Neither Adamant's Delver's Light nor Kal's Light spell are in effect now.

Attachments:

[Ken]

Belarin can hardly believe it. They are alive! He has crossed through a number of planar portals, but this was the weirdest transit yet. He looks around. "No sign of the others," he says, one arm still around Histra's shoulders. "But first things first...."

He rummages through his waterlogged pouches and eventually finds the healing potion that he'd offered her back on the ship. Well, not really BACK, he ponders, since it's the same ship. He moves over to Shorak, gets one arm under both of Shorak's armpits to raise him out of the water, and then pours the potion into the lipless slit of the half-changeling's mouth.

_________________________________

Belarin gives Shorak the potion of healing. Shorak heals 2d4(4,4) + 2 = 10 hit points.

[Brian]

Melethos coughs, trying to clear water from his throat. He is wet and weary... but alive. He slowly stands, looks around, spies the wrecked hull of a ship.

"Where by the gods are we?" he mutters, then prods Kal with the toe of his boot. "Wake, lord Kalarian. I think you may have fainted."

When he is sure Kal is waking, he hails Streko. "We're over here. Do you see any of the others?"

[Jeff]

Shorak awakens. His body is stiff and pained, but he feels remarkably alive. And just very tired.

Elsewhere, Kal does not stir at Melethos's toe-based prompting. A deep sleep, it seems.

[Dave W.]

Adamant sitting, weaponless, coming from darkness, he feels almost re-forged. The urgency of waking without Calirataia or his friends is the only thing that belies that feeling. Thank you Lady. he prays looking at the dawn, it is very good to see You again.

He looks for those he holds dear and then he sees the dryad on the rock.

He scrambles to the massive rock and tries to quickly climb up to where Calirataia is.

---

I'm not sure how climbable the rock is but he is working his way up as best he can.

[Dave W.]

not great but not a 1 either...
dlw32: 1D20+3 → 11( (8) + 3)

[Joe]

Streko opens his eyes, blinks in his brightening surroundings and sees both Melethos and Kalarian. He smiles. "Thank you, dear Olladra!"

Then he frowns. He doesn't see either Adamant or Calirataia. He takes in the sounds of water gently lapping at his feet and recalls some of the deadlier life in the river. "Best get out of this!" he whispers, standing and moving toward the Tiefling and Kal. Responding to Melethos, he says, "No. I just woke up myself and Kal, is he...?"

Streko reaches his friend and checks for signs of life. "He appears to be in a deep sleep. I won't be able to help him until we get to a safe place and we all get some rest, which is what I think we all need. First of all, we MUST find Adamant and Calirataia. Perhaps they are still in the river. Adamant would be fine, but does the Dryad need to breathe? Or they could be out there," he motions to the jungles beyond. "How do you suggest we proceed?"

[Brian]

Melethos cocks an eyebrow at his halfling friend. "What do we do? Well, I have to carry Kal, that's what I have to do. That leaves the job of leader to... you." He scoops up Kal and slings him over one shoulder. "Lead on, Streko. I will follow where you go."

[Jeff]

Adamant manages to climb the nearest frames of the ship so he can make contact with the rock—then scrambles and slips and fails to get onto the rock itself.

The splashing draws Melethos’s and Streko’s attention. They see their warforged friend has somehow wedged himself awkwardly where the massive rock in the water is pressed up against the skeletal hull of the wrecked ship. Then they see where he’s trying to get: to the sun-brown frail fork lying atop the boulder.

What is Melethos doing about the rope wrapped around himself and Kal and the chest? It is beginning to look severely frayed. It would be easy to cut.

Streko thinks Kal is battered but well. He thinks he could get him awake but any small amount of magical healing would make short work of it.

[Dave B.]

Shorak stirs. "What, where, how?" He finds his feet touching something solid and steadies himself in the water. "Ah, we are still alive, then." He says. Eyeing the empty vial in Belarin's hand, he adds "Thank you." Shorak realizes he is in his natural changeling form, but is just too tired to change to his preferred semblance. He starts to look around. Getting a feel for their current surroundings. "Any sign of the others?" He asks.

[Ken]

"No," says Belarin. "No sign. But at least we're back in our world. Are you all right?"

He looks back toward Histra. "Let's go out of the water and build a fire. I can try to scry for the others in a bit."

[Joe]

Streko hears the splashing, sees Adamant struggling to climb and looks up to see Calirataia. "We found them, at least. Hold, Melethos. Let me try something before you carry Kalarian around too long."

Streko takes Kal's hands in his, offers a blessing and prayer Olladra and gives healing energy to his friend. He whispers, "Thank you." Streko then bows his head momentarily, before smiling as he hears Kalarian begin to waken. "Better put him down before he begins flailing and takes you both down," he tells Melethos, pointing at the frayed rope tying them together. "Once awake, Kalarian might still be able to fly up and get the dryad, bring her to safety, and then we can help her find Dragonfly. Or she can find the ship without our help, too. You might have a better chance at helping Adamant out of his current predicament."
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Streko casts Cure Wounds at 2nd Level: Kal gets back  8 hp.

[Brian]

Melethos nods at Streko's instructions and lays Kal on the ground. Then he unties the rope from his waist. The chest rests on the beach, with the skeleton wearing the garb nearby. He'll deal with them later.

He sets his shield on the sand, then walks over to the water and swims the roughly thirty feet to the warforged. Standing on the wood ribs of the wrecked ship, he smiles at Adamant. "Would you like some help?"

[Jeff]

Kal awakens smoothly, and though disoriented at first, and still very weary, his body feels largely unhurt. Only some of the lingering scars and aches from the recent battle remain.

The top of the rock Calirataia is on juts about fifteen feet out of the water.

[Darren]

Kal reaches up and pushes a lock of red hair gently back behind her ear, caressing the side of her face as his hand falls slowly back to the bed they share. He reaches up again to touch the side of her face as he kisses her. He pulls back and stares for a moment, swimming for just a moment in the deep blue of her eyes. He sighs. "A man could find himself dangerously in love with you, Violetta," he says. She's not the first girl he's said it to, but this time he may actually mean it. She smiles, tracing a hand across his bare chest.

"My lord, Kalarian," he teases, "you flatter me so." She kisses him, then kisses her way down his chest, giggling as she returns to kiss him on the lips once again. He breathes in her scent, relishes the feeling of her body pressed close to his. He wraps his arms around her, pressing her head against his beating heart, feeling the pulse increasing to a faster rhythm.

"I wish I could stay here forever," he whispers into the top of her head. She shifts, her chin resting against him as she looks up. He kisses her forehead.

"Aye, my lord. So do I," she says, even as she begins to pull away from him and rise to her feet, pulling her shift and simple dress over her head. "But we both know that cannot be," she says, tying the apron strings behind her back. "You are you and I am me, my lord." She kisses him again and moves to the door, turning to look at him and smile again before returning to work on the tavern floor.

Kalarian sighs, his head hitting the pillow hard and he closes his eyes....

Kal opens his eyes and sees the golden orbs Melethos' face looking down into his. Violetta's perfume lingers in his nostrils and he inhales deeply, then twists his face at the sour stench. "Melethos, by all the gods, you need a bath." He waves his friend back, then sits up slowly, taking in his surroundings. "Well, we're no dead, at least," he says. The ache that runs all through his body is deep inside of his bones. "So, where are we?" Kal scans the area, realizing his staff is missing. He looks to see if the weapon is nearby, hoping that it was not lost beneath the water.

________________
More later, but I wanted to get all of that out.

[Ken]

As he, Shorak, and Histra begin wading to shore, Belarin says, "Well, forget about starting a fire. After all the gloom of Mabar, I momentarily forgot we were in a jungle." He looks at the approaching dawn. "The day's heat will likely dry out our clothes soon enough."

Once on the shore, he opens his pack and pouches and shakes out any water. The spellbook that Histra purchased for him is fine - its alchemically treated pages resist any damage from such a simple thing as water. His mind wanders for a moment, and he finds himself considering new spells... though not ones that he's learned through Histra's teaching. The pleasant tingle in his mind is similar to that he feels when Raeshara's power opens his awareness to new arcane deceptions and attacks. It just feels a little different. He puts the thought aside for the moment.

He sits down on the sand. "Let's rest for a few minutes," he says. "It's been a difficult couple of hours!" He can't help but chuckle.

[Jeff]

Belarin has to climb over the side of the sunken ship (easily), and Histra follows. (Does Shorak? I await for statements of action.) It's much too deep to wade at first, so he has to swim to shore. Meanwhile, he notices that where a portion of the ship that's canted down and buried at the rocky shorline, the water is dark as though still touched by the energies of Mabar. Moreover, there is a constant churning in there.

When he reaches the rocky beach, he spots a long slender object there, half in the water, half on the pebbly sand: Adamant's glaive!

Then, in almost the same moment, he spots some silhouettes in the still-dark dawn light, further down to the beach. To the south.

Kal and Streko, and even Melethos on his way over to Adamant, also spot the silhouettes of Belarin and Histra rising out of the water onto the beach further to the north. The shipwreck blocks their view from where they came from.

Shorak notices the outline of the other wreck to the south. And there, atop a rock jutting from the water, he sees the figure of a woman lying still.

[Dave W.]

Feb 4, 2021 6:14:03 GMT -4 Brian said:

Melethos nods at Streko's instructions and lays Kal on the ground. Then he unties the rope from his waist. The chest rests on the beach, with the skeleton wearing the garb nearby. He'll deal with them later.

He walks over to Adamant. "Would you like some help?"

“By the Host you are a welcome sight!” Adamnt says while trying to get back onhis feet... “yes, I could do with some help, if you would like to use me as a ladder I think we could get her down.”

As Adamant positions himself to give the tiefling a boost up, he adds, “the others? is Kal alright? Belarin, Streko? Histra?”

---

joe, i think you may have forgotten to add your WIS modifier to the cure wounds.

[Jeff]

Feb 4, 2021 10:18:42 GMT -4 Darren said:

Kal scans the area, realizing his staff is missing. He looks to see if the weapon is nearby, hoping that it was not lost beneath the water.

Kal sees no sign of the staff in his immediate field of vision. Of course, it is also still the dark of early morning, and it will grow brighter by the minute.

[Brian]

Feb 4, 2021 11:10:11 GMT -4 Dave W. said:

“By the Host you are a welcome sight!” Adamnt says [to Melethos] while trying to get back on his feet... “yes, I could do with some help, if you would like to use me as a ladder I think we could get her down.”

As Adamant positions himself to give the tiefling a boost up, he adds, “the others? is Kal alright? Belarin, Streko? Histra?”

Melethos gestures northward. "I just spotted Belarin and Histra, and Kal will be okay. Not sure about Shorak." He smiles at the warforged. "Boost me onto the rock and I'll lower the dryad to you."

[Dave W.]

Adamant boosts Melethos up. “Be gentle with her, she has suffered.” he reminds him (needlessly surely).

[Brian]

With Adamant's help, Melethos scrambles up the rock surface, trying to reach the top.

___________________________________

Let me know if an Athletics check is in order.

EDIT adding advantaged Athletics checks

Melethos: 1D20+4 → 7( (3) + 4)#Strength (Athletics) Check
Melethos: 1D20+4 → 16( (12) + 4)#advantaged Strength (Athletics) Check

[Darren]

With Adamant and Melethos seeing to the dryad, Kal extricates himself from the ropes and begins a circuit of the area, making sure to always keep the chest in sight. They fought dearly for that.

_______________
Kal will do a circle out to around 100' around the chest to see what's around (and if he can locate his staff).

Once Cali is down, I've got some other ideas.

[Ken]

Belarin smiles as he sees his friends. "They must have come through with the bow of the ship," he says to Histra, "while we ended up on the back end. Typical!" He retrieves Adamant's glaive and uses it as a walking stick as he walks toward the others.

[Jeff]

Kal begins to look around the area.

With Adamant's tall, if scraped-up body becoming an instant warforged ladder, Melethos is able to scale the rock without too much difficulty. His feel slip a few times, since water laps frequently against the rock, but he reaches Calirataia. Like Kal, she seems to be in a deep sleep. Lifting her, he bears her safely down to Adamant's keeping where he still stands between the frame of the shipwreck and the slippery rock.

Melethos can slide down into the water easily enough, if he wishes.

When Kal walks around the nearer beach, he sees nothing else washed up. When he walks over to the drier patch, he sees signs of recent activity. The grass here looks like it grows thick and tall, but it's been . . . he thinks chewed. Thus it is cropped short but irregularly. Though he's no ranger, he thinks he can see the source. Huge footprints in the earth, rounded like the feet of some enormous elephant, are evident near the tree line. When he looks that way, even the thick foliage of the jungle looks like it's been parted so many times that some of the taller plants and trees look like they've been warped.

In addition to seeing Belarin and Histra, Kal can now easily see the wreck of the other ship to the north. The sterncastle barely sticks out of the water; it's mostly sunken now, with only a few bits and pieces above the surface. Shorak is still on it, surveying from there. The water near the middle of the wreck is dark as though fouled by something beneath it. But it's the churning that makes it more disturbing.

Then Belarin approaches, Histra only a short way behind him. Kal can see that she's just pulled Adamant's glaive from the beach on their side.

Give me a Wisdom (Perception) check, Darren. And remember, disadvantaged for exhaustion.

[Darren]

Wisdom checks were 10 and 15.

Kal feels a flood of relief at seeing Histra and Belarin. "It seems a prayer to Olladra is in order, Streko," he says, waving to his friends. He spies Shorak in the distance and waves to him, too, beckoning him to join them.

[Joe]

BEFORE Kal goes off walking, Streko takes his hand and pulls him down so that they are nose-to-nose. Streko doesn't smile. He slaps Kal's face lightly.

"Stop doing that! Also, before you go traipsing off on your own yet again, perhaps you will allow me to assist you, in case you manage to wander into something you wish you hadn't."

Streko will join Kal in his localized search pattern.
__________________________________________________

EDITED CONTENT ABOVE (FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY)

Add 4 to Kal's healing (thanks Dave).

Wisdom (perception) roll → 12

[Dave W.]

Adamant gratefully takes Calirataia from Melethos. “Can I help you get down?” he holds a up a hand.

[Dave B.]

Shorak watches the figure long enough to see a big red humanoid with horns climb up to take the figure down. "That must be Melethos." He says, not realizing that Belarin and Histra are already many yards away. He squints at the figure even farther away waving at them. "Hmm. Looks like Kal." He mutters to himself, waving back. "Wait up!" He calls to Belarin and Histra as he hurries after them. "Do you think they managed to bring the chest with them?" Shorak asks Belarin as he catches up to them.

[Brian]

Feb 4, 2021 23:18:10 GMT -4 Dave W. said:

Adamant gratefully takes Calirataia from Melethos. “Can I help you get down?” he holds a up a hand.

Melethos shakes his head. “Take the dryad to shore. I’m going to take a look from up here. Maybe I can see the Dragonfly.”

Standing, Melethos looks north and south, hoping to spot the ship somewhere on the river.