What You Missed, Monster Island
by James "Sir Tao" Murphy
Dagger,
I regret to inform you that at this time we can offer no help from the mainland. A brave and diverse group were assembled but alas bad luck started even before the ship set sail on Saturday.
Pirates stole the boat that the group was supposed to take to the East. However the adventurers were kind enough to help recover it.
I understand it was guarded by several waves of pirates, some that were briefly filled with the power of Neptune and then blew themselves up. It was quite a mess.
I understand the underground passage was long and twisty, but ended quite near the hidden cove where the ship was tied, and it was tied well.
For the group to get down into the cove they did have to climb down a rock face with only a heavy rope for help. But once they reached the bottom they discovered many pirates that were standing guard. In the cover of darkness the group was able to stay somewhat quiet to get a majority of the group down the rock before pirates noticed them and started attacking.
This is when the players first noticed the ship. We had commissioned a large vessel as it had to cross the eastern ocean. It was 35 feet long and 10 feet wide. And it was “chained” up. Many of the chains had alarm bells so that when the group started to untie the ropes more pirates would appear and attack. In the end the group got away from the pirates sailing the ship back to Portsmouth harbor. The deck hands had quite the job to get the ship ready for the morning launch.
With the bad luck of pirate problems even before they stated we should have known it was not going to go well.
So the group set out to help start the diplomatic process. Unfortunately it was nearly wrecked on an uncharted island.
The group tells of an island that was overrun by monsters and cannibals. The island had several different dragons, a demon, giant spiders, tar monsters, hydra’s ogres, giant Cyclops, giant snake, sea snake, smaller Cyclops, minotaur, turtles, enchanted trees, octopus, an eye of the deep, piranha (that are in the ocean, weird), baby squids, living lava, ghost making shadow monsters, chaos barriers, multiple wooden puzzles, several flat puzzles, pits, stepping stones, stepping rings, and one overworked Ensign Smith.
Ensign Smith was able to assist the party with telling them what was needed to fix the ship. This was fortunate that any of the crew survived as the group reported that soon after they wrecked two Smoke dragons arrived to look at the new arrivals. They talked of many things but the most important was that the island was blowing up soon.
After many adventures the group also reported that the volcano under the island had a magic imbalance that was causing the island to explode if it was not fixed. Someone in the party decided that a dagger would be the vessel for the magic. Hearing this I was surprised that only a small dagger was considered when the magic could have been transferred into anything, to do almost anything, with the proper ritual. I guess they were still thinking of you when this decision was made.
It should also be noted that one of the adventures gave a year and a day of service to a demon. We will not see the Merchant, as he was called, again for quite some time.
Well I am sorry to say that at this time you will have to solve this problem another way. We can’t afford either the time or the gold, to mount a second expedition. Maybe in a year or two people will have forgotten how unlucky this attempt was.
Good luck with your endeavors
Sir Tao Ya Kang
Lord of Blackwood