(G460 14/08/2021 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, KT) LR42

[More on the big pickle I had got myself into on Yacg'harr Island.]

DAY 537 (22nd Eleasis) (August) cont ...

I must say Yacg'harr Island is an odd sort of place - well the small town that we've been calling 'Pirate Town' is anyway. I want to find out who these people are - so that we know how to deal with them, but so far I can't pin them down to a generalisation.

There are 'retired' pirates here, there are thieves, murderers and the scum of the sea waves, but there are also farmers, tradesmen, sail makers, chandlers - as reasonable  people as you would hope to find in any decent port.

It's almost as if some sort of capricious drunken god has thrown them all together for his  (or her) own amusement. How did the island get like this? Did it start with settlers who then started attending to pirate ships out of fear or avarice? Or did it start as a pirate port  that slowly go more 'gentrified' as commoners came to cater to the needs of the pirates?

Who knows? Certainly not the people that live here, or at least no one will tell me. It's hard to say, if this is the work of a 'capricious drunken god' or just a strange set of circumstance that led to such an odd mix of people living together.

From what I remember of Chult, ports such as Renkrue might trade with a pirate out of fear or ignorance, but on the whole the inhabitants were good, honest people. In short Renkrue was a port. So what is Yacg'harr Island? Is it a pirate port (as I was told) or is it a regular port? But with a name like 'Yar-harr' Island and the reputation it has it can hardly be the later. But if it is the former it does not fully fit the bill.

Somewhere in between then, and I will have to leave it at that. Suffice to say that of the dozen or so corpses we saw littering the street where the skulls had beencausing chaos, some were scum of the sea, and some were honest folk who had just been trying to defend their homes.

We were all in disguise when we got there, except Dak who wanted, at all times, for everyone to know who he was and dam the consequences. The youthful exuberance of a fellow who had, as yet, not built up a back catalogue of powerful enemies. In my experience, enemies came not for you, but for your friends and family, so it was best to keep as hidden as possible.

So, back on the street by the captain's house we were attacked by another one of those annoying skills. Sylvia took it out straight away. A fireball hit us from somewhere. This was the third time that night I had been fireballed and it was getting incredibly tiresome. I'd have to shave my beard in the morning as there would only be patches of it left, but thank Silvanus for my dragon-hide armour.

I started summoning wave after wave of hippogriffs that then flew over and aided Dak who had found the second one and was attacking it. Jiggles had found the third one - it was back inside the captain's house. I remained outside, directing the hippogriffs I had summoned. Sylvia went in and located it in the kitchen where she eventually destroyed it with a Turn Undead.

Outside the last of the skulls still on the go got a lucky shot on Irritator that nearly knocked him flat, but we got the blighter in the end, between Dak, Irritator and half a dozen hippogriffs.

With that all over then, we stuffed the skull dust back into the captain's box, then went to attend to the wounded and the dead.
Myself and Sylvia posing as 'Clerics of Ilmater' healed those that still lived and arranged  the dead into two (for want of a better word) piles - those that were scum that no-one  would miss and those that were decent people that were deserving of a resurrection.

In total we healed 5 injured people, left 8 dead, and planned to resurrect 7.

While we were doing that, I was approached by a man who said;
'Thanks for helping out. You are one of the folks from up at the barrow, aye?'
He was jumping to (in this case correct) conclusions I thought, so I said;
'No, we are Clerics of Ilmater.'
'Oh,' he insisted. 'But...! How did you get here then? You must be one of that lot!'
'No,' I growled in an intimidating manner. 'We teleported in yesterday. We are Clerics  of Ilmater.'
Who knows what he thought of that, but he ran off to tell people what I had told him.

Perhaps it would have been good to get some good will from the people of the town,  but at what cost? Anything that alerted my enemies to my location would endanger  my family. We had to be careful. Better not to boost my ego at the expense of putting people at risk. The secrets I held of Midpoint Island were huge, the more hidden my identity the better.

After the arrangements were made in town, with the innkeeper, we teleported back to the Barrow with the box. Irritator told me that the box had 'dampening magic' on it that stopped the skulls from regenerating. That would do for now.

We spend hours back at the Barrow making plans. Sylvia will continue to pose as a Cleric of Ilmater over the next couple of days until the resurrections are done. The 35,000 gold it will cost will come out of my share as Dak is too much in love with his wealth.

I didn't ask him for any gold of course, I was well aware he would not contribute, but unbidden I was treated to a long oration on his thoughts on how male and female half-orcs interacted with each other and the complications around calling half-orcs "half-orcs" around humans and calling them "half-humans" around orcs and how it got even more complicated with half-orcs who either leaned one way or the other and how it was so easy to annoy and even provoke violence by using the wrong noun to
describe yourself.

It was interesting, but went on for some time.
What an odd fellow he is.