Hello, Ederyone!
Last time in our dear Mary Windfiddle's adventures our heroes went underwater and had an encounter with a water elemental guarding a chest of some kind. They didn't know what the chest contained but curiosity and the chance of treasure drove some of them forward and they started an undersea battle.
Mary couldn’t see the Elemental from the surrounding aquatic plant life. She moved to a new vantage point and saw the water flash with Bruno’s Guiding Bolt and Aurum’s Thunderwave. She joined them with an Eldritch Blast of her own but the creature was beginning to retreat farther and farther away.
“Should we let it go?” Bruno called out. “There might not be much point in chasing after it after all…”
“If you let it escape with the stupid chest you wanted us to get, I’m going to kill you!” Mary yelled and pressed a hand over the place where the Elemental had last hit her.
Bruno nodded. He crouched, brushed the seafloor with the top of his fingers and, standing to his full height, made a wide pulling gesture. It shaped the water and started a magical current. The Elemental got dragged back along with it.
It was now in range for Aurum’s spells. The bard clapped his hands and a boom echoed through the water, magically enhanced to the point of making the water pulse. More of the creature’s form got distorted and it shrank down again.
However, something else got hit by the magic as well. The chest. Its exterior shattered and something broke inside. Mary’s Eldritch Sight saw one of the magical green lights float out of its container and disperse in the surrounding water.
So that was it?! They were fighting this stupid battle for the stupid chest and in the end it was going to be in vain?!
She sent out two angry Eldritch Blasts at the elemental. They both hit with malice.
The creature swooped down and picked something out of the seafloor. It… it wasn’t the two magical items still glowing in the chest’s fragments. The Elemental left those in the sand and began swimming away.
“Let it go!” Mary said. “It abandoned the important stuff!”
Bruno and Aurum complied. They all watched the elemental disappear in the darkness of the water.
“So, what was the whole ruckus about?” Mary asked when Bruno was done Identifying the content of the chest.
There were two bottles left in the debris, both filled with dark red liquid looking suspiciously like simple wine.
“It’s an enchanted drink,” the dwarf said. “When consumed, it could magically enhance people’s abilities.”
He wrapped them in cloth and put them in his bag.
“Oh, well, cool. Awesome,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. “Now can we proceed to look for the bells?”
They climbed the rocks and stepped off in the open. This was the highest point of the reef. Beyond it, a field of jagged rocks spread about, with all kinds of punctured and destroyed shipwrecks scattered on the bottom. There were no dead bodies to be seen. About fourty feet ahead, the floor disappeared into a sudden vertical drop – a deep trench, filled with darkness and eeriness.
Mary's Guiding Hand pointed to a space just before the drop. It was supposed to point at the wreckage of Creen Bright's ship but there was no sign of a shipwreck there.
“I don’t get it,” she said, trying to make the incorporeal hand point at something tangible.
“Maybe that’s just where the ship was thought to have sunk,” Bruno suggested. “The spell works only if somebody’s marked a certain place on a map, and people wouldn’t know the exact location of the shipwreck. Plus, that was years ago. Who knows what happened to the remains of the ship in the meanwhile.
"This is not a bad thing,” Aurum said, “We know that the bells are not with the ship, but with Pyron instead.”
Mary looked around. She had the bad feeling that their way was going to continue in the trench, and she was right – when Bruno tried to locate the Sahuagin they’d seen, the spell pointed towards the deep.
She’d prepared a few pieces of wax paper especially for such an occasion. She folded them into five origami octopi and sent them out to do some reconnaissance.
Down the octopi went, one by one, in the abyss, in the dark and the unknown. The first whose senses Mary looked through, saw the surface of the cliff covered with fissures and underwater caves of varying sizes. In front ot one of them, a Sahuagin guard was posted. It was holding a long trident and was looking intently at the approaching familiar.
“I’m going to try and lure it to us, so that we can talk,” Mary said.
The paper octopus swam towards the Sahuagin, stopped a fair distance away and twirled around, like a dog wanting to be followed. Mary made sure to make it seem as obvious and as little intimidating as possible.
The Sahuagin followed its movement with its beady eyes but didn’t move from its post. The octopus swam a bit closer and stopped, dancing in the water. Three more times it did so, before the guard finally raised its trident as a warning.
Just then, Mary’s second octopus jumped out from behind it and wrapped its tentacles around its face. The Sahuagin jumped and tried to wrestle itself free but in the meantime, the first octopus managed to swim into the cave.
“Oh!” Mary said. “It’s… not sinister. Not awful or horrifying at all. It looks like a small village, there are Sahuagin of different age and gender just going on their business. There are even some children playing around.“
She made the octopus release the guard’s head and try to show that it didn’t mean it any harm. But it seemed to have lost the Sahuagin's favor. The creature swung its spear and suddenly, Mary lost her connection to the familiar. Just a few seconds after, the second one was gone as well.
“All right,” she said. “Two down, three more to go.”
So, the treasure Bruno wanted didn't turn out to be much. But the little octupi are so cute! Do you think they're cute? So sad that they expire so easily!
See you next time!
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossary and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: These are my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum and Bruno) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.