Beeeeees!!!11!!1

From the journal of Namor, Captain of The Trident:

Feb 2: Hired some men in Monmurg, set them to training with Bjorn as elite marines. Someday soon we're gonna go a-Viking. Need to find a river to terrorize.

Met a sailor called The Bandit on the docks, captains a black ship with strange mechanical additions. Said he bought them off of an "iron whale", which we've heard many rumors of cruising around the area. Interesting, but when pressed for pricing it sounded extravagant. Maybe another time.

Set sail for Bastia with the intent to follow up on Soto's mission to kill a Redcap. We had our three war galleys and one of the sailing ships. Admiral Captain Morgan, Usopp, Farland, Vee, Zorro, Rogar, and I made up the primary crew.

Six merchant ships lightly armed looked like a promising catch. We suggested that they halt, pay a 25% tax, and no one would get hurt. They chose violence and we obliged, easily capturing two of the vessels. They flew a flag from far off Oberholt and none of us cared at all. The ones that escaped will spread our name and likely warn others. We'll have to consider that going forward.

During the battle Usopp boldly boarded and struck at the enemy captain only to be poisoned and killed. We chalked it up to the chaos of battle at the time. Vee the venturer displayed some uncharacteristic divine healing ability and helped the assassin back to life, but when prompted for additional healing attached a price tag to it. There was some strife between the two.

We returned to Monmurg with our prizes and booty. Usopp paid locals for magical healing and rested, and Farland mastered the quarters.

Feb 5: Set sail for Bastia again. This time we arrived without further complication. Soto's man Hollander gave us directions to the Redcap lair and we planned our away party.

Usopp's ship The Red Dragon had developed an advertising problem during the recent overhaul. One side was labeled Usopp in giant red letters, while the other said Usopp SUCKS. How he didn't catch it before leaving Monmurg is beyond me, but he was pretty sour with the crew who was laughing about it and being generally disrespectful. He put forth an ultimatum that it should be cleaned and other provisions for them before we returned from faerie hunting, or there would be hell to pay.

Feb 6: Left out for the mission, most of a day's walk inland. We found it easily enough, a strange faerie cottage of overgrown thorny foliage that dripped blood. I tracked around and found fresh tracks headed away from the place. We took that to mean he'd be coming back so we set an ambush, painstakingly concealing ourselves in the nearby terrain and covering our tracks.

Stakeouts are boring, but necessary. Some wild horses trotted by and some centaurs trailing them. Otherwise idle time crouched in the woodlands. Easy for me but restless for some I'm sure.

Feb 7: Overnight we were attacked by killer bees. After a short but costly battle, Vee the venturer and Farland's dog were killed. This mission was turning out to be a right pain in the ass. Zorro and I went to work cleaning up the mess and covering our tracks, setting our ambush again.

Feb 8: Morning came and the Redcap hollered from inside the little cottage. He'd either been in there the whole time or snuck back in some secret way. In any event, he didn't want the smoke. Easy enough, neither did we at this point. He offered to leave if he could take some trinkets with him, we told him nah leave it all or die. I mean, we're pirates?

Redcaps are extremely fast, apparently. He packed up and zipped out the front door, sprinting at supernatural speed out of bow range before we could react. So much for days of ambush. We searched his little weird cottage and found a tree cultivated to drink and disperse blood in little taps around the place. Pulled some copper too which was apparently too heavy for him to take with him before burning the place down.

I dug up Vee and we headed back to Bastia, mission complete but unsatisfied to say the least. There was an amazing super awesome glowing rock on the side of the road that I picked up and it definitely isn't cursed or going to cause me problems later. No, you can't touch it, but I'll show it to anyone and everyone.

Usopp's crew had followed the letter of the ultimatum but not the spirit, still laughing at him and taking shots at him. I suspect he's going to establish order severely, but his boat his problem.

Hollander paid us for the mission and we set an appointment to talk to Soto. We think he's an experienced Crusader that might be able to help Vee. I think Vee is touched by Soto's weird god Serlios so he'll probably help him. If not, maybe my rock will. It's pretty awesome.

Musings: I like the journal format of these reports, but the value in session reports as a practice is as more than a record of events. I'll return to offering some commentary on how the game is running going forward.

Numerical advantage in naval combat is different than I'm accustomed to. If they're just going to split and run, then we need the numbers to account for each ship or they just get away. More effort could have been made to hunt them down, but not like you can track on the ocean and we were laden with slower sailing ships and loot. Naval stuff is definitely a blind spot for me so these are good opportunities to learn.

The PVP conversation came up again this session with one PC interfering with another in a funny but frustrating way. We'll see if the repercussion is as clever. I don't care one way or the other because this party is a group of shithead pirates and petty grievances seem perfectly on role. If our other party of Lawful holy rollers start merkin' each other I'll have more to say.

The Killer Bee fight was an interesting case. They only have 60' "vision" and it's mechanoreception. The PCs were sleeping and hidden in bushes. DM had some misgivings about how the fight was resolved, questioning whether the bees would execute sleeping foes or auto-hit against same. I suggested it's likely the bees couldn't have even detected the PCs, particularly since several were over 60' from each other, and they were likely not intelligent enough to coup-de-grace. They're just buzzy and angry bugs. Ultimately I felt the resolution was fine. If any mistakes were made, they were made both for and against the PCs, but it highlights a scenario with some unusual variables that can be hard to track in real time.

The Redcap encounter was icing on the frustration cake. First the ship stickup complication (quick tax turned into long battle), then the bees (RIP Vee), then the faerie just running away. In hindsight, during negotiations we should have declared held actions so when the little bastard showed himself we'd at least have a shot to respond. He wouldn't have gotten a free run which for such a fast creature is basically free evasion. Shoulda cleared the house too, but the bleeding thorns looked like a trap so we decided to wait based on the tracking.

We need a spellcaster. Glaring hole in our capability during sessions to heal or investigate weird things (cursed rock, faerie plant cultivation) or any number of other things that we just power through as thieves and murderers. Maybe it's time to lift my embargo on playing casters. We'll find out if Namor dies.