With repairs recently completed on The Blue Nixie, and Lavinia Vanderboren determined to capture her brother, she tells the party take the ship, at this time captained by Amella Venkalie, to Blood Bay. There they hoped to find Vanthus Vanderboren, who planed a raid on the Crimson Fleet hideout. The hideout was situated in caves in a small cover protected by a dangerous reef, know locally as Kraken Cove.

As the ship approached the bay the adventures saw numerous dead deformed sea creatures floating in the waters, and smoke from what must have been a fierce blaze burning in cove itself. As the turned into the bay they discovered a ship drifting dangerously just outside the reefs that make the cove a perfect hideout. Amella explained they wouldn’t be able to clear the reef without good charts of the reef, so they would need to find charts or set down the other side of the cliffs and make way overland.

On the hope of finding charts or some explanation as to what had happened in the bay Amella brought The Blue Nixie alongside the drifting ship. As the adventurers boarded, The Sea Wyvern, they saw it’s deck was covered in blood and the bodies of butchered sailors, their limbs covered in cuts and bit marks. Some were twisted and deformed as if they were partially mutated into something else but were died during the process, the new form unable to survive.

When they searched the ship they were set upon by horrifically deformed pirates, each unique in its mutations but all having an excessively large mouth and countless sharp and vicious teeth. On death these creatures would make a final lunge, then explode in a shower of acidic puss.

a savage pirate encounter on The Sea Wyvern

Once the ship was made safe Amella came aboard with a skeleton crew, and started to repair the damage to the mail mast and sails. She ordered her first mate to take the Blue Nixie back to Sasserine to report what they had found, claiming The Sea Wyvern as a prize.

With little information to be found on The Sea Wyvern the adventurers took to a small row boat to the nearby beach and headed to the caves over land. Inside the caves faced more corrupted sailors and exotic animals that were once illicit cargo.

It becomes apparent that whatever has happened here has effected nearly all living creatures for at least a mile around. While some creatures were not effected it seems they were quickly set on the deformed savage creatures. In a few cases the mutation were so extreme that the creature did not survive the transformation process. It is there deformed bodies that litter the beach and float in the sea, as if the transformation is successful then on death the creatures explode is a spray of acidic puss that leaves little more than fragments of a skeleton behind.

Eventually the party encounter Captain Harliss Javell, one of the few pirates to have resisted being transformed and survived the attacks of the savage creatures. From her they discover that Vanthus Vanderboren had shattered a magical black pearl and that had caused the wave of transformations to spread like a savage tide. Thinking Vanthus had fled back to Sasserine Harliss had set her first mate and a band of froglike bullwugs conscripts to the Vanderboren manor to extract revenge.

The party were split, some wished to continue searching the caves, in case there were more riches to be discovered, others wished to return immediately to Sasserine to protect Lavinia Vanderboren. When eventually they took the row boat and sailed back to The Sea Wyvern it was attack by a large savage shark. It overturned the boat and while some desperately swam for shore or the safety of The Sea Wyvern, Jhan Nagaarian a Truedive Shifter fought the beast.

While he was triumphant running his weapon deep into the creature’s neck, in it’s death throes it’s powerful jaws clamped down on the Shifter biting him clean in two. It was with heavy hearts the remaining adventurers made sail back to Sasserine.

Arriving in the harbour they found the streets virtually blocked by the Growfest celebrations. While making their way through the crowds they were ambushed by the remaining members of the Lotus Dragons and an assassin dressed as fools on slits, Rowyn Kellani was not among them however.

Eventually they arrived at the manor and were able to defeat the bullwug commander and rescue Lavinia and other members of her household. The commander dropped a strange looking longspear research showed it to be The Mariner’s Spear.