An airship full of starving slaves

As we headed back to town, we came upon the burning ruins of a caravan. There were several wounded, many of whom I aided when we arrived. We quickly found the leader, an elderly man named Dryan. He told us that on their way, an airship led by half-orcs hailed and wanted to trade with their caravan, but instead attacked. He told us that he was the leader of a group of pilgrims, whose life savings of 200 gold, that they had planned to use to establish a new church, had been stolen. In the meantime, I found myself healing the last remaining caravan guard, a ranger named Morangan. He pointed us toward the last standing caravan, inside which was Ned, an accountant-type. He told us some information about those in the airship and pointed us toward where it had gone. Overall, he was very rattled, and came across as a greedy and cowardly type. He said that he was ruined, and estimated his losses at around 1500 gold.

Phelaia and Colvin were shocked and very sympathetic to the pilgrims' plight. They offered to go chase the airship and get the money back. Now I wasn't real set on chasin' a long-gone airship to get a couple hundred gold back for the pilgrims. It would have been a different situation had we been hired to do it, or if we could still see the airship. Me, I woulda rather helped 'em all get healed and give 'em an escort back to town rather than leavin' 'em without any guards. But I reluctantly agreed to go along with the team, under the condition that if there was no sign of the airship by nightfall, then we head back to town. Mishaan left us to stay with the pilgrims and go back to Greenwood Villa, whereupon he would take the Wrathstone to his employer to have it properly disposed of. Morangan volunteered to come with us instead, as he wanted to be part of taking down the bandits.

The airship had a four-hour lead on us. Dryan had given us a bunch of (Ned's) horses, now that their wagons were fewer in number, to help us catch up to it. We rode hard, and Morangan spotted the caravan as dusk was falling. We rode somewhat into the night, and when we (and our horses) became too weary, we rested to begin again the next morning. We caught up to the ship during the day, and waited for it to anchor to a tree at nightfall. We then found ourselves the difficulty of climbing up the ropes to board and overtake it. Treble came up with a great idea, and tied us all what he called "Prousic knots," to tighten and catch each of us should we fall. Treble and Morangan went up first, letting down a tied rope to ease the trip for the rest of us. Eventually, we all (save Colvin) made our way up, as Colvin threw lightning bolts in the air on the other side of the ship as a distraction, trading profanities and insults with the half-orcs.

The situation on the ship itself was not optimal, at least not without Colvin there. I think he would've been able to do us a lot more good above than below. Instead, their damn mage conjured a swarm of biting flies, so between those little bastards and the mage himself, I was close to going down. Not to mention that the flies kept flying in front of and into our eyes so we couldn't see, either. It was thanks to Brogar that I didn't die, but the whole takeover was a pretty shitty situation and we probably should have used much better tactics. I guess what counts is in the end we got ourselves an airship and routed all the guys out. I sure heard the crowd cheerin' when Aurora threw that mage right off the deck to the ground. Served him right. Bastard.

Anyway, then we looted the place. In the captain's pocket, we found a letter to Agrawal (captain) from Thorn. It said to deliver the cargo to the Dagger River Compound (we found it marked on a map in the captain's quarters), and "between your load and the others, we should be ready to begin Stage 2." Sounds nefarious. Loot-wise, we found 1 platinum, some magic boots that Treble showed a quick interest in, a quarterstaff that Phelaia claimed, some sailing equipment, jewels worth 800 gold, a smashed, empty, lockbox, and 4 healing potions.

After we all healed up, we opened the hold, from which we could hear movement. Inside, we found about a hundred, starving, scared, chained people sitting in their own sewage. Poor folk. I started healin' 'em right away, and talked to 'em to learn that many of 'em were from the northern area, near Cragwar. I told 'em that we'd do our best to get 'em close to home, and several of them told me that they thought they'd never have hope again until we came upon 'em. I found a few of the prisoners knew a bit about sailing, and asked 'em to help give us some pointers so we could get 'em home faster.

Among us in the little party, quite a debate erupted upon the best course of action. Phelaia was pretty passionate about going to the compound with great haste (and Brogar was in support), suggesting that we take the slaves to the capital city of Wroat before going to the compound; while the rest of us weren't necessarily convinced that the situation was as urgent (after all, the letter indicated that Stage 2 couldn't begin without the rest of the slaves). We all agreed we didn't want to drop them in the nearest small town, Woodhelm, because of the tax on the infrastructure, but some of us would rather've gone back to Greenwood Villa, to give the money we'd retrieved to the pilgrims and stock up at a familiar town before heading out. And I wasn't real sure about leaving the pilgrims 500 miles from their homes (and we could have gone back to get them later, but it seemed like a good idea to get the people we had as close to home as was feasible before worrying about the unknown). In the end, that's what we did, as Greenwood Villa was only two days or so out of the way. The slaves were overjoyed to be free, and the pilgrims were falling over themselves with gratitude for returning their savings. Some of the (ex-)slaves tried to convince us (or maybe I should say bribe us) into going to Cragwar next, but I don't think we can afford the time for it, although I'd be glad to offer to return a couple weeks hence after finding out whether there are more slaves to free. Ye'd think of all people, they would be understanding to the plight of others who were enslaved.