The intrepid Londonites join Setanta on his borrowed boat as he waits for them on the shores of the Isle of Man in...

The intrepid Londonites join Setanta on his borrowed boat as he waits for them on the shores of the Isle of Man in the Otherworld. They set off, minus the sea serpent, but with a little encouragement who knows what might have happened? An escort of that size might well have precluded any need for stealth at all. Not that people were thinking about such things as subtlety, as will be seen later.

The magical map guides them through the darkness and some of the characters hear the slap of waves on rock. The map says press on, but the boat disagrees and tries to veer away from the rocky island, hidden by illusion, that they are steering for. Setanta fails a strength check fortunately, and the boat scrapes by the island, assisted by the waterworking skills of a couple of the mages on board with handy shape water spells so that they do not end up a mass of bruises and splinters on the shore.

The Way of the Empire OR We'll just sail blithely, completely outnumbered and possibly out magicked, into what might be a trap, without trying to be at all stealthy or disguise ourselves at all, because Harry the Fixer is ENGLISH, it's what they do! Even though we have perhaps one of the best Illusionists in London in our party... Flashbacks to Lord Pincushion...

The sound of the scrape and the raised voices of the PC's alert a Fishman patrol who swim - through the air - toward them. The PC's make short work of them and continue...EVENTUALLY they realise that a head on approach might not be the best course of action once a castled island and several other islands, all crawling with Fishmen appear.

Kuval makes the boat appear as a bit of driftwood, and off they go to where some very successful vision checks have detected a very nasty ceremony on a farther island.

A shark swims by, the only fish they've seen since they entered the area, maybe attracted by the blood threading up from the slain Fishman from the 1st patrol. No one thinks to check it for anything...odd. Oh well.

Time to disrupt the ceremony, ask for the Blessing of Earth, and free all the merfolk who are being tortured and killed to fuel the rite. And then home for scones and jam, hurrah!

There's a landing at the base of Abominable Ceremony Island but it's guarded by some competant fishmen some of whom are quite as good at combat magic as our heroes. At least they were on paper. They appear to be terrible at rolling dice though, and I think Gr'shnk's Exploding Fireball was the only thing that caused any damage, a measly two points.

Up on the top of Ceremonial Abomination Island the ceremony continues, but Lord Fingolfin charges up from the beach head and tries to engage the enemy mages who are poring over their character sheets saying to each other, "I should be doing better than this!" They don't, though and withdraw, hoping to ambush the Elf.

Kuval's cobra has been set on the rest of the fishmen, and multiple illusions of the same cause the rest of the beach defenders to fall back in panic.

Sung Pow has had the brilliant idea of apporting himself and Lord Setanta to the top where the ceremony is going full bore. Setanta is trying to fight his ríastrad or battle frenzy, and Sung Pow intends to use him as a grenade - certainly a distraction - while he frees and arms the 15 or so captive merfolk.

They reach the top of the island and Lord Setanta bounds joyfully into battle, spells, weapons and curses having apparently no effect on him as he does the best Warner Bros. Tasmanian Devil impression this side of anachronism. Sung Pow gets to freeing Merfolk who cheerfully start releasing each other and stabbing distracted guards. They explain through successful Gesture rolls, that there are many more merfolk, and fishmen back at the Castle Island.

Meanwhile, back at Castle Island, the shark messenger has relayed the problem, the result being a huge call out to the garrison there to go clean up the human/elven invaders on Abominable Ceremony Island, in addition to the patrols already aware of the problem. The PC's become aware of a couple of hundred fishmen mages and warriors approaching from Castle Island. Th'skrr tries a Control Person on Harry the Fixer and misses. Twice, disgusted, she looks at her character sheet but is then shot.

During the course of time, everyone except for Lord Fingolfin has prayed to the Earth for the stilling of the Earthquake/Volcano spell...

Gaea kindly hints that it might be appropriate, and Fingolfin caps the requests.

Earth Goddess now activated, and asks them, quite reasonably, what they would like.

They tell her, some in more detail than others.

The earth is calmed. Their priority mission completed, the characters must now roll Will to stay asleep. Kuval fails and wakes up, vanishing. A minute or so later, all the Fishmen just...stop...as if in a swoon or dead. The merfolk start swimming back toward the castle, to rescue the prisoners there.

This leaves them with a problem, how to get rampaging Lord Setanta back to his calmer self. Sung Pow uses some narcotic dust but it has no effect.
As with his namesake, Lord Setanta will be embarrassed into normality by the sight of ladies with no clothes on, but as Kuval is gone and his ability to conjure the sight of very abundant temple maidens isn't available, what do they do?

Well, there are all these mermaids around...it's worth a shot thinks Harry.

He waves down a mermaid, and eventually establishes that she speaks French. He rolls a French language roll that makes him sound like a French nobleman, and explains, hesitantly, what she needs to do.

Harry: "You must 'show yourself' to him"

GM: "Roll to look at her face when you're talking to her."

Harry, rolls "I succeed. Just"

Fingolfin, cheerfully "I fail!"

GM "You didn't even try!"

Fingolfin, even more cheerfully "Nope!"


One by one, more will rolls are failed, as the party get back to the castle and assist with the freeing of the merfolk. Lord Setanta is brought back to sanity and, er...Sung Pow or Harry, I forget which, tries to get him to wake up.

Now Setanta is feeling the effects of the drug...he can't wake up. "I'm so tired" he complains.

"Lord Tan, you need to wake up so that you can go to sleep!"

He tries to wake up, but fails.

He advises that he will catch up. Reluctantly he is left...

When Sung Pow wakes up he has breakfast and then takes the antidote to the Irish House, where under his ministration Setanta wakes up and immediately sticks his head under the pillow again.

The party now have the Blessing of Water as well as The Blessing of Earth.

Although the major part of this adventure is over, there are some loose ends...the remains of the Fishmen in London, the Fishman prisoner, and what about Jonathon, who reports noises around the house as Harry slept, which soon turned into the snarling and growling of some great cat, and then silence.