Session Two — I was not planning on writing a recap for any more sessions after the first, but the second was so chaotic in nature that it warrants a review.

Two new characters joined — Siobhan the beautiful and quite tall assassin (especially given that the other characters include three delicate humans, a halfling and a gnome) from faux-Ireland, and Uschi, a snotty 12-year-old girl (who fits right in with the other shorter people).
The players for Kirigaya and Bongo were absent, although Bongo checked in digitally, as we will see.

The GM retroactively decided that Siobhan and Uschi had actually been with the group all along. A quick intro established that we had discovered no information about our destination at all; not a single mention was to be found in the library, nor had any sailors any stories about our island. No-one had any clue about the city of Achimaktan. And now we were already at sea.

Infighting

On board of the ship, Magister Nox fast clashed with the NPC ship captain Claire Medina: she and her crew of five also had no clue about their destination, and it turned out they were also bad at navigation and only ever followed the coast line or hopped from island to island. Magister Nox explained that he had studied the stars and offered to plot a course. Alas, the captain explained to him she had no need for weird, primitive pseudo-sciences like Stargazing, thank you very much, and went on to ignore and cut out Nox. He, in return, repeatedly advocated for a mutiny and throwing her overboard. Alessandro knew how to handle a ship, so Nox figured we did not need her. However, the rest of us, while agreeing that she was an idiot, didn’t go for a mutiny. The constant animosity between Captain and Scholar would continue all the while, though.

En route from Fiorinde to Estoleo in Corua – the first lag of our journey – we were contantly on the lookout for pirates, a staple in any GM’s quiver, but nothing of the sort happened.

Instead, Uschi the snotty girl insisted on opening the chest we were transporting. The thing was rattling ever so often, and when we flipped it over something inside shifted or dropped: presumably some living being was in the chest. To prevent opening it, there were sets of heavy chains wrapped around it and tied together with a difficult lock.

Uschi was trying to question my authority when I said No (as our boss had named me chief of this outfit), and tried to get the others to vote me out so she could get her fingers on the chest. While this was going on, Mi-tse sneakily summoned a fire elemental that snuck into the chest throught he key-hole, with orders to report back to her what it found.

Whatever it found made sure it didn’t come back. One second the fire elemental was still there … the next it wasn’t.

That shrunk interest in opening the chest down fast, and now Uschi was the only one intent on taking a peek inside, but even she backed off when I pulled out an axe. Ilva agreed to share the guarding of the chest with me: when I slept, either the Halfling watched the chest, or her hound, so Uschi never got a chance to open it up and turn us all into fish fodder.

Estoleo

We crossed the sund and reached the Coastal States and Estoleo, where we anchored. The captain went to get supplies. Most of us went out into the harbour to look at sailors or go into the Estoleo state library, depending on inclination. Uschi stayed on board to maybe sneak the chest, but the hound stayed on it.

The library had very little, and what it had, the librarian tried to usher away fast. But Nox offered to buy it, and Alessandro got them to agree, and so instead of hiding it Nox got the book. Alas, in a language none of us could read.
Why did “they” try to hide that island and even got librarians to cover up? Unknown.

In the harbor tavern, I tried to talk to sailors but they all knew nuffin’.
Siobhan tried and they all looked at her like fine art, and one let slip something about pale people and forest, which checked out with what little we had learned earlier. So I suggested we nab him, bring him on board and question him in detail, on our own time.
The women said they’d do it and sent me off back to the ship, where I tried to learn something about star charts in Nox’ papers; alas I mixed things up and the paper I studied was actually a draft of a strong protection rune that Nox had sketched after one he saw incorporated in our chest.

While the Captain was away, three soldiers from the harbour authority came aboard and demanded gold for our ship’s anchorage. And since the Cap wasn’t aboard, they demanded that from us, the passengers.
Well, that didn’t fly with our 12-year-old rascal. Uschi gave them quite the earful and would not hand over a speck of dust, let alone gold, for a bunch of bullies who pretended to be on official business. They tried Gerald (me) as well but with similar outcome: I accused them of running a protection racket, because just collecting gold from random passengers felt extremely fishy.
Long story short, we won the blinking game, because they were not quite prepared to go as far as drawing on us. Therefore they had to retreat, uttering dark threats. Later the Captain returned and went to settle the issue in the official offices.

Once the tavern started to empty, the women failed at making the sailor interested in coming with them – even though they carted up some pretty heavy invitations in twos and threes. The dice revealed the Why soon: the sailor had a boyfriend and they were thick as thieves. Enter Bongo, the master of drums. The player was absent but joined by video call and decided to try and seduce the couple, him being male (played by a female). And succeeded with flying colours. So the two sailors came with Bongo and spent the night on our ship.
They went on to join our crew as the “BoBo”s, the Bongo-Boys. As the only ones who have ever seen our destination island and ready to help us find it they will be invaluable when we get there, out west.

Still in the prelude

Finally we set out again, with a mysterious book and two BoBos added; the GM was stunned by this development and claimed that we were not even in the adventure yet — just on the way to the adventure site — and yet we had already made enemies, started fisticuffs and stood up to the port authorities, recruited sailors and done all sorts of shenanigans at a point where he would have, by his plan, just rolled a few random sea encounters and been done with it.

Mardaba

Next stop is Mardaba, a harbor on the western end of the continent, in a land called “Eshar” which is culturally faux-Arabia.

En route our lookout-NPC spotted a ship following us and called “Pirates!”
We made ready to hurt them as plenty as we could possibly muster, Ilva gave it a second look and identified the ship as a harmless merchantman, in time before we would have set them alight with fire arrows and magic.
Nox was ready to dump both the Captain and her lookout (who kept yelling “pirates!!” even with no-one around) into a wet salty grave, but what we actually did was relieve the delusional sailor of duty and send the Bongo-Boys up in shifts.

In Mardaba our librarians (Nox and Alessandro) once more went into the library to discover info, and once more they found absolutely nothing — generally that sounds like a global conspiracy to hide the island, but I suspect it is just the GM trying to play his cards close to his chest so we go into that island without foreknowledge.
In-game though, our characters go by the conspiracy theory and do what they can to find out things about that darn island.

With a page copied from the book, we walked around in the city, and discovered a captive in chains; Bongo showed him the page and the guy claimed he could read it — but wouldn’t as long as he was in chains. We discussed the matter with the guy who had him chained up (legally under local law) and so we bought him free so he could translate our book.
Turned out though that he had lied and had no more idea what the book said that we did.
That made some people quite angry at the guy, but I figured even though he didn’t have that particular skill, he may have others, so he should still join our crew. Uschi wanted a vote about that, but since I am the boss of the outfit, I declared my decision final; and since most of the group had no particular opinion about it, my decision stood.
Can’t have a 12-year-old question my professional authority at every little turn.

I expect next session the ship should reach the island of pale mystery-people, but I’ll not be there.

Midgard Campaign