ARRRR YOU SURE THAT’S THE RIGHT WAY ?

After a bruising journey North we finally arrive at the Gates of Luskan, home of the ice pirates, of the biggest black market on the continent, of the High Captains, and most importantly, the secret entrance to Dran Enterprises head office.

We wisely choose to hide our identities and try to integrate ourselves quickly into life in this sprawling mass of raucous crime as we find our way to our Thieves Guild contact.

At the gates we encounter Noriel, a noble and somewhat naïve bard, down on his luck, his avant garde poetry is not being well received in the local taverns. We decide to take him under our wing, and take up his enthusiastic offer as city guide.

ARRRR YOU DEALING DRUGS ?

This was of course a mistake, and the bumbling poet quickly leads us in the wrong direction, straight into the roughest slums, where we come across a drug deal in progress.

For reasons that still remain unclear, we decide to bust the drug deal. After some ‘negotiation’, this ends with an explosion scattering skagweed across a full city block and four drug traffickers crawling away and vowing to pursue a different profession.

Ned eats a handful of drugs, for reasons.

Buoyed by our successful foray into local law enforcement, and not deterred learning that dealing is perfectly legal here, we happily head back across town, this time in the right direction.

We stop briefly by the Captains Court and learn a little bit more about our new hobby as officers of justice, we discuss forging a public bounty on powerful CEO Narcissa Dran and decide against it when we think for more than 30 seconds about what a terrible idea this is.

NOT FARRRRR NOW ..

Finally, we make our way onto the main drag and ‘do an Aladdin’ to dance our way through the drinking, singing, fighting, vomiting throngs of pirates spilling out onto the streets. The fates appear to shrug, and this idea succeeds.

We meet our contact, Arya, at the Fish Hook Tavern, and Beeky uses his hard-won mark of the Capo to convince her that we’re not in fact the idiots we seem. Respect earnt, we pass a fun evening ‘blending in’. Ned eats seven casseroles then passes out stoned, and the rest of us drink and sing shanties until we join Ned in happy oblivion.

ARRR . THAT COMPLICATES THINGS …

Overnight, a huge storm begins, and the next day, after a late start, we ditch Noriel and get on with what we were actually in town to do. With only a brief detour to fall off a cliff and meet our old friends of the Tortured Tortle, we make our way to Dran’s boat, anchored at Dragon Beach.

Under the cover of thunder and lightning we defeat Dran’s guards, and after nearly a month of effort, bribes, murder and scheming, we finally find their secret head office entrance, a small portal chamber hidden in an unassuming boat. We also find two dead bodies. We are not the first ones here…