In the hold of the ship, Aedric dreamed of cursed items. The talking bone-sword, the clay tablet, the green amulet, the coral ring, and the shark-tooth pendant danced around him, laughing. Then he awoke to the noise of something snuffling through his pack. It was the nightmarish fish monster! Slightly smaller than before, but still just as horrible. Vraifigi was already awake, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. She leapt onto its scaly back and carved chunks out of it with her shiny dagger. Mateo cast Light so the rest of the party could actually see. Simon stumbled out of his hammock and threw his own dagger directly in the beast's eye. It sunk deep into the socket, only to rocket back at him as the old eye fell onto the floor and a new one popped out to replace it. Then Francesco chopped it in half with his sword.
The party mused over why the fish monster would wander so far from the dungeon, but decided to investigate the faint shouting they heard from outside. On the sand was a one-armed orc, completely soaked with seawater. He introduced himself as Llywelyn Bloodsmock, a follower of Phantom Limb. Aedric recognized the name as a powerful druid worshiped as a nature spirit, but kept his thoughts about their divinity to himself.
Llywelyn happily agreed to accompany the party into the dungeon. The sun was coming up and he didn't want to find out what tropical creatures were lurking in the palm forests. Together, everyone made it to the temple's central area without incident. A hunting horn rang out, alerting everyone to the black ooze trying to sneak up on them. It managed to splash a few people with its acidic pseudopods, but it didn't stand a chance. A hail of attacks smeared ink across the floor and split it into two smaller chunks. Simon blended one into droplets with his grappling hook while Llywelyn trapped the other with his blanket and beat it to death with his shillelagh. While everyone took stock of their injuries, he scraped the acidic goo into one of his empty potion bottles for safekeeping.
Vraifigi had spotted the ooze guarding a side-passage a week earlier and encouraged the party to check it out. They found an improvised barricade made out of furniture but made short work of it. Simon scouted ahead, checking for traps, but only found a treasure hoard: a heap of literal silverware and a fancy sacrificial tripod. Inside the tripod was a potion-bottle filled with fishy-smelling water. Llywelyn put a drop on his tongue and felt a painful itching in his sides and neck. "It's a potion of water breathing!" he exclaimed, "that's where I would start growing gills." This was the biggest haul the party had seen in a long while, so they packed up everything and dragged it out to the winching crane.
The group debated what they were going to do with the cursed items. Amalia agreed to take possession of Quadrapelagia as Aedric warned her about its tendency to cast paralysis at random but left out its incessant inane chatter. Llywelyn experimented with the green amulet and discovered it let him stick his arm (and the rest of his body) through walls. Despite its spooky appearance when the party first found it, it wasn't obviously cursed. The orc declared it a blessing from Phantom Limb and went to sleep wearing it. The rest of the items were put into a wooden chest and stored above decks. The party would take shifts watching them to make sure the nightmare beast didn't come back to try and steal them.
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