The Curse of the Crimson Reprieve: Fire on the Water

Savage and skilful, the cannibal raiders rowed away into the night, their five canoes — hollowed tree trunks carved with bone-blade precision — slicing across the dark water. They bore hostages with them: sailors bound and bleeding, taken alive for grim purpose. But the adventurers aboard the Crimson Reprieve reacted without hesitation.

Salt raised her staff and cast a spell of holding. Beside her, Mustafa and Ryu joined their magic to hers, freezing several of the escaping raiders in mid-paddle. Bojing, Tetsukichi, Dolkar and Nekhil loosed volleys of arrows — some struck home, but the canoes continued their desperate flight.

Bojing weighed the option of asking Ryu to summon a whirlpool, but the danger of drowning the sailors as well as their captors discouraged him. Instead, Salt extended her magic, conjuring a towering wall of flame across the sea ahead of the fleeing canoes. The fire hissed and crackled on the water, casting its red glow across the night. The cannibals veered, paddling to avoid the inferno — but Salt summoned a second wall at right angles to the first, boxing them in.

Then came illusion. Mustafa conjured terrifying sea monsters — tentacled horrors of the deep — rearing up behind the cannibals. Their teeth shone in the flame-light, their eyes like burning coals. Panic broke out among the raiders.

One canoe had already fallen into disarray: the holding spells had frozen all the raiders, save one — the cannibal chief. The bound sailors wasted no time. They overpowered him and hurled him into the sea. But another canoe veered close, and a raider hauled the chief aboard.

The illusions worked too well. In their terror, the cannibals took their hostages — the captured sailors — and threw them into the sea. A sacrifice to the monsters, a desperate bid to appease angry gods.

This had not been Mustafa’s intention. Bo-Jing called out to the sailors through the illusion. The party shouted from the deck, assuring the drowning men that help was on its way. Even as the rowing boat was prepared for rescue, Mustafa steered the monsters towards the canoes, hoping to show the futility of their human offerings.

Salt, resolute, raised her hand again and sent a missile of pure force streaking toward the furthest canoe — one filled entirely with raiders. The missile struck true, and the boat was torn asunder, its occupants hurled lifeless into the sea.

Arrows flew again. More spells of holding surged across the waves. The tide turned.

A sea monster — real or illusion, none could say — pulled one last screaming raider beneath the surface, vanishing in a froth of blood. Then, as swiftly as they had come, the illusions faded, leaving only silence.

The sailors were pulled from the sea by the rescue boat. The surviving cannibals, held fast in place by enchantments, remained adrift in their canoes. When the spell’s duration ended, they would find themselves weaponless, surrounded by open ocean, and utterly alone.

Bojing ordered the chief brought aboard the Crimson Reprieve. He was tightly bound and held under watch. When the spell was reversed, the man grinned with broken teeth and introduced himself as Mad Dog. He asked for wine.

They gave him none.

Under Bojing’s questioning, Mad Dog revealed the truth of his people. They raided passing ships when the winds favoured them, seeking plunder — and captives for their rites. Their god, he said with wide eyes and reverence, was the Great Turtle, an ancient power to whom all sacrifices were owed.

Once he had said enough, Bojing gave a single nod. Mad Dog was cast back into the sea.

The following morning, with the sun climbing behind them and the wind strong in their sails, the crew of the Crimson Reprieve looked over the stern — and beheld an island where none should be.

It rose from the water in the perfect shape of a sea turtle, its shell a mossy dome, vast and unnatural. The island had not appeared on any chart.

The crew fell silent, soon broken by a wisecrack and grim laughter among Captain Hu’s men. Sailing under a curse for centuries, many had already died in worse ways than being fed to a giant turtle.

The winds were in their favor and the Crimson Reprieve sailed on.

The Curse of the Crimson Reprieve: The Library of Ma Tsu and Sailing Toward Acererak's Island

At the quiet inn on Tushuguan Island, where the adventurers had first sought rest, the walls shook with monstrous force. A massive, armor-plated ox thundered through, its eyes glowing with unnatural fury, and its hooves sparking as it turned the nearest patrons to stone with a stomping roar.

Salt, ever quick and fierce, unleashed a torrent of scalding steam from her breath, searing across the ox’s flank. Wu Jian Fen followed with a volley of magic missiles, shimmering darts of arcane energy that struck like hammers. Bojing and Tetsukichi loosed arrows with deadly precision, their shafts singing through the smoky air.

The beast roared once, staggered—and collapsed to the floor, dead.

From the smoke emerged a towering figure. A woman, immense and regal, bearing a gleaming trident with the ease of a queen holding court. Her presence silenced the room. With a flick of her wrist, she returned the stone-struck patrons to flesh and breath.

“I am Ma Tsu,” she said, her voice like deep waves over coral. “Priestess of the Ocean’s Goddess. Lao Ren, it looks like someone knew you were coming.”

Lao Ren stepped forward, his tone as calm as ever. “She is my friend,” he said. “But this creature came not for me. It came for the clever ones.”

The name he had spoken before. The name he had always used for them. Ma Tsu looked them over with affable skepticism. “Is that why you brought them to my library?”

Ma Tsu offered sanctuary and scholarship. Tushuguan’s libraries, a cluster of squat, crumbling stone houses, were placed at the party’s disposal. Salt dove into charts and maps of distant seas. Tetsukichi pored over dusty histories and the whispers of dark legends — all concerning the dreaded Acererak.

But just as they were settling into their scholarship, a new terror struck. A shattering crack tore through the ceiling — and then, with thunderous violence, a monstrous creature plunged into the study hall.

Its face was a stone gargoyle wreathed in smoke, and it bore four grotesque arms, each ending in claws soaked with rot. It landed beside the grand carousel — a turning tower of scrolls holding secrets thought long lost — and let out a bone-rattling shriek.

They could not risk the knowledge it threatened.

Salt was the first to act, unleashing a bolt of force. Wu Jian Fen and Zakshi followed, while Bojing shot arrows with precision. But it was Tetsukichi who delivered the final blow — his katana, blessed and blooded, sliced through the creature’s neck. The head tumbled, the body convulsed — and then exploded in a minor detonation.

Scrolls ignited.

Flames licked the edges of the knowledge they had come so far to find. But Salt, with a moment of rare grace, tore the cloak from her shoulders and smothered the fire before it could consume more than the outer layers.

Then, a voice boomed through the stone. Ma Tsu.

“They are looking for you. You cannot stay here and risk my libraries.”

The adventurers protested. Ma Tsu relented. She would allow until nightfall. “And then you and your ship and your Captain must be gone.”

They made the most of the next few hours.

With the wind rising and the cursed dead still unavenged, the party returned to the Crimson Reprieve, set once again to sail.

Based on what they had learned in the library, Bo-Jing set a course for Acererak’s Island.

They should sail east, then further east, skimming over silent waters along the equator, and until the solstice, then sail across the equator and continue eastwards. When they reached a great land mass, they should sail north along its coastline, until they reached the massive delta of a wide, turgid river. They would sail up the river to reach Acererak’s Island.

Captain Hu spent several days in his cabin, recovering from injuries he had sustained in the ship’s galley while the party was visiting the libraries. 

The voyage was long, and the sea vast and dreamlike. It gave the party time — time to reflect on what they had uncovered in the libraries of Tushuguan, and to weigh the dangers they would face upon landfall.

What they had learned was grim. Acererak, the ancient and monstrous lich, had constructed his infamous Tomb of Horrors on marshland, a mire of fetid waters and treacherous mists. Captain Hu — cursed, ragged, and bound by a past he could never escape — had said that Youshi’s body lay close to the tomb, by a river that twisted through the swamp. It was not inside the tomb itself. That detail had comforted some of the party, though it did little to lessen the sense of foreboding.

 

The name Mouru Zhai had risen often in their research. Acererak’s former apprentice, a powerful and twisted mind in his own right, had played a pivotal role in the tomb’s construction. He had created the maze of bait and traps that filled the temple: a fake treasure chamber that might yet hold real gold, a shimmering blue door that opened into a pair of rooms — one empty, the other home to a sarcophagus. Within that sarcophagus, the party had read, lay a bandaged corpse with a jewel in its eye — a gem both beautiful and evil, which, if disturbed, would reanimate the foul creature.

Mouru Zhai had been happy to serve Acererak, crafting death for the tomb’s intruders — until he discovered his own death had been planned as part of its completion, alongside every other servant. Now he was a fugitive, hiding far from his master’s gaze.

Mustafa had already learned Shatter, one of Mouru Zhai’s arcane legacies, and studied its uses carefully. The party spoke often of the traps and illusions they might face — but more often still, they argued about whether they needed to face them at all.

Captain Hu urged the party to avoid the tomb. The river, he said, would yield Youshi’s body. They need not enter the cursed place. His goal was simple: lift the curse that bound him and his ship. Since laying Niao to rest, her spirit had vanished. But those of Youshi — and of the murdered ship’s carpenter Tong — still haunted the crew night after night.

Salt, Tetsukichi, and most of the party agreed with Hu. Their course, they felt, should be swift and direct.

But Lao Ren disagreed — passionately. To him, this was no simple mission. This was destiny. He believed the adventurers were the clever ones, prophesied in old stories, fated to destroy Acererak once and for all. He revealed that Mouru Zhai was now in exile on Guibao, the island of cursed nobles they had recently left. Though the time was not yet right, both Mouru Zhai and Ma Tsu — the powerful priestess of Tushuguan and one-time ally of the apprentice — might one day stand with the party in a future campaign against the lich.

Bojing, meanwhile, had come to suspect a deeper deception. He believed Captain Hu might be a lich himself, and that the ship’s curse could be lifted by Ryu, his magician henchman, without going to the island at all. But his claims failed to sway the others.

For all their disagreements, fate had other plans.

One night, as the ship rocked gently under a full moon, screams rang out. Steel clashed on deck. When the party rushed topside, they found a massacre in progress. Bloodthirsty cannibal pirates had attacked — silent, swift, and savage. Crew members lay slaughtered. Others were being dragged to small boats, bound and unconscious.

And suddenly, all talk of tombs and liches was swept aside. The party now had a new challenge. And it would not wait.

The Curse of the Crimson Reprieve: Niao’s Rest and Guibao

 

At first light, beneath a grey and watchful sky, the party made their way to the abandoned far side of the island. There they carried the remains of Niao — a stranger in death as in life — whose ghost, restless and agitated, hovered at their heels. Her spirit would not settle, and the land offered no clear place of rest.

 No graveyard marked the terrain. Disguised by the illusions of Mustafa, Bojing approached a local for guidance. The man asked for money before answering. Suspicious but determined, Bojing and Zakshi took to the skies with the aid of Fyny, Zakshi’s levitating sword. From above, they spotted the cemetery — close, but the only road to it was guarded by a band of armed soldiers.

 With deft use of Mustafa’s Seeming spell and cloaks of invisibility, the party concealed their identities and transformed into a solemn group of mourners. In this guise, they passed through unnoticed and unchallenged.

 The graveyard lay in quiet disrepair. Open graves yawned in the earth, some ancient and overgrown. The ghost of Niao grew increasingly disturbed. They chose one of the forgotten hollows, placed her remains inside, and took up shovels left nearby. As they covered her with earth, two local gravediggers approached. The party offered to let them continue, but the men simply nodded and watched.

 When the last of the earth had been laid down, the ghost of Niao finally vanished.

 With their grim task behind them, they returned to their ship — the Crimson Reprieve — where the cursed Captain Hu awaited. That night, as the harbourmaster had warned, an invitation arrived from the Duke of Guibao. All attended, save for Captain Hu.

 The Duke’s household sat uneasily on the land — a recent invention of nobility, overcompensating with silk and spice. The island, once called Zhuazhu, had been renamed Guibao, and the name hung heavily in the air like false perfume. The food was outrageously spiced, almost deliberately inedible, and the rooms were filled with statues of Youshi — a drowned child whose corpse the party hoped to recover, in order to break the ancient curse binding Hu and his crew.

 The Duke and his kin claimed Youshi had been their own — a beloved child, tragically lost to the sea.

 But Salt, ever watchful, suspected darker things. A sorceress and seasoned sailor, she saw signs of a shared curse — the same mark that plagued Hu. She whispered her suspicions to the others: that the family had bargained away Youshi long ago, handing her over to Hu and his master, the deathless Acererak.

 Back on board the Crimson Reprieve, they readied to leave Guibao behind. Youshi’s corpse, they believed, lay near Acererak’s island — but Captain Hu, shackled to his curse, could only recall its location in part. It drifted in and out of his memory like sea-mist.

 Then Lao Ren, the old man who had quietly joined the crew in recent days, spoke. He was seeking "the clever ones," he said, and knew a friend — Ma Tsu — a mystic who lived on Tushuguan Island. Ma Tsu, he claimed, would know where Acererak’s island could be found.

 The party agreed. Their next destination was set.

 But Guibao would not release them so easily.

 As they left port, a swift vessel came in pursuit. The harbourmaster, flanked by thirty armed sailors, demanded payment of extravagant taxes he had tried to impose upon their arrival. The party refused.

 Ryu, ever quick with the elements, conjured a whirlpool on the far side of their ship. Mustafa added to the illusion, filling their own deck with writhing, monstrous snakes. The pursuing ship faltered, then turned and fled.

 Bojing called out for a refund of the hundred tael they had paid. The harbourmaster responded with a dripping envelope containing four.

 So ended their dealings with Guibao.

 Their voyage brought them to Tushuguan Island, a quiet place tucked between reefs. A small party ventured ashore and found a modest inn. But peace was fleeting.

 From outside the inn’s walls came a deep, beast-like snort. The inn’s patrons waved it off, unconcerned. Then, without warning, a massive, armor-plated ox crashed through the wall, shaking the earth . . .

servants tried to corral it . . . and were turned to stone by its breath . . . 

Chronicle of the Wandering Stars: The Curse of the Crimson Reprieve

 
The party’s time on Angel Island was meant to be brief. But this place—half-forgotten paradise and half-test of character—had its own ideas. Bo-Jing confronted his sins beneath the eyes of an angel. Bang-qiu and Salt learned nonsense from a simian madman that felt more like prophecy. When they finally left, it was aboard a ghostly vessel with a name that whispered promise and danger: The Crimson Reprieve.

Captain Hu welcomed them with the gravity of a man hiding centuries of guilt. His ship was fast, his crew loyal—but strange. They moved like shadows, and the nights belonged to the dead.

First came Niao, pale and drifting. Then Tong, water-logged and bitter. Then Youshi, a child too young for such tragedy. The party tried to ignore them at first, as the crew did—but some truths demand attention. Bo-Jing and Salt confronted the captain, who revealed the truth: a curse, binding ship and crew since the days when he had served an evil master. The party, it seemed, now sailed with the crew beneath that weight of the same curse.

Fog swallowed the sea. For days there was no sky. When the light returned, it revealed a different world—new constellations, unfamiliar waters. They encountered a merchant vessel from a nearby island. The sailors spoke in hushed tones of the Dragon Claw, a cult rising across the Sea of Jiudian. Among them was Nanji Laoren, a curious old man with eyes like a storm in still water. He asked to join the Crimson Reprieve, claiming he was looking for “the clever ones.”

Soon after, a ghost ship emerged from the mist.

Its hull was barnacled and blackened, sails shredded, but it moved as if guided by malice alone. Spectral figures leapt across the waves to attack. The crew of the Reprieve, long unchallenged, fought alongside the party. Ryu’s serene command of the waves stalled the enemy ship. Bo-Jing’s bodyguarded destroyed the ghastly crew with a barrage of arrows.

In quieter hours, Nanji befriended Fen, Salt’s apprentice. He saw potential in the man’s quiet curiosity and taught him a dangerous spell—one that could bend memory, make people forget their most recent actions.

Soon after, the ship stopped at a deserted island to gather food and fresh water. There, Nanji Laoren told a fuller story. Captain Hu, long ago, had carried people—living people, including Niao and Youshi—from their home island of Zhuazhu to another, where his master was building a tomb. "Why," Nanji asked, “would a being of great power need a young woman or a child to build a tomb?”

The question lingered, unanswered.

That night, they encountered a group of mermaids, beautiful and predatory. They claimed they could help destroy Captain Hu’s old master. They even named him: Acererak. To prove their power, they bit into a live sea-snake and offered to write the lich’s name in dragon’s blood upon a blade. Salt, horrified by their cruelty, lashed out. The party followed her lead and slew the mermaids. In the quiet that followed, Nanji asked again: “Are you truly the clever ones?”

Their next destination: Zhuazhu.

Captain Hu explained that he had thrown Niao overboard there, hoping to distract the authorities in a moment of panic. As they drew nearer to Zhuazhu, Niao's ghost became more active, shrieking throughout the night, watching the sailors eat their meals. And as they approached the sea stack off the shore of western Zhuazhu, the screeching was so incessant, that jumping into the cold seawater was pure relief. The party helped him search for her remains. Salt used her elemental power to let the others breathe water. Tetsukichi talked to a bottom-feeding fish that directed them to Niao's general location. Bo-Jing used the Coin of the King of the North to find a glint of gold in the deep—Niao’s necklace.  They dug in the sandy bottom and found her bones, and returned with them, wrapping them with her jewelry in a coffin carved from the ship’s own wood.

They arrived in Zhuazhu’s port, and found it much changed. The name Zhauzhu had been forgotten, the island and its port were now named after the Guibao family.  The Crimson Reprieve’s foreign design drew suspicion. The harbormaster, eager for bribes, levied unjust taxes. But Tetsukichi’s advisor Mustapha used magic to ease the price. The harbormaster, in sneering surrender, insulted Bo-Jing by calling him Mustapha's servant and slapping him. Bo-Jing drew steel.

Salt intervened. Her magic dropped Bo-Jing to the deck in slumber before blood could be spilled. The harbormaster, unaware how close he had come to death, gratefully waved them through, promising them an invitation from the Guibao family would be forthcoming.

The party nodded vaguely in a show of gratitude, fixed on their immediate goal of giving Niao’s body a proper burial at last.

And as they looked back at the harbor of Guibao, something in the shadows of the mountains stirred. They had retrieved one of the dead—but the true weight of their journey, and the evil behind it, still lay
ahead.

Mad Monkey Style

After his meeting with the Angel, Bo-Jing consulted with Salt regarding how they would return home. Salt assured him that she had learned much about the arcane workings of the teleportation room. If they wished to return to the familiar surroundings of Banua, she could accomplish that with very little chance of error.

Very little chance that they would be transported underneath Banua, embedded in solid rock. Like 1 chance in a hundred.

An alternative that offered greater, but more attenuated risk, would be the assist the sailors who were marooned on the island. They knew they could repair their ship, but had lost many of their crew. Bo-Jing's skills would be most welcome. The Captain of the ship would make him his first mate, giving him full authority over the ship whenever the Captain was not on deck. The sailors welcomed assistance in repairing their ship and gathering supplies but were fully willing to fulfill these tasks by their own labor, leaving Bo-Jing, Salt, and their friends time to explore the beautiful island.

The island was small but incredibly varied so a day's walk would always thrill the senses in a new way-- waterfalls, luscious flowering gardens, delicious fruit, the songs of birds, all hinting at something even more purely beautiful and soul-enriching-- Bo-Jing mulled over the angel's suggestion that maybe he was home. 

And then one day, Bo-Jing, Bang-qiu and Salt came upon an old man in a sunny clearing, beset upon by two horned giants. Bo-Jing leapt up and hovered in the air, firing arrows at the monsters, while Salt attacked them with her magic. But these monsters had their own magic and also took to the air, drawing their huge serrated blades. This combat suited Bo-Jing very well. He drew his flaming sword and fought both enemies at once. Salt supported him, firing magic missiles into the monsters' eyes. 

The heroes killed the monsters and received the congratulations of the old man who surprised them with a display of his own martial prowess. "You are formidable and honorable warriors. At the risk of immodesty, I assure you that those monsters offered no real threat to me, but this not take away from your righteous valor in coming to the defense of a seemingly defenseless stranger."

He offered to teach them his secrets, "Because, if your life goes the way I pray it does, you will be old one day, and may wander into the forest without your sword."

Bo-Jing, Bangqiu, and Salt agreed, and stepped into a kung-fu training montage . . .