Adventure 1: Eye of the Sandstorm

The scene: a vast sea of sand with islands littered throughout. The sand, while quick, only spares the non-sentient. Sand ships are essential for travel and trade.

We meet the crew of the Sunchaser- stalwart captain Helena Handbasket, first mate Sylas, Umi the white dragonborn sorceress, Mischief the sharpshooter and her trusty Guncat... the cat with a gun strapped to it, and Alarac the black dragonborn meat shield with weaponized acid reflux.

Session 1

They hear tell of slave trade nearby, and a specific ship that holds innocents bound for lives of hard labor. Also, there's definitely gold. Onward!

They find the slaver ship, and have some difficulty getting aboard. Then, a scuffle ensues. There is a tabaxi inexplicably bound to the mast in the middle of the tumult, so Sylas frees her between slaver slayings.

The tabaxi immediately pounces on one of the slavers, clawing his throat out. Splattered with blood, she licks her lips and grins at Sylas. So Helena refers to her as "crazy cat lady" when she shouts orders.

The tabaxi retorts "Va na sheggori! I no crazy, you crazy! Mean shaveskin..."

And they continued to attack slavers till none were left. Then Helena rallies her crew, saying, "Now, we take this fight into hell," meaning below decks. The tabaxi shouts down from the rigging (where she chased a slaver) "What is hell?"

Sylas was kind enough to offer his spare shortbow to the tabaxi, as she had no weapon. However, it needed to be strung. There is no verb form of "string" in the tabaxi language. She looks at him like he's crazy. But, she figures it out.

Session 2

They descended into the lower deck where the majority of the party got its collective ass handed to it by an evil sorceress-hag-slaver-captain and slavers with horrible weighted whips. Trance is speaking exclusively in Tabaxi, but helping as best she can. Two party members almost die, so Trance has to slide in and spam heals. Her level 1 cure wounds is basically a makeshift poultice, and she rolled dismally again and again. (They're old, and she had to smuggle them behind her ears etc. she's doing her best). When she cast Aid, that was a proper nature spell, so she dug her claws into the wood of the boat to siphon energy from the trees that were, and was able to save three party members. They made it through that encounter by the skin of their teeth.

Trance knows her effects are another deck down, and there are no more bogies. She makes a dramatic gesture of kneeling before Sylas (or Rish'safiit, as she calls him) and offering back his bow and remaining arrows. He says "oh, that's ok. You can keep it." And she doesn't move, head bowed, waiting. He takes them awkwardly.

Below deck, there are six other slaves shackled to the hull. We free them using the keys we looted from the boss. Trance gets all her things, and goes to fill up her water skin from a large barrel. Most of the party goes back up the stairs with the freed slaves, but Helena (captain) and Alarac (tank dragonborn) stay behind to attempt to talk to Trance.

They startle her, and she unthinkingly shouts "whaddoyowant?! UUHHH… I mean… shit."

Revealing that she does know at least some Common.

Helena compliments her on her fighting and healing, and asks her name. There is some struggling and miscommunication, as well as some awkward pantomime, but it's gleaned that she's fine being called Trance.

Everyone reconvenes on the top deck as the captain's quarters are being looted. There are books, papers, maps, and a small chest surrounded by quartz crystals. Trance joins three other players, and pursues. She shoves a weathered journal in her bag without looking through it, considers bagging the small chest, but doesn't think it will fit in her bag, so she moves on. She finds some questionable literature on a nearby shelf and takes a couple violent, smutty novels for herself.

Then Mischief touches the small chest, and is instantly cursed with violent nausea.

Cue all the casters trying to figure out how to break the curse. "Was there a spell book? A Grimoire, or a journal?" "We haven't found one."

Trance hesitates, then comes forward with the journal, outing herself to the rest of the party as speaking and understanding some Common. There is another struggle to communicate, but the journal is handed over and the captain is cured. They share some of the coin spoils with Trance, and she is overcome with gratitude. We left the session with everyone preparing to get back on the Sunchaser.

However...

There was very little alcohol left in the barrels, which made little sense, as the ship seemingly hadn't left port that long ago. If we had captured a slaver alive, he/she/they would have said that Trance was such a horrible nuisance (breaking out, screwing with captors, putting laxatives in the grog) that the only way they could make it stop was to tie her where the captain could keep an eye on her.

That's why they found her tied to the mast.