Treasures of the Caverns
Darvin looks at the carnage all around him and thinks to himself, I wish there was a way to do this without taking so many lives. Plus it would have been nice to have this Sanbalet guy to corroborate Ned's story. Well, what's done is done. Let's take a look and see if any of them have anything useful on them. The human rifles through the wizard's clothes and satchel. He pulls a long delicate looking pipe out of a pocket.
"Look at that," Thamila says and lets out a smooth whistle, "That pipe looks similar to my Aunt Hillile's pipe, especially with that river stone bowl. She loved to sit outside on the porch, in her rocker, and have a smoke."
"I don't smoke so you're welcome to it," Darvin responds offering the pipe to the halfling.
Thamila reaches up and takes the pipe saying with a giant grin, "Thanks! I'll have to get some tobacco and give it a smoke as a tribute to her."
"Would you like this satchel too?" Darvin asks, holding up the colorful bag.
"Oh yes! It matches my outfit perfectly," she replies. Thamila pulls the strap over her head to wear the satchel across her body. Then she opens it up to set the pipe inside. The halfling's eyes go wide when the bag swallows her entire arm while reaching for the bottom of the bag.
"What kind of bag did you give me, Darvin!?" she asks in a bit of alarm.
"What do you mean?" the human asks.
"It doesn't have a bottom," she replies.
"What do you mean, it doesn't have a bottom?" he responds. Thamila hands him the bag and he reaches into it up to his shoulder and feels around. The human looks over, wide eyed at the small woman.
"That's what I mean," she replies and gestures to his arm in the bag.
Darvin pulls his arm out and puts it back in a few more times as if he expected the outcome to be different. Then he put his head into the satchel.
Upon seeing Darvin stick his head into the magic bag Kenku begins to giggle. She had been delightfully watching them play with it. She claps her hands together and trills "Magic bag! I see before. In fey world."
Darvin pulls his head out, his eyes gleaming and he suggests they find out how much this 'magic bag' can carry.
Illayana comes out of the storage room and sees the three of them standing around a colorful satchel as Thamila drops her pack into it.
Then the kenku takes off her pack delightedly saying, "My turn! My turn! My turn!" and drops her pack into the satchel too.
Illayana says, "Not to interrupt, but, I suspect these casks and bolts of silk were taken from the people in Saltmarsh. We should return them."
"Yes, but how will we get them back to town? They're not exactly easy to transport," Darvin asks.
"The bolts of silk we can drop in that bag of holding. And I can hear the sounds of the sea coming from farther down this passageway. Perhaps the slavers have a boat we can use," she replies and heads that way assuming the others will follow.
The eladrin stops in her tracks when she sees the armor the dead hobgoblin is wearing. It's a deep blue and decorated with a pattern of fish and shells. Knowing she can't leave armor like that here to rot, Illayana gets down on the ground and begins to remove it. She calls out to the others, "Help me get this off of him! I think it might fit me! We can take it with us and figure it out back in town."
Darvin helps Illayana finish removing the woman's armor and they drop it into Thamila's satchel too. Then the group follows the sloping passage down into a cave that opens directly to the sea.
"Looks like you were right. There's a small boat at the water's edge," Thamila says.
"It looks big enough for us, our two prisoners, and the casks. Let's get it packed up and get out of this place," says Illayana.
Once the goods are loaded on the boat, they head back to the cellar to collect Ned and the runaway archer. The two prisoners don't resist, but they also aren't very cooperative. Once everyone is aboard, Darvin pushes the boat out into the water and then jumps in. Thamila, Illayana, and Kenku begin rowing when Darvin is in the boat. Then the human picks up his own oar and helps his companions row their way back to Saltmarsh.
Wow! I've only finished writing half of the first chapter of the module and it's already ten chapters long. There is still a lot of story to go. Since this was my first time writing a story from a module or even reading one, I didn't realize how much would be going on. (Never DMed. I've only ever been a player.) So I pretty much wrote something for almost everything and I'm not sure if it was too much. There is a lot more story to be written from the module and some ideas I have of my own to throw in, so I'm doing some rethinking on how I want to tell this story.
Also I know Sanbalet doesn't have the bag of holding in the module. But since I decided to skip the skeletons and skeletal alchemist, and I still wanted them to find the bag I had to find another way to get it to them. Sanbalat was the obvious choice as the boss.