The ship is ours!

The party began to explore the ship, finding numerous chests and boxes. The first such box that Etna opened, however, she set off a poison gas trap, which knocked out Tristan. Tristan appeared to only be sleeping, however, so the party continued to explore on their own.

While they were searching the ship, they discovered an aquatic elf who was being held prisoner in a closet at the stern of the ship. The elf's name was Oceanus, and once he learned that the party had dispatched the pirates, he seemed very eager to join them.

The ship's hold contained a vast quantity of smuggled wares... over 300 casks of various goods, as well as 7 or 8 dozen bolts of silk, which would doubtless fetch a handome price in Seaton. They also found a substantial cache of weapons, as well as a letter apparently from the lizardmen, discussing the acquisitiion of "ironwares". They also had found a great deal of silver, gold, and electrum amongst the treasures they discovered on the bodies and in the chests.

The party also found a third lizard man who evidently had a pseudodragon for a pet. The pseudodragon stung Tullus, who fell into a coma, but the party was able to dispatch the lizard man quite quickly. At Sarlac's insistence, the party then began to try to capture the pseudodragon, who was proving to be difficult to find, and began using its chameleon ability to stay hidden from the party. Meanwhile, Tullus and Tristan were revived. Their efforts to locate the pseudodragon were unsuccessful, however.

After collecting all they had found amongst the bodies and in the chests into a pile to detect magic on it, the party ascertained that they had secured two magical swords, a magic ring, and a slenderly carved ivory magic wand.

The magic user's spellbook contained Find Familiar, which Sarlac was very eager to use the spell, hoping to lure the pseudodragon in. To Sarlac's delight, the gambit was a success, and the pseudodragon lit on Sarlac's shoulder.

After quickly going back to shore and fetching Tom and Will, who were both experienced sailors, the party were able to navigate the ship into the harbor at Saltmarsh.

Taking the ship

Boarding the ship, Sarlac and Etna saw that there were several people on the deck, all of whom were apparently looking coastward, probably waiting for the boat to arrive. The party's plan to sneak behind them and try to surprise them seemed to be working. Etna threw a dagger at one person near where she climbed up, and missed terribly, creating a splash that all of the people looked towards the coast immediately noticed, and looked at... apparently thinking it might be the approaching boat. Trying again, she nailed the pirate in the back of his head and he immediately fell down in a slump. Everyone else was quietly getting on board at this point. Sarlac, meanwhile, was moving towards the back of the ship where he saw several people and cast a Sleep spell at them, which took down everybody but one very impressive looking person down. This, however, alerted the man who was standing there and he turned towards the party, shouting "INTRUDERS!" and a full scale combat began.

The battle was intense, and pretty heavy damages were done by both sides early on, including some unexpected attacks from above that the party presumed was from the crows nest. Etna climbed the ropes, being hit a couple of times by arrows coming at her from the crows nest before reaching the top. Although the party had started to whittle at the crew's defenses and was taking them down, it took only minutes for several reinforcements to arrive from below deck, including 2 lizardmen. Etna, up on the crow's nest, decided to push the man off, and successfully grappled the man so as to accomplish it. Through sheer serendipity, the man landed on another of the crewmen who was attacking the party on the deck, killing two of the crew right away. Had it not been for this single circumstance, the party would have likely fared far worse.

The party held their ground for several minutes before they started to be overwhelmed however, and started taking some serious hits themselves. The battle continued for many more rounds after that, with Etna trying to hurl her many daggers from above and hit any targets who were not too close to her comrads. The characters who had fallen asleep at the back of the boat had become conscious and quickly moved to join the fray. One of them, apparently a magic user, cast a magic missile at Seamus, who appeared to be the most heaily armored of the group. Trina decided to levitate carefully and use her ability to sneak around the perimeter of the boat and try to attack the magic user from behind. Etna decided to use her last dagger to try to prevent the magic user from casting another spell and was successful. Unfortunately, the fighters were taking too much damage from enemies to remain standing and they both fell, but not before taking out several of the crew. Seamus the cleric, being under attack himself, was unable to tend to his fallen comrads right away.

Trina managed to face off against the magic user, while the remaining members of the party fought for their lives against the remainder of the crew. The battle was very intense, most of the remaining characters being wounded within an inch of their lives. When Seamus was free, he checked on Tristan, who was still alive, and healed him to consciousness. Seamus went to check on Tullus as well, who was also merely unconscious. Finally, after a long and arduous battle, the last crewmember of the ship, who had taken inordinate amount of pummelling from the party, fell, as Tullus was healed back to consciousness as well.

The party then began to explore the vessel.