01/16/2026
Varsmak and Saoirsa arrived in Broken Compass and began scouting the area. They determined the traitorous Adewale would have taken up residence in the Chateau LeMarque if he'd usurped Saoirsa's role. But Saoirsa was ever an adherent to tradition, and refused to enter the Chateau without being part of a proper crew, for which they'd need a ship.
While Saoirsa went to check old alliances, Varsmak made for the docks in order to procure a ship, making he and Saoirsa a technical crew, able to enter the Chateau.
On the way, Varsmak found a rock elemental hanging from a crow gibbet named Bruno. The elemental called itself a "memory keeper," some role it found important, it seemed.
Varsmak released the creature, and did so using the Stoneskin spell, which immediately endeared the little memory keeper to the old pirate, and they went off together, Bruno now a part of he and Saoirsa's new crew.
Varsmak found an old plague ship that had been abandoned to time down on the docks, overgrown and in disrepair, which fit his needs perfectly.
Boarding the ship, called the Daring Due, Varsmak and Bruno found a drunken old elven man named Clancey, the sole remaining member of the ship's crew.
When told the ship was being commandeered, Clancey seemed to not care, but cared much more when Varsmak and Bruno attempted to enter the captain's cabin.
When Varsmak forced his way in despite Clancey's protestations, he found the former captain of the Daring Due, dead and decaying, having contracted some disease by doing something Clancey had disagreed with while plumbing the depths of the Caecalian cities, she'd decided to take her own life rather than risk the lives of her crew. She was apparently very close with Clancey.
Varsmak informed Clancey that as long as there is a crew, there is a ship, and as long as the ship endures, so does its crew. Varsmak removed the alcohol, replaced it with water, and welcomed Clancey to the ever-growing crew of Captain Saoirsa.
The new crew met with Saoirsa outside the Chateau, and all four of them entered in as the crew of the plague ship, Daring Due.
Varsmak told Saoirsa that his old crew, Tough As Dirt, had found a map for a hidden place in the Chateau, but he couldn't remember what it had said.
Bruno, as a memory keeper, claimed he could exchange a memory with Varsmak, and in Bruno's mind, Varsmak's memory would be perfect and easily remembered.
They exchanged, and Varsmak received a memory of the Broken Compass in pristine days, before it had ever earned its name. The god Tsh'Ah stood on the docks and handed over a vial of black smoke to a remorseful looking pirate captain.
Within the Chateau, they found Adewale holding court over a pirate who had broken the Benthic Creed. He sentenced her to death for insisting the court needed to learn from the past rather than leave it shrouded.
After she was dragged away, Bruno took issue with the idea that memory was not important, and took the spotlight, accusing Broken Compass as being too literal with the Benthic Creed and needing to interpret the words in new ways.
Being uninterested in new ways, the court turned on Bruno, but Clancey jumped to his defense, and Varsmak added his voice.
When Saoirsa jumped from a rafter to attack Adewale, he played dumb about rigging her ship to be destroyed, and claimed instead that her religious zeal for the Children and some unhealthy responsibility towards them is what had everyone turn against her.
Saoirsa wasted no time in attacking to end his life, and a fight broke out, ending with an empty Chateau and a headless Adewale.
Bruno saw Varsmak use his lightning powers during the battle, and found time later to ask Varsmak where he got them. When he replied from a lightning crystal, Bruno told Varsmak about how of all the things he remembered from the very beginnings of Vault, the elemental paragons pre-dated even those. But most of those paragons were gone now, and only a few remained on Vault.
Varsmak's new crew found their way to the place found on the map that was now in Bruno's memory, and activated a hidden compartment that contained the very black smoke vial Varsmak had seen in Bruno's memory.
Apparently, Saoirsa had also been searching for this compartment for most of her life.
When asked what it was, Saoirsa ushered them all to the Daring Due.
Carried by two of the Children, the old ship had one last voyage, as Saoirsa, Varsmak, Bruno, and Clancy all sailed to Siren's Suckhole, so Saoirsa could show the crew what awaited there.
Thousands of Caecalians and Children circled within the tempest, and the whirlpool rose and fell with a shared breath, and closer then than any ship had ever been before and been able to escape to tell the tale, the crew saw the Great Mother, the beast as large as an island, at its bottom.
Saoirsa claimed there were too few Children now to protect her, the Great Mother, and the Caecalians had been dying off due to a disease that tore through their people. And when that last happened, the people of Broken Compass had been called upon to fulfill their duty.
The crew learned the former residents of Broken Compass were, in fact, the Caecalian people, and had been turned by the very black smoke Saoirsa now held. If you hold the key, you keep the gate. If you can do something, you do it. Saoirsa planned on releasing the smoke once more, and replenishing the ranks of Caecalians to protect the Great Mother.
Clancey protested, pointing out no one had agreed to that. Saoirsa claimed they had when they took the Benthic Creed and became pirates of Broken Compass.
Eventually, the crew agreed and headed back to the docks outside Broken Compass. And the once plague ship became so again, as Saoirsa unstoppered the bottle and allowed the tendrils of Tsh'Ah's smoke to reach into the city, and turn every person into a Caecalian.
Varsmak felt himself turn, looked to his new crew, who had also begun, and jumped off the side of the ship into the waters of the Farewave Ocean, finally home.