The Secret of Devil's Island

Thanks to Joel Jenkins for his awesome game summary!

The Privateer ship, the Screaming Vulture, working under a commission from King Henry, is pursued into Caribbean waters by three Spanish ships hungry for vengeance. The captain of the Screaming Vulture, Pteor Chandenko, maneuvers through a cluster of islands relying on the shallow draw of his ship to carry him through small channels where the Spanish ships can't pursue and he is able to cut them off and engage them separately.



The Vulture disables one Spanish ship and the other is forced to go aground or sink. The third Spanish ship flees. Now with one Spanish ship, El Cervantes, in tow the Screaming Vulture heads toward Jamaica to divide its spoils. However as they pass near a small isle with high cliffs and thick jungle growth spilling from its heights, the strong wind suddenly dies and their sails fall limp, and they sit astride a becalmed sea—the waters turning bloody red, and then darkening as the blazing sun slips over the horizon.

Shortly after midnight a scream is heard from El Cervantes, and Pteor Chandenko and former French musketeer, Jean L'Eveque leap on board after there is no reply from the watch that was set. They find only the bones of the watchmen in a puddle of luminescent green goo. Their flesh has been dissolved from their body.

A faint trail of luminescent green is seen through the waters, heading to the one inlet on Devil's Island, as it is called by the superstitious sailors. Even Chandenko's first mate, the normally level-headed Mr. Ferrand is convinced that an evil presence is holed up on the island and has caused the wind to cease and will slip out nightly to devour a few of them until only two ships devoid of life are left. To convince the Captain of his case he cites several legends and then points to the moonlit hulks of ships that have been broken on the jagged teeth that surround Devil's Island.

These, Chandenko, surmises could easily have been ships that were blown their by the winds with a full complement of crew and so he is not convinced. Yet another day of blistering heat and no wind leads to another night in which two more crewmen are devoured, and again there is a phosphorescent trail leading in the direction of the island.

On the next day Chandenko's hopes for a wind to take them away from the cursed shores of Devil's Island do not come to fruition and as night falls he decides on taking a desperate measure in the hopes that he can prevent the deaths of yet more crewmen. He orders a longboat let down and with twenty men they row through the dangerous wash and beach the longboat on dark sands.

They climb the bluffs, through the dense foliage, and against the yellow moon they see smoke rising from the center of the island. Twenty men do not easily travel quietly through unfamiliar terrain, and they blunder into an ambush of robed men with wild eyes and curved blades. Still, hardy freebooters are not easily slain, and only one of Chandenko's men is killed, disemboweled by a cultist's sweeping blade. The freebooters cut down their frenzied attackers, but then a hideous beast, skin dripping with phosphorescent slime and drooling from flaccid lips and swinging scythe-like claws comes rumbling from the forest. With a swing of his razor scythe he beheads one freebooter, and with a swing of another he cuts a howling cultist in twain. Then he flips their remains into his waiting maw, his gastric juices digesting the flesh and secreting the bones.

Some of Chandenko's freebooters fall trembling in fear before the hideous creature and others turn and flee, while a few fire gunshots into the beasts slimy hide. These do not seem to phase it, so Chandenko strikes with his great two-handed blade, but the hammered steel of the sword only shivers in his hand, deflected by the beasts thick skin. The creature swings at Chandenko and only the steel of the musket slung across his back keeps him from being sliced asunder.

The French Musketeer backs up a pace and fires round after round into the beast, and finally a ball of hot lead cuts through the beasts eye and slices through his brain, dropping the horrific monstrosity to the earth.

Some of the remaining cultists flee into a cavern and bar the steel door behind them.

“The beast is dead by virtue of superior French marksmanship,” said L'eveque. “We can return safely to the ship now and wait for a wind to spring up.”

“Are all the French bursting with such optimism?” growled Chandenko, he was a burly man with wild beard and Kossack blood ran thick in his veins. He'd seized control of The Screaming Vulture by physical strength and maintained control over the crew by sheer force of will and presence. “Smoke still pours from that mountain top, and if Mr. Ferrand is correct a curse has been laid upon our ship so that wind will not move it until we have removed that curse. We must delve into the depths of the caverns and destroy every last one of these depraved cultists, lest they summon up some other beast from the depths and again have it creep upon us while we sit in dead waters.”



The captain had spoken and L'eveque rammed another ball into the bore of his musket, followed by wadding to keep it in place. With a prybar, Chandenko attacked the sturdy door that capped the cavern mouth, and soon it gave way to his strength. He, L'Eveque and six other stout freebooters explored the torch-lit, and twisting passages beyond. Howling cultists hurled themselves from shadowed niches and corners, their curved blades slashing, but Chandenko hurled them back with the edge of his two-handed blade and L'Eveque skewered the cultists on the edge of his blade.



Once Chandenko looked into the wild, wide eyes of a cultist as their blades locked and beyond he saw hideous movement, as if a thousand maggots squirmed beyond the window of his eyes.

“They are possessed by some strange force,” shouted Chandenko. “That is why they come on, regardless of pain and heedless of their wounds.”

In a chamber hung with manacles and instruments of torture, a half dozen robed cultists again hurled themselves against the band of intrepid freebooters only to be cut down. In the shadowed corners of the room were a chained wolf and a manacled man, naked to the waist, and his dark skin marked with burn and cut.

Chandenko found a set of keys among the dead and rose from a crouch. “What brings you to this dank cavern, stranger?”

“The name is Unka. I am a shaman of the Algonquin people, kidnapped, sold into slavery, and escaped to ply the seas. The ship on which I sailed became becalmed and night after night men would disappear from its decks, until finally the captain went mad and drove the ship ashore on the tides.”

“So why did these cultists keep you alive instead of feeding you to the demon?”

“I was among twenty-three which still lived and were captured. I and my wolf are the last alive; the others were indeed fed to the beast, which they call Licamphus; those who are many and live beneath the seas.”

Chandenko unlocked the shaman and handed him the keys. “So there are more of those things?”

Unka nodded gravely. “You have slain their Licamphus, and now they will call another from the summoning circle.”

The wolf growled and Chandenko took a step back unless he become a meal for the hungry beast. “Is your dog safe to run free?”

“He is only safe when he is free. He is my friend and you have nothing to fear from him.”

“Then go free or come with us as we hunt down the last of these demon-worshiping fiends,” said Chandenko.

Unka did not respond, but after recovering some bags of powders and talismans that belonged to him, and arming himself with a spear, he joined in the procession of freebooters as they trod through dripping caverns. At the end of a long hall torchlight flickered and a room opened up to reveal a sorcerer in black robes who pored over a yellowed parchment at a desk of stone. The footfalls of the freebooters alerted him and he rose, his yellow, maggot-ridden eyes glaring.

“Halt, interlopers! How dare you tread the sacred ground of the Licamphus?”



Chandenko surged down the cavern, his great blade leaping from his scabbard as he drew it forth. Then the necromancer uttered ancient words, and the stench of death suddenly pervaded the hall. From the walls of the cavern and from the very ground beneath his feet, cadaverous forms burst forth, flesh rotting and wormy.

Even as the rotting limbs began to drag him down, Chandenko drew his pistol and aimed at the necromancer—but then an oozing hand caught his wrist and dragged it down, even as he pulled the trigger and the flint sparked, sending a ball of lead into the stone desk instead of the necromancer's skull.



The necromancer said a few more arcane words and threw a handful of bones into the air, and suddenly a wall of whirling bones grew up in front of him. The freebooters hacked away gory limbs that clutched at them and Unka cast a powder into the air and fanned it outward. Suddenly the undead army fell to dust, and the bone wall faded into nothingness, leaving the necromancer unprotected.

Before Chandenko could cover the distance between them, the necromancer spoke the words of yet another ancient spell and his form became wraith-like and insubstantial, and then he walked through the far wall of the cavern—a place where no mere man of flesh and blood could follow.

“Like a ship rat disappearing into the bilge,” said Chandenko.

They went deeper into the caverns, and Chandenko led the way through a narrow crevice and into a wider tunnel. Crouching in the darkness were eight sets of eyes glowing yellow, squirming shapes behind the whites. These were not mere worshipers, but acolytes of Licamphus, there chests bare and bleeding where they had cut themselves in their rites of worship. They came on in silence, throwing themselves at the Captain who narrowly avoided being diced by their whirring blades. He stepped back into the narrow crevice where they could only come at him one at a time, and he felt the furry form of Unka's wolf familiar slipping past him and saw the blur of his body as he leaped at the throat of the nearest acolyte.

This bought Chandenko a moment's respite, and now he stood his ground killing man after man until all the acolytes lay strewn in gory dismemberment across the rough floor of the tunnel.

Jean L'Eveque was chafing for action and a disappointed expression crossed his face when he saw that all were dead.

“Don't worry,” said Chandenko as he leaned on his sword, regaining his breath after the brutal battle. “There are sure to be a few more lurking about.”

The rough-hewn tunnels gave way to a large chamber, strewn with broken and crumbling pillars, and beyond the shattered door at the rear, bright brazier flames cast a shifting yellow light. On a dais stood four priest's of Licamphus, chanting words which never should be heard or spoken by mankind so that they might summon forth that abominable thing which they worshiped.



Chandenko was quickest, and he darted to the dais and hewed off the legs of the nearest priest who tumbled forward to the floor with a sickening cry. Then the senior priest, a dark-browed man with more teeth than his mouth could contain, made a motion and said a word that smote Chandenko's ears like a thunderclap.

Behind him, amidst the knot of his freebooters, a spectral thing of hideous form and nature appeared, and with one stroke of a razor-sharp flipper, he sliced away the head of an unfortunate freebooter. The others fired in frenzy and fear, but their bullets passed right through the thing, which had turned insubstantial and could not for the nonce be touched by the physical.

However, the bullets sped toward the dark-browed priest and he motioned with his hand, waving the bullets aside, so that they balls of lead clattered across the stone and came to rest against the far wall.

Unka drew upon the innermost reserves of his shamanic powers and with a cry, he drove out the evil thing that was in their midst, so that it was dashed into nothingness.

Chandenko leaped at the dark-browed priest who lifted a hand to ward off the sword, but his spells could not be cast quickly enough and the blade cleaved through hand and collar, slaying him in an instant.

The other priests went down under a wave of freebooter blades as they swarmed up and over the dais.

Chandenko looked over the blood-spatttered dais and the carnage that they had wrought. “Perhaps now, we will be able to escape this island unmolested.”

Jean L'Eveque turned his gaze upon a pair of weathered chests that sat against the far wall of the chamber. “It seems like these priests have not taken a vow of poverty. Those look to be the money chests of the ships wrecked upon this island's shore. This evening may have been a more profitable venture than I had dared hope!”