The True Ali-Baba's Cave™ and the « Witch's Deal »

That item is totally anecdotal for our plot (Yeah, we confirm there's one, Friend Game Master, try to show some respect at least!) but it can, however, also proove totally usefull, though only under one condition, there too: to discover it and, most importantly, to manage to negociate it with the Witch: so, here's the hidden extra stuff, the True Ali-Baba's Cave™ of the Witch!

To those who would wonder how the Witch can manage to have so many clothes and ingredients in her minute cabin, let's say they would « only » have to search in the « closet in the back » while she's not there but that could prove dangerous for it's an « a-mazing » closet in the very true sense of the word and there is a significant risk to get lost between the rows and shelves! It is quite simply a True Ali-Baba's Cave™ of which the making involves a secret Voodoo charm of Hattean origin.

One could possibly also guess that there is something with the closet, judging from the completely unrealistic movements of the Witch, yet under the condition to explicitely have focused one's attention to the topic for the Witch takes good care to keep her little secrets: that translates into a Roll versus « Cleverness + Look-Out » with a Malus of 3.

There is no hope to procure the formulas for the Ritual from her but she could, if our young friends succeeded making a good relationship to her and if they can pay in large amounts of rare Voodoo objects, propose them a « deal » if they come back to her after having activated properly the Voodoo Navigation system of the Suzon: she would then propose them a True Ali-Baba's Cave™ with the shape of a medium-sized marine chest. That True Ali-Baba's Cave™ is actually protected with an additional seal which makes it impossible to remove any object of any kind once it's been put in. You may ask: what can it thus be useful for? Well, there it comes: the Witch is interested in many a rare and useful Voodoo objects which she cannot procure on Yellow Lizard's Island (see the list below) but for which she can roughly give some directions to find them. We guess you got the remaining of the idea: when the contents of the list will have been collected in the chest, our Crew will only have to come back to her, she will break the protection seal and take the objects for her own use. Our Friend Young Pirates will have earned the chest, with which they then can go for good or bad… We wonder whether you shouldn't even prepare for a big special Scenario only for that! Actually, you can even think of feeding regularly a Campaign with little side stories to manage transitions in the main plot!

List of supplies (or a letter to Santa Claus if one prefers) of the « Witch's Deal »:

  • Green Crystals for the « weaving of colours » (you don't ask what it means);
  • A Jet Icegrinder™ (in other words a device specially meant to produce a ground ice's jet, if one dares to say or first even understand what it could be useful for…);
  • A plastic bucket and spade;
  • A bottle of kerozene enriched with 5% of lime;
  • A dried barbula of a giant red mullet of the Nasty Beaches - it's a local name of the Belt-O'Dolly Dreams on some islands (Note also: the barbula alone and already dried still weights fifty kilograms!);
  • A lock of the Governor of Yellow Lizard's Island;
  • A postal card in a bottle from Highgut, Cue-Bar.

That's rather fair for a deal, no!? « Yooho, hail ho! »

Ultimate revelations of the Witch

We can now add the following section, very important for our story, and create and thicken the mystery around Poerava's Character, only usable if our Young Pirates manage to maintain a good relationship with the Witch of the Swamp.

During one of the discussions with the Witch, it happens that Poerava, who always wears on her the medallion she gave to search a short time to all the Crew, lets accidentaly appear the golden jewel through the opened neck of her shirt and that the Witch sees it. If, at that moment, our Young Pirates haven't yet reached any agreement with the Witch, they'll only possibly see her astonishment (on a successful Roll versus Perception + Look-Out in Opposition to Got a Nerve! + Discretion of the Witch) for she won't speak a word of what she saw.

Otherwise – or later if the relationships become better – she'll tell Poerava on a somewhat solemn tone the following thing and not a significant word more: « Girl, where do you have this medallion from? »

Poerava, while quickly putting it back in her shirt: « No se; I had it, always… » (« No se » meaning « I dunno » in Criole but that's something everybody knew or understood!).

The Witch: « Yes, you should as right now always keep your medallion in your shirt and take care it remains hidden there. I have no doubt that the whole lot o'ya have only one idea: leaving the borin' place here. That's not me business but you, little Cubanita, mark carefully my words: never leave it anywhere and show it to nobody or it could bring very bad things on you, as well as on all your companions! »

There will be no more word from her, she'll simply say that she knows nothing else, that it was only an intuition she had while seeing the medallion. A Success to a Roll versus the best of Cleverness, Perception or Power + Won't Get Nabbed! in Opposition to Got a Nerve! + Discretion of the Witch and with a Malus of 5 will reveal that the Witch probably knows or guessed more. Worming the information out won't be easy, we let you manage that with your Players, Friend Game Master. They'll only learn the following additional items and it will then be obvious that the Witch doesn't know anything more:

« I dunno much more, little pratty kids… And you'd better not search for more about that yourselves! I've seen that medallion in a dream the night after Pedro Delgado came here, for sure because you've got ties. And what a terrible vision I had then! I didn't think that the medallion could be on the island, on you… I've seen, in my dream, the medallion being forged in a dark place and given by the hands of a figure, hidden behing a straw hat, in the hands of a bluffingly beautiful woman, brown hair and a skin a little as yours, wearing a trihorn and a long and thin sabre at a red belt of cloth. In the very same vision, just after, I saw a woman very much like her at sea, her sabre brandished and in a state of bloodthirsty fury, making a massacre of men who were trying to rob her of the medallion; and the medallion around her neck shone blindingly. I woke up in fever that very night I speak of. You got it, I hope, me kiddies, that I dunno more about that medallion but I have no good intuition about it… »

Despite such words of the Witch of the Swamp and despite possible « fearful injunctions » (those would be her words) from the part of her companions, and even if those injunctions would come from « her » Captain, whatsoever could be, Poerava would refuse to get rid of from her medallion. First, that fact makes the notion of Captain way more relative to circumstances… Moreover, it becomes obvious that there is for sure more to Poerava than only a cule little Cubanita… She herself probably does not know more but there seem to be strong ties between her and her medallion.

The Witch of the Swamp also has some Voodoo Divination powers but the service is not offered for free and one can doubt that our Friends Young Pirates can afford such an expense. She could theoretically, however, « see » scenes of the Poerava's past, which Poerava herself cannot remember anymore; for instance, a woman hastily leaving a fishermen's town (thatched-roofed bamboo houses on stilts) by an eye-slit mooned night with a baby and, in the background, in the rocky creek, an uncommonly shaped three-master burning in a furious fire.

That'll be all for that section since the likelihood that your Players, Friend Game Master, reach that point as early as during their very first Zebra Island's Scenario is quite low already. We now shift to other sections and other secrets surrounding the Suzon, the Governor and his past, some less, some more mysterious.

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