"Titus, ye son of a bitch," Avery spits. "I told myself I'd run you through the next time I saw you."
Avery long blamed Titus for his string of ill luck, for every ship that they sailed together on has sunk beneath them. He banished Titus from his crew, thinking the half-orc was cursed, but Avery has since concluded that it is he who is cursed. "I guess the real curse was inside me heart all along."
Avery explains that he's been following the clues and a crude map drawn by a deceased orb hunter named Barnabas Barnacle, who stumbled upon the Seven Sacred Pools whilst hunting for Obari orbs. The centerpiece of a long-sunken temple, the Seven Sacred Pools were rumored to hold healing properties... and could remove curses. He sailed his pirate ship Sea Bitch to The Green Hole and descended into the depths with a three colleagues wearing Orb Hunter armor, where he encountered sahuagin and deadly chuul... as well as our pirate protagonists.
Outnumbered and still in need of a crew to help him reach the Seven Sacred Pools, Sam Avery strikes a deal: "Aid me in me quest and I'll sponsor ye as captains in the Brotherhood of the Sea."
The PCs agree and accompany Capt. Avery into a series of aquatic and air-filled caverns, where they encounter a range of threats such as a sinister spectator, sahuagin ambushers, and Barnabas Barnacle's undead crew.
Ultimately, each character drinks from one of the Seven Sacred Pools:
- Chaser drinks from the necrotic black pool (and multi-classes into an evil fighter).
- Teach drinks from the wonder pool and becomes ambidextrous.
- Cake drinks from the wonder pool and gets a quasit familiar, which the DM instantly regrets because OMG it's an invisible telepathic scout, what was he thinking?
- Titus drinks from the hero pool and gets even stronger, but loses a vital point of Intelligence, which means he forgets how to do maths.
- Samuel Avery drinks from the pool of restoration and cures his curse.
"I'll fulfill me obligation to ye," Capt. Avery says. "Ye may find me at me hideout, Bitch's Bay."
And with that, the pirate captain vanishes. (Whaaaat?)