Session XI: What's in the Box?

As expected, the night was spent in one big, long battle between the party, the pirates and the Gnoll slavers.

I began the session with the Chromatic Imps exploding out the back of the pirates' ship. Then things grew very quiet on the docks, and I told the party that they begin to hear this coming from the deck of the slavers' junk (Chinese sailing ship) ... I played the sound clip off my phone.  

There was derring-do, there was showdowns and sacrifice, explosions and swinging from the rigging, there were ninja style attacks and some glorious fails (the black Dragonborn captain of the slavers - who was suppose to be this big, scary tough guy - couldn't roll for beans. Though he did manage to spit acid right into Scruffy's face during the big show-down). One character went down, another finished with literally 1 hit point left. I call it a success.  

The fight ended with the slaves rescued (one taken on a hireling), the pirate captain dead, the ship on fire and the slavers escaping in their badly damaged boat (it might have been hit by lightning a couple times). 

But for all the party's tactics and bravery, they are not natural looters. They barely searched the empty mid-deck and found only one of the possible three chests I'd placed there (also missed the bag of gunpowder sitting on the stove, which accounted for one of the explosions) and didn't loot any of the bodies. I'm trying to give each character a  minor, magical item that isn't a weapon or armour, but they aren't looking around hard enough to find where I am hiding them in the game. Its an odd position to find myself in as a DM. 

Of the three chests I'd hidden on the mid-deck, they salvaged one. Peter the Thief flubbed three roles trying to pick the lock, so it remains unopened. Of the three chests on that deck, one had basic treasure (coins and gems), another had a magic item for one of the PCs, and the third was a party item rolled from the trinket table in the PHB. I haven't' decided yet which chest they saved...  

Next Session: The party has been hired by a Tiefling monk to retrieve his Sensei's magical trident from a dead dragon's lair. At least, they think she's dead ....