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First Post
When Hoo arrived with her tow-truck, she scanned the hull of the stricken Phase Rider with a sonic hedgehog and listened carefully to the echo. She nodded sagely and spoke frankly to Captain Jeli who rightly feared the worst. "It's gold fever," explained the owlbear. "She's got too much gold in her ichor stream. Have you been putting gold ingots in the ballast? Yes? Thought so. It's leaked into the bilges."
"Can you do anything?" asked Jeli in a frightened voice.
"You'll have to dump the gold and use a clay poltice to draw out the surfeit."
At the mention of the words 'surf it', Snappy appeared looking cool in Hawaiian shorts and spouting nonsense that he'd picked up from watching too many 1970's movies. "Not now, Snappy," admonished Jeli, "we've got work to do. All hands on deck, mister mate. I will address the men."
"Men, and others," she began, "We have found a safe place to hide our gold. We are going to offload it and stow it in that big glass bottle in the shadow dimensions. I want you all you remember precisely where it is, but keep the secret to your grave. It's our secret. No-one else must know what we know. Is that clearly understood?"
There was a brief silence as the assembled crew frowned, scratched their grizzled chins and worked through the implications in their minds but in the end each of them secretly worked out that if they went along with it, they could come back later on their own and steal the lot for themselves. A ragged cheer went up* as, one by one, they endorsed the plan.
Meanwhile, down in his cabin, Herewulf had been working a private project - a Tome of The Unforgotten. He had just carefully set down the story of Throg, Hermione and All The Fish and given them a whole chapter to themselves. Indeed, had it not been for Herewulf's efforts, that whole thread could never have been written. He concluded the chapter :
And so it was that, by mysterious forces, the ship-in-a-bottle on Hermione's mantlepiece was magically transformed overnight into a bottle containing about five million very tiny gold pieces. Strangest of all, each of the tiny gold pieces weighed as much as an ordinary one (about a third of an ounce) so Hermione was able to convince sceptical bankers to accept them at face value. With the proceeds as security she was able to raise stock and build a commercial empire and ended her days where she began, back in Oxford as the principal of a ladies' college. And what of Throg? He went into politics. You may perhaps know him by a different name.
With everything safely offloaded, the Phase Rider began to recover and hummed quietly to herself again as her servos clicked in. The ship's cook almost ran out of honey making sandwiches for Doctor Hoo, but Od saved the day. He played 'Fight of the Bumble Bee' over and over again on his flute until he practically collapsed with exhaustion from all the cyclic breathing, but it worked and enough bees responded to the call to make enough honey to keep the owlbear fed for a whole hour.
When all was ready, Jeli gave the order to sail on ...
* Why are cheers always 'ragged'? It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. Are cheers a kind of overcoat?
"Can you do anything?" asked Jeli in a frightened voice.
"You'll have to dump the gold and use a clay poltice to draw out the surfeit."
At the mention of the words 'surf it', Snappy appeared looking cool in Hawaiian shorts and spouting nonsense that he'd picked up from watching too many 1970's movies. "Not now, Snappy," admonished Jeli, "we've got work to do. All hands on deck, mister mate. I will address the men."
"Men, and others," she began, "We have found a safe place to hide our gold. We are going to offload it and stow it in that big glass bottle in the shadow dimensions. I want you all you remember precisely where it is, but keep the secret to your grave. It's our secret. No-one else must know what we know. Is that clearly understood?"
There was a brief silence as the assembled crew frowned, scratched their grizzled chins and worked through the implications in their minds but in the end each of them secretly worked out that if they went along with it, they could come back later on their own and steal the lot for themselves. A ragged cheer went up* as, one by one, they endorsed the plan.
Meanwhile, down in his cabin, Herewulf had been working a private project - a Tome of The Unforgotten. He had just carefully set down the story of Throg, Hermione and All The Fish and given them a whole chapter to themselves. Indeed, had it not been for Herewulf's efforts, that whole thread could never have been written. He concluded the chapter :
And so it was that, by mysterious forces, the ship-in-a-bottle on Hermione's mantlepiece was magically transformed overnight into a bottle containing about five million very tiny gold pieces. Strangest of all, each of the tiny gold pieces weighed as much as an ordinary one (about a third of an ounce) so Hermione was able to convince sceptical bankers to accept them at face value. With the proceeds as security she was able to raise stock and build a commercial empire and ended her days where she began, back in Oxford as the principal of a ladies' college. And what of Throg? He went into politics. You may perhaps know him by a different name.
With everything safely offloaded, the Phase Rider began to recover and hummed quietly to herself again as her servos clicked in. The ship's cook almost ran out of honey making sandwiches for Doctor Hoo, but Od saved the day. He played 'Fight of the Bumble Bee' over and over again on his flute until he practically collapsed with exhaustion from all the cyclic breathing, but it worked and enough bees responded to the call to make enough honey to keep the owlbear fed for a whole hour.
When all was ready, Jeli gave the order to sail on ...
* Why are cheers always 'ragged'? It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. Are cheers a kind of overcoat?
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