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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brimshack" data-source="post: 3140571" data-attributes="member: 34694">All right my dear friend, you have certainly been warned about the direction of our little adventure. Let us now get on with the matter. How, you might ask, did I come to such company? The story has humble beginnings to be sure. In fact the story will remain a humble one for quite a stretch. One has to slay hobbits before she can cast fear on kingdoms, that is just the way of it.    To the heart of the matter, I came upon the people that I now call friends while seeking a bit of adventure. There lies to the North a small island, set unfortunately between two great warring kingdoms, and on this isle, there is much confusion about who is to rule what region and by what law. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, I travelled to the shores of this island in the hopes that I might enjoy the fruits of piracy. Few parts of the known world present better opportunities for piracy than the “Northern Clash,” and after years of tiresome work on peaceful sailing ventures I thought to try my hand in more troublesome waters. Little did I know just how troubled those waters would prove to be.    At this point, I must entreat your patience my dear reader, for I have only begun this story many months into the adventure. I have a number of things to tell you, and I must tell you these things rather quickly before my story can become the true journal that it should be. Please forgive the brevity of the next few entries; for they will lead to longer and more thoughtful narratives in the future.    ...so, upon reaching the Northern Clash, I quickly found my chosen vessel to be a hostile and unhappy place. This great pirate ship’s dreadful captain was, it seems, wary of the mildest fishing vessel. He fled from the mighty navies of the northern kingdoms on but the slightest of encounters. Indeed he fled from such encounters even before they had occurred, and in point of fact, I suspect that he fled from them in his dreams, as it were, always seeking to hide his pathetic carcass further and further from the site of those with a flag and a sword. In the few months aboard this terrible vessel, I found we had sailed well north of the human kingdoms which vie for control of the island. We traded the fruits of past conquests with local villages of orcs and goblins (...and let me now just say that those conquests seem as unlikely to me at this point as the prospect that our noble captain would scrub his behind in the wake of his morning reverie). After many months it appeared that my greatest adventure was to be the task of fending off the advances of my own captain, and the most daunting adventure we had ahead of us was the labour of repairing the docks of a small orc village. ...or perhaps it was eating the food fed to us by orcs in lieu of payment for the task. To the best of my understanding, we were pirates only in the sense that we were no longer fit for polite company.    Needless to say my friends, this was not the vessel of my dreams, but to my surprise one of the wretched creatures we had come north to do business with made me a personal offer. If I was to join in a larger venture, an orc shaman offered to bail me from the company I was then keeping. This shaman spoke to me of a powerful magic which threatened to fall into the hands of “the wrong evil” as he put it. The local powers that be (i.e. the drow nobles living deep in a nearby cavern) had begun to assemble an expedition to thwart not one but 2 rivals and secure this mysterious power for ourselves. (Did, I say, "ourselves," my friends? I am sorry, I meant to write that our patrons had sought to secure the powerful magic in question for "themselves." Please do not make more of my poor penmanship than it is.) All very cryptic, but what would you expect from a spell caster, especially for this pig-witted reader of pidgeon-guts. (It's true, he couldn't afford a sheep.) Now mind you a business venture relayed by an orc shaman is always a dubious thing, but I could not stomach the thought of another night in the company of a certain dread pirate of the sea, and so I opted for the risk of a new venture.    I must confess that at this time I had already resolved myself to return to the fleets of my own kind at the first opportunity and to content myself with standing a watch and scrubbing a deck as my kind has done since time out of mind. I had indeed turned my thoughts towards tamer times and softer ambitions.    But alas tamer times and softer ambitions were too prove unattainable in the short run, and thankfully so, as the old orc shaman turned out to be a good source indeed. I soon found myself waiting with a shark woman on the shore of of a small and isolated bay, only to be joined by a human scout and a High Elven sorcerer both of whom were to be of assistance in the unfriendly ports of humankind.    And herein lay our first real adventure my friends, because, it seems that so many elves and humans in orc territory should not loiter about, nor indeed should they travel unaccompanied. We were soon assaulted by a war party full of the filthy creatures, filthy creatures who I might add were SUPPOSED to have been our own allies. Still they had no way of knowing and they came with an ogre and a powerful winged Minotaur covered in blue scales. (I am told that some of these details vary with the usual appearance of such creatures, but as I have never seen another minotaur, I shall have to withold my judgement on the matter.) Hardly had these creatures made an appearance when a battle broke out, and must confess my friends, my own part in this chapter came to a quick end. A single orc delivering the very first blow of the incipient battle was, it seems, quite sufficient to put me out for the balance of that fateful event, and I only awoke several days later to find that the Minotaur had turned tables on the pig-men who brought him along. He was now one of our own, as were a host of other creatures. If memory serves, we had already been joined by a nixie, 2 lizardmen (one of them small), and a number of other creatures and persons, including at least one drow. We were to fight one more battle with the local colour, and suffice it to say they faired rather poorly against us.    Our next task it seems was to secure our own ship as the patrons who had gathered us did not actually purchase one at all. That you would think might be the most important step in the process of launching a naval campaign, but that is not how our own patrons work. No, they had seen fit to purchase a bit of gossip whispered into the right ear, just enough to lure a ship of pirates to the bay which presently served as our resting place. The ship, we were assured was ours well enough, just as soon as we took it from the plague of fair-skinned humans currently infesting its worthy decks. Our efforts to accomplish this task proved, I must confess, quite unworthy of the narrative I would hope to tell. Indeed, the ship was to get away.    During the ensuing ambush (ours mind you), we managed to assemble ourselves in a convenient circle, just large enough to accommodate the great ball of fire which issued forth from the  decks of our would-be prize. Our shark-woman who had thought to climb up the anchor chain of the vessel was speared off the very side of the ship, speared by the tongue a great gaurdian fish which proceeded to swallow her whole. (She was to claw herself free in due time, but truth be told, I do not think my friend has ever quite recovered from the shame of it.) Still another fish unleashed a barrage of missiles from its tail every time it jumped out of the water. And if that were not enough, an Ogre which had joined our crew just before this fateful battle managed to catch one of our own in his fearsome back swing, slaying one fine stout orc in single moment of distraction. That we slaughtered the enemy shore party is small consolation indeed. We lost 3 of our own that day and negotiated a shameful peace with those we had hoped to enslave. The pirate ship was to sail off a little lighter than she had been on her first appearance, but more to the point, she sailed off without the brand new pirate crew which had been assembled on shore for her benefit.    Now some of you may have experienced the shame of explaining to your employer some small failure, some petty disaster, we have all been there. Such a miserable experience is not made merrier when one serves the interests of a powerful drow Wizard, let me tell you. The next weeks were an uncomfortable experience for all. We were eventually told that our hopes for sailing rested on the appearance of a second ship of a royal navy which was to be lured to the same spot in the hopes of capturing the very pirates we had earlier assailed. We were told to expect our new quarry within a month’s time.    Instead we travelled South and attacked a village of Hobgoblins, taking the fishing vessel which was to serve their needs for the winter. Mind you, the Hobgoblins were supposed to have been allies, but our leaders reasoned the greater need was to get to sea as quickly as possible and join in the grand hunt of the day. One can only hope that our patrons saw fit to help the Hobgoblins through their coming need.     ...or not to hope for them at all. Honestly, who gives a damn?    A little ways out we traded ships with the royal expedition which had been lured to our vicinity. At least we traded our long boats for their ship, at least with the survivors. I seem to recall sinking the one we had taken from the Hobgoblins. Those harbouring any sympathies for the hobgoblin donors of our first vessel may content themselves with the thought that the few human survivors were headed for shore somewhere in the vicinity of the village.     And with this rather hurried account, my friends, I have finished the first chapter in our story. Our ship was now at sea and we were on our way. Just where we will going, that will have to wait for the next instalment. Until ten...</blockquote>

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