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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 111059" data-attributes="member: 150">Pike’s PeakOnce we had gathered ourselves in back in the clearing, we figured we needed to make our way as quickly as possible back to the Enterprise – we didn’t want to be marooned here, however pleasant the environment was.  So, after a few quick taps from my wand of Cure Light Wounds, we took off at a run for the ship.We reached the beach just in the nick of time.  A quartet of gnomes had started to turn the capstan, raising anchor, and the Commodore and his men were shuffling around the decks preparing to make sail.  For some reason, they had left a longboat on the shore, an oversight we quickly took advantage of, hustling ourselves and my two war dogs, Toblerone and Cadbury, into the boat while Irk and I took the oars.We pulled as hard as we could, trying to close the difference between the two ships as quickly as possible.  Once Pike and his goons spotted us, the fun started.  A few were taking pot shots at us with crossbows, while someone on deck called up a storm to make rowing more difficult – a storm which eventually produced a bolt of lightning – a very odd bolt, one that signed most everyone in the boat – killing Cadbury and nearly killing Toby, who I managed to save with a tap from my wand.  But the boat itself took no damage at all.  Still worried that we would not be able to get to the ship before they weighed anchor and left us behind, Uri got into action from the bow of the longboat.  He cast a thick web over the foredeck, where the gnomes were working on the capstan, effectively stopping them in their tracks.  Then he traded shots with the rest of the crew on deck until the boat was alongside the ship.Now, boarding a large ship from a longboat is a tricky business – trying to attack up the steep sides of a ship while people are attacking you from above is practically suicide.  Of course, this group had it a lot easier than most.  Irk, who snatched up his axe, was the first to reach the deck, carrying Uri on his back.  He was wearing his slippers of spider slimb, and was able to charge up the side of the ship as if it were firm, level ground.  Within seconds he was on deck cleaving his way through the gnomes trying to repel boarders.  Pah managed to reach the deck in a single bound – thanks to that ring of jumping – and began to dart around the deck taking shots of opportunity as they became available.With the way cleared, Minimonk was also able to scamper up to the deck without difficulty.  Which left me, Toby, and Caddy’s corpse in the boat.  I knew there was no way I was going to get Caddy up there right away, so she would have to wait until after the battle.  I grabbed a rope and tried to haul myself up onto the ship.  I fell the first time – nearly falling into the water, where my armor would have sunk me pretty quickly.  I hauled myself back into the longboat, and began trying to climb the side of the ship again, eventually hauling myself up there in time to see the battle in full swing.Irk was making short work of the commodore’s flunkies, while the halfling trio bounced around and worked on the flanks.  Jordi and Weasley, two of Pike’s flunkies, fell quickly.  I charged up to the afterdeck, where Pike was trying to make a last stand, in time for the charm that Pike had placed on Irk to make life difficult again – Irk didn’t mind the idea of our attacking Pike’s men, but when we turned our attention to Pike himself, Irk balked at the idea, and did his best to keep us from fighting with him.  We had to distract Irk by sending him below hunting for treasure.Pike himself turned out to be a tough opponent.  The legs of his metal chair lashed out at us, as we surrounded him and tried to finish him off with some flanking attacks.  He bolted for the lower deck, but Pah lept into the rigging and executed an amazingly acrobatic rope swing down to cut him off (her first level as an acrobat paying off).  Once we had him cornered again we managed to finish him off.  Pah pulled off his hat as well, revealing that he was some sort of monstrous insect humanoid, not the demi-commodore he looked like.  Weird.  We rolled his corpse into the water and set about clearing out the rest of the ship.  We found a crew of gnomes hiding down below – perhaps connected with the gnomes that had been helping the Commodore run the ship and try to fight us off.  They surrendered to us without a fight.  They tried to convince us that they would just drop us off back at our planet, but Pah had decided the ship was her new home, and she wasn’t listening to a bunch of dwarves about it.  In the end, the Gnomes were dropped off on the Atoll, where we can only hope they were welcomed into the local tribe.  And then I got into the chair again to fly the Enterprise back towards Dyvers.  The navigation was trickier than we thought it would be, but we were able, after a few false starts, to make our way back to Dyvers, where we sailed over the city, flying a makeshift Dragoon flag.  We decided to dock the ship in the Dragoon Barracks, rather than landing in the harbor, so the ship would be easier to protect, and we could work on repainting and renaming the ship.  For some reason the others were convinced that the wanted to call the ship the Mystery Machine.  Whenever the subject came up, Uri started telling Pah she was Velma, not Daphne, but I have no idea what any of that meant (although it did seem to aggravate Pah).Next time: getting caught up on life in Dyvers.</blockquote>

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