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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sayburr" data-source="post: 1173" data-attributes="member: 92">From Haanex to ZoaBefore we left Haanex, the guilt must have gotten to Prissy Britches because she left the books and 100 gold pieces and a note saying that she didn’t deserve the shares from the vaults after all. You never can tell what she is going to do. The note also said something about scouting for a day but being back in time to go to Zoa with us. We get passage booked to Zoa on a ship called The Forsaken. I can only admire the audacity of someone who names a ship, which will have to brave the dangers of the open seas, something like that. Especially when one considers the very superstitious natures of those who make their living from the sea. We take our gear to the ship and then sell our horses.The sea travel is nothing new to me. I am glad to have taken my first trip alone since I remember how sick I was on it and none of the others seem to suffer like I did. I am glad not to appear weak in front of them. We travel quite well for three days but then our wind dies. The captain seems quite nervous, saying something is unnatural about it. I dismiss his unease as typical sailor superstition and go swimming in the afternoon. The next day still finds us with no wind and I swim again. It feels good to know that the men are watching me so I wear even less than yesterday. Rakis and I pass the rest of the afternoon practicing combat. I still feel so clumsy with Flamesinger; I just cannot emulate the powerful strokes of the mighty axman with a weapon. I must find a better way to employ this magnificent blade. After our second full day adrift, I wonder if the captain might be right about the wind. I decide to ask Laura and Amber. I feel better when they both assure me that they are familiar with weather lore and both feel this to be a normal if somewhat odd lack of wind. The third still day passes much as the first two but the crew is pretty edgy by now. I hope this breaks soon if for no other reason than to appease their anxiety.“Be careful what you wish for,” my fath—Foebin Tessin always told me, “because you just might get it.” That night it broke alright. Rakis and I were speaking with the captain when we heard Laura shouting. We ran out to see what was the matter and found her and Amber fighting some hideous sea-lizard-man creature. Ars came up from below decks as we engaged it. The thing was incredibly agile, fighting us while balancing on the railing of the ship. We basically had it surrounded except for the seaward side and it might have escaped but our blows made it fall from the railing. When it fell, I stepped forward and drove Flamesinger thru the back of its head and into the deck. We had heard some yells and splashes while we killed this thing and a head count and the wet slimy pools on the decks revealed that the thing had not been alone nor had their hunt been unsuccessful. Thank Risk and Watcher the wind returned shortly after the sun came up.We were making good time again under sail. About the fifth day after our encounter with the sea-lizard-men, the crow’s nest shouts sail ho. The captain watches the other ship quite closely. We know why soon. The other ship seems to be veering towards us. I immediately think pirates. My suspicions are soon confirmed as they run up their black flag. One good thing about sea battles is that there is plenty of time to prepare. Everyone is ready for them to try to board us. A little ways out ports open and oars come out and the pirate ship speeds up noticeably. Pandora says it looks like they are going to hit us rather than pull along side and board us. By the gods, I know she is right! I mutter the few words Risk told me in my dreams to guide my aim as I take the only action I can think of to keep them from cracking the Forsaken open. I have the wheelman in my sights at the greatest distance I think my crossbow can reach and let the bolt fly. The magic Risk gave me guides my bolt to the mark and the wheelman takes it in the throat and goes down in a heap like a bull at the spring feasts slaughter. The ship starts to wallow. One of the other pirates notices this and moves to take the wheel. He sealed his own fate. I mutter Risk’s words again and send the bolt on its way again. He goes down with the bolt thru his eye. The ship is turning with no one at the wheel but not enuf to miss us entirely. I say the words to the Watcher’s protection spell and pull Flamesinger. I am ready to take the fight to them and so after the ships collide I run and leap aboard their vessel. I land and start swinging the heavy flaming blade. Rakis leaps to the deck also and starts hacking with his fearsome ax. Four pirates fall to the deck to my right. I see no bolts in them so I think it must be Pandora. In just a few seconds we have eliminated nearly half of the pirates on deck. Just as I thought, by taking the fight to them and putting them on the defensive when they are used to being the aggressors has thrown them off. Most are trying to surrender. I tell them to throw their weapons down to surrender. All but one does so and that one yells something about fighting to the death. I will make an example of him. I rush over to him and deal him a tremendous slash but he doesn’t go down. Two bolts fly past my head but Risk is watching over me so one lands in the sea and the second hits this bastard. He is still up. Rakis comes to my aid and slashes at him with his ax. Ars closes on him too but this bastard is still on his feet and swinging after wounds that would have put me down twice over. He swings at me but Watcher’s barrier saves me. His swing and wounds carry him off balance so I step in close and run Flamesinger thru his guts and out his back. He can’t stand anymore. Rakis turns to face the remaining pirates and asks if any of the rest of them want to fight to the death. The one or two who had not dropped their blades do so then, quickly. As I approach them to ask if they have any swag on board already, one of them asks me, “What are your orders, Captain?” I am caught off guard momentarily and wonder if he is running some game on me. I decide to go with it and tell him I want to see the hold and any booty they have. We go below decks and see the slaves they have chained to the oars. They all start pleading for us to release them. I ignore them. We continue to what should be the cargo hold, which is empty. The pirate says that the men are all they have so far this trip. Someone, I think Ars, asked him where they secreted the treasure they had before and he says it is far to the south in a freeport in the Sea of the Dead. The rest of the group seems upset by the men chained to the oars. How odd, don’t they see the difference between victor and vanquished where they are from? Even the big man seems concerned. I listen to them but tell them it doesn’t bother me to leave them chained. I remind them we might need oarsmen ourselves on the rest of the trip to Zoa. It seems important to them and is of little value to me either way so they are freed soon thereafter. We tell them they will have their freedom after we reach Zoa if they will do what they are able to help us get the ship there. As it turns out, they are experienced sailors captured from other ships. We debate leaving the other captain and the Forsaken a few of the slaves and making the best time to Zoa but in the end decide that two ships pose a harder target in case we run into more pirates or other dangers. One of the slaves says that he was captain of his own ship before being captured. I promote him from slave to first mate and let the crew know of his new position. I tell him to get the ship and crew ready to head to Zoa and then report to me in my quarters once we are under way. I have him give me the crash course on captaining and quickly decide to let him handle the day to day chores of maintaining the ship and keeping my mouth closed as often as possible. “ Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt,” I heard a many a time growing up. We travel a few more days when the lookout shouts sail ho again. Everyone gears up for more pirates. A view thru the spyglass quickly denies that. This is a ghost ship. The sight of her sails in tatters and the eerie air about it, even in the daylight, has me much more worried than pirates. I am glad Amber is with us. There is something that just seems evil about that ship. I tell the first mate to bring us along side her and prepare a boarding party. He advises against that since we don’t know what happened on board the other vessel. I pick four rowers and they and the six of us set out for the ghost ship in the two dinghies. As we approach, the figure we had assumed was dead and lashed to the wheel lifts his head and croaks out a desperate warning to us to get away while we can and collapses back to the wheel. That just makes me want to get on there that much more. We pull along side and Amber casts one of her spells and tells us there is evil on board that one of them is more powerful that she is. I speak Watcher’s protection into existence while we throw our grappling hooks up and climb their lines to get on the deck. The deck is littered with gore. Bodies and pieces of bodies and blood cover the wooden surface. “Attack!” is yelled from somewhere under the quarter deck and the bodies rise up to slay us.We battle the corpses for just a short while before Amber displays her Holy Might which forces them to cower and retreat from us. Ars seems to be heading toward where the command to attack came from but pulls up before entering the gloom of the hallway just as some ghouls climb over the side of the ship to attack us. If I can just hold it off long enuf for Amber to wreak her havoc on these abominations… And of course she does! I must talk to her to find the secret behind this awesome power. Perhaps Risk or the Watcher will speak to me of it in a dream. With the undead gone, I turn to follow Ars down the hallway. As I close, he still is not advancing. When I get right on him I see that what made him pull up was not the ghoul attack on us but some sort of ghostly hand attacking him. Rakis runs up just ahead of me and the hand attacks him too. Ars steps to one side of the doorway and Rakis is on the other. Ars attacks the spectral hand as Rakis holds up the light orb to she into the darkness of the hallway. When he does that, I quickly check the doors to see if any are open to let a spellcaster see and attack us like this. Watcher guides my eye to the furthest door open a crack. I mutter Risk’s power words to guide my hand as I run down the hall and ram Flamesinger thru the door. I am rewarded to feel the blade slide easily thru the cheap, flimsy wood of the door only to slow as it hits the solid bone and meat of my target. I push the door open to find the priest on the floor in a small puddle of dark blood from the sword-sized hole in his head. I have little time to admire the magnificence of the death stroke before I am set upon by his minions, 3 more ghouls. A ghoul some how penetrates my defenses and I can feel a little death run thru my soul at its touch but I shake off the hopelessness of the inevitability of the grave and continue to fight. I have heard the others follow me down the hallway and know they cannot help me much with me in the doorway. I execute a cartwheel between two of the ghouls as I would have on the gypsy stage between Lola and Daphne in one of our close tumbling routines and Rakis barrels into the room. He swings mightily but misses in the close quarters. Then the ghouls are turned to dust before our eyes, as Amber unleashes her deity’s power upon them. The ship is a charnel house. We dump all the bodies and pieces overboard along with the priest’s unholy trappings then debate what to do with the ship. We finally decide to tow the ghost ship behind the pirate ship. The pirates and the other sailors except for the 1st mate are too scared to board the ghost ship so we must do the rigging ourselves with the 1st mate checking our work. The rest of the trip is rather uneventful but still busy with the task of towing. Lines always needing checked and rechecked, course being checked so that we have the best one in case something were too go wrong we wouldn’t get rammed and so on. There really is very little free time sailing the seas. Everything is so important. If you fall off your horse or it steps in a hole ,you might get a bump or a bruise or have to walk. Out here on the open seas, forget your responsibilities and you and your shipmates could end up drowned or fish food. There is no walking home out here. I have a new found respect for the harsh life they lead, and those men who live it.Zoa!The first mate helps us with the harbormaster and all the docking procedures. We sell the lumber and salt that was in the hold of the ghost ship and then sell the two ships we captured. Like I said, I have tremendous respect for these men who brave the seas and asked that all the men, slaves and pirates alike get a cut from our sales and all the others agreed. Rakis seems ill at ease here in the city. I guess he is not used to so many people so close. Magnus said it took him a while to get accustomed to it. He follows me around thru-out much of the day. This is not a bad thing tho. He is pretty good company even if a little tightly wound sometimes. And I’m sure he scares away some of the company I don’t want. I need to go check in with the guild here in the city tho and I’m not sure they would appreciate him coming along. And, of course, I’ll need to go to the churches of Risk and Watcher. I’ ll ask him for a day or two to myself. I am sure he’ll understand.</blockquote>

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