NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7112073" data-attributes="member: 20323">[SECTION][align=left]http://i.imgur.com/hHYpoTE.jpg[/align]While Piet Hein Van Djik clings to life by the skin of his teeth, he still proves a true host as is the custom of dwarvenkind. The potent jenever flows quickly and generously for whosoever wishes to drink, but especially for Old Zef and Katerina. There must be some secret Dutch club where they tell stories of how drunk they were able to get non-dwarves, for there is a mischievous glint in Van Djik’s eye whenever he refills Katerina’s shot glass. “We’re well enough away from customs of the Old Country, jonge dame,” he toasts with a shaky hand.Furrowing his brows, the ancient dwarf sinks into his chair, his milky yellow eyes wincing as he recalls some memory of his time as a privateer. ”I wasn’t a dwarf given to the taking of slaves…” he begins with a distant look on his face, as if in the telling of the story he inches one step closer to Death’s embrace. As Van Djik begins, his tattooed manservant quietly closes the drawing rooms’ doors behind you to give the ancient dwarf privacy as he relates his ghost story…[/SECTION][GM]This begins a Ghost Story… Anyone who correctly guesses the type of ghost (see below) or derives a primary moral from the tale gains Inspiration! So at maximum 2 PCs could get Inspiration. However, guess wrong and the next time you encounter that type of ghost you start the encounter frightened!“Types of ghost” might include…<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Haunts – not harmful just scary, only move a little, anchored to one place typically where they died, can’t speak but may gesture</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poltergeists – invisible specters that can throw things, typically confused and angry</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tragic Ghosts – bound to their state of undeath by some tragic error or unresolved regret</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Manifestations – residual spiritual energy manifesting only on certain times/dates/events, cursed to repeat the same action over and over, more of an illusion than an entity</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Deathly Apparitions – ghosts that appear to someone when they are near death, typically loved ones or ancestors, usually beneficent</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Possessing Ghost – an undead spirit possessing a creature, typically a child, a madman, a descendant, or an animal</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Haunted Objects – an object being moved by a willfull undead spirit from the Ethereal Plane or serving as the spirit’s fetter to the Material Plane</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">or any of the undead listed in the Monster Manual, usually but not always incorporeal</li> </ul>[/GM][SECTION]”I was but a young dwarf with no more than 21 winters when I was captured by the Spanish and made a galley slave. For four years I toiled at the great oars,” he looks down at a shaky palm marred by rowing calluses. ”It was a half-elf that governed the galley, as liberal with his cruel words as with his whip. El Sacapuntas (The Sharpener) they called him. At last I was traded during a prisoner exchange…only to be taken captive soon thereafter near the shores of Cuba. Another fours years I toiled aboard a Spanish warship. I can still hear the grind of the oar-shaft against the channel-locks, the groaning of men sweating hell for leather. But again fortune smiled upon me; the captain’s concubine read my palm and told me I would betray everything I held most precious and I would die in misery and infirmity. Thinking this meant my betrayal by rowing for the Spanish who would work me to death, I begged her for the key to my salvation. Were it not for her seeing something in me, for some shred of compassion in her, I would never have made it home.”Rolling his empty shot glass over in his hand, Van Djik squints his eyes as he studies the lone oil lamp on his desk. ”Spanish ships. Portugese ships. I took them all. The fleet under my command grew. And in 1628, I took four Spanish treasure galleons in the Bay of Matanzas, the very same Cuban bay where the Spaniards once took me captive. Eighty Years of War.” His victory in taking a treasure fleet from the Spanish Main went down in the annals of Dutch history, never again accomplished by any pirate or privateer since then. ”I thought to myself: I am rich, I have a wife and children, my name will be remembered forever. Piet Hein! Piet Hein! They would cheer. That palm-reading concubine must have been wrong after all. A dwarf can make his own fate. Ack, ack ack…”Ruefully heaving a rattling sigh as he recovers from his coughing fit, Van Djik continues his story, ”It was my own pride as much as the Dunkirer cannonball that turned my fortunes. The Spanish Armada de Flandes (Flemish Fleet) supported a band of mercenaries, privateers, and blockade runners. Dunkirers we called them for they operated from Dunkirk bay. I should have been killed, but the artificers of my motherland are skilled.” Pulling back his lapel enough to reveal scar tissue intermingled with a sophisticated wooden prosthetic left shoulder and arm. ”My ships were destroyed or routed. In shame, I sulked away to the Caribbean. Perhaps I never truly left here, some part of my soul tied to these hot humid islands…the place of my greatest victory…I thought, maybe, I could reclaim that…” "Because I'd been whipped in the galley, I wasn't a dwarf given to the taking of slaves..." He repeats in an raspy quiet voice. Van Djik pauses for a moment in his story, as if locked in a trance, his breath coming in ragged shallow inhalations as if he’d seen Death itself waiting for him by the windowsill.[/SECTION]</blockquote>

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