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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 586451" data-attributes="member: 221">Chapter 5: A Midnight SearchDanny Smith was a good cop.  But he had also pulled a double shift each day for the last four days.  Which is why, when Andrew and James Sharpless arrived to sneak aboard The Bouncing Skipper, he was asleep in his car.  “Is he asleep?” said James peering across the dock area to the squad car. “Yeah,” whispered Andrew, “I think so.”They crept along to the gang-plank and then, seeing as how they were not about to be stopped, they made their way on board.  The Bouncing Skipper was a single crane cargo ship.  The crew’s quarters, helm and engines were all at the back of the ship and the majority of the deck was empty.  Seeing nothing that grabbed their attention they made their way to the rear to look through the quarters.  There were three floors of rooms, not counting the engines below deck, with the helm and the captain’s rooms at the top.  The kitchen and mess hall was on the first floor and it looked like the crew bunked on the second floor.  “Where should we go?” asked James.“I don’t know,” said Andrew, “Let’s look through the different rooms and see what we can find.”Before they even began looking they heard a crash of something being thrown to the ground sound from above them.  Immediately the twins turned to look and see if the noise had awaken the cop but as he did not stir from his car they assumed that he was still asleep.  “Let’s go up there,” said Andrew, “see who it is.”“But quietly.”“Right.”Quietly and stealthily they sneaked up the first flight of steps and then they stopped and listened, unsure of where exactly the noise had come from.  They heard the sound of something moving overhead.Schlurp, schlurp, schlurp, came the sound of wet footprints moving away from them.  “Perhaps it’s a zombie,” whispered James jokingly.“Let’s rush up there and surprise them.”The sound of the wet footprints turned a corner above.  The Sharpless brothers leaped into action and ran up the rest of the stairs to the top floor of the deck.  They ran across the walkway and around the corner to the front and froze.The figure before them ran awkwardly and then leaped off the deck.  There was a splash from the ocean below.  Each stood still for a moment, unsure of what they had just seen.  There was a funny smell in the air, a mixture of rotting seaweeds and dead fish.“That was a weird costume,” muttered Andrew.“Who would be sneaking around at this time of night in a fish mask?” asked James, and then added, “I should have taken a picture.”“Bumblebee’s knees,” said Andrew, “We should have questioned him.”James ran over to the side and snapped off a picture of the water below.  They hurriedly looked over the rest of the ship.  There was little of interest for them.  Blood stains where indeed in various places, but the police had already taken most of the things that might have been pertinent to the investigation.  In the quarters of Walter Matthias they did notice two pictures hanging on the wall that they decided to take with them.  The first was a photograph, 8 by 11.  It featured two men, one of them in a seaman’s uniform with his arms around the shoulders of the other.  They appeared to be standing on the deck of The Bouncing Skipper.  The other was a charcoal sketch on rice paper, behind glass.  It was a crude outline of some sort of half-man, half-fish creature of immense size.  Something about the picture rang a bell in their minds and then the feeling was gone.  They took it down off the wall, along with the photograph, and carried them both off the ship.“James,” said Andrew as they walked past the car containing the still sleeping police officer.“What Andrew?”“I thought of a story, but we’ll need to make a few phone calls before I write it up tonight.”</blockquote>

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