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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 2815853" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the One-Hundred Seventy-EighthIn which: they finally get the message.Annika ducks out of her hiding place in Elsuki’s cabin and puts a web on the deck of the Tranquil Shore behind Eva, catching Aurelia, Ragya, and the dire wolverine. Aurelia is completely stuck in the web, writhing and shouting in frustration.  Ragya however, is still able to move and attempts to cast.  Unfortunately for her, the wolverine five feet away from her is also still more or less free, and the instant she drops her defenses, the animal surges forward. A single swipe from its razor-sharp claws sends her to join her brother in the afterlife.Kaykel’s eyes go wide as she sees Ragya hit the deck.  As Kaykel is now the only crew member free aboard the Tranquil Shore, she defends it to the best of her ability and shoots Eva with her crossbow.Without the benefit of concealment and the ability to aim at leisure, Eva is barely scratched.(Note: Losing your sneak-attack damage is a b----.)###Eyes flashing in anger, Aurelia dispels Annika’s web, freeing herself at last.  Her own airwalk spell is still active, and she climbs her invisible stair to a point some fifteen feet above the deck of The Tranquil Shore, safely out of the fray.Unfortunately, once Aurelia has dispelled the web, the dire wolverine is also free to roam the deck at will.  He snaps at Aurelia’s heels, frustrated, and then growls in Kaykel’s direction, taking off across the deck after her.Lira takes on Aurelia herself with another pair of magic missiles, followed-up by an arrow from Kiara.###Elsuki manages a last parting swipe at Maklim, who grasps a rope and, managing to hang on this time, swings back to his ship.  Brother Bradley follows suit, leaping easily between the two vessels without assistance.Anvil scowls.  These bandits of the high seas will not escape, and their leader will feel Ketennek’s wrath.  “Ketennek!” he calls out.  “I ask that you see fit to punish this man for the crimes of piracy, murder, sailing under false flags, and various others which I am sure he has committed but of which I am not currently aware!”Maklim looks back at Anvil and shakes his head, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s—” at which point he is cut off by a sudden clap of thunder and a nearly unbearable pain that shoots through his entire body.  “Da-amn!”Anvil looks on soberly.  “You have damned yourself.”(Astute readers might recognize this as deific vengeance from The Complete Divine.  We didn’t.)Eva stabs at Maklim with her rapier, and he only barely manages to parry the blow.  Eva is just about to follow-up with another attack when she’s suddenly jolted by a crippling burst of black energy.  She gasps, turning to look for the source, and finds Aurelia, floating above holy symbol raised, ready to cast again.(Astute readers might recognize this as another ranged inflict spell, showing that BadMonkeyJeff isn’t the only person at the table who reads The Complete Divine.)“Go home, little girl, before you get hurt again,” the priestess taunts.Eva is only distracted for a moment, but a moment is all Maklim needs to knock Eva’s rapier aside and bring his own sword up under her chin.“Do as she says,” Maklim’s earlier easy grin has been replaced by real anger.  “I won’t ask you twice.”Eva’s eyes flash.  She’s sick of people telling her what to do.  “Bite me.”Maklim’s sword flashes, Eva ducks, but the blade still manages to slice her scalp, sending blood dripping into one eye.  Despite her bravado, Eva is quite aware she is not in the best position.   In fact, aside from the dire wolverine, she realizes she is very much without ally on an enemy vessel.And that is when Thatch, dripping wet, comes climbing over the rail and onto the deck.(DM: Where do you want to come aboard?Thatch’s player: Oh, you’d better believe I’m gonna flank that m-----f-----!Let it be noted here that Thatch’s player has never regretted the skill points that he piled into swim.)Eva grins, slices Maklim’s Achilles tendon and follows with a thrust to the kidneys.###Anvil and Aurelia glare at each other across the space between their two vessels.  As Lira and the wolverine have turned their combined attention to Brother Bradley, and Thatch and Eva appear to have the pirate captain well in hand, there are no distractions as Anvil turns his attention to the Sedellan.  She’s looking right at him as he casts, and Anvil makes no attempt to conceal his motions.  After all, he thinks to himself, it will be the last thing she sees.For her part, the thought that comes to Aurelia as Anvil’s blindness spell takes hold and her world goes black is: I should have saved that dispel magic I used on the web.Aurelia casts sanctuary on herself instead, but not before two arrow embed themselves in her thigh and Kiara’s shouts of victory ring in her ears.The spell also doesn’t stop Annika from zorching Aurelia with her wand of shocking ray, or from Eva following up with two deftly-placed arrows of her own.  Finally, Aurelia crumples in the air then floats gently to the deck.Brother Bradley lies bleeding on the deck as the wolverine comes dashing for Maklim.  Already weakened by Eva’ and Thatch’s devastating attacks, the captain is soon unconscious.Kaykel, now the only member of her crew still standing, lets out a squeak of fear and makes a desperate dash for the aftcastle and the ship’s wheel.Thatch catches her at sword-point an instant before she reaches it.“Don’t even think about it,” he tells her.  For a breath, Kaykel hesitates, then slowly puts her hands in the air, and surrenders.###Through quick action by Anvil, Lira, and Reyu, only three of the sailors on The Fool’s Errand succumb to their wounds, although many are caught just at the brink of death.  Kaykel is handcuffed and placed in the Errand’s hold, where she is soon joined by several guards, and Maklim, unconscious but stabilized and bound with Anvil’s masterwork manacles.  None of the rest of the Shore’s crew survived their wounds. As the adrenaline wears off, the party members finally tend to their own wounds and then set off to explore their unexpectedly captured vessel.A CodaAs some of you know (and the rest of you are about to), whenever I complete a session’s worth of story hour, I send the file off to Fajitas for a read-through before I start posting.  Over the years—and I confess that it feels a bit weird that I say that without exaggeration, we’ve been this for years now—we’ve worked out a system that allows us both to be happy with the resulting story hour… without killing each other during its creation.So now, as a sort of DVD extra, I would like share with you (in its entirety and completely unchanged) the note I found following Zokuth’s first line in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/index.php?posts/2787511/" target="_blank">Part the One-Hundred Seventy-Fourth</a>:**********“Don’t like this, sir,” Zokuth is shaking her head.  “Can’t see the others.  Ragya should have the whole crew snarled in the rigging by now.”DEEPLY STUPID WORLD NOTE: Funny story.  Ragya is not, in fact, her actual name.  In fact, excepting Aurelia, none of the guys you took aboard were using their real names.  Ragya and Sakeem are both Ebisite names, whereas in reality they’re both from Dar Thane, like the others.  And Brother Bradley is a Pykosian name, to lend credence to the story that he’s helping them get to Dar Pykos.  In fact, he too is Thanean.  Their real names are Raka, Sorkane, and Bothk.The fact of the matter is that everyone on the ship, except for Aurelia, is Thanean.  They were all from the town of Tranquil Shores, which was located on one of the islands in the Darine Straits.  It was destroyed by the Ebisites.  The crew of the Tranquil Shore were among the few survivors. Maklim got a Letter of Marquee (privateer authorization) from Dar Thane, and they all banded together to prey upon ships of Ebis in revenge for their devastated home.  I believe that Raka/Ragya was the only one of them who as actually *there* at the time.  Witnessing the slaughter of her family is why she’s crazy.Aurelia isn’t really a Handmaiden, either.  She’s a Sedellan, pretending to be a Handmaiden for purposes of infiltration.  Aurelia probably isn’t her real name, as it sounds far more like a Handmaiden name than it does a Sedellan name.  I believe she’s a Child of the Wind, tho’ I didn’t write that down.  I even think that I had something in my mind about her seducing Maklim and egging him on into more and more Sedellus-like tactics.  She could give a crap about the destruction of their village, but she was overjoyed to find an emotionally pliable privateer captain that she could turn into a force of destruction.Anyway.  There’s every reason to think that this is not actually worth mentioning, but I thought I’d bring it up.**********Ultimately, I decided that the fight was confusing enough without having the crew of the Tranquil Shore refer to each other by one set of names and the crew of The Fool’s Errand think of them by another, but it did seem worth mentioning.</blockquote>

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