The chain shot almost misses. But one of the balls barely clips the rigging and sends it spinning through some sensitive ropes and one of the secondary sails is ripped! That's really all it takes.
It's more than the pilot can handle and he looses more speed than he probably should have. You pounce! The grappling hooks come out, and the battle is joined! The officers are on the fore and aft castles, waiting for you! On the aft castle near the wheel is a halfling woman flanked by a half ork wielding a polearm. One the forecastle are a pair of humans with bows.
-
The two archers immediately shoot at the only other person with a bow!
Both arrows hit the captain, and one pierces something important! Your crew surges across to engage!
Two alchemist's fires from the officers at the rear fall among your men, wounding some and forcing others to jump overboard to douse flaming clothes! It only blunts the charge, however, and soon your crew is effectively engaged with the foe!
Sven led the charge into the enemy, singing an old tune as he did so. As he leapt across, his hammer began to spark, with bolts of electricity dancing around the head, a sure sign of what was to come.
Arrows flew and alchemical fire rained down...Sven laughed as he plunged into the thick of it. ”With me! Bloody, glory and gold await! Haha!” His voice boomed as his hammer swung.
Seeing Tamesis hit by an incoming volley of arrows, Kehlysch activates the power of his Stormlure necklace.
As the crew helping her jump down to join the fray on deck, Madiya swiftly draws her crossbow with a prayer and fires at the nearest enemy.
Once the melee starts, Baolus maneuvers around the half-orc, intending to flank him with Sven eventually.
Tamesis grunts as the arrows land, but grins wildly. Her eyes wide open and wild, she calls across the gap, "You'll be paying for that! Your souls are mine for dinner tonight!"
She draws back and lets fly, two arrows for two targets.
Tamesis kills one of her attackers with her vengeance. meanwhile, the fight on the fore deck is swirling. Sven arrives first and strikes at the halfling. She moves just a few inches and his hammer misses her by a finger's width. Madiya's arrow then comes in and hits her, causing some clear pain. While all that's happening, Baolus is weaving a careful path around both combatants and sets himself up on the far side of the fight.
The Halfling feints to the left, then steps right and weaves herself around Sven's mighty legs. Sven goes down on his back!
The half orc isn't blind and engages Baolus as he joins the fight, but Baolus ducks under the polearm, and good thing too as you recognize it as a lucerne hammer! Instead of continuing to engage you, however, he spins around and strikes at the prone Sven, twice!
Sven knocks the first hit aside, but gets pummeled by the second!
Kehlysch unleashes a volley of magic missiles at the half-orc standing over Sven.
"Ya uln kadishtu uaaah!"
Sven got to his feet, knowing full well he would pay for it in blood. But he would gladly die before losing to a ratling!
The man the Captain didn't kill returns fire, but misses badly.
Besmara favor's Sven and both the attacks he draws miss!
His attack hits the halfling like a load of bricks. You pull your hammer up expecting a halfling sized smear, and instead find her firey eyes boring into yours!
Resolving to deal with her attacker once Sven is back on his feet, Tamesis shifts her aim to his attacker.
Madiya doesn't have a clear shot at the halfling after Sven's hammertime, so she targets the half-orc with her still-magically-charged crossbow this time.
Noticing the danger that the half-orc represented with his weapon, Baolus tries to disarm him before kicking him.
Tamesis misses her shots, but Madiya hits hers, wounding the half-orc! Baolus then manages to snag his weapon and send it clattering to the deck!
The Halfling again weaves her way around sven's legs...
and once again sends him sprawling! The half orc growls at Baolus, but focuses on Sven. He draws a dagger and goes for Sven's head!
The archer on the aft keeps firing at Tameses!
Bleeding profusely, Sven roared wordlessly. Surging to his feet he braved the half orc’s dagger and swung his hammer at the halfling, again. He wasn’t used to enemies glaring at him after he hit them, let alone halflings. It was unnerving how easily the diminutive warrior managed to take him off his feet as well. So he gave in to anger instead of fear, trusting blind rage to carry him to victory.
Meanwhile, your crew is very quickly overpowering the crew of the smaller ship in spite of getting alchemical fire in their face at first. Many have already taken prisoners.
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The halfling strikes... and misses! Sven's revenge is brutal and complete. The hit sends the little lady flying across the deck to impact on the back wall with an audible *squish*.
With the halfling down and the half-orc between himself and Sven, Baolus attacks with both his hook and a kick.
Kehlysch turns his attention to the archer firing at Tamesis. He unleashes another barrage of magical force at the new target.
"Ya uln kadishtu uaaah!”
Madiya loads and fires again at the half-orc.
"Not. Again."
Tamesis bares her teeth and focuses her magic and her mind, casting a spell to guarantee her next shot to hit Sven's attacker.
Urgan moves in and tries to engulf the archer with an aqueous orb.
Once the monk falls things snowball very quickly. The half-orc takes multiple punishing hits and drops dead to the deck. The other archer is engulfed in the writhing water and is soon dead as well. The crew quickly capitulates after that and the ship is yours!
In the hold you find furs and spices worth 3 points of plunder. There are also two composite longbows (str +1) and a Mwk. lucerne hammer.
"Shall we claim the ship and tow it back to the Rock, Captain, or just take the plunder and scuttle her?" Kehlysch asks.
"Claim her. And any of her crew that wish for it. Throw the rest overboard."
Tamesis heads over to Sandara for some healing to close her bleeding wounds. She trusts Sven to get the party started, though she herself doesn't feel much like indulging in excessive libation. She feels vindicated and satisfied with their catch, but somehow disconnected from it.
She retreats to her cabin to recenter herself overnight.
For his part, Sven walked over to the body of the halfling. He looked at it for a long moment before picking it up. He walked over to the side of the ship, set it down, and stripped it of any valuables. ”Well fought little one. Your ancestors smile on you.” And with that he tossed the corpse overboard.
Turning to the crew, he shouted, ”Victory! Now for the good part. Strip the bodies of anything useful and give them to the ocean. We’ll drink to the fallen and to our well earned fortune!” He immediately went about seeing to the securing of their prize.
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Sven finds a long strip of cloth embroidered with magical sigils. Further investigation reveals it to be a Body Wrap of Mighty Strikes and worth quite a few pretty pennies if sold.
Once victory is declared, Madiya duly heads over to the other ship and helps with the looting and healing and corpse-clearing. She leaves the ballista alone for now.
”So...do any of you have an interest in changing careers? You may find it preferable to swimming and fending off sharks for the foreseeable future,” Kehlysch says to the assembly of surviving crew members.
The crew is successfully recruited or disposed of. After a bit of repair the ship is sufficiently staffed and made seaworthy. Just one short day later you arrive back home at Tidewater Rock.
"Home sweet home, shipmates," Kehlysch says as he pulls the prize ship into the bay of Tidewater Rock behind the Sunset Challenger.
"Drop anchor and stow the sail. We'll go ashore and see what plans the Captain has for our next expedition."
”Aye!” Sven said, pleased with how things were going. ”She’s lead us to gold and glory at every turn.”
There will be no bells or songs to mark your end, it will simply come silently, slowly, loudly, quickly and almost always painfully.
There is no romance in death, no adventure, there is simply the end.
You will not dream, you will not suffer, you will not help nor haunt the living and there will be no paradise.
So was the world before you, so shall it be after.
If you are lucky, perhaps you will be remembered for a time but in the end all are forgotten.
Oh how we do scream and beg and pray for something more, some sliver of hope, some hint of purpose, how we do fight the meaninglessness.
We scratch and claw and bite, but we will lose the fight, we never stood a chance."
Tamesis disembarks the Sunset Challenger once docked, muttering softly enough to be considered for herself, yet loudly enough that it can be clear she doesn't care if anyone overhears. She greets their new allies with pleasant indifference, and claims the upper bedroom for herself that night.
For the remainder of the day, and part of the night, she can be found on the ramparts, staring out at the sea without the Farglass, oft times muttering strange poetry in an assortment of languages.
As the Captain's sequester drags on through the day and into evening, Kehlysch approaches the other officers.
"Should we approach the Captain, or let her swim in her own head a bit longer? We don't have any plans in place to re-provision and head out again. We don't know if she prefers to keep and re-fit the prize ship, or sail it to a large port for sale, or strip it for lumber and nails. She seems to be in a temper that'll earn the first person to speak to her a tongue-lashing, if not a real one."
Not possessing enough of an imagination to be properly afraid, Sven approached Tamesis. ”C’pn!” He called out as he strode over. ”We’ve got a prize ship that can be sold, refitted, or scrapped. What’re your orders?”
Tamesis pauses a moment before responding to Sven, turning towards him ever so slightly as she speaks, "Nothing can be said
That hasn't already been spoken
Nothing can be lost
That hasn't already been broken"
She sighs and looks back out over the sea, "We don't have a dry dock, so unless we sail to Rickety's, there's no point in keeping her. We might as well sell her, but that journey is long."
"Perpetual cycles in a meaningless life
No use dying when there is no living
No use crying when there is no ending"
A pause, and she continues again, "We'll hold her, for now. Once we have at least one more prize, ideally two, we'll take them altogether to be sold. The inhabitants of the island can use it to escape, should we find our end in the waves before that happens."
Her voice when speaking of the potential that they may set out and never return takes on an almost giddy air, far removed from the otherwise darker tone of the words themselves.
”Are you...” Sven scratched his beard as he thought. ”...alright, c’pn? Did you eat a bad soul or something? I’ve got nothing against a good poem but not like...this?” He finished, concern in his voice.
Tamesis pulls her lips back in a mirthless smile, "Everything is as it should be. The Chelish pirate hunter. The blow I took on the merchant vessel..." She runs her hand over the freshly healed wound in her abdomen, "...it reset my perspective. Reminded me of my place in this multiverse."
She takes a moment, and releases a sigh, "The point is, there is no point. No purpose. We exist on this plane for such a short time, relatively speaking. Even the plane itself is finite. The world will burn, in time, washed away in the apocalypse. Long before that, though, our bodies will fail, and our souls will pass on to the greater wheel. Outer planes at conflict with each other, that will likely fall to ruin and destruction themselves, on a cosmic scale.
"We will be judged and sent to whatever 'afterlife' suits us best. I'm sure your people have some grand, glorious demiplane waiting for you, with feasting and good company. Me, I have Abaddon to look forward to. Where souls are hunted and tortured before being eaten. My grandmother rules a quarter of the plane with an iron fist. And even if I fall into her domain, I won't get any special treatment. In fact, it may make me even more of a target."
She takes another pause, looking down at the two ships in the harbor, "We must live in the moment. Take our joys, as fleeting as they can be, when we get them. We never know when the end will come, so pining over long term dreams is a waste of effort."
She turns to face Sven fully, tilting her head up to lock eyes with the much taller man, "Mine is a path of destruction, Sven. Of wild rides and death and exhilaration. I'll never intentionally lead us to suicide, but you must understand, as I do, that this will all come to ruin, in time. We will outrun the twilight as long as we can, but we can't run forever."
Sven listened, and then shrugged. ”So be happy.” He said, simply. ”All of those problems are not problems. Some say souls are judged. Others say Gorum takes his Chosen. I don’t care, because I don’t know and until a god talks to me all there is are words. Come, let us drink and enjoy the moment. Because what good comes from worrying about the future?” And after a moment of actual thought, he added ”And don’t say any of that to the crew. Bad for morale it’d be.”
Tamesis chuckles, "See, that's why you're a good first mate. Get me out of my own head. Come on, there's libations to be partaken of."
Feeling inordinately pleased with himself over the compliment, Sven strutted back to the crew upon which orders were relayed and alcohol was consumed.
Baolus hears the conversation quietly and soon after makes as many "good luck" signs as he can.
Kehlysch drinks with his comrades, looking forward to their next venture. He watches the captain's behavior for signs that she might be cracking, though.