Traveling on the Second Shank across the Sea of Pleasant Winds, day two...
Mark, seeing that Erin appears to be having trouble getting sober, put the ring back on her finger and tried dialing it down - a maneuver which worked rather splendidly, sobering Erin up completely and instantly. She was very thankful for the favor, though her general business changed little, her schedule mostly consisting of hanging around and killing time. As she was once again in a useful condition, Mark then gave her a letter asking her to conjure up some fish bait. She gladly obliged, providing Mark with rather aromatic lures of many types to aid him in his quest. Glad at finally getting what he needed, Mark got back to his fishing. And once again, he met with quite a lot of luck - the fish seemed to enjoy the bait rather nicely, and Mark managed to improve yesterday's result by catching 19 fish, which he sacrificed with great gusto as he caught them. Eighteen souls left. He was making bank, that was for sure.
Scott, what with having spent the previous day studying shades, today tried to process this information and understand his capabilities. He did not make great headway in this respect, however. He believed that he could, in fact, use telekinesis, though his many attempts throughout that day seemed to say otherwise. That teleportation trick was also something he wished he could do, but sadly the nuances of the thing were beyond him as well. And with the Captain busy at all hours of the day, he couldn't think of anyone he could ask about this sort of thing, leading him to develop disturbing feelings of inferiority during the course of the day.
Kevin, still incredibly threatened by the idea that he might not be good at this jesting thing at all, resolved to utilize this day to make himself feel better. He was going to show these people who the real, professional, licensed jester here was. So he went around to each of the ship's residents, trying to cheer them up with a good joke. However, the reactions were regrettably quite negative. The Artiste did not seem amused about the joke with two elephants walking into a bank, Erin's reaction to what was, in Kevin's opinion, an absolutely amazing pun was simply a faint, almost apologetic smile, Art wasn't a very big fan of toilet humor, and most of the others seemed a bit too busy to pay attention to him. Even the shades, miserable and impressionable bastards that they were, didn't like any of his material, and he tried it on any that he could find, too. This served to only exacerbate his fear that he was not very funny currently, and possibly never was funny at all - after all, his poor taste in jokes was what got him executed in the first place. And he suspected he only got the royal jester job in the first place because the male line of his entire family as far back as his great-great-great-grandfather had all been court jesters of somewhat great renown, and not because he was any good himself. There was an existential crisis brewing up within Kevin, and he was certainly ill-equipped to deal with it, what with his newly realized lack of humor.
Sigmund, though not feeling terribly relaxed around the wantonly exploding piece of paper, tried to get his business done regardless. He tried to fix up as many foci as possible, spending long periods of time concentrating on the tasks at hand before that. Unfortunately, however, concentration wasn't going to happen, Sigmund realized, mostly due to the fact that there seemed to be a flaming piece of paper following him around that seemed to behave erratically whenever he tried to concentrate, interfering, menacingly rumbling and occasionally shrieking loudly just as he tried to focus. This meant that he did not manage to properly do anything that day, either, particularly when, at the end of the day, the paper started randomly emitting strange, pinkish beams of light that left pink trails on deck that seemed to undulate threateningly and pulse oddly. Just as Sigmund notices this, Evelyn addresses him once again, the voice in his head going ~The focus has become highly unstable. It will soon become increasingly dangerous.~
Morton, unaware of the magical tragedies unfolding on deck for most of the day, tried the Listening Chant next. He liked to listen, after all, and it could come in handy. And the chant proved rather easy to use, much simpler than the Single Thought Chant, he found. Chanting it repeatedly, Morton found the distraction of his own thoughts slowly decrease, allowing him to more acutely hear the surrounding area. And the longer he chanted, the less he felt his own presence on this world, his oneness with his surroundings increasing. He could hear very clearly a whole lot of things - the lamentations of the shades, the sound of pages in a book flipping, Mark performing beastly sacrifices to dark entities, Evelyn flapping her wings on occasion, Erin humming a tune, a strange twinkling that Morton supposes most likely belongs to Art, the structure of the ship occasionally groaning as a shade misjudges a telekinetic push, the Captain shouting out orders... he thought he can even hear occasional splashes coming from the sea, and the sound of wind blowing over the ship. After the effects of the chant, rather dramatic in a way, subsided in Morton's mind, he realized that he probably could not spend the entire day just listening - it would get quite dull, after all. So he got out his mop and started looking for dirt to bravely vanquish - over the course of the day, he managed to clean up the entire ship, rendering it quite spotless and earning a pat of approval from the Artiste at the end of the day. Happy about being a valuable member of the crew, Morton then decided to take a break and go chat up Tailor Craig - the fellow had moved over to the den some time previously, and seemed to be making use of the ship's vast amount of writing supplies to pen some kind of manuscript. Also in the den with him were Art, Erin and Justine, the latter hovering in the air in a pose that seemed to suggest she was meditating while the other two were making conversation between themselves, the tailor occasionally speaking up and adding some sort of detail - the main topic of conversation seemed to be the Aspect of Appeal, as well as other demons, and speculation about their abilities and spheres of interest.
Niklas resolute in sacrificing the feast to someone, sacrificed it to himself. However, a few minutes after clogging up his vocal apparatus with food, he realized that maybe there is no way to do such a thing effectively. It took him about an hour to clean out his packed pipes, during which he formulated a plan which, quite unfortunately, involved stealing from Mark of all people. Stealing his fish, to be exact, which proved to be shockingly easy as long as Niklas waited until after they were sacrificed. He even stole all of the fish from the previous day on top of that, and used his newly gained riches to cook more feasts - they did not involve much variety, being composed exclusively of fish, or, indeed, much preparation either, for northern cuisine frequently did not involve much preparation of various meats (it did, however, involve quite a bit of food poisoning for those with weaker stomachs), so the pile of fish parts at the end of the feast preparation was still a pile of fish parts, albeit a more appealingly organized one. Still faced with the impossibility of sacrificing it, though, Niklas opted not to stuff his chair face with the feast this time around, and instead moved on to the next activity - chair making. For this the fish and remaining other food came in handy, as the bones and tougher vegetables made for great materials to make chairs from, and soon Niklas had made an entire five chairs out of the entirety of the food available. They looked both good for sitting as well as quite appetizing, so Niklas thought his job was done for now, and decided to spend some time with his family again - hopefully they were not be busy today. He was sad to find out that Torkel was still absent, apparently having decided to extend his adventure by another day. Helsvar, though, was quite free, and they spent a nice evening catching up on old times, conversing and otherwise alleviating their general friendlessness. The experience was quite pleasing for Niklas, and helped him feel quite a bit less alone among strangers than usual.
In Blynn...
Timothy, hoping to endear himself to the populace of Blynn with random acts of kindness, heads into the less populated area or Blynn and tries to repair the outer wall - its sad state can't be good for providing the town with a sense of security, can it?
[Timothy's repair roll: 6]
Despite the wall missing great chunks in places, Timothy resolves to do his best anyway, utilizing dirt and bits of rubble to put the wall back into serviceable condition. After about six hours of work, he has reconstructed and repaired about a hundred meter stretch of wall. The entire length, however, is probably a few kilometers, though.
Maybe engineering is not the best way to endear himself to people. Hardly anyone seems to live outside of the inner wall, anyway - Timothy certainly hasn't seen any residents. And fixing this entire wall alone could take weeks - this wasn't even the worst part of the wall, just a good starting point. The task is daunting, to say the least.
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 564376 times)