During the voyage, the various crew take up tasks around the ship. Aside from the standard drudgery - cooking, cleaning, and sleeping - they undertook their own tasks.
Action: Fiori spends the journey trying to hone her connection with Cormyr and teach him some 'tricks'-by which I mean she tells him what to do, and he decides if it's worth his time. She wants to train other beasts, as noted, and this little fellow is a good start as any...
Fiori tries to teach a young dragon new tricks. Unfortunately, Cormyr seems to have picked up on the mood on the ship, and is rebellious. The mean strike native to dragons comes to the fore - and Fiori finds herself singed, clawed, and hidden from for her efforts. The rest of the ship is treated to several iterations of elvish curses.
"As for me, I happen to not be particularily interested in whomever becomes the captain as long as the orders are reasonable, but most importantly profitable in the end. I'm an enterpreneur at heart, after all. Which reminds me that I should see the entirety of this... void-worthy... vessel and see what we've got for bargaining."
Richard signs the paper, then does not vote for a Captain proposal and instead begins scouting the entirety of accessible ship areas to do an inventory check and see what scrap or machinery can be sold without disturbing the ship's performance in any way.
"Anything in particular I should not touch? Hmm hmm, pity there's no one here is there." Richard mumbled as he, during his check of the ship, ultimately stumbled into the engine room. Not being a mischievious gremlin nor a dumb animal, he merely gave everything a looksie from respectable distance of at least few meters.
Checking the inventory, you could probably sell the Captain's clothes and books for a fair few coins, or sell the miscellaneous bits in the hold for some. Worst comes to worst, you could sell your food, but then things would be really desperate. A starving crew isn't a good crew.
Still, the Captain wasn't so poor - there should be a ship coffer somewhere. An indeed, there is.
For the rest of the voyage, Tokoda adjusts the ship's course to deter pursuit while on her watch. During her off-time, she familiarizes herself with the inner-workings of the Fist of the Moon, looking to learn how to upgrade it later.
You take a course you're pretty sure any pursuer wouldn't expect. It's good enough that you don't lose any time, and you see no vessels after you in the times you check behind you.
You spend the rest of your time with that ancient weapon - the Fist of the Moon. While you're not entirely certain how to o about it, some kind of automatic loading, or demon-assisted aim might help. A simple spirit could make it shoot more powerfully, though magical assistance would mean it'd also consume mana with each shot in addition to your limited amount of shells. Still, being alive is typically better than being rich but dead.
Gert uses his downtime to talk to the demons in the works of the ship, querying them about the Not-There as well as any other information they are willing to give on the subject of demons to keep in the practice of talking to those mysterious creatures, while making sure the machines they inhabit don't break.
The two major demons in the ship are sealed in the engine and the life support.
Gottarjang, the drive demon, chitters that all is well on his front, and he is well fed. He looks like a bloated centipede - his flesh seems to bulge out the gaps in his exoskeleton - but his head resembles a carved human mask of ivory, marked with three scratches as if it had been clawed.
However, he gets rather irritable when you ask him about the Not-Here."Not-Here is Not-Here. Not here is where you should be." It chitters sullenly, and refuses to speak any more. Oh dear.
Axaspheous is the other demon, and rather unpleasant to look at - as if someone took a bunch of lungs, still breathing, and molded them into one being.
It's more willing to talk, and remembering Gottarjang's reaction, you stick to safer topics. It tells you of how it maintains gravity and air as directed by the wards on the ship, and how they are made and maintained. You're not quite sure how some of it works, when it talks about using senses you're pretty sure you don't have, but you learn some about demons from what it says.
Of the lesser demons on board the ship, there's the gremlins in the boots of the voidsuits, so small and simple-minded they barely even have names beyond a syllable.
There's the demon in the demon-locked chest, but it doesn't seem keen on conversation, something that you find utterly unsurprising.
Also, ponder if I can find a way we can return to that-one-place-where-the-Captain-went-ded, in analyzing paths we can take to make a silent and secret landing--for future reasons.
You figure you could always go into orbit and berth on the opposite side of the rock to the docks, and walk in your voidsuits over to the docks - with a bit of care, you could doubtless sneak in without much effort.
If there's enough time to, with the whole iron chest fiasco, attempt to guess the password of the feywood chest.
It takes you less time than you expected to retrieve the fragment of lockpick and start again. Before too long, the iron chest pops open, revealing the ships coffer. Over three hundred disks of mana gleam up at you. That's... quite a lot. Unfortunately, you feel the need to inform the rest of the crew of your discovery, as you don't feel that they'd believe you if you said there was nothing in the chest. That does not mean, however, you told them quite the correct figure...
You have the opportunity to take some of the 320m for yourself, but too much would be suspicious. The ship wasn't doing that poorly.After several days of travel, the pinpoint that is Culworkes appears on the horizon. The sight can't help but pick up the ship's mood - and the new captain wastes no time in berthing at the docks. As a smaller town, the docks here have no berthing charge, for fear of driving away business.
Still, it's not long since you've docked when Granite Ironblood announces his intentions to find his own way.
A drawn map will be available. Eventually.
You are near: Culworkes
More of a trading post than a town. Good for supplies, and famed for good weapons. Where the captain mentioned as his next stop.
Nearby locations:
Falberry: 3 days
A small town, with very little there. Good for bying copper cheaply, and has a small group of academics studying spiritology.
Zarnshope: 5 days
A reasonably insignificant town, but a place to sell goods. The death-place of your captain, and the beginning of your journey.
Warns: 5 days
A small village. A good stopping point on the way to the grand city of Library, where much of humanity's technology and magical equipment comes from.
Author
Topic: Ocean of Stars IC (Read 8250 times)