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[Devastator]

Hide in the corner like the creeper we are and wait for eyes to adjust.

You wait a while, and nothing happens.  Eventually you can make out dim shapes, not enough to identify things well, but barely enough to see your way around.

This cargo chamber is mostly empty.  There is a line of shapes along the starboard wall, and you think you can make out a door leading further towards the stern, in addition to the one behind you.  It's still extremely dark.

[Egan_BW]

Eh, good enough. Dump a bunch of oil, light it, and cheese it.

[Radio Controlled]

Yeah, no turning back now. Let it burn, the ring of fire.

[syvarris]

Might as well.

[MidnightJaguar]

burn it all in cleansing flames.

[Devastator]

burn it all in cleansing flames.

You're on the ship.  Time to set it on fire.  That's the plan, after all.  You take your oil out, and pour it over some cloth and some wooden objects in the darkened room.  You then get out your tinderbox, and make a spark on a sulfur match, and apply the match to the oily cloth.  After a few moments, it starts to catch, and shortly later it's burning.

The room is now lit, and you can see that it's mostly empty, save for sails, barrels and crates of food and water.  There are more hatches leading further belowdecks, in addition to the main doors.  You've just set some water barrels on fire.  And some sails, but that's less ironic.

Oh, the water is spreading the oil out, and you leave, quickly, through the door the way you came.  You pass the sleeping crewmen, and head up the ladder to the top, across the deck with more crew on it, and back onto the pier, into the rowboat, and back to shore.

No sooner than you are back on shore do you hear a shout from the ship... the flames have been noticed.  You find a hiding spot and watch the action.  At first a sailor from the card game starts ordering people about, and a bucket chain quickly develops.  Things get confused for a moment, as the belowdecks crew starts heading up the ladders at the same time as crew are trying to haul buckets down them, but the captain appears swiftly and sets things to better order.  Water is delivered, and things are put back under control, with the fire out for good after about twenty minutes.  After the fire is out, there continues to be much activity on deck, and you don't think they'll settle down for a while, but the ship looks to be okay.

You haven't done the job yet.  Is there anything else to do immediately, or are you going to do something different with your last action this week?

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Assets and Abilities:
Prestige = 2
38 silver.
Ancient bronze short jian.
fine map of the Empire
poor maps of the countries across the sea.
plan for travelling across the sea by ship.

Skills:
Gather information, +1
Shopping, +1
Urban Navigation, +1
Weapon handling I
Jian skill +2/+2

Allies:
Min Li, spirit reader, 2 prestige, 1 favor
Huan Zhang, diplomat, 2 prestige, 0 favors

Job to waylay the costal trade ship the Swallow's Fortune, or damage her cargo.  It's due to leave about end of week 18.
Spirit reading with Min Li scheduled for week 19

[Egan_BW]

We almost certainly didn't get the target with that. Dammit. The best option now might just be to default. There are still options, but this is the point where risk starts to get too high.

[syvarris]

Oh, come on, now you're being practical?  Right now is when we need one of your crazy ideas, because they're the only option at this point.  I guess I have to do it, then.

Screw it, we're murdering the captain.  Yes I know he's ageless and ultra experienced, we're trying anyway.  Stay near the ship all day, waiting for him to leave, and then follow him.  Once he's in a relatively emoty area, or at least just a fair distance from his ship, run up to him and chop his head off with our jian.

Edit: In accordance with MJ's point below, the First Mate is also an acceptable target.  Whoever comes out first should be attacked--there's no guarantee either will, so I don't wanna ignore Caps if we're lucky (?) enough to see him.

[Egan_BW]

That will be both obviously illegal, and the first time that this character has killed someone.

Get back on the ship, fight past the crew, swordfight the captain. Push him over the edge into the water and claim the new title of captain. Sail the seas as a vicious pirate.

[Radio Controlled]

I'm voting against committing assisted suicide. There's a bunch of them, they're on alert and it's not like we're a grand master martial artist or anything. Cap'n might not even leave his ship for all we know.

Also, from irc:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

23:18   Devastator   those are some orders in Sh.
23:18   Devastator   I should tell you what the captain's stat line is.
23:18   Devastator   he's too crazy for his own good, and has a +1 to everything, but under no circumstances can he ever get better than +1, because he's his own worst enemy.
23:19   RadioControlled   What bonus do we have for our jian?
23:20   RadioControlled   Also, are we doing this? Seriously?
23:20   Devastator   depends.
23:20   Devastator   I got a usual order split here.
23:21   Devastator   you're +2/+2.
23:21   RadioControlled   Outnumbered by an enemy that's on guard though.
23:21   Devastator   Yeah.
23:22   Devastator   I'm not saying it's a -good- plan.
23:22   RadioControlled   I don't really think we can do this.
23:22   Devastator   failure is an option.
23:22   Devastator   you ain't looking at die if the boat sails.
23:22   RadioControlled   Maybe with a good ranged weapon we could hope to get lucky and bug out, but this sounds like a good way to get an early -BAD END-.
23:23   Devastator   that's your decision to make.
23:23   RadioControlled   Did the fire stall the boat at all? Maybe it'll need some repairs?
23:23   Devastator   lemme look at the final result again.
23:24   Devastator   You don't know.
23:24   Devastator   (I did roll for it, though)
23:24   RadioControlled   Hmm.
23:24   Devastator   It looks okay, but you don't know anything about boats.
23:25   RadioControlled   I'm gonna cast a vote for not committing assisted suicide.
23:26   Devastator   It'll be an action to investigate that.
23:27   RadioControlled   Sounds like a bad action though?
23:27   RadioControlled   If yes => would have noticed that by it not leaving. If no => no more actions to stop it.
23:29   Devastator   You weren't on board to see how bad the damage was, and you know nothing about boats.
23:29   RadioControlled   From the turn it seems the fire went on for at least 15 min or so.
23:29   Devastator   Yeah.
23:29   RadioControlled   Even so, it seems that the action either confirms we're too late, or tells us something we'd notice anyway.
23:30   RadioControlled   I mean, it was gonna set sail at start next week right?
23:34   RadioControlled   Can I mention/copy this convo in the thread by the way, or would you prefer not?
23:36   Devastator   lemme check.
23:36   Devastator   yeah you can tell them what you think about the captain.
23:36   Devastator   but you don't know if it's delayed or not.
23:37   Devastator   if it was delayed for two or more weeks, I'll tell you.
23:37   Devastator   (I do see why you think that action is wasteful, but it would definately take an action to find that out.)
23:37   Devastator   If you don't have time to use that information, well..
23:38   RadioControlled   So I can just copy-paste this irc log, right?
23:38      Devastator rereads it.
23:38   RadioControlled   A better action could be 'check if the vessel is delayed, and if yes how long' but that would be even harder.
23:38   Devastator   yeah, sure.
23:38   RadioControlled   Cool, thanks. Too lazy to type much.
23:38   Devastator   If it was two weeks, for the success, I would tell you.

[MidnightJaguar]

How about this, how about we kill the first mate rather than the captain? His death would likely result in a delay as well.

[Egan_BW]

I veto any plan that involves murder and does not end up with us as a pirate captain or similar badass profession.

[syvarris]

((Well, we're making ridiculous money for doing this, so we could put it towards a badass profession.))

[Egan_BW]

((Not if we land in some prison we won't. :/
Somehow I doubt that our agent is going to help us get away with murder. We might be able to kill someone, but "run up and chop 'is 'ead off!" is not going to be a good idea.))

[Devastator]

Opinions seem to be split, but murder and mayhem seem to be the order of the day.

You decide to take one more attempt at it, and this time go for some more direct action.  With that in mind, you sneak back down to the docks towards the ship, attempting to kill whatever officer you can see first.  You decide to get started during the day, as you aren't sure how long you'll have to wait.

However, you don't see what you were expecting.  The ship is busy getting ready to make way, and earlier than you'd expected to see them leave.  You see the crew putting sails back on the masts, and doing many things with lines and poles that you don't really understand.  You can see some damage from yesterday, and there are a number of charred barrels, casks, and kegs on the docks, along with some partially ruined sails, and there is some visible fire damage on the decks.  However, you don't see any officer in charge at this moment.  It looks like they will be away from the dock in a matter of a few hours.. but that doesn't mean they will be out of the harbour any time soon.  They could be floating out in the bay for days before leaving, and will certainly be resting on the estuary for a favorable tide.

What do you do next?