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[Devastator]

Yeah, another handler job seems like a good idea.

You meet up with her, saying that you might be leaving town soon, and you can't really wait for another job, you'd like to get something lined up quicker.

"All right.  I was going to pass on this, but this is yours.

There's a ship in the docks, a coastal junk from Ashisan Island called the Swallow's Fortune.  She is carrying a load of pepper, and will sail north in about two weeks.

You need to wreck it or destroy it's cargo so that it never makes Kwellan."

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Assets and Abilities:
Prestige = 2
44 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/+1

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

Currently employed running messages.  pays 1 silver/week, consumes two actions.
Engaged in focussed jian training, costs two silver/week, consumes one action.
Job to waylay or damage the Swallow's Fortune, a coastal trade ship.

[Devastator]

Oh, and next week we should spend an action quitting our messenger job.  Or just walk off the job if we can't quit without wasting two more actions on it.  The pay is trivial, we aren't hurting for cash, and time is quite valuable for us.[/b]

You have no time left this week, but walking off your job doesn't use an action.  If you wish to do so, let me know now.

[Egan_BW]

Yeah, another handler job seems like a good idea.

Edit:Oh, and next week we should spend an action quitting our messenger job.  Or just walk off the job if we can't quit without wasting two more actions on it.  The pay is trivial, we aren't hurting for cash, and time is quite valuable for us.

How will we use the time that we gain from being unemployed? Not saying it's a bad idea, but we should lay out why we're doing it in particular first.

[syvarris]

Reasearching the nations across the sea.  We don't know which nation we want to go to, but we can get an overview of all of them.  There's lots of stuff to research; their political systems, economies, languages, unrest, etc.

Extra training.  We really want to make sure we pop the next level of jian combat, and there's more than that--we can practice our political reading abilities, which will be useful when we travel across the ocean.  Currently, I think we should try to back some powerful faction and manipulate them to assist us.

We'll really be rushed for time after our spirit reading because we'll be needing to make our assets liquid, and learn an entire new language, immediately, but we really shouldn't be doing those things before we know where we're going.  Leaving our job right this moment isn't necessary, but we definitely want to do so before the reading.

Finally, our job barely pays.  Handler missions vastly outpay it, by a factor of ten.  We're losing chump change, but gaining a notable amount of time.

...Still not sure if we should just walk off.  I don't want to spoil our reputation at all, even if we think we'll probably be leaving.  I'm gonna think about it for a little while.

Yeah, let's work our last bit this week instead of just walking off the job.  We should still have plenty of time, even spending an action to quit.

[Devastator]

Yeah, let's work our last bit this week instead of just walking off the job.  We should still have plenty of time, even spending an action to quit.

Week 16 comes to an end.

You have no dreams this week; your rest is calm and uninterrupted.  At least, uninterrupted by visions.

The weather is very bad this week, with torrents of rain and lightning.  The river is high and the many streets are flooded with mud and water all over.  Unfortunately, the messages must go through, and with many streets flooded you spend far too long trudging the streets.

Your training, however, lifts your spirits, as you pass your challenge examination today, and officially graduate from the dojo.  Hurrah.  It's a bright spot in a week filled with mud and rain.  Things are even too wet for much news.

The mud slows things down.  You have time for but one action this week.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Assets and Abilities:
Prestige = 2
43 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

Currently employed running messages.  pays 1 silver/week, consumes two actions.
Job to waylay or damage the Swallow's Fortune, a coastal trade ship.  It's due to leave about end of week 18?
Spirit reading with Min Li scheduled for week 19

[Egan_BW]

I think we'll spend that last action this week to quit our job. Should be good to have our metric fuckton of actions next week.

[syvarris]

Yuuup.  Jobquits.  At least we'll have the full five actions next week, since we graduated jian school too.

[Devastator]

I think we'll spend that last action this week to quit our job. Should be good to have our metric fuckton of actions next week.

You do so.  Quitting your job means no more running messages through endless muddy days for a pittance of pay.

..and with that, the seventeenth week since your first dream comes to an end.  Ahead is a new week, and perhaps the turning of the seasons.  The storms of last week may mark the end of the summer, and the beginning of the autumn.

The weather this week isn't too bad, with the rain easing up, and the weather being cool and partly cloudy, and a good breeze blowing off the ocean.  Much better than slogging through mud.

You aren't the only person with more free time this week; you hear that a mob has lynched the alchemist from a couple weeks ago, and there was some looting and rioting in the Mages quarter.  You do hear that Min Li, the spirit reader, is fine.  There are lots of guards and soldiers on the street, and they aren't being very particular, so it would be best to avoid their notice.

The Swallow's Fortune, the ship you agreed to waylay or destroy it's cargo, is due to leave this week.

You have five actions this week.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Assets and Abilities:
Prestige = 2
43 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 or damage the Swallow's Fortune, a coastal trade ship.  It's due to leave about end of week 18.
Spirit reading with Min Li scheduled for week 19

[Radio Controlled]

((Haven't paid attention to this for too long, might be a little out of date.))
Gather info on the ship perhaps? Scout it out, see if there's any guards around, get to know the harbor lay-out a bit.

[Egan_BW]

Gain ye intel!

[syvarris]

Gather info on the ship perhaps? Scout it out, see if there's any guards around, get to know the harbor lay-out a bit.

+1

((Haven't seen you in forever, 'cept for some politics posts.))

[Radio Controlled]

Gather info on the ship perhaps? Scout it out, see if there's any guards around, get to know the harbor lay-out a bit.

+1

((Haven't seen you in forever, 'cept for some politics posts.))

((Yeah, been pretty busy lately. Still following some things from afar, but for the most part there's little that compels me to post often on bay12 now that ER's done. Might join one of pw's new games sometime, but for now some grumbling about the ridiculous state of the world is about all you're getting. Rejoice!))

[Devastator]

Gather info on the ship perhaps? Scout it out, see if there's any guards around, get to know the harbor lay-out a bit.

You head down to the ports.  The foreign ports have restricted access and are guarded, to cut down smuggling and what not.  This is not the case here, as the swallow is tied up in the ports for local ships.  The Swallow's fortune is a large coastal junk that has three masts and is about fifty feet long.  It's made in the local style, mostly of hardwood.  It looks fairly old overall, with plenty of discoloration, and a noticeable amount of decay and barnacles, but still seems fairly sound.  You estimate the crew as being about forty or fifty people, and you'd guess maybe half of them are on the ship right now.  It's tied up at port, one of dozens of ships there, and has a single gangway leading up to the ship.  Right now it isn't bustling with activity, although you can see several people on deck.  Some are doing work and others are just chatting.  The top deck of the boat is suspiciously free of cargo.  Most of the other ships carry cargo on their decks as well as inside the ships.

The overall layout of the harbour for the local ships is pretty simple.  The river has a long inlet, with numerous small, swampy islands in it's delta.  This acts as the breakwater.  When approaching the city, the local ships bear east, and tie up near a long, narrow beach that has room for dozens, if not hundreds of ships to berth.  The docks are fairly short, and there are dozens of them, with a fairly narrow promenade between the buildings and the docks.  The foreign docks are on the other side of the river, and tie up on the inside of a somewhat larger and drier island that's connected to the mainland by bridges.  There are two coastal forts, one on the southern tip of that small island, and a larger one on the east side of the river inlet, downstream from the city.

Do you want to try and board the boat?  And if so, do you have your sword with you when you do so?  If not, four actions remain.

[syvarris]

Okay.  I talked with Dev in IRC.  There's two ways to do this that I've thought of.

One, we can search the ship for contraband, and hope that there's a good bunch there.  If there is, we then bribe an official (just a few silver would be sufficient, due to our prestige), telling them to search that ship.  The search, if contraband is found, will delay the ship long enough.  It would also get us positive prestige.

If searching is too dangerous, or ineffective, we could also just interrogate one of the higher ranking sailors.  Drunk sailors can tell girls lots of things.


Second plan, which is probably easier and definitely more reliable, is just to kill the captain.  It would be hard to do this directly, since he'll almost certainly have strong and loyal sailors with him... but he's a sailor.  If he gets drunk, and we play the part of a cheap prostitute, we could probably get him alone.  At that point, killing him is easy, and we could likely get away without us being found with the body.  Of course, this is a distasteful method, and would worsen our reputation if anything.  It's more of a fallback plan, IMO.

Opinions?

[Egan_BW]

I vote we try the drunk sailer thing first, and if that doesn't work we can consider our other options. It's always good to try out the lowest risk method first, in case we get lucky.