Landon concludes his 'rampage' and leans over the ship's rail with a grin. "Oi! Quit playing with yer food and finish the buggers off!"
Chubs attacks both remaining sharks.
Chubs hears the command and obeys. The water below betrays a fight beneath, water splashing across the surface with the occasional glimpse of fur or fin above the water line. In time Chubbs returns to the ship carrying most of a Shark with him, with a second lying in the ocean below.
What is left of the Wolf Shark swarm scatters into the sea. So long as a second sea monster doesn't get attracted by the commotion, you shouldn't have to worry about them again.
COMBAT FINISHED
******
As the
Zephyr settles down from the fight, Hunters and sailors get to work. Without the ability to regenerate the Star Sinker's corpse is easy to chop into pieces, a fact the sailors took advantage of to remove the tentacles still held fast to the hull. While the sailors where busy getting the ship back into shape the hunters threw out nets (or occasionally jumped in the ocean themselves) to reclaim the remains of the Wolf Sharks.
One of the civilians from below ran up to inform everyone that the preacher has set up a makeshift hospital below deck along with the ship's doctor, and that any wounded should be brought to him for healing. Several sailors are dragged by their comrades to this medical facility.
Much of the ship is now covered with the broken corpses of Wolf Sharks put in a neat pile and chopped up bits of the Sea Sinker minced to fit whatever storage containers could be emptied.
Now for the hard part: Splitting the loot.
The chef/Hunter takes a bite of the Sea Sinker raw. She chews it around her mouth before spitting it into the sea. "Ain't much to work with here. Seems like a young one that didn't have all that long to collect mana. Bit bland an' poisonous too. Was hopin' I could get somethin that could regenerate ya."
Meanwhile the bearded hunter digs around in a barrel repurposed for holding Sinker guts. "Haha it just had the wind ripped out of its sails is all! If we can get some Mana back in it before sundown I bet we can get it growing again. It ain't all that tough but if I can beat out some regenerating armor I bet someone would appreciate it."
More interested in the Sharks than the Sinkers, the man in eastern armor is looking at their teeth. He pulls something from a pouch and performs a routine scratch test before shaking his head in disappointment. "As numerous as these creatures are we are going to get little mana from them. I suspect it would take ... three or four sharks to have enough to satisfy a starting Hunter. All together it may be worth something, but splitting it apart I suspect we will all come out of this with very little....
How are we to split it in any case?"
***************************
OOC CORNER!
Congratulations on not dying immediately in your first battle! I knew you could do it! It is now time for Character Advancement Rules! Yay!
In short now that you killed a monster you get its parts. Rules of nature and all that. With these parts, you can:
-Eat them, eventually leading to Stat growth
-Use them to upgrade your equipment as long as their Quality is higher than your Equipment
-Use special properties of the Monster to give yourself a new Feat
-Sell it to buy new items
Now for the more detailed version!
Stat growth:
Eating mana-rich foods will result in your character gaining strength. As such eating powerful monsters will make you powerful in turn. Every 3 Encounters worth of Monsters you decide to eat, you will get a single stat point to spend on anything but Speed. Speed takes twice as much to increase. More powerful Encounters may count as multiple, to the point that a single boss monster could easily be worth a stat point on its own. Fortunately most Monster's edible parts are different than their functional parts, so you get this by default unless you decide to sell your share of meat or are otherwise unable to access it for plot reasons.
The Ship Sinker and Wolf Shark swarm count as one Encounter together.
Equipment Upgrade:
Your equipment all has a quality rating. If you fight something above the quality rating of your equipment you can use it to either make equipment of that quality or upgrade your equipment to that quality to taste. Most monsters only have a few parts that are truly usable for weapons and armor, as such there will be a limited number of parts available and the party may have to discuss who gets their equipment upgraded. "Alchemy" may be used to transfer mana from one object into another, which can result in items of higher quality. If you collect enough low quality parts they can have their mana combined into a higher quality part. In this case the Very Low quality shark corpses may be combined to make Low Quality equipment.
The Ship Sinker is of Low Quality. The Wolf Shark corpses are of Very Low quality. 3 Wolf Shark corpses may be combined to make a Low Quality shark corpse. There are 15 Wolf Shark corpses available. The Players get 1 Ship Sinker piece each.
New Feat:
Many Monsters, especially more powerful monsters, will have parts valued beyond their Mana worth. You can integrate these into your equipment in some way to give you a new Feat, such as taking a lightning-shooting creatures lightning-shooting part to make a weapon that shoots lightning or an armor that shocks anyone who touches it. Players suggest their own Feat based on the parts they are using. Two players may not use the same part to get a new Feat. A part that is used to make a New Feat can not be used to upgrade a weapon. Power of the feat is based on Quality, and as above new parts may be used to increase the Quality of these Feats over time.
Sell It:
Don't have any interesting idea for a new Feat? Instead of upgrading, you may instead find a merchant willing to buy the parts off of you and sell them for money. This is abstracted - for the most part you will be able to sell three "Objects" worth of monster bits for one "Purchase" of equivalent Quality. It is assumed that you can sell off less meaningful parts in town for daily living expenses, this action assumes you're selling off the meaningful parts too. The benefit of this is that instead of being limited by the creature's ability, you may choose any new feat that the GM approves of - not necessarily tied in with equipment either.
Hopefully this makes sense and isn't too broken. Currently each player has access to One Ship Sinker Piece (Low Quality) and three Very Low Quality Shark Corpses. For the first Encounter I will assume everyone got equal parts, but you may give either to other players if you want to. In future encounters there is likely to not be a 1-1 ratio of parts to players, in which case you will be able to agree IC and OOC about who gets what.