Bloody Sailors

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Tuesday 22nd July

Flung Chow Wong - Male Human Monk (FW TF) - Ian Luxton
Jack Rabbit - Male Halfling Thief - Darryl Sherwood
Polly Ester - Female Human Bard - NPC
Ulotta Puck-off - Female Shield Maiden Parry-Fighter - Edwin Muir
Finn Finnegan - Male Halfling F/T - Jeff Clendon
Halcyon - Female Priestess of Panadine - Matt Carr
Mel Licious - Dwarf Psionicist - Steven Krijnen
Hanky Chiff - Gnome Illusionist/Thief - Peter Fairbrother
Asi van Dit - Male Halfling Thief - Adrian McKinnon
DM - Andrew Earl


Who the heck can write when the damn ship keeps moving?
Up and down, up and down, up and down, side to side to
side to side to ...

Oops, sorry Halcyon, probably feeling sick just reading this!

Seems it isn't religion that's got us into trouble after all.
I guess trouble was inevitable, we just had to wait and see
where it came from.

It came from the bloody sailors!
I guess they just aren't as tolerant of their betters as one
would have thought. I think it starts near the top too. Who
would have guessed?

The first inkling of trouble was when Mel, my fellow guard,
went sprawling along the deck on his face. He had tripped on
something, he reckoned. Still, that's pretty common with Mel, so
I didn't think too much about it till later that day when I
felt an impediment to the motion of my left leg when I was
running down the companionway, past a few of the other sailors.

Imagine, trying to trip a Halfling, ha!
With a dextrous twist and a light brush of my hand on the
companionway wall, I was able to continue without even slowing.

"Whart hoo, carful lards!" I exclaimed.

Later that night, I made sure that the hammock of McTavish
wouldn't support his weight. Talk about laugh! The crew thought
he looked a right twit, sitting on the floor of the bunk room
with bits of rope and hammock twisted round his head.
Still, he didn't seem too amused.

It didn't work either, next day we come in from our shift and
our hammock's weren't there at all, just plain gone.

"Bluedy Sarlors"

And we both had to sleep on the floor!
We tried to ignore the incident but that didn't work either.
We kept getting the un-wanted jobs, nasty comments about our
heritage and mothers and stuff, knocks, trips, nasty looks, etc etc.

An appeal to the Endor's first mate, Smee, revealed that he was
uninterested in our plight. In fact, maybe he was even behind it.

"Well that's just too fucken bad, isn't it?", he said "Get back to
work. I don't want to hear any more of this whining bullshit."

We tried to be tolerant, even acted happy and cheerful when he
denied us shore leave at Freeton. We had to work, swabbing the
bloody deck and cleaning the bloody barnacles off the water line,
while the rest of them got to try out the local dockside Inns.
And that's another thing, imagine making a Dwarf hang off the
side of the boat, over the harbour, on a rope, to scrub the hull.

"Bluedy Sarlors"

Still that was nothing to ordering Mel up the rigging to reef the
tops'l during a huge storm. It was incredible, Mel just looked at
Smee for a moment and then turned and climbed the rigging. I couldn't
believe it, Mel must be made of sterner stuff than other Dwarves
I've met, maybe he's a galvanized Dwarf or something?

No fucking good at knots though. If I hadn't been up there to actually
do the reefing for him I think the tops'l wouldn't be with us today,
or the mast for that matter.

On the way down he slipped and spent about five minutes dangling on
the end of his safety line, swinging backward and forward over the
side of the ship with the wind howling past his ears. You should have
seen his face, I didn't think it was possible to close your eyes so
tight that even your eyebrows roll down off your forehead and disappear.
Good thing I tied off that safety line, fifty fathoms they reckon down
there!
And talk about chuck! Mel must have had a hearty meal before the
storm because he certainly fed the fish more than their fair share.
I guess upside down on a long rope in a howling storm just doesn't
sit with some folk. Didn't even splatter that bastard Smee, who was
smiling up at us the whole time!

"Bluedy Sarlors"

Still, when Smee then told Mel to go reef the sp'rit sail on the fore-mast,
I wasn't too surprised too hear him say "NO!"

Later, he told me that the brig wasn't too bad, just a little too small
for comfortable sleep, but certainly warmer than the crew's quarters
where we normally sleep. Quieter too.

"The flogging weren't so good though," he said, "I think its all that
salt water blowing into the cuts that hurts so much."

It was McTavish who carried out the flogging. Grinning the whole time
too, the bastard.

"Bluedy Sarlors"

Seems that Mel has been hiding a few truths too. Not only is he a
galvanized Dwarf that doesn't seem to mind too much about the proximity
of great depths of water, but he practices the lesser known art of Psi!

After being flogged to within 1 point of death, and healed back to just
1 point, he crawled off somewhere to lick his wounds.

"Back tomorrow" he grunted, and disappeared.

Later that day we hear rumours of a "head popper" on board.

"Woot the fuuks a hued pooper?" I wondered.
"He's fucked dead. You tell him he's dead," said McTavish.
"Whoot the fuuk r yoo tooking aboot?" I asked him.
"That fucken head-popping Dwarf cunt, that's what I'm talking about!",
he yelled, "You tell him he's bloody dead."
"Weel tharts noot vary neece is it" I yelled back, "goo tool heem youself"

Funnily enough, McTavish and Smee, and in fact all the crew, didn't seem
too keen to go anywhere near Mel from then.

I kept up a good scare campaign running by mentioning that Mel doesn't
normally give any trouble, "oonly ef e es enoyed". That ought to help,
I thought.

The rest of the gang seemed to be enjoying the trip.

Asi managed to scrape together enough cash for a cabin and kept the crew
gossiping with an endless stream of girls coming and going at odd hours.
I didn't even know there were so many girls down in steerage.

Hanky turned up from somewhere, I didn't even see him come on board, but
he's been skulking about with a couple of other mage types. Reckons he
only had enough cash for a fare to Sancho and keeps trying to borrow a
few gold pieces.

Ulotta has been scrambling about looking for cash as well. It seems that
Flung's comment about "gur-rees" in Sancho has made her very nervous.

"An not to fo-get famous x-spearmint of Sancho mages" he told her
yesterday. Seems to like teasing the "gur-ree" I suspect.

So we arrived at Sancho.

Polly said the whole arrival experience was quite dramatic and she was
going to record it for posterity..
Actually, I think she said something like "yuk, how gross."

Once again Smee was picking on me, and assigned me to guard the
priestess Halcyon and Flung as they went down onto the docks to visit
their shrines.
Fortunately, there was one other sailor with us, as we got into a fight
with a few locals.

Seems that Flung and Halcyon aren't too tolerant of other people's
way of life. Well the slavery, abuse, experimentation and degradation
of females in particular. We rescued a poor girl who must have managed
to slip away from a hoard of guards. They had been chasing her down
the wharf and had just managed to knock her to the ground, give a few
kicks, and were in the process of dragging her by the hair back to
their wharehouse when Flung jumped in front of them.

"Vot you do here?" he demanded "you will be topping in-tantly"

Of course, they immediately dropped their girl and ran off - NOT.
I drew my sword and jumped between them and Flung, while my fellow
guard, a sailor I might add, turned and fled back to the ship.

"Bluedy Sarlors"

Fortunately, I was able to beat them all back (actually, I think there
might have only been two of them) and after mortally wounding one they
did flee back down the wharf. At least it looked like a mortal wound,
I'm sure he would have collapsed a bit later!

"Poor gur-ree, you come vit us" Flung said "much safe now, all vetter"

She did actually look a lot better after we cut off the two metre long
snakes that were growing out of her belly.

"Rook here Wotta, x-spearmint on poor gur-ree" Flung yelled at Ulotta,
with a wink, as she lowered her bow. Seems the two thugs were also
getting a bit of a missile peppering from the boat during the fracas.
Ulotta seems a lot more comfortable about Sancho since scraping up
enough cash to buy a ticket on to Porn city.

After getting the poor girl back on board (very easy as she wouldn't
leave Halcyon's side for anyone) the Captain had all the crew guard
the side of the boat.

"A good show of force here won't hurt" he commented, "we'll also be
putting off shortly and anchoring about ten boat-lengths out for the
night"

And a good thing too. As soon as it was dark there was a huge flood
of refugees (and other things) jumping off the wharves and trying to
sneak onto the boat.
Beats me why they waited till night, as soon as the Captain brought
out his light sticks the place was as bright as day anyway.

We all enjoyed a spot of target shooting that night. We had to let
on all the good-looking female types, but the rest were open slather.
It's a good thing that most of them didn't appear too human, I might
have had a case of conscience. Didn't seem to bother the rest of the
crew though, they actually fought over the good-looking ones, and
had bets on how close the poor things would get to the boat.

"Bluedy Sarlors"

----

Murder most foul! They found McTavish this morning. Apparently his
head was "popped" some time during the night. I never actually
believed all those stories about head popping, but you should have
seen the poor bastard. His brains were oozing out his ears and
everything smelt of that fried liver stuff that Ali Carte used to
cook up. Even though McTavish deserved it, it didn't look like like
a nice way to go.

If Mel can do this why the heck didn't he do it ages ago?

"It wasn't me" grunted Mel as they dragged him off to the brig again.
"I can't do that. Wish I bloody could!"

Those bloody sailors were all cheering, and throwing stuff. Smee
was grinning as he rigged up a noose on the yard-arm. The Captain
wasn't too concerned.
"You, Panadine girl, sort this out," he commanded Halcyon.
Poor kid, she won't be able to cure McTavish, and as sure as eggs
will break when you throw them off a cliff, she'll be upsetting a
good few of the crew with all her prying and questions and stuff.

Maybe Mel can pop heads after all, I guess we'll find out soon ...