Airship Pirates, Chapter 1: Isabel

[Graybeard]

OOC: Isn't anybody gonna try to stop that inbound bomb? HEEELLLP!

[Graybeard]

If you want a job done right, do it yourself, Rip grumped. He'd been awakened by the commotion as people noticed the rebounding bomb. The red shirts were panicking, an unidentified woman somewhere was screaming (were there even women on this boat other than Kattie? Rip was quite surprised), even Thurston was cursing at the top of his lungs, although that wasn't really that unusual. Well, let's do something about that thing.

He quickly made his way to one of the gun ports, stumbling over a gunner who'd curled up in a fetal position. (He'd make sure to give the man a good ration of crap later, if Wrackham didn't just toss him overboard first.) There really wasn't any need to expend valuable ammunition on this; very simple, economical magic would do. It shouldn't be too hard to reverse the Mending spell that he'd used on the airship many times before. Summoning energy, he cast.

There was an audible RRRIIIPPP as the small airship-bomb, now no more than 500 feet or so away from the Bonny Read, experienced a sudden, dramatic opening of its seams. All manner of exceedingly gross stuff, installed within by Garlock, tumbled out, and of course, so did the hydrogen gas giving the thing lift. A small spark blossomed from the ship's running lights ... and that was enough.

A job well done, Rip thought to himself, dusting his metaphorical and physical hands ... and then he looked earthward.

The magical grossness was descending directly on a small town along the coast of Farrel, five thousand feet below.

Well, not our problem, Rip thought incorrectly, as he went back to bed.

[Sareth]

Below decks, Katie had made her way between the officer's quarters, past crewmen trying very hard NOT to notice the condition of her trousers, and into the galley. There she took the time to survey the situation. Not that it took much surveying.

The prisoner was strapped down to a table, with the doc eyeballing the man with something unpleasantly akin to glee. The prisoner was eyeing the doc back, with something far removed from glee, or anything else healthy. Two other crewmen were standing there, with expressions stating they couldn't seem to make up their minds whether to menace the prisoner or hide from the doc.

"Doc!" Katie called.

"Aye!" Doc called back. "Do I get to operate yet?"

"Needle!"

"Needle?" the doc said, though he did take the time to obey her and select a needle of dubious cleanliness.

"Thread."

"Well, naturally," the Doc said, threading the needle with care, using fingers that appeared to be covered in something unwholesome. He then smiled at the prisoner. "What am I doing? Stitching his eyes open so he can't sleep? Sewing his mouth shut so he can't eat? Stitching his anu"

"Pants."

The doc looked flummoxed. The two guards looked at one another and shrugged. The prisoner looked non-plussed.

"Pants?" the doc asked. "You want me to sew his pants to his pec"

"NOT HIS... mine," Kattie growled.

The doc looked even more confused. "You want me to sew your pants to his pec"

"SEW THE RIP ON MY PANTS SHUT!"

The room was silent as everyone quietly took that in, before making a collective "OOOOooooooooh." The doc took the threaded needle walked behind Katie, and dropped to his knees. Katie ignored this to contemplate the prisoner.

"As for you... You're from the Queen Alice's Revenge," she said.

The prisoner blinked. "Isn't that supposed to be a question?"

"There's no other airships around for miles. I need to ask a question?"

The prisoner thought about that. "Well, when you put it like that..."

"You came over here to sabotage our shiOWGAWDAMMIT!" Once she'd landed, Kattie rounded on the doc. "I said sew my PANTS! Not my ASS!"

"Sorry..."

"Where was I?"

"Sabotage," the prisoner added helpfully.

"Oh, yes. Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"You came over here to sabotage our ship," Kattie continued.

"Um... that's still not a question."

"You were caught red handed."

"Oh... right."

"You wanted to keep us from getting the prizes from that archeological dig."

"How did you know that?" the prisoner demanded.

"I'M THE ONE ASKING QUESTIONS HERE!" Kattie roared.

"But you haven't asked a question yet," one of the guards pointed out. Kattie glared at him. He shut up.

Katie bent back down to the prisoner. "That's a nasty head wound you have there."

"Yes," the prisoner agreed. "But with proper medical care, I'm sure I'll recover."

"Not that head wound," Katie replied.

"You mean I have another head wound?"

"Yes," Katie replied, and shot him.

"That was my chest!" he objected, then expired.

"I never was good with anatomy," Kattie commented.

"Me either," the doc said.

Kattie walked over to the speaker tube on the wall (trailing the doc behind her, as he had managed to sew his hand to her seat) and blew into it. "Cap'n?" she said.

"Yes, Kattie?" came the reply.

"He confirmed all of it."

"Excellent," the Cap'n replied. "Then we can feel justified in stealing his stolen stuff and killing his killer crew!"

"I'm glad we got that established, sir," Katie replied.

[Xzen]

A short time earlier...

Xzen Dvorak had been awakened from his nap in the crew quarters by perhaps the strangest combination of sensations he'd ever experienced in a 5-second period. First, he'd been roused from a sound sleep as the ship lurched violently about, launching Xzen from his perch on a top bunk. Then before he'd even been able to land, a small furry black mass had attached itself around his face with what felt like claws digging into the back of his scalp. After landing, it had then taken Xzen several more seconds to wake up enough to realize two things. The Bonny Read was in distress. But more importantly, a cat was attached to his head.

"Mmfff fgttk gkttff!" he sputtered.

"What?"

"I said, 'Get this damn cat offa me!'," cried Xzen, uttering a curse for the first time in his entire life.

The cat-attachment had lasted several more seconds, and then the feline was carefully detached by what turned out to be a rather odd-looking man wearing a dark robe who glared at Xzen for a moment and then spoke. "Rip said we have company. You seen anyone around?"

"Do I looklike I've seen anyone?!?"

"No, guess not," said the hooded man. "One more thing. By any chance... do they call you Hungry Joe?"

Still shaking off sleep, Xzen stared at the hooded man and considered several sarcastic replies before deciding to play it safe by shaking his head. That seemed to satisfy the hooded man, who wandered off aft. Xzen, already calming down, considered following the hooded man to apologize for his anger, but then decided he was safer with as much distance from him as possible instead. Besides, there was an intruder to find.

As Xzen hurried forward towards the stairs and down to the forward gun deck, he wondered what he would actually do if he found an intruder. Yell a lot, he supposed. His previous line of work had left Xzen with no formal combat training and no skill with a firearm whatsoever. But he had found himself in several minor physical skirmishes in the past year and had even arguably won a couple of them, though owing more to determination and a strong instinct for self-preservation than to any actual skill at fighting.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard a loud hissing sound and turned to see the cargo hold filling with steam. Xzen hurriedly cast a barrier spell to protect himself from burns and entered the cargo hold to find that one of the steam lines leading into the galley above had ruptured, presumably due to whatever had just happened to the ship. Xzen found a cutoff valve and turned it, then proceeded to work on repairing the steam line, grateful to have something to do that was more in line with his skill set of healing and repairing spells. Those spells were the main reason Shorty had allowed Xzen to join the crew at all, along with Xzen's assurances that he would work hard without complaint at any task assigned to him.

Xzen became fully engrossed in his task, combining physical and magical repair methods to try to mend what turned out to be several breaches on the same steam line. He briefly took note of the announcement of the intruder's capture (Good, glad I didn't have to deal with that...) and the captain's order for all cats to report to the Engine Room (Um... what?) but otherwise pretty much ignored everything else until the explosion.

Explosions, by rule, are difficult to ignore.

As it just so happened, Xzen was working next to a porthole, so a quick turn of the head gave Xzen a full view of what appeared to be a much smaller airship, crackling with malevolent magical energy, that had apparently been moving towards the Bonny Read but was now in the process of exploding. Xzen stuck his head out the porthole for a better look, and his peripheral vision registered someone else doing the same from a front gun-port. Xzen turned his head and recognized his fellow crewman Rip, who gave a satisfied nod and dusted his hands off together before looking down, then shrugging, then ducking back inside.

Xzen looked down too -- and then realized the whole magical and fiery mess was descending directly on a small coastal Farrellian town five thousand feet below. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives were in jeopardy.

Xzen gave a stifled scream, collected himself long enough to project a "slow fall" spell onto the whole mess to buy all involved more time, and then took a second to consider his magical options -- none, as it turned out. He needed some way to nudge the course of the flaming wreckage so that it would fall into the ocean, but he couldn't think of any spells in his arsenal that would prove useful.

However, Xzen DID have another skill that WOULD prove useful in this situation, something he'd had plenty of practice at in his previous career: moral outrage. He ducked back inside and sprinted forward, hollering at the top of his lungs.

"YOU! Rip! Don't just walk away from that like it's not your problem! Get back here and help me save that town!"


(OOC: And oog, that was long. Sorry, had to get Xzen caught up with the story. I'll keep it shorter in the future.)

[Graybeard]

"YOU! Rip! Don't just walk away from that like it's not your problem! Get back here and help me save that town!"

What is this Veracian all upset about? Rip wondered, then it came to him, although it left him shaking his head. This guy wasn't going to last long as a pirate, with morals and all that ... but he did have a point. He shrugged and re-emerged to the observation post.

A quick overview of the situation suggested he had about five minutes before the foulness reached the surface. He'd need two. He retreated to the galley, found an opened bag of dried beans (it shouldn't have been left open -- the kid would have to learn that even an airship had rats), quickly swallowed two or three, returned to the crow's nest, marshaled his energies, assumed the indicated -- posture -- and cast a spell.

"GUST OF WIND!"

What happened next is best left to the imagination, but it did have two lasting effects. On the good side, the town was going to be safe. The unpleasantness falling toward town had been blasted out toward the ocean. Of course, Luminosita alone knew what it would do once it got there; he expected reports of sea serpents and worse all up and down the coasts of not just Farrel, but distant Veracia. Still, dilution had its advantages.

On the debit side, the entire crew had been awakened by the noise, not to mention the stench ...

[Xzen]

"Thanks, Rip. I guess I shouldn't complain, but damn, I sure want to," said Xzen, cursing for the second time in his entire life, and trying unsuccessfully to wave the stench away from his face. "While you're here, I've almost got this ruptured steam line patched up there in the cargo hold, and I haven't heard about any major damage or casualties. Any idea what I should work on next? Is that other ship out there going to make another move on us?"

[Graybeard]

"Dunno, I'm too tired to think about it," Rip said. The spellcasting had taken a lot out of him. Actually, he was feeling pretty proud of himself for everything he'd cast today (well, almost everything...); that was the heaviest-duty, most sustained bout of magic use he'd engaged in since he left Sashi Mu. It felt good to know that he still had the touch, he thought as he staggered off to his bunk.

However, he couldn't sleep, fatigue or no fatigue. Xzen's question about the other ship was in the back of his mind, not least because when he ... blew away ... the airship-bomb, he couldn't see hide nor hair of the Queen Alice's Revenge. Where had she gone? It wasn't really his problem -- somebody would be standing graveyard shifts in the crow's nests -- but still. After a while, he gave up and staggered down to the bridge to chat with the helmsman. He was a rather dull sort; maybe that conversation would get Rip in the mood for some shuteye.

Thurston was on his shoulder, sucking on an unlit cigar, as he got to the bridge. "Hey, just out of curiosity," Rip said, "what was that little town that we just about dropped a magical stinkbomb on?" That seemed like a safe enough topic to start with.

"I don't know, let me check the charts," the man said, and pulled out a large folding map -- the ship actually had a Tsuirakuan crystal-ball system for navigation, but this guy was too dim to know how to use it. Besides, he was a Farrelite... "Ah, here we are," he said, pointing to a dot on the map. (At least he could read, Rip thought.) "Looks like a town called Gyptiel. Only thing close to here big enough to show on the map, anyway."

Rip started to thank him and make polite conversation, but Thurston interrupted him (dropping the cigar into Rip's shirt pocket in the process). "RRAAWWK. Gyptiel. Boss, ain't that the name of the place that that professor guy is usin' as his base camp for whatever he's doin' out here?"

And damned if it wasn't, Rip realized.

[Sareth]

"Lu...Luminosita's left testicle... WHAT IS THAT SMELL?" Eyes watering, Katie demanded an explanation from the bridge crew. The crew all quite helpfully pointed to one another, attempting to pass the blame even though no one knew who was actually to blame.

The door to the Captain's cabin, a bare few feet from the bridge, opened, and Captain Rackham stuck his head out. He took several sniffs, then looked over to Katie.

"Kill the cook," he ordered.

"Yes sir," Katie acknowledged, intending no such thing, knowing that the Captain would have forgotten by morning.

"Oh, and order the crew to bed. We attack the Queen Alice's Revenge at dawn."

"The whole crew?" Katie asked.

"Of course the whole crew."

"But who will fly the ship?" Katie questioned.

"The crew, of course." Captain Rackham slipped back into his cabin, and closed the door.

Katie sighed, putting her face in her hand. "All non-essential personnel to bed. The rest of you... Try not to kill us in our sleep, alright?" She stomped off to her cabin, her half bare derriere making a syncopated rhythm that no one dared watch as she left.

[OOC]Try to wrap things up in the next day or so, so that over the weekend I can introduce the next bit of madcap mayhem.[/OOC]

[Graybeard]

"Uh ... boss? How're we gonna attack it if it ain't there? And ain't we here to go after this professor, not another airship?" Thurston asked, reasonably enough.

"Are you going to tell Rackham he's full of it?" Rip asked back. Without waiting for a reply, he headed back to his bunk.

[Xzen]

Back in the cargo hold, Xzen put the finishing touches on the steam line repair, then turned the cut-off valve back on. No leaks. Xzen considered using another spell to augment his eyesight, but he decided to save his strength. The cargo hold was still empty, and while the broken steam line would've been inconvenient for the cook up in the galley, it really didn't look all that essential. A simple visual inspection would be fine.

"All non-essential personnel to bed. The rest of you... Try not to kill us in our sleep, alright?"

The orders from the first officer echoed over the speaking tubes, and Xzen figured that was as good a time as any to head back to bed anyway. Maybe someone back in the crew quarters could fill him in on everything that had just happened.

Rumors and news spread fast on an airship, so it didn't take long for a crewman to fill Xzen in on Glorfingle's untimely death in the crow's nest, the two intruders sabotaging the engines, Rip's role in killing one and capturing the other, Rip's use of the cat to repair the engines, the interrogation and subsequent execution of the remaining intruder, Kattie's new fashion statement, and now this strange and unexplained stench that had settled in over the ship.

"Damn, it sure has been a busy evening," said Xzen, cursing for the third time in his life. "Though I think I can te-- uh, hmm." It occurred to Xzen that perhaps nobody needed to know who had caused that stench or who else had goaded him into it. Instead, he faked a yawn and begged off to bed.

As Xzen started to drift off to sleep, something else occurred to Xzen: he had just yelled at one of the most influential members of the crew: Rip. Probably not smart, regardless of the reasons. Here he was once again trying to keep a low profile and once again failing. He was quite lucky that Rip had seemed less annoyed and more amused at the chance to put such a vulgar spell to such good use.

The execution of the prisoner nagged at Xzen too. Nothing he could do about it now, and on a ship with no reliable way to keep a prisoner locked up, it wasn't quite murder, but it was close to it. A very good reminder of what Xzen was dealing with. Maybe coming on this trip was a mistake, but no way out of it now. Just find opportunities to do good when possible, and try to keep your hands clean in the meantime, he thought, his last coherent thought before he drifted off to sleep.


(OOC: Hope that helps wrap things up, unless the other characters want to wrap up what they've been up to as well.)