Airship Pirates, Chapter 1: Isabel

[Xzen]

Okay, now what?

Xzen had leveled off, and judging from the screams filling the air and ranging from sheer delight to abject terror, he was no longer alone in the sky. Suddenly, about thirty feet to his right, a red-shirted crewman and his glider went plumetting down, totally out of control and spinning in seemingly every possible direction simultaneously. Xzen reached out his arms and prepared to try casting a slow-fall spell, but the sudden shifting of his weight in the harness suddenly knocked Xzen's own glider off-kilter. He hurriedly pulled his arms back in and shifted around to level back off again, while the red-shirt passed well out of Xzen's range for projecting the spell.

Okay, for starters, let's just stay focused on your OWN glider, and let everyone else worry about THEIR gliders.

Xzen's failure to save that crewman (or any of the other unlucky falling few who Xzen could see) was going to gnaw at him later, and no amount of rational thought was going to change that. But he just wasn't sure enough with his own glider to be able to play the hero, and trying anyway was just going to get him killed.

Okay, goal number one: stay alive. He was doing well enough at that so far. So, goal number two: find the Queen Alice's Revenge. Katie seemed to think they would've already landed to stalk the dig-site, and that made sense to Xzen, so he started looking down for good hiding places for an airship. Then a thought occurred to him. He very carefully brought his hands up to his face, made sure he hadn't just thrown off his glider again (he hadn't), and then cast a spell to augment his vision. The terrain below was suddenly revealed with incredible clarity, and Xzen made full use of this, looking everywhere he could see, but still not finding any sign of the rival airship.

Of course, much like yesterday, Xzen wasn't sure what he would do if he actually found the ship first. Yell a lot, he supposed. He also wasn't sure what good an extra share of the loot would be, although he would have several options that weren't entirely evil. He could always sell it off and donate the money to a good cause. Or probably the best course of action would be to earn as much loot as possible, thus to minimize the rightful owner's losses when Xzen returned his share of the loot to that rightful owner later... assuming he wasn't arrested on sight for air piracy.

"I'm the worst pirate ever," muttered Xzen.

As Xzen continued scanning the ground, he also took notice of the other gliders. Most were flying parallel to the coast, in the same direction the Bonny Read was pointed. A few were fanning out further inland, and a couple of gliders were actually heading out to sea, though possibly not by their intent. But nobody was going backwards, back in the direction the Bonny Read had circled back around from. And if the Bonny Read had overshot the dig site, couldn't the Queen Alice's Revenge have done so as well?

Xzen looked around, trying to pick out Rip, or any other crewman he felt confident pairing off with. But with the glider restricting his field of vision, Xzen just couldn't see where everyone was, and he couldn't pick out any familiar faces among the visible glider pilots. So Xzen gave up, figured out how to get his glider turned around, and went off in the opposite direction from everyone else.

Hopefully someone else will see me and tag along. I'd hate to go off on this fool's errand alone, he thought.

[Graybeard]

Rip's thoughts were similar to Xzen's. They'd lost track of the Queen A somewhere back toward Gyptiel, which probably meant that the other ship was around there somewhere, or at most, inland from there. If she wasn't, she'd have had plenty of time to get well and thoroughly hidden away from prying eyes by now. Either way, continuing south down the coast didn't seem to make sense.

He banked the glider and moved to join the Veracian. As he did, he noticed what looked like an oil slick out on the ocean, maybe a mile or so offshore. Might the Queen A have crashed into the ocean instead of heading inland? It seemed unlikely -- why would a crashed airship leave an oil slick, for one thing? Still, it might be worth checking out.

He was just starting to bank the glider again when he noticed three things in rapid succession. First, one of the red-shirts had apparently had the same idea a little sooner, and was heading for the slick, considerably lower than he and Xzen were, maybe as little as fifty feet above the water. Second, it wasn't an oil slick at all, but rather the remains of the black foulness that Garlock had created and he and Xzen had blown out to sea. That meant...

"Hey! Gain altitude!" he yelled across at the other crewman, but of course, the distance was much too great for him to be heard. That gave him the chance to notice the third thing ... as a long gray tentacle formed out of the black mass, reached up, and snatched the red-shirt out of the sky as deftly as if it were picking a strawberry.

Well, so much for that idea.

[Sareth]

Aboard the Queen Alice's Revenge, the consternation was no less than that which had been witnessed aboard the Bonny Reed only a short time earlier. Two people had been forcibly ejected from the crew (by being forcibly ejected from the ship at 5,000 AGL.) Three had instantly been demoted. And one had been promoted into a job he suspected he really did not want.

The Queen Alice's Revenge turned about, retracting its steps...

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Warning, mild-to-moderate gross-out ahead...]

Rip was still trying to get the screams of the man who'd just been grabbed by the tentacle out of his head when Thurston noticed something. "RRAAAWK. Somethin' down below is drawin' vultures, boss. One o'clock, right on the shore line."

Rip banked the glider for a better view. It was hard to be sure from a distance, particularly with the buzzards hopping around, but that looked like ... He motioned to Xzen and went down for a look, careful not to go too far out over the water.

Winds along the coast were dodgy, but that was a good thing: while it would complicate a landing, if he could find a bluff or promontory, he shouldn't have trouble getting airborne again. (Besides, he'd cast Gust of Wind successfully not long before ... and there were fewer people around to be offended by it out here.) There was indeed a suitable spit of land with a tall sea cliff, so he decided to risk landing to see if his initial guess at the carcass was correct. The buzzards quite sensibly dispersed in the face of this alarming apparition bearing down on them, revealing what they'd been working on. It only took a minute, however, for Rip to realize he'd made a mistake.

It wasn't so much a matter of being in danger; there was nothing around bigger and more threatening than a buzzard. He wasn't even particularly fazed by landing next to a human corpse; he'd seen enough of those before. But a corpse, in the sort-of-uniform of the Queen Alice's Revenge, that had had buzzards nibbling on it for an hour or more ... and dispersing many of the innards thereof ...

As Rip's stomach ejected its contents in outrage at what he was seeing and smelling, a dim corner of his brain tried to look at things on the bright side. Hey, at least having puked up three meals' worth of stuff, at least I'll have reduced my weight enough not to have any trouble getting airborne again...

[Sareth]

"Phew... What a mess!" The voice came from behind Rip, and sounded half amused, half irreverent, half business-as-usual, and half bad at adding up halves. Rip turned to realize that a man dressed looking like a farmer was standing off to the side, contemplating the same mess Rip had been. "Where d'you suppose he came from? One of them two airships that passed by last night?" The man shrugged. "Well, no matter. Made quite a splatter when he hit, didn't he?"

[Graybeard]

OOC: OK, does anybody have any ideas on how to get this thread moving again?

[Graybeard]

OOC: OK, one more try. A new player/character has expressed an interest in joining the game by way of this thread. Is there anyone left here except me and (when he has net access) Sareth? Let's make one last attempt.

[Sareth]

Looks like it's you and me...

[Graybeard]

Looks like it's you and me...

There's a newcomer who'd participate in this one, so it's up to three. Want to try it again? Your call, since you'd been carrying the narrative load.

[Sareth]

I don't know if I can commit to anything, owing to life playing merry hell with me at the moment, but I'd be willing to give it a try, sure.