Out of the frying pan...
Nov. 5th, 2005 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothThere was a brief trip back to the tower to get some more crystals to possibly steer the magic boat they'd found in the second docking bay, but without much more fuss the party set sail from the island of centaurs and Vlindar, with 30 passengers spread around the ship, sleeping in empty rooms or the canopy, of whereever they could fit.
Several days passed without much ado -- one of their passengers went missing, but no one was sure if he was just hiding or if someone had offed him and tossed his body over the side or what, and a floating tower drifted nearby, and was roped in and towed along with them, since it offered more space for the Vlindar to sleep in -- and then, in the middle of the ocean, they came across what looked like a large island, with dozens of airships of all different sorts docked to it. Many of them seemed to be in good repair, although there wasn't much sign of life from a distance, so they approached to check it out.
They hadn't even docked -- and were, in fact, split up doing various docking-related tasks -- when they were ambushed by a bunch of pirates. One of the nearby ships shot a harpoon, penetrating their side (which was surprising, as the sides of their ship were reinforced) and drawing them closer, while eight people of assorted flying races charged over, seven non-fliers somehow dropped onto the top of the canopy, and a couple of humans and male cytherians plopped onto the manta decks to start trying to steal mantas.
Their intentions were immediately clear -- the first thing that any of them did was to randomly slaughter one of the civilians in the canopy. Balthazaar, Wayne, and Perrel tried to fight back, but while they managed to take out a couple were obviously overmatched as well as outnumbered, so after a Daeg miner with magic claws ripped the hell out of Wayne's sanity, he grabbed Perrel and ran for the danger room, planning to lock himself in until they went away.
Roshan tried to talk sense into them, despite their obvious hostility, and was cut down for her troubles. Her new personality was *not* suited for combat. Jardin went to wake up Chochang, and then the two of them went back out onto the deck to fight off the fliers. Jardin took down one with magitech wings that was using some sort of flamethrower to torch Vlindar passengers, and was jumped by three others, while Chochang tossed bolas, taking down two fliers before a third cut her down with an axe.
In the danger room, Wayne and Perrel found the five gold grenades they had left, a bunch of healing potions, and an animated mosquito. The potions were enough to cure Perrel's wounds, so they decided to head back up and try to fight off the pirates, some of which had followed them down out of the canopy while others finished off the people still hiding there. Wayne tossed the mosquito at one, a grenade at another... and remembered too late that the grenades had a REALLY BIG radius! He and Perrel managed to duck back into the hallway to avoid the swarm of golden needles, but four of the pirates and six or so of the Vlindar weren't so lucky. Fortuantely for them, most of the gold grenades were of the stun variety, and this one was no exception.
While Wayne and Perrel mopped up the wounded pirates from the canopy (Wayne stinging them until they were paralyzed, Perrel in a disturbing display of bloodlust beheading them whether or not they were still fighting) and the female cytherian that had taken down Chochang, Jardin finished off the rest of the fliers, and was then nearly (but not quite) caught in an explosion as the flamethrower or whatever that the first pirate he'd cut down went off. He ran to get water to put the fire out, but it didn't help...
Luckily, after a second grenade thrown up into the canopy to take out the pirates up there, and after the manta-thieves took off with most of the ship's complement of skymantas, there weren't any other enemies threatening them, so they put out the fire with some of the denying force (as having an annoying force field coating the front of your ship was less dangerous than having the whole ship be on fire), stripped the pirates (living and dead) of weapons, and healed up the people they could save, which included pretty much everybody except for the people in the canopy that were already badly hurt before Wayne's grenade went off and finished them. And the pirates Perrel had beheaded.
While they were doing that, a huge crowd of people gathered nearby on the island, and expressed their disappointment that the pirates hadn't killed them all -- they lived by scavenging the remains of ships the pirates destroyed, after all. They offered to take the crew with them and hide them from the remaining pirates, who'd surely be back for revenge soon, and which would incidentally have allowed them to scavenge the ship etc., but the party wasn't about to give up the ship so easily.
Not even after it proved just as stuck to the island as all the other derelicts, drawn in and trapped by some magical force emanating from the island.
Instead, the immediate plan was to build a sort of hypnotizing weapon out of the jar of will-o-wisps (and by 'build a weapon' they meant 'drape a cloth over') and use it to check the pirate ship for any more pirates. Once the immediate area was clear, they could come up with a better plan of defense, and perhaps construct some devices to assist with that aim.
last week | next week
Several days passed without much ado -- one of their passengers went missing, but no one was sure if he was just hiding or if someone had offed him and tossed his body over the side or what, and a floating tower drifted nearby, and was roped in and towed along with them, since it offered more space for the Vlindar to sleep in -- and then, in the middle of the ocean, they came across what looked like a large island, with dozens of airships of all different sorts docked to it. Many of them seemed to be in good repair, although there wasn't much sign of life from a distance, so they approached to check it out.
They hadn't even docked -- and were, in fact, split up doing various docking-related tasks -- when they were ambushed by a bunch of pirates. One of the nearby ships shot a harpoon, penetrating their side (which was surprising, as the sides of their ship were reinforced) and drawing them closer, while eight people of assorted flying races charged over, seven non-fliers somehow dropped onto the top of the canopy, and a couple of humans and male cytherians plopped onto the manta decks to start trying to steal mantas.
Their intentions were immediately clear -- the first thing that any of them did was to randomly slaughter one of the civilians in the canopy. Balthazaar, Wayne, and Perrel tried to fight back, but while they managed to take out a couple were obviously overmatched as well as outnumbered, so after a Daeg miner with magic claws ripped the hell out of Wayne's sanity, he grabbed Perrel and ran for the danger room, planning to lock himself in until they went away.
Roshan tried to talk sense into them, despite their obvious hostility, and was cut down for her troubles. Her new personality was *not* suited for combat. Jardin went to wake up Chochang, and then the two of them went back out onto the deck to fight off the fliers. Jardin took down one with magitech wings that was using some sort of flamethrower to torch Vlindar passengers, and was jumped by three others, while Chochang tossed bolas, taking down two fliers before a third cut her down with an axe.
In the danger room, Wayne and Perrel found the five gold grenades they had left, a bunch of healing potions, and an animated mosquito. The potions were enough to cure Perrel's wounds, so they decided to head back up and try to fight off the pirates, some of which had followed them down out of the canopy while others finished off the people still hiding there. Wayne tossed the mosquito at one, a grenade at another... and remembered too late that the grenades had a REALLY BIG radius! He and Perrel managed to duck back into the hallway to avoid the swarm of golden needles, but four of the pirates and six or so of the Vlindar weren't so lucky. Fortuantely for them, most of the gold grenades were of the stun variety, and this one was no exception.
While Wayne and Perrel mopped up the wounded pirates from the canopy (Wayne stinging them until they were paralyzed, Perrel in a disturbing display of bloodlust beheading them whether or not they were still fighting) and the female cytherian that had taken down Chochang, Jardin finished off the rest of the fliers, and was then nearly (but not quite) caught in an explosion as the flamethrower or whatever that the first pirate he'd cut down went off. He ran to get water to put the fire out, but it didn't help...
Luckily, after a second grenade thrown up into the canopy to take out the pirates up there, and after the manta-thieves took off with most of the ship's complement of skymantas, there weren't any other enemies threatening them, so they put out the fire with some of the denying force (as having an annoying force field coating the front of your ship was less dangerous than having the whole ship be on fire), stripped the pirates (living and dead) of weapons, and healed up the people they could save, which included pretty much everybody except for the people in the canopy that were already badly hurt before Wayne's grenade went off and finished them. And the pirates Perrel had beheaded.
While they were doing that, a huge crowd of people gathered nearby on the island, and expressed their disappointment that the pirates hadn't killed them all -- they lived by scavenging the remains of ships the pirates destroyed, after all. They offered to take the crew with them and hide them from the remaining pirates, who'd surely be back for revenge soon, and which would incidentally have allowed them to scavenge the ship etc., but the party wasn't about to give up the ship so easily.
Not even after it proved just as stuck to the island as all the other derelicts, drawn in and trapped by some magical force emanating from the island.
Instead, the immediate plan was to build a sort of hypnotizing weapon out of the jar of will-o-wisps (and by 'build a weapon' they meant 'drape a cloth over') and use it to check the pirate ship for any more pirates. Once the immediate area was clear, they could come up with a better plan of defense, and perhaps construct some devices to assist with that aim.
last week | next week
