Pirate RP - Quest for the Snark

[Terra]

Terra was bored.

She had come down to the library to return Extreme Horticulture, only to see that Celestial and the Librarian were arguing. She didn’t particularly want to get in the middle of that, so she had turned around and headed back toward the front door of the Manor. She walked outside and sat behind a bunch of bushes, where nobody would see her try and fail miserably at doing magic. Looking back on this, she thought that it probably wasn’t the wisest choice, considering the likely unpleasant consequences of setting the bushes on fire, but because she couldn’t create a spark to save her life, it didn’t end up being a problem, anyway. But then she grew tired of failing to do magic, so she just sat in the bushes, being bored.

Then she heard and saw a giant...furry...thing approaching the Manor. There were quite a lot of people riding it, too. Her curiosity was immediately piqued, and she considered coming out to greet them, but that sort of thing had gotten her into a lot of trouble in the past, so she refrained.

Then the spaceship landed.

Wow, that’s awesome, she thought. I want to ride one of those someday.

She watched and listened eagerly from behind the bushes as everyone came out and talked to each other, and when she heard them talking about a “snark”, she knew that she had to find out more about what was going on. As Celestial finished talking and stepped aside to allow everyone in, Terra came out from behind the bushes and approached them.

“Can I help?” she asked.

[Zylaa]

Oh hey. The Mage leader was also one of the people who had been possessed by the Underdeep and caused massive amounts of destruction a few weeks ago. That was a fact Zylaa should have picked up on at some point.

The large boar-man, with a horribly familiar spaceship and a generally horrible Hawaiian shirt, was going to be staying with the crew. On the ship. For a vacation.

Again, it's one thing if Fraze does it...

All in all, Zylaa was quite happy to hear Goosh's suggestion.

"Do you want to head to the library and wait for the rest of them there? They probably just need a minute to work out all the arrangements. We're not needed for that."

"Sounds like a good plan," Zylaa said, grinning at the Yurble. She had a slight urge to swoon as she noticed the sparkles, but honestly she was used to that by now. Anyway, it was Hunty's job to deal with all this diplomatic stuff, so really, she couldn't be blamed if she scampered off to do some advance searching.

"Cap'n, we're going to head to the Library," Zylaa called without explanation.

She swung down from the Blarf's back, waited for Goosh to follow, and walked in through the gate, passing by the fortunately-welcoming dragon mage.

Only when she was halfway across the lawn did she have an important thought.

"So... how do we get to the Library, anyway?"

[Celestial]

“Can I help?” It was Terra. Celestial looked over at her and shrugged.

"I don't see why not, although for now there's not much to help with. I'm sure our guests will manage just fine, " she replied

Some pirates got off the Blarf's back and headed past the dragon mage towards the Manor. However, one of them suddenly stopped. She even suspected that she knew why.

"So... how do we get to the Library, anyway?" one of the pirates, the one who she could only describe as a weasel, asked.

"Depending on how the Manor feels, either turn right at the entrance or go through the basement into the portal room, through the greenhouse, past the dangerous artifacts and then the green door to your left. I better come with you to make sure it's the former," she stated, unable to keep a bit of amusement out of her voice. She strolled by the pirates and up the stairs of the Manor, beckoning the pirates to follow her.

"Terra, could you please keep an eye on everyone?" Celestial called out towards the other mage, "If anything happens, Overlord should be nearby. Call him over and he'll get me."

"Sure, because you're really the best person to deal with all situations that can arise. You give yourself too much credit, Celestial," came a snarky voice from the trees.

The dragon mage ignored it and headed with the two pirates towards the library.

[Kengplant]

The last time Keng had been to the mage manor she had been attacked by an infiltrator then met up with an old enemy. At least she could say she'd been with the mages the entire time. In fact she probably owed them a thing or two for having helped tend to the massive bump she'd received on her head and not killing her when her werewolf side had gone feral and taken over her brain, that was way back in the first guild war though and a lot had changed since then, and she'd missed most of it. A thought suddenly occurred to her that maybe she wouldn't be welcome in the library considering the last time she'd been in there she'd begun to use the books as projectiles and had been trying to crush ninjas with shelves. To her credit, the ninja HAD been in the midst of attacking her.

She considered staying back to play fetch with Blarfy boy but decided she'd be of more use flipping through pages looking for that which no one knew the nature of. Maybe they accepted space credits here and she could offer to pay for any damage she'd cause all those years back? Or she could trade off some info on instances of magic she'd encountered on other planets. At least the info that wasn't classified anyways... actually, such a trade could prove beneficial to both parties... She would ask Fraze about it. He was conveniently here after all. Well... she would ask for permission to do some negotiating anyways. He seemed rather tired from diplomacy, and it was just a little bit her fault for having dumped the job on him after she quit/had a freak accident.

She followed after the other pirates as she considered her options. She was getting better at this double guilding thing.

[Gelquie]

Gelquie had been mulling around the hall, scanning her finger along a book in her hands, walking away from the library. She had just done some more research on matters of a personal nature; namely, self-defense. And she was just about to go to her room again, no matter how long it would take her to walk there; the Manor still seemed to have no forgiven her for a little tiff she had earlier with it. But the point was to get to the end and back to her room.

Now, one thing she didn't expect at all was to come face-to-face with the leader of the guild, purple robes galore. With her were some pirates, and certain other people. One of them--Haggoth--she did not recognize, but the other... He seemed rather familiar...
And then she remembered; he was that commander of Spacefleet. The same Spacefleet... Gelquie had yet to have gotten the bitter taste out of her mouth after what they did. Despite attempts at negotiation as well as Celestial's acquiescence to try to re-open trade agreements, Gelquie still couldn't see herself having anything to do with them.

"A technical error..." Gelquie thought bitterly. "That's very convenient..."

However, the Archmage was also there in front of her; as much as she wanted to call the visitors out on them, she really couldn't do much. It wasn't really the Pirates she was that worried about, but the Fleeters... Something had to be up... Especially if this is the Archmage with them. Maybe they were watching them... But for what?

"Archmage Celestial," Gelquie said after a pause. "...What's going on? What's with all these... non-members of the Mages Guild?" Gelquie couldn't help but cast a suspicious look at Commander Fraze as she worded the last part of her question.

[Kengplant]

"We're looking for a Snark. The official definition is an imaginary animal that's difficult to track down. We're going to track it down because apparently we have nothing better to do. It's a pity we're not looking for snark comments. I've got those a plenty and they're easy to come by when lurking around debate teams, science fair students, political cartoonists and are especially abundant around a breed of troll that are born with a psychic connection to message boards."

Keng offered rather casually. Having missed whatever it was that had happened exactly during GW3 she was a bit out of the loop on the appropriate awkward situation procedures. She wasn't even sure if she qualified for awkward feet shuffling as she was technically acting as a pirate at the present time. But then she had just been negotiating with herself on how to trade Fleet info with the manor in exchange for goodwill... ok so maybe she wasn't getting better at this double guild thing after all. Oh well, if all else fails, smile like nothing's wrong... unless you're at a funeral, that's just bad form.

[Huntress]

"We have plenty of better things to do, with all due respect to this lovely manor here," Hunty said a bit dryly, "we're just on a bit of a mission. Anyway," she nodded at Celestial, "thanks. We'll try not to be of any trouble."

She was about to press on into the Manor after Zylaa and Goosh, but hesitated. Things weren't looking pretty out here - well, they seemed to be mostly under control and not very tense any more, but still - and while she was... more or less convinced that her crewmates weren't going to blow anything up in the library, she wasn't anywhere near as convinced that nothing bad would happen out here on the front lawn while she wasn't keeping an eye on everything. So she stopped on top of the staircase and turned around.

On the flipside, she did have business here and staying outside to keep an eye on things would've had Keeping An Eye On Things written all over it. This sort of action tends to incite brashness, bravery and stupidity in one big steaming-hot package.

And on the flipside of that, she'd always made a point of keeping her crew together and watching one another's backs. To split up meant to weaken.

"Come on, gentlemen, let's get a move on," she called. "If their Librarian finds us all the relevant info, good. But if not, we're going to need all the manpower we can get to shift through books and I daresay we're all literate enough to help out. Hup-hup-hup."

"...What's going on? What's with all these... non-members of the Mages Guild?" Hunty hadn't even noticed Gelquie. The girl looked vaguely familiar, in that way that all other guilders looked familiar to her, ever since she'd tried to memorize them from third-hand data and succeeded only halfway, but she had a tendency to treat everyone equally anyway.

"Yeah, that'd be my crew," she said cheerfully. "Cap'n Huntress of the Pirates, how'dyoudo."

"Well, technically they're not-" Bloody Mary begun.

"Leave it to you to point out the formalities," Hunty remarked, already unlacing her corset. From its depths appeared the time-worn piece of parchment that constituted the Pirate Guild's single most official document: the muster-roll. She held it against the wall and updated it on spot, sealing it with her lavish, spiky signature.

Bloody Mary eyed it curiously. "Doesn't that technically fall under a political takeover?"

"In this case? No. It did when Ikkin was still the archmage of this place and my boatswain at the same time," Hunty said with a bit of a nasty tone in her voice, "but the Fleeters can only get listed as onboard guests. Which still means that I'm responsible for every single one of them and subsequently, that any issue you have with them, you have with me and shall take up with me because it saves a whole lot of time and effort."

[zarikrahia]

Zari shifted uncomfortably. It was obvious the Mages were none-too-happy with the arrival of the pirates and four spacefleet personnel, and come to think of it she was the only one there on Spacefleet business, which only made things worse.

And then there was Haggoth, who's presence made her decidedly nervous, and the whole Is-Fraze-the-Commander-or-your-old-comrade thing as well. Her one-year absence suddenly felt like a thousand. And Celestial, who she was sure she recognised but unsure if she could place. Perhaps Other-Zari had met her? She blinked at the dragon archmage, her own wings itching where they attached to her back.

Finally, the professor could bear it no longer. Zari opened up her empathy slightly, scanning the emotions around her and finding nothing she hadn't expected. She sighed and massaged her temples. If this ended up as another Guild War...

[Fraze]

Fraze thanked Haggoth and jogged over to his ship. He felt a mechanical presence focus in on him as he entered--mostly because several conspicuously placed cameras and scanners swiveled to watch him as he came in. They identified him as Spacefleet personnel, and lost interest.

He left from the ship just in time to see an unfamiliar mage join the fray and ask, none too warmly, just what they were doing there. She gave him in particular a rather unpleasant look. Having recently been given hundreds of looks like of that caliber and worse, he didn't flinch. He was formulating a response, but someone got to it before him.
A snark. Well, Keng just saved him the trouble of asking what exactly they were doing. He turned to his wristcomp, accessed Spacefleet's database, and did a search. Volumes on wit, dissertations on irony and critical reviews of critical reviewers. "Snark animal" came up with references to some poem interspersed with more of the previous search results.
As he searched, Huntress explained, in fits and starts, her policy on guests. Or maybe it was general piratical policy on guests, though he guessed that that would involve rope and a locked cell.
"If you wish," he chimed in to the group as a whole, "I can stay here and search the Spacefleet database while you're in the library. While I would be most interested in seeing the library, I do not wish to cause a confrontation."

[Strife]

"It certainly is a nice shade of red. Kind of like a giant apple... with guns."

Apple, apple... what was that again? Haggoth wasn't particularly savvy with planetdweller food names, as he just didn't care to try them most of the time. He was perfectly happy with a diet of food from his homeworld.

"I'll take that as a compliment," he answered, his voice slightly mellower than when he had spoken to the Captain.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a pirate who was shorter than most of the other humanoid crew members, with sparkling gray fur. Something about the way the fur glistened in the sunlight gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling. He decided to shrug it off.


Back on his ship, there was a strange yet barely audible noise as HUGO sprung to life, waiting ominously in the corner as the Commander performed his business. Once he had left, there was a series of unsettling clanking and scratching noises as HUGO returned to his standby position.


Meanwhile, Haggoth kept himself relatively close to the group, which seemed to be spreading out at this point as they approached the Manor one by one. The Captain had apparently taken out some kind of parchment and was currently discussing it with her Meepit companion.

"In this case? No. It did when Ikkin was still the archmage of this place and my boatswain at the same time, but the Fleeters can only get listed as onboard guests. Which still means that I'm responsible for every single one of them and subsequently, that any issue you have with them, you have with me and shall take up with me because it saves a whole lot of time and effort."

"Hey, lemme see that," snorted Haggoth. He leaned over to the side, peering skeptically at the document held against the wall.

"Thanks for the support," he began, turning to face the Captain, "But unless the Commander says otherwise, I'm responsible for myself. If anything, he's responsible for all Spacefleet personnel on this missi-er, vacation, with the exception of those under your custody." He motioned towards Speck. "Point being, don't worry about us. We'll play nice."

[Celestial]

"Archmage Celestial...what's going on? What's with all these... non-members of the Mages Guild?" Gelquie called out. Celestial turned around and briefly gave her an angry look, noting how she looked at the Fleeters. She wasn't too keen on what the other mage was going to say there. No matter what guild they were part of, they were still welcome here. Perhaps it was because at the time of the incident everyone seemed to be so angry about, she was either dead or posessed. It just didn't seem real to her.

"We're looking for a Snark. The official definition is an imaginary animal that's difficult to track down. We're going to track it down because apparently we have nothing better to do. It's a pity we're not looking for snark comments. I've got those a plenty and they're easy to come by when lurking around debate teams, science fair students, political cartoonists and are especially abundant around a breed of troll that are born with a psychic connection to message boards." one of the people, Celestial couldn't be sure if she was a Fleeter or a pirate, chimed in before the mage could answer. She just nodded, smiling a little at the last parts. They were too true.

"We have plenty of better things to do, with all due respect to this lovely manor here, we're just on a bit of a mission. Anyway, thanks. We'll try not to be of any trouble." the pirate captain, Huntress if Celestial's memory served her well, said with a nod. Celestial nodded back to her as aknowledgement of her words.

"You're welcome, captain," she stated before turning to the rest of the group "If anybody else wants to come, they better follow me now. I do not recommend trying to navigate the Manor on your own if you've never been inside before or if you have...less than savoury intentions."

With those words said, she waited a few moments before going into the Manor to join with the other two who had gone in.

A tiny change in the lighting was all the response she got from the Manor before they were all whisked away to the library doors.

[Lord Hayati]

Krisseh decided to follow huntress, who seemed to be in charge of the pirates who have walked in. Normally, she wouldn't have paid attention... but there was something off. Besides, if this snark was real, She might as well help, and could summon something to attract it... just as long it wasn't herself.

"Excuse me, but why are you hunting this snark? I've never heard of it... but if you'd like, I can at least help. all I ask is that you don't turn this into one of those guild wars."

She wasn't even around for the 3 guild wars, yet they were so severe... But then again, messing with pirates? infinite fun!

[Gelquie]

Gelquie was expecting herself to get glares, though she couldn't help but be taken aback by them; particularly Archmage Celestial's. Nonetheless, she buried them all far back in herself.
She had very good reason to be suspicious of them; the last thing she wanted in her new home was an internal battle between the guilds. But at the same time, she was reminded that she should probably tread carefully, especially considering it was just her first month in the Guild. At the same time... She wasn't sure who to trust. She couldn't leave them alone while they were in the Manor.

She listened carefully to Keng's description of a Snark... A Snark? What the heck was a Snark? ...Oh wait, they themselves said they didn't know. But now Gelquie was curious herself... There came another reason to return to the library. ...That is, if they were telling the truth. Only one way to find out, I guess.

She listened to the Pirate Captain's introduction, and she nodded in response. "You're the captain? I see. I'm Gelquie; a mage of the guild with no formal title."

Then she let her go on. The pirate captain seemed sincere enough about her policies on guests. Perhaps they were telling the truth about their information needed about this so-called "Snark".

"If you wish, I can stay here and search the Spacefleet database while you're in the library. While I would be most interested in seeing the library, I do not wish to cause a confrontation." Gelquie didn't say anything; Celestial had already seemed to have taken control of the situation. But a part of her wanted him to tell him to go ahead. At the same time though, she had a thought about wanting to keep an eye on him; a potential enemy in the shadows is more dangerous than one in the light.

"...Heh," Gelquie thought to herself, shutting the book she had in her hand and tucking it under her arm. "I've been reading too much on ninjas."

Gelquie decided not to give any answer, but instead decided to leave it up to the others, though she gave Fraze a look saying "follow if you must, but I'm watching". Then she moved to follow the Archmage. She at least wanted to help keep an eye on them, and maybe find out more about this Snark.

[Draco]

The Ninja Dojo, a place that has been busy for weeks now. Not with a lot of activity, but with a lot of talk. Since the events of the Underdeep, Draco stayed locked up in his room, and only just recently began to leave it.

He sat in one of the gardens, petting a cat that has made the garden it's territory recently. A lot of cats have been around lately. A number of them even had talent.

Standing up he tilts his head back as a member of the NNPC squad member walked over, breathing loudly.

"You need to work on that breathing."

Bowing slightly the NNPC explains how a messenger bird arrived and how he was needed. With another bow he runs off to look for someone else.

Draco looks down at the cat he was petting, who meows at him.

"It looks like something is going on. I wonder if this will mean I get to leave the dojo for a while..."

He walks off to see what the meeting was about. The cat sits watching him leave, and with a cloud of smoke disappears with only a small meow as a reminder it was there.

[zarikrahia]

Zari, feeling distinctly relieved at the sudden relax in tension, followed Celestial, keeping her empathy open. The Manor, she decided, was not overtly hostile, although she didn't doubt that if she herself had hostile intentions she Manor would not hesitate to terminate her with extreme prejudice.

As soon as she entered the Manor after Celestial her visor filled with white noise before resuming it's normal state. Zari frowned and turned the visor off, leaving it on her face just in case she needed it.