Pirate RP - Quest for the Snark

[Goosh]

Goosh was sprawled on the deck, idly flipping through Alcohol and You: A Very Bad Idea. The library had not been worth the fuss of what was nearly a diplomatic incident, in his opinion, but now they were free. Sort of.

He rose and approached the captain, who was in conversation with her meepits.

“So we still don't have a whole lot on this snark thing, do we?” he asked Hunty. Glancing over at Haggoth, he added, “Plus we're saddled with Sergeant Swine now. He's probably just going to cause problems. He's here on vacation, and we're going on a quest. You know how our quests tend to end up, don't you? With the screaming and the running and the dramatic swordfights. Not good vacation material.” He shrugged. “I'm fine with Fraze on board, at least. He can probably handle himself--” and here there was decidedly suggestive wiggling of eyebrows--“and we could always use some company. And Zari's something of an unknown quantity. This doesn't bode well.”

*~*~*

The cliffs of Ap'str'ph' loomed ominously above, sunset splashing off their jagged crevices and dripping down to the choppy waters below. The wind tossed his hair and the cliffs drew closer. The salt spray dampened and chapped his lips.

When he was so close that he could have reached out and brushed the cliff face, he yanked sharply on the reins. There was a sharp cry of elation as his mount shot straight up, hugging the rock until they reached the top of the cliffs.

The dragon did a wide circle before gently landing on the sparse grass. The view of the sun sinking into the sea was the sort of beauty that only a cheap greeting card could produce.

The rider of the dragon, the one watching the sunset, was a decidedly plain fellow. He looked like a farmer.

But most farmers found things like dragons to be rather frivolous. There was a sword in a sheath on the saddle. His eyes looked like they had been forged, and there was a mysterious birthmark on his forearm, the kind that drew intrigue and magic toward it like a lightning rod.

He looked like a hero.

[Huntress]

After a long day of plain sailing, sunshine and seagulls and on-the-go ship-related training, the white walls of Port Parnassos finally appeared on the horizon. By this point the sun was already setting, so the white walls were mostly orange, as was the sea that now glittered in all possible hues of blues, oranges and purples. The seagulls were gone at this point and the weather was still calm, with light yellow and purple clouds hanging over the horizon. It was a gorgeous sight, but Hunty, as all pirate captains, was more worried about ship security at this point.

"Give me an educated guess here," she said to Bloody Mary, squatting under the foremast and digging through the flagbox for a flag that would've been safe to hoist in these waters. "Is Nordstatern the kind of place you'd expect Port Parnassos to be at war with?"

"It's the kind of place I don't expect anyone to be at war with," said the meepit. Nordstatern was a good five hundred miles to the north and largely unknown in these waters, closer to Hunty's own homeland than Dunburrow or any related region. "But in this newfangled world where information spreads faster, anything's possible. Try Dunburrow? I don't think Dunburrow is currently at war with anyone."

"We would've heard if they were," the captain agreed, tugging at Dunburrow's green and silver flag that was stuck under a bunch of others. ((Is that thing actually green and silver? The Knights' homethread was less than helpful >>)) "Should we weigh anchor now or just press on?"

"You're the captain."

Hunty scowled at the meepit, who, when it came to criticizing her decisions, never really took that particular point into account. "Okay, we'll press on then. If something goes wrong when we enter the harbor, it's much easier to escape in the darkness."

whump.

Hunty's head jerked up. This sounded exactly like the Weewoo mistwings in flight so for a second she'd thought that something had attacked the ship to provoke the mist out of its dormant nest in the keel. But the setting sun still glittered calmly on the ship's sails and lines, painting them orange.

whump. Whatever it was, it sounded closer now. Bloody Mary was craning his neck as well. There was a moment of tense silence.

"Ah, there," he suddenly said. "Twelve o'clock."

Hunty stood up with a disbelieving scowl, the Dunburrow flag still in her hands, and stared at the dragon that was flying towards them in the sunset.

She'd seen dragons before, one of them had fought the blarf not too long ago. They were rare, but they existed, and one of them residing in the western islands wasn't too big a stretch, even if they weren't native here. But dragons were still huge and could often breathe fire so you never knew what one wanted when it came over to see you, and it was definitely coming over because it was headed straight for the ship. She went over to the bowsprit to wait. Whatever it wanted, she was the captain and she would therefore meet it first.

whump.

And it... had a rider?

whump. With yet another majestic wingstrike, the dragon reached the ship and, being too big to land on it, remained hovering in front of it, drifting along with the windcurrents and keeping up with the ship's speed. It was emerald green and glittering yellowish in the sunset. Its rider looked like a simple fellow, but he looked like the kind of simple fellow you could see on the silver screen, if, of course, the guildworld had had any silver screens by this point. He was the kind of guy who had Destiny written all over him.

"Greetings, travellers," he said, resting his hands on the dragon's neck and leaning forward. "It seems to me that you're headed towards the beautiful city of Port Parnassos."

"We are," Hunty agreed carefully. "Is it forbidden? Because we only need supplies and the like."

"Where do you come from?"

Nordstatern's ice blue flag was still flying in the foremast. Well, so much of this. Hunty shot a glance at the Dunburrow flag in her hands and then shrugged. "Dunburrow. We're on a mission from the Mage Guild to find some supplies for them."

"Hunty." Bloody Mary, who'd been craning his neck to stare at the somewhat prim-looking dragon and its rider, now all of a sudden sunk on her shoulder, flattening his ears. Hunty shot a glance at him. She'd half-expected a lecture on the general topic of "thou shalt not change thy flag too late into the journey" but instead she could tell that the meepit was genuinely surprised.

"What?"

"That's Farmer Bob!" hissed the meepit.

"Who?"

A flashback hit the captain. Sometime quite a few years ago, she'd been lurking in the bushes with her crew, hiding and spying on a small group of people who'd gathered on a field where a young farmer had found a mysterious magical object that'd turned out to be Leraye's gem, a powerful artifact that'd held the souls of thousands of warriors from the past and sparked one of the biggest battles in recent guild history. Somewhere along the way, in the midst of all the fights and magic and revelations, everyone had forgotten about the one guy who'd dug the gem out from his field and started it all.

But life, apparently, hadn't forgotten him.

Hunty stared back at the man who was now scrutinizing her with a frown, apparently trying to match her face with the land he'd grown up in.

"Dunburrow, huh?"

[Zylaa]

As Zylaa heard the fwump of wings, and, like Hunty, realized they weren't from the Weewoo, she had swivelled to face the front of the ship, nearly tripping over herself as she beheld the dragon.

She reached the bow just in time to hear Bloody Mary's hiss. "That's Farmer Bob!"

Staring at the dragon rider, Zylaa too had a flashback-- of a stormy field, with huddled pirates, watching huddled mages and knights and Fraze... and weasels. Every single weasel storming across that field towards the gem. She glanced nervously behind her, but there wasn't a weasel in sight. Well, except her. Perhaps this Farmer Bob wouldn't remember her, and the rest of the pirate crew. It was too much to hope that he had forgotten a massive swarm of weasels charging towards him. That sort of thing doesn't happen every day.

Except to me, she had to amend.

"I'm from Dunburrow myself," said Farmer Bob. "Not so long ago..." he looked off into the east, as if he could see the fields even from here. Obligingly, she heard a swelling crescendo of nostalgic music coming from belowdecks. She winced, thinking the man might react, but he only sighed. Dramatically. Perhaps background music happened all the time for people touched by Destiny.

"Haven't seen many dragons around Dunburrow," Zylaa remarked brightly. She still wondered where this exchange was going. Why he had approached them. That sort of thing. She wasn't about to ask, though; that might lead to him probing more into where they were going. "If you're from Dunburrow, what brings you to Port Parnassos?"

[Ikkin]

I really need to stop zoning out, Ikkin decided, when she snapped out of a daydream to find that a dragon was suddenly flying alongside the White Weewoo and apparently... talking to Cap'n Hunty?

She quickly floated herself over to the bowsprit where the Captain and the dragon were, noticing as she came closer that the dragon wasn't the one talking - it had a rider. She wasn't quite sure whether that made more sense or not; talking dragons weren't exactly unheard of. On the other hand, there was something about the rider that didn't seem right.

"That's Farmer Bob!" she heard Bloody Mary hiss as she came to a stop behind the Captain.

"Who?" Hunty asked, echoing Ikkin's sentiments exactly. But then, she stopped for a moment, stared at the man, and spoke again. "Dunburrow, huh?"

Did the Captain remember this Farmer Bob? Ikkin didn't, but then again... there were a lot of things she didn't remember.

"Cap'n, do we know this guy?" she asked. It was strange... even though she couldn't remember him, he seemed Important, with a capital I. But why would a farmer be Important?

...scratch that. Why would a farmer be riding a dragon over the ocean just outside of Port Parnassos? She looked at him suspiciously, and then asked, "Who are you, exactly?"

Maybe that was a bit too blunt, but really, Ikkin just wanted answers.

[Draco]

It's been a long trip, but land was now visible. It was pretty uneventful for the most part. Part of Draco wanted something to happen, perhaps something that would make him see why Pirates like the open sea. The only problem they had was a ambush of flying piranhas. It wasn't that big of a problem, but it did catch one NNPC off guard, knocking in the water.... Where he was swarmed... And that is how the group found out they were man eating.

But now land was visible, but only one problem seemed to be going through Draco's head now.

"Where are the Pirates?"

He looked around at the visible coast, but didn't see the ship.

It was the navigator that answered, "The current pushed us a little off course. If my map is correct, that is the island we are looking for. If we sail around the coast, we might find them."

"If we spot them, make sure to stay out of sight the best we can..."

The navigator nods, and several of the sailors move about the ship.

[Huntress]

Imagine a hero.

They're really pretty easy to spot when you know the right signs. They usually come in a package deal with a fancy sword that once belonged to their fathers, mentors, mysterious old men in the woods or all of the above rolled in one. And sometimes a fancy, often impractical armour handed down much the same way. And a noble hot-blooded horse, or a dragon, or sometimes a large wolf or a unicorn in more exotic regions*.

But a hero who hasn't yet reached that level is still as easy to spot. He's usually a farmer or a street rat, and almost always an orphan. He lives a humble life, but depending on the point in time where you see him, he'll be forced to leave that life behind and travel to new, unknown lands, learning new skills, meeting mentors and noble steeds and love interests and fortunetellers in any given but inevitable order so fast that he barely has the time to eat. He'll be put through tests that come in order of difficulty** and he'll eventually play a key role in the lives of a group of people that may range from a small village to an empire, depending on how ambitious the gods are feeling with this particular story.

That was more or less the story Farmer Bob told the crew of the Weewoo. His name, for the record, was Robert. It was sort of unclear whether it was pronounced the English or the French way because he slipped every now and then and alternated between the two. His dragon was called Flame; he was a big, stoical, rather intelligent-looking beast who nodded curtly in the general direction of the ship when he was introduced but didn't say a word the entire time. Yeah, I'm a dragon, his entire demeanor seemed to say. Don't mind me, it's been a long day and I'd like to hit the nest already.

"-and after that the people of Port Parnassos asked me to stay to guide and protect them whenever necessary," Bob - sorry, Robert - said. Hunty realized that she'd zoned out a bit. She was also fairly sure that she hadn't missed anything crucial.

"So that's why you come and meet ships when they near the city?" she asked, making an educated guess. The dragonrider nodded.

"It's a well-protected city," he said, "but we don't want any undercover spies. The Spacefleet is cunning, after all."

Hoooold that thought. Hunty's face froze into the kind of indifferent, unflinching expression that everyone who knew her would've recognized it as a blatantly obvious poker face. Bob, thankfully, didn't know her.

"M'sorry, let me get this one straight," she said, cursing herself for not paying attention. "You're at war with the Spacefleet?"

"Not as such, because we can't attack them," Bob said, "but we've declared ourselves autonomous from their tyranny and isolate ourselves from all of their vile influence, yes. Which is why I meet all incoming vessels to eliminate any potential threats."

"Sounds... dangerous," said the captain, her brain now kicking into autopilot to keep up with the sudden increased workload. Bloody Mary, her ever-reliable external harddrive, took up part of the load and ambled closer to her ear to whisper something. "I didn't know that dragons can withstand lasers and suchlike."

"Oh, they won't attack us outright," Bob said grimly. "It wouldn't look nice politically, you see? They have to keep face. But they can send in spies, and they work with pirates. You're not pirates, are you?" he suddenly asked, eyes narrowing, and Flame awoke from his lethargy to obligingly bare his fangs a bit.

"Pirates? Good grief, no." Bloody Mary could feel Hunty suddenly relax. This was familiar territory. It came with the trade. She'd stood there on the deck facing some other patrol ship so many times, coolly telling them that she'd never seen a pirate in her life, that it wouldn't have shown up on lie detectors or with any truth serums any more. "And if we were, it wouldn't be very smart of me to say that we're pirates, amirite?"

Bob furrowed his brow. "So how do I know that you're not lying?"

"Dunno. Look for the telltale signs, I guess." She spread her arms. "See any peglegs, eyepatches, three-pronged hats, skull signs, parrots or cutlasses?"

"You have a skull necklace," Bob pointed out.

Hunty picked up the silvery skull that usually hung around her neck on a long chain if she didn't forget to put it on in the morning. "Oh yeah. Guess I really am a pirate then. Dang."

"Stop mocking me, woman, I'm doing my job here," the rider grumbled, a bit insulted. "I'm just supposed to ask this. Any pirates or Spacefleet officials onboard your vessel, yes or no?"

Hunty fell serious again. "No. Can you give us permission to enter the harbour or do we need to apply somewhere or how's it work here?"

"If you give me your logbook to take back to the city, I can hand it in for the harbour pass at the harbourmaster's and you can get it back with it when you arrive," said the hero-slash-messenger. The Weewoo, like all reasonable pirate ships, ran a failsafe logbook that only documented standard maritime info and used different paperwork for writing down loot and the like. So the captain had no qualms about fetching it and handing it over.

*Unicorns are even rarer than dragons and not really known for their rider-friendliness, except towards young chicks who don't get out much, which all things considered should be a warning sign. Yet for a long time, there was a story going round that said that somewhere to the east, there's a noble king who rides a unicorn and wears a jewel-encrusted armor and a sword made of silver, and whoever manages to defeat that king wins the hand of his beautiful young sister in marriage plus half of the kingdom to rule. Dozens of hopeful men flocked to the distant kingdom to get the chick and the country because it can't be too hard to defeat some sparkly sissy on a unicorn who carries a sword made of a soft metal, right?
As it turned out, the story was only untrue in one small point (the sword was made of titanium, not silver, an easy mistake to make for an untrained eye). The princess was indeed lovely, if a little sulky because all potential groomscandidates who showed up seemed to be self-important jerkwads. Her brother the king was a fiftysomething war veteran with a near-permanent five o'clock shadow and an equally near-permanent cigarette tucked behind his ear. He did indeed ride a unicorn, and nobody knew where he'd gotten it, but as all opponents who reached his castle quickly learned, it was really just a big horse with a horn growing out of its forehead. Which meant that it was a species of animal that's generally known for being half-mad, biting very painfully, stomping even more painfully, and easily trained to charge at and attack an opponent with all the natural weapons at its disposal. Which included a horn growing out of its forehead.
The jewel-encrusted armor became fancier with every visit, because the king adds the jewels of the fallen opponents to it. The princess eventually gave up and ran away with her lover, a butler at the castle. They're both very happy.

**Unless he runs into a genre-savvy villain, in which case his story will be very short.

[Speck]

Speck had made herself busy polishing the cannons. There wasn't much need for it, but she had already tidied up the gun deck to the fullest extent. At the very least, if anyone needed a mirror while they were gunning the cannons, they would have their pick of any of the half dozen carronades. While in the middle of adding a that last touch of elbow grease to final cannon, she saw the swish of a giant tail swing past the open cannon hatch beside her.

She poked her head out of the hatch and looked up at the hovering dragon. Opening her mouth in silent horror, she scrambled up the stairs to the main deck.

"Captain! There's a drag-- there's a dragon just--" She began to shout, but stopped herself. Of course anyone topside would have seen the thing! More importantly, they would have also seen its rider.

Her face became a deep red as she gazed at the man atop the giant beast, "Oh."

[Zylaa]

Zylaa listened obligingly to the story. It was remarkable, she thought, how rarely the Weewoo ran into heroes. After all, they'd run into almost everything else. But she had no trouble with heroes. They were doing their bit to save the world in their own, predictable way. It was sweet, really.

Only when Robert mentioned Spacefleet did Zylaa realize a fundamental problem with her thinking. She tended to forget the fact that most people on the planet thought of pirates as bad guys. As opposed to, well, shades-of-gray-guys.

"You're at war with the Spacefleet?" Hunty said, and at this point Zylaa's face froze into what she dearly hoped was a closed expression. Technology or no, she didn't bet anything on Fraze and Haggoth's chances vs. a dragon. And if the dragon killed Fraze, she really didn't want to see such an impressive beast get dismembered by the Captain. The dragon turned its lethargic gaze towards her and its golden eyes met hers.

You really need to work on your poker face, darling, a low, smooth voice said in her head. It was, quite obviously, the dragon. Zylaa's jaw dropped, her eyes widened. Shockingly, that's not any better. She snapped her jaw shut and swallowed.

Thank you for the advice, she thought, not entirely sure how her tone would be conveyed. She hoped her nerves wouldn't show through.

Don't mention it, said Flame. It's not like Our Hero would notice up there, but others in Port Parnassos are more alert. It was impressive that Significant Capitalization made its way through mental communication.

"You're not pirates, are you?" said Robert, and it was only this that made its way through Zylaa's now very muddled consciousness. Flame made a show of aggression.

You don't seem very enthused about Robert, Zylaa tried, hoping to change the subject.

Oh he's a great kid. But he seems to think that saving someone from a trap gives him the right to ride said someone like a mindless horse. Flame snorted, although he had returned to his original indifferent hovering. His gaze roamed this way and that over the ship, perhaps to throw suspicion off Zylaa. This would be why I'm talking to you. I'd quite like a way free of Robert, and I'd like a bit of assistance.

Why us? was Zylaa's first thought, which she unfortunately couldn't second-guess before asking. After all, this was a dragon. They tended to have the repute of being the best at, well, everything. Strength, speed, firepower, and, most importantly, cunning.

A number of reasons. Many heads are better than one. Clever heads, are, naturally, the best. And the reputation of noted pirate crews tends to precede them.

It was rather infuriating how smug the dragon sounded. Zylaa considered this, for a moment. She was starting to get the hang of this thought process-- how to skim over ideas and not transfer them to Flame. She was, however, unreasonably flattered by his estimation of the pirate crew as "clever."

Why do you call us pirates? she said.

Your Great Megahexapod is frolicking with some dolphins about a mile behind you, said the dragon.

It's someone else's Great Megahexapod, thought Zylaa, successfully resisting the urge to turn and look.

Aha. Aha. As Hunty fetched the notebook and handed it over, Flame had to focus on hovering lower, and Robert stood up, walking along his neck to reach out towards the ship for the logbook. Robert even walked like a hero, all confidence and poise. As he returned to his saddle, Flame rose up into the air again. Find me when you get to the city, all of you, he said. Or I will find you instead.

Your point is duly noted, said Zylaa.

[Goosh]

Goosh had something of a highly selective attention span. He could spend a week walking around with undone bootlaces, but remember the names and likenesses of innkeepers of the last five port they'd docked in, and just as often the complete opposite.

So while the entire hero-Robert-is-farmer-Bob bit whooshed a good metre over his ears, he watched as Zylaa's expression dashed through stoicism, then shock, then concentration. Of course, it helped that he had been standing right next to her, trying to sparkle in a helpful, non-piratey way.

Hunty gave Robert and Flame—which was, Goosh thought, a bit silly and obvious as far as names for dragons went. No one went around calling him Sparkles, did they?

Well, not to his face, at least.

Anyway, Hunty gave them the logbook and the hero and his dragon buzzed off into the evening. Zylaa still had a faraway look on her face. “What's the deal?” he asked her quietly, watching the fading silhouette of the dragon in the distance.

[Huntress]

When the dragon and its rider had left, Hunty turned around. Bloody Mary craned his neck to eye her carefully. The captain looked a bit concerned, but she always looked a bit concerned when she'd just handed the logbook away to harbour officials. Not that it contained anything that could've become problematic, they were hardly newbies in the business, but she'd still handed one of the most important documents on the ship away and that sort of thing triggers a pirate's sense of self-preservation. A pirate without a sense of self-preservation is a dead pirate, so she made a point of sticking to that attitude.

"So, uh, the merchant ship guise again, then?" the meepit hazarded. Hunty seemed to startle out of her thoughts.

"Huh? Yeah, guess so, that's our best guise and I wouldn't want to risk anything in this situation. So tell me," she turned her head to look at Bloody Mary, "a moron or a man too smart to let us notice just how smart he is?"

"I always hated reverse psychology," the meepit said sternly. "The guy's a farmer. And a hero, a cookie-cutter one at that. We were lucky that he didn't wear a loincloth and speak in single-syllable words. But we're headed for a city and somehow I don't doubt that we'll manage to find, say, one or two guys there who are slightly sharper thinkers."

Hunty took a deep breath, then furrowed her brow and cast a look around. "Alrighty then, folks, it's been a while since we last did this but I hope we all still remember how it goes, yes? Infiltrating a harbour undercover to gain info, gather supplies and not get killed. Standard procedure. If any of you turns out to have forgotten how it goes, I'ma keel you just to shake your memory up a bit, clear? And we currently have subsection B in works with the plan, 'Including newbies who haven't done this before' but we've also done that before and you've all been schooled in this plan at some point or other so I'm hoping that you'll be able to school them as well. We've gone long enough not being proper pirates, so this situation is probably just what we need for a little revision. All clear? Good. Any questions?"

[Zylaa]

“What's the deal?” Goosh asked Zylaa in an undertone. Zylaa shook herself away from watching Flame soar off into the distance.

"A deal important enough to be made an announcement," Zylaa muttered back. So when Hunty finished her instructions, and ended with the request for questions, the weasel girl raised one hand tentatively.

"Not a question, per se, but a complication. Because we clearly can't get away with piracy being simple any more," said Zylaa. "That dragon is not, in fact, a souped up horse. He can talk-- at least through mind speech anyway. And he is none too pleased with his current status as a souped-up-horse, so he wants us to help him out." She took a deep breath.

"He also knows that we are pirates. He spotted the Blarf, and apparently our reputation has preceded us. So we're to find him in the city, or he'll 'find us instead.'" She made air quotes with her fingers. "I am not sure if the implied threat was to out us as pirates or to eat us alive, but it was there."

[Deleted]

During the Captain's entire little escapade (for lack of a better word) with the dragon and its rider, Nasue had still been up in the crow's nest. Most of her sandwiches had been eaten; the one that hadn't was lost to the sea when the Blarf decided to play dolphin. Of course, thanks to Murphy's Law, it was the one that had taken the longest to prepare.

After all, the roaches hadn't killed themselves.

Yes, Nasue ate bugs. She was (and still is) a coati. Deal with it.

Her first thought when she spotted the dragon approaching? Crap! Wait, no... wait. Wait until you know if it's hostile or not.

When she spotted the dragon's rider? ...what? Is that guy out of his mind?! Why would the dragon agree to something like that?!

And then they started talking. Nasue listened* to the dragon's rider - some bloke named Robert - and the Captain, talking about his past, about Port Parnassos, about Spacefleet... and then about pirates. Or more specifically, the subject of whether they were pirates.

Right at that moment the coati was very glad that she was not in the Captain's shoes. She would not have handled that well at all.


Once the dragon and its rider were flying off, Nasue decided to get back down on deck. Holstering the telescope and grabbing her 'food bag' in her teeth, she climbed onto the nets, and from there basically hopped all the way down.

And she arrived in time for a briefing from the Captain.

"Alrighty then, folks, it's been a while since we last did this but I hope we all still remember how it goes, yes? Infiltrating a harbour undercover to gain info, gather supplies and not get killed. Standard procedure. If any of you turns out to have forgotten how it goes, I'ma keel you just to shake your memory up a bit, clear?"

Hang on, she didn't mention the rookies--

"And we currently have subsection B in works with the plan, 'Including newbies who haven't done this before' but we've also done that before and you've all been schooled in this plan at some point or other so I'm hoping that you'll be able to school them as well."

Oh, okay.

Nasue felt herself tense. This was it.

She'd joined the crew because they promised safety. She'd stayed because she didn't have anywhere else to go... or anyone to go to. She was becoming part of this close-knit group, but that would mean joining them in more dangerous and less legal activities.

Was she cut out for a lifestyle like this? Here, she was going to find her answer.

"We've gone long enough not being proper pirates, so this situation is probably just what we need for a little revision. All clear? Good. Any questions?"

And then Zylaa went and broke the news that things would be more complicated than that. The dragon was smart. And he wanted their help to liberate him from being a 'souped up horse', or else.

"I don't blame him," the coati said. "Well, I don't blame him for not being happy with being a vehicle--erp, I mean, a flying steed. I mean, the way you put it, Zylaa, it sounds a bit like he'd been forced into it. Okay, maybe I shouldn't draw conclusions, but--"

She took a breath and clenched her fist.

"Maybe it's stupid of me to say this, but... no-one deserves to be an unwilling servant. Ever."


Only a second later did she realise what she'd just said.

"Um--!" Nasue stepped back. "Sorry. I wouldn't want to compromise the crew or ship or anything. I mean, my opinion's not that important, right?"


_{* Even though it's probably hard to hear a conversation on the deck from all the way up in the crow's nest. Chalk that one up to good hearing or something.}

[Huntress]

Hunty listened to Zylaa's revelation, then remained staring up at the yards for a little while.

"Well, seeing how complication-prone our adventures always are," she finally said, "I should probably be glad that this here is as simple as it is. Dragon-liberating, then? Can do. We once liberated an entire race of blarfs, we've saved the world like, twice, I'd like to think that one dragon won't pose too much of a problem."

"Famous last words," Bloody Mary said.

"Aren't you the little miss sunshine," the captain jabbed back. "Anyway, this might even turn out to be a good thing. Dragons are old and powerful creatures. If we win its gratitude, we might gain a pretty useful ally-"

"-who doesn't want to be a servant-" the meepit mumbled.

"-because being an ally is nowhere near the same thing as being a servant, do you mind?" Hunty furrowed her brow. "What I'd like to know is why a dragon, onnacounta being a, you know, dragon, even needs help getting liberated. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be as good at biting Robert the farmerboy neatly in half."

"And then you'd get an angry mob with pitchforks at your door, or nest in this case," Bloody Mary pointed out. Hunty gave him an approving now-you're-being-helpful glance.

"Well, tracking a huge dragon down shouldn't be too hard once we're in the city, if our buddy Bob is their local national hero there. Guess we'll then talk in more detail. But first we need to get to that city, so everyone back to your positions if you please, and brace for landing maneuvers."

* * *

The first stars were appearing in the sky as the Weewoo slid into its designated spot by the pier in Port Parnassos City Harbour. It was a magnificent white city, with a rich and turbulent history, which meant that it'd burned down a good fifteen times before a slightly smarter local tyrant eventually decided to make an investment and rebuild the place entirely out of expensive imported but entirely fireproof stone. As he'd also been a huge fan of fantasy literature, the city looked like a cross between Minas Tirith and all those pages in art history books that discuss classicism, but the eventual outcome wasn't bad.

Once all the standard mooring procedures were over and done with, Hunty gathered the entire crew for a meeting on the main deck.

"So remember, folks, that one night at the tavern can give more than an entire year's worth of newspapers, if you keep your eyes open and don't drink or blab too much," she said. "Try not to go solo, that's just asking for trouble. We're merchants looking for a lucky strike, mostly deal with import and export and general cargo transport, basically anything to do with ports. Our hold is currently empty but we're looking for exotic spices to buy and are willing to pay a good price. If anyone can get any discreet info on the snark, the dragon, his rider or the whereabouts of any of them, all the better, but don't initiate any talk if the info doesn't come your way itself, we don't want to rouse suspicion. Right, city permit until dawn. We'll meet up here when the sun rises and then see what we got."

[Goosh]

“So, not only are we searching a large city for information on some mysterious object that will be incredibly difficult to find, we also have to find some way to release a dragon, which for all we know could be bound to Robert. Or Bound even, capital b, serious magic stuff. And we've already done the Mage Manor thing.” Goosh sighed. “Is it just me, or do these things always end up being so needlessly complicated?

"We should probably make sure none of the Fleet go off without one of us with them. That's just asking for trouble in this place. And I guess Zari will be going with Speck. Anyone who wants to come with me is welcome, I suppose. I'm going to sparkle it up and see what I can find out.”

[Ikkin]

"Hey, look on the bright side," Ikkin said to Goosh, "At least freeing the dragon will give us something to do until we find information on the snark. And, who knows, maybe the dragon knows something about snarks that we could find useful. We've already run into a hero, so it wouldn't be too strange if convenient story-tropes like that started popping up, right?"

She paused, considered that thought for a moment, and sighed. "It's probably not going to be that easy... but it can't hurt to hope, right? Anyway, I hope you don't mind if I tag along with you -- I feel like I haven't done anything in ages, and I kind of want to start now."