Day 1 - Fritzholm Wins a Ship!
Day 3 - The Crew Signs the Contract
Day 16
Day 21 - Landing on Ginsel / The Irony of the Intrepid Sextet
Day 22 - The Duke's Daughter Kidnapped
Day 23 - Rescue / Dragon Slaying
Day 24 - The Whole Story
I am now the proud owner of my own star-faring ship. During an otherwise ordinary day of card gambling I found myself in a high-stakes game of progressive pot poker. Divine light shined on my hand, leaving me with none other than an unbeatable royal flush. I pushed table stakes into the pot and won a huge sum of coinage in addition to the deed to a ship. I wasted no time is signing some of my fellow card players on as crew and launching off to adventure.
We have plotted a course for the crescent planet of Ginsel, which is rumored to have "Good Trade"
The crew is quite capable. We seem to have all the major positions filled in just the four of us. What luck!
I have written up a ship's contract and the crew (listed below) has signed it.
Mustafa is an excellent cook. His dishes have a much more refined sense flavor than my own. I should spend some time trading recipes with him.
Ah yes, this is the way I remember ship food. Mustafa's skill has succumb to the boredom of dried foods. It will be good to restock our food stores. It should only be a few more days now.
We have landed on Ginsel and have picked up supplies and cargo. Kerkstra Shippin' has enlisted our ship to deliver a magical trunk to a wizard named Clorinthal on Oerth. It will be very good to return there. Perhaps I can visit my sister, Sara. I have also made a stunningly shrewd purchase of a load of goods from Tinsley at Monarch. The poor man is completely desperate to ship absolutely anything from his warehouse. Kerkstra suggests we return from Oerth with basic cloth, sacks, barrels, and perhaps millstones. These items will sell well when we return at harvest. We should be able to make a small fortune on this trip if all goes well.
I started chopping a tree down, but I only got half way done before finding something more important to do.
Ezekiel has finally settled on a solid design for a cargo crane. It will take the blacksmith weeks to complete all of the parts. We'll have to wait until we return to build the crane.
The Irony of the Intrepid Sextet:
We met a trio of charming ladies at the tavern tonight. Tara Bertrand, daughter of the Duke, was chief among them. She is quite cultured and a very good dancer, but seems to have a limited vision of life. I've tried to broaden her experiences by relating some of my more colorful adventures. My crew and I have been invited to her father's house tomorrow night for dinner. Evidently, the Duke is somehow interested in off-world shipping.
I saw a portrait of the town founder this morning. He's was a very impressive, large, dark skinned man with a weapon in place of his right forearm.
After taking care of some business, the crew returned to the tavern where we met the ladies the night before. I got there a couple of hours early. I had invited Tara to see the ship last night, but she declined saying that she would show up early for a tour. Well, she didn't show up early. If she didn't want to see the ship, she should have said as much. Sometimes the polite lies of royalty get on my nerves.
The dinner was wonderful - soup, salad, fish, main course, and desert. It was quite a production. The Duke was obviously trying to impress us. I'm not sure why. I have to admit that I like Duke Bertrand's style. He's a real strong stand-up guy. This is a man who can get thing done, not just a bureaucrat. After dinner Tara took me for a walk in the garden. The garden was beautiful. Tara was beautiful. We talked about the history of Gissel and mused about metaphysics. The evening was delightful. Later I discussed a trade agreement with Duke Bertrand.
The peaceful night was shattered when a Genie kidnapped Tara. Zeek blasted the Genie with Magic Missles, Liam and I attacked the Genie, and Mustafa grappled the creature, but the Genie made its escape anyhow, taking Tara and Mustafa with him.
We investigated. One of the Duke's guests' men was dead in Tara's room. He was wearing a new ring. The room was trashed, but there were no signs of forced entry. It was puzzling. We'd look into this more in the morning.
Crystal Ball, there's so many thing I want to know, Crystal Ball
In the morning I returned to the Duke's room to ask him the hard questions that I felt he was in no condition to answer the night before. He confirmed that Tara was indeed an Enchanter, claiming that she kept it a secret. He was not of the opinion that her magic would have been powerful enough to thwart or stage the kidnapping. I'm still not ruling it out. The Duke was also a bit vague about his enemies. I think his quote was "Everyone has enemies." I also questioned Shain, an ambassador from the southern desert. It was Shain's man who had been killed during the kidnapping (and had been wearing the ring) Now Shain was under house arrest. This didn't seem to bother him in the least. I told him about the ring, but he was little help.
Zeke cast Detect Magic in Tara's room and we discovered that the ring had trace, fading elements of summoning magic. Clearly the Genie had been brought forth with this ring. Liam also brought forth some information by way of magic. Soon we had a sketch of a 30-ish woman who had evidently put the now dead man up to the task of delivering the ring to the scene. It sounded like Charm Person was at work here.
Next stop was the local mages' college in search of a Dowser or Diviner. There, Dr. Schwesing took us for an interminable walk through the interior pan-dimensional spaces of the college. I had always been of the opinion that mages would use magic to make there daily walks shorter, not longer. Who knows. They're an odd lot, some of them. In the end we arrived at a room with a freakin-huge crystal ball. It was child's play indeed for Dr. Schwesing to locate our missing friends. They were in a desert ruin. Liam drew the ruined castle. He sure is handy as a sketch artist.
Shain was able to point the ruin out on the map for us. So it was settled. We were off to the desert. The Duke sent a couple of riflemen, Wedge and Biggs, with us for the rescue.
The crew HATES the name I chose for the ship. Allow me to take a moment to describe the standard naming convention for space ships. The name must contain a distance or length of time followed by the name of a flying or swimming creature. Based on the length of our contract and the general look of the ship I named it The Quarter-Century Yellowjacket. Like I said before the crew HATES the name, so I suggested The Royal Flush. They like this much better. Have they no concern for naming conventions? Oh well. At least I wont have to paint the ship yellow now.
Curses! Somehow my trusty enchanted Field Plate has become more mundane, but still enchanted Plate mail. How can this be? Maybe the clerics of Gnoble Abbey had some purpose in mind for this change. I cannot deny that it is still my armor despite its transformation. Life is very strange sometimes.
So we went zooming across the seas, skies, and sands of Ginsel. "Zooming", of course, is a relative term. We were making good time, but I was lead to believe that the ship would travel much faster than this. It took us several hours to get to the southern continent, but at least I was given the assurance that there would be No RADAR - 100% guaranteed.
The desert heat was upon us when we spotted something airborne far off in the distance. Far away as it was, we were still able to tell that it was a blue dragon larger than our ship. It was intent on attacking us. Many people have sung the praises of dragon's incredible intellects, but this assault upon us was further evidence of the feeble lizard mind. The crew sprung into action! With Liam's deft maneuvering, Zeke's mighty spells, the firepower of Wedge and Biggs, and my deadly accurate use of the ballista we were able to grievously wound the creature. Only at this late hour did the foolishness of the attack dawn on the dragon's small mind. It bid a hasty retreat, but I would not let the evil fiend get away so easily. I had the ship chase the monster down. Even though we were bathed in deadly lightning we were still able to slay the dragon. Sadly, Biggs was killed in the fracas.
With that obstacle overcome we proceeded unhampered to the ruins. We landed the ship unnoticed a safe distance away.
Now this may seem unbelievable to you when you first hear it, but believe me when I tell you that it is possible. Much like the Wu-Zen masters who can, though use of secret techniques and shear willpower, perform seemingly impossible tasks I, Fritzholm Hammermill, have developed a method that enables me to follow a thin trail of sand through the very sands of the desert! Do not ask me how it is done, for a will not expose the secret, but you can be confident in the knowledge that it can be done.
That said I will get on with the tale of our rescue.
We sneaked into the ruins and shortly came upon Mustafa. He was lounging on the porch and seemed intent on not searching for Tara. He kept assuring us that she was fine - off doing "girl things" and we shouldn't bother her. Non-sense! This is a rescue. We split up and searched the house. The place was pretty empty, but also mostly harmless except for a strange torture chamber with a bottomless pit. Eventually, Zeke and I discovered a chessboard room with some non-Tara babe on a dais in the center engrossed in the reading of a big book. You know... now that I think about it we never did find that book. I wonder what happened to it. Oh well.
We regrouped with Wedge, Liam, and Mustafa (who had come to his senses on the issue of finding Tara) and we charged in. By 'charged in' I mean that we rescued Tara and Zeke summoned up a huge lightning bolt to blast the evil sorceress. With his amazing mathematical abilities he was able to calculate in an instant the correct angles by which to bounce that lightning bolt around the chess board so as to have it zap the evil lady three whole times! Once again we triumph over evil!
We returned to the ship to sleep the night. I let Tara have the bunk above mine.
OK, here's how it worked:
This evil sorceress (who isn't even human!) is all psyched up to get this incredibly powerful pearl. It's buried in this magic room in the basement of the ruined castle, but here's the catch - the magic room is locked... with magic.
Some mages might be tempted to use the extremely common spell Knock to open the door, but not our villain. She has other ideas. You see there's a key that opens this magic room. There's a right and wrong way to do things and opening the door with the key is simply the right way. Now who has the key? Shain and his men have the key, and they pass right through the very ruins where the evil sorceress awaits. It's all so easy! Too bad she bungles the job. Shain and his men get away... almost.
If nothing else, the evil sorceress can be incredibly beautiful and charming when she wants to be. The enchantress charms one of Shain's men and slips a ring on his finger. This is not a wedding ring, but a genie ring.
Now if you've been reading my logs you know the next part. Shain gives Tara the key. The genie pops up in Tara's bedroom and kidnaps her. We fly across the world to rescue her and we blast the evil sorceress.
All that's left to do is open the magic room and nab the pearl. That's exactly what we did. The pearl is VERY powerful, but for the life of us no one can figure out what it's good for.
We flew back to Barretstown. The Duke was very happy to see his daughter returned. We were heroes!