Day 26 - Launch
Day 36 - Corpse on board
Day 37 - Zeke frotzes his noggin
Day 41 - The Pebble Pub
Day 43 - Greyhawk
Day 47
Day 50 - Visitting Sara
Day 52 - Lizardmen!
Day 55
Day 56 - Free slaves on the Rock
Day 58
Day 60 - Leaving the Rock
Day 69 - Ghost ship
We're all loaded and ready to launch for Oerth. The cargo hold is packed full of valuable goods. We stand to make a sizable profit off this trip. I can also use the time to study magic more deeply. Tara has loaned me several books on elementary enchanting. Dr. Schwesing of the local mages guild advised me to spend numerous contiguous hours studying if I wanted to expand my mental abilities sufficiently to fully understand spellcraft enough to cast spells. I plan on studying 6 hours at a time per day if I can.
While Looking through some navigation charts Liam and Zeke found a little scrap of paper that gave us mysterious direction to a secret trans-dimension cargo space in the ship. It was completely dark and measured about 2 feet by 4 feet by 6 feet. And what's even more shocking is there was some dead guy in there! He was some sort of recently dead noble. He had an interesting necklace with and outdated map of the galaxy, 4 rings, a bracelet, a sabre, and a magic bag. We conducted an honorable space version of a burial-at-sea and sent the poor guy off to a better place. We detected that the ring, the sabre, and the bag were magical. Mustafa and I tried to figure out what the sabre's magical ability was, with no luck. The magic bag, was an easier matter. We Zeke opened it the bag said "To whomever finds this bag - Beware the priests of the Golden God." when we opened it, which is plenty cryptic if you ask me. It reminded me of some totally useless advice I got from a pair of price-gouging nagas some years back. This kind of advice is better left unexamined. The bag contained a spell book, which Zeke ran off with cackling.
Zeke learned the spell identify from the dead noble's spell book and he cast it so we could figure out what the ring, the sabre, and the pearl's powers were. One of the rings was magical and had the ability to summon whatever its counterpart ring was attached to with but a word. The other magical ring was connected to the sabre (which was otherwise mundane). We gave the rings to Mustafa so he could summon his rapier at will. Won't that surprise our enemies? As for the pearl, trying to identify it frotzed Zeke's mind. I hope he recovers.
Looks like Zeke's noggin has recovered from trying to identify the pearl. He's up and about today like nothing happened. Liam was glad to get some time off from piloting.
Today we came upon a very small asteroid with a very small dock and a very small pub. The place was so small that the owner hadn't even bothered to name it, so I suggested The Pebble Pub. They seemed to like the name well enough. We stopped there and had a few drinks. Their blue plate special was merely called "Meat" and was extremely expensive (1gp), so I didn't try it. I told the few customers of the pub about Ginsel's trade situation, and to mention the name of Fritzholm Hammermill. After our drinks and a bit of relaxing we were on our way.
We should be arriving on Oerth in a couple of days.
We landed safely on Oerth today. It sure felt good to be back. I have to admit that this planet is the only one the feels 'real' to me. Maybe it's something about physics or gravity. I don't real understand those well enough to tell you for sure. We delivered the trunk to Clorinthal the drunken wizard and received the remainder of our fee. That alone would have been worth the trip, but we still have a hold full of cargo to sell.
A few people I've never met before recognized me today!
The market here in Greyhawk is quite efficient. With a minimum of haggling I've been able to sell the vast majority of our off-world goods and purchase the goods that will be needed for harvest on Ginsel. I also picked up some assorted equipment for myself, and some gifts for Tara. I look forward to selling the last of the goods so I can visit my sister.
My sister was quite a sight for sore eyes. It was so good to see her again. She hasn't changed much these last few years. She's still teaching tracking and reading at the local children's institute. Sara married a fine upstanding young ranger by the name of Henry Freshwater, so I guess she's now Sara Freshwater. They're living on a gorgeous ranch, and they own the land themselves too. The place is great - well over 150 acres of fields, hills, and woods. I have a nephew now, little Fritzholm Freshwater. Wow! They named the little guy after me! He's a sharp kid too. The whole deal kind of makes me want to settle down and have a family of my own. *sigh*
Sara and Henry prepared a nice dinner for us. I tried to help out, but they wouldn't hear of it. You know what they say about too many cooks. It was a very relaxing evening. It was just the ticket before a long space trip. Zeke even spent a little time out in the forest trying to figure out what nature was all about. I gave him a few pointers, but it didn't help. It looks like he's a city elf if there is such a thing.
We were just approaching the grinder, an asteroid belt outside the orbit of the sun, when we spotted a large spider-lookin' ship. Zeke informed us that it was a Neogi Death Ship. You have to admit that sounds pretty bad, and the ship was about 10 times the size of the Royal Flush, so we had to be careful. When we got close they signaled us with flashing amber lights. Evidently, this is the interstellar signal for "This is a trap." I mean "We need help." Since we are a bold and daring crew we took our chances and decided to help them out. After all, why would a massive ship like that have to resort to trickery to get the drop on us?
The big spider ship was full of hyperactive, mechanically crazed, gnomes and big hippo headed giff. Now, I am informed by numerous sources that these gnomes are typical of space faring gnomes. I have only met a few gnomes on Oerth and they seemed calm enough. They tinkered with little clockworks from time to time, but nothing like what these space gnomes had done to their ship. We met with Captain Mob�m, the leader of the giff. He welcomed us aboard and showed us around the ship. The gnomes were tearing up the ship and building all manner of incredible, but only partially functional, machine. Their currently plan was to create a giant gnome-powered propeller to thrust them through space. You see, neither the gnomes nor the giff had any method of moving the ship. They were stranded.
We concocted a plan to shuttle a few of the giff to a nearby planet where they could hire someone to tow the ship, but before we could put this plan into action we were attacked by 3 ships full of lizardmen! We cut the Royal Flush free of the spider ship and maneuver into defensive position. One of the lizardmen ships broke off while one ship attacked us and the other attacked the spider ship. The foolish fiends saw fit to try to board us and overwhelm us by shear numbers. This suited me fine. Their heat deprived and hatred addled brains were clearly overtaxed by such things as tactics. We picked them off at will as they struggled stubbornly to grapple our ship. By the time that they finally boarded the ship they only outnumbered us by 5 to 1. Needless to say we slaughtered the 'feebs' in short order. I personally killed over a dozen myself!
While our little battle raged, the gnomes managed to blow one lizardmen ship to smithereens and the giff slaughtered boarders from the last ship with almost as much success as we had. When the dust settled we had captured one wasp class ship, salvaged another minor spelljamming helm, and sent the final ship into a panicked retreat.
Liam took the helm of the captured lizardmen ship. Mustafa led the giff in crewing the ship and we took them to the Rock of Bral.
Being the only non-pilot crew on the ship can get tricky. Today I got knocked off the ship by a wing while I was adjusting the swing angle. It's a good thing I always carry a rope and hooks while onboard.
Today we landed on the Rock of Bral. It's an odd little asteroid about a mile long. I've only been here once before and I didn't stay long. We'll be here for as long as it takes to make repairs on The Royal Flush, and sell the lizardmen ship.
We met a ship merchant named Honest Lenny. That made me nervous. Truly honest people rarely have to advertise their honesty. Never-the-less, Lenny seemed to strike a reasonable deal with us. Lenny offered us salvage rates - 15,000 gold. He told us that he could give us 4 times that if we could prove ownership, but even after a complete search of the ship we couldn't turn up a deed. Now there are legal channels for such things such as proof of ownership, but they evidently require endless bureaucracy.
Our next stop was a feisty tavern called The Scaver's Grin. The place was a hive drinking and merriment. We all partied hard. One thing I couldn't help but notice about The Scaver's Grin was that other than the waitresses, there were no women in the bar. There were, however, more than enough waitresses. After speaking with a very pretty waitress named Bambii for a while I was certain the waitresses were also courtesans. Bambii and I retired upstairs for some time. Now I would not normally mention this in the log except for the fact that Liam pounded on my inn room door later that night as Bambii and I were finishing up. He had stumbled across some slavers in a shadier part of town and we hatched a plan to free the slaves. Duty Called! We regrouped at the Royal Flush.
Zeke was far too drunk for combat and was completely drained of magic, so I talked him into calling it a night. Mustafa and I posed as Liam's henchmen and we went to the rendez-vous point. The weaselly guy who was making the sale had two henchmen of his own, but they looked small time. Liam checked on the slaves and then we gave the thugs their payment, but when the weaselly guy opened the chest he found a note from us - SURPRISE. We trashed the riff-raff with ease. One of the henchmen tried to escape, but I shot him down with my bow. We freed the slaves. Mission accomplished!
Zeke bought me a captain's hat today. Wasn't that nice of him? What a great crew!
I've been working with the repair crew on fixing the ship. The repairs are simple enough to understand. I should remember to get some lumber on Ginsel so we can do our own repairs. I think Zeke is doing some research on the magic pearl. Liam drew me a rough sketch for a ship's flag, which I'm having crafted for us. I haven't seen Mustafa for a couple of days now.
I came this close to buying a ring of protection, but evidently it wouldn't work while I was wearing my enchanted armor. Gamelon, the magic shop owner, said that it had something to do with holistic protection auras. This seemed to make sense until I thought about wizards robes. Why would a ring work with robes, but not armor? Even Zeke couldn't give me a coherent answer. I'll have to read up on this subject and discuss it with Tara.
We ran into Captain Mobüm. Even though I told him it wasn't necessary, he insisted on paying the bill for our ship's repairs to thank us for rescuing them.
Mustafa returned to us, and the ship was ready to go, so we set off for Ginsel.
There were two events today. I am unsure if they were somehow related.
First we were forced to slow down by the proximity of a cluster of ships. Zeke didn't like the looks of them, so we avoided the ships.
A few hours later we were forced to slow down again. This time we couldn't get away so easily. A ghost ship sped towards us at three or four times our own speed. They launched skeletons onto our deck (which we promptly slaughtered - what a dumb tactic) and grappled our ship. Liam and Mustafa fought the onrushing skeletons, but I was not content to defend. I leapt onto the ghost ship and took the fight to them! Skeletons are mindless and feeble. I had no trouble destroying eight or ten of them. Soon Mustafa and Liam joined me on the ghost ship. We had beaten all the skeletons and the ghost ship had ground to a halt. We searched the ship, but found no helm and no pilot. I guess that's not too surprising that a ghost ship might just fly itself through space. I wanted to salvage the ghost ship's catapult, but the ship gave Zeke the Heebee-Jeebees. Has the little guy has lost his bravery? I hope not.
