Day 95 - Launch from Ginsel
Day 104 - Pirates!
Day 106 - Farm and Magic
Day 107
Day 108
Day 110 - New mission
Day 111
Day 138 - Greela
Day 146 - Berserkers!
Day 282 - Solune
The Duke was willing to sell us guns and gunpowder for off-world sale, but not raw sulfur for some reason. I was uneasy about traveling around space with a hold full of gunpowder, but Zeke suggested we could but a few barrels in the secret trans-dimensional space. That sounded safe enough, so we bought 4 barrels, which filled that area. We also bought 50 muskets and 50 pistols. Zeke seems to have some experience selling guns or at least he talks a good game. He bought a fancy display case. Knowing that food also sells well on Bral we bought a lot of grains and non-perishable food. We have enough preserve spells to preserve about 200 lbs. of fruit, so we bought some fruit too. Lastly, we bought a hefty amount of highly valuable luxury items such as velvets, jewelry, marble, and finely crafted objects d'art.
This strikes me as another highly profitable cargo.
Today we happened upon a merchant ship being attacked by pirates. Zeke applied his newfound spelljamming skills to overtake the pirates' Eel ship. Mustafa and Anna tested out our new medium ballista. I'm not sure how much damage we did, but we seemed to frighten them. We sailed up alongside and we all (except Zeke of course) boarded the pirate ship in rather unorthodox ways. The catapult and ballista crews ran off and hid below deck while about a dozen armed men came swarming up from below. They were reasonably well trained and had decent tactics, but they were no match for The Mighty Crew of the Royal Flush! We cut them to ribbons and were eventually faced with the Dread Pirate Lloyd. Mustafa and I were able to take Lloyd down with minimal effort, and the battle was over.
The crew below decks all surrendered without a fight.
The merchant ship ran off during the fight, which is too bad. Their ship was badly damaged and burning. I'll bet they could have used our help. Oh well.
The Eel ship's helm, which apparently was powered by magical items, exploded during the fight. I guess they had planned on running away from us and pushed it too hard. That was a harebrained plan at best. You can't escape from people who have already boarded your ship. Anyhow, we had to tow the Eel ship (Good thing it was small). We decided to drop the crew who had surrendered off at a little farming asteroid a few days from where the battle took place.
When we dropped the crew of the eel ship off at Cansazz the first mate, Pearlmudder, give me a key to a secret hatch under the captain's desk.
We opened the hatch and found two boxes. One held coins which were numerous, but most silver. The other held a stash of magic items, presumably for powering the helm. Zeke and Anna spent a day identifying the items. There were two scrolls of protection, a ring of wizardry, a ring of telekinesis, and a magic arrow.
I had ordered the crew off to enjoy themselves while I made arrangements to have our cargo warehoused. By night they had not returned. Additionally, Bambii was no place to be found. I realized I was beginning to really miss that delightful flirt.
I spent a few hours telling the patrons of the bar stories of my recent adventures. Some scoffer who heard tale of my amazing feat of consuming 30 pancakes at one meal claimed I was a liar. We settled on a wager of 10 gold pieces, that I placed at 10-1 odds, that I could do it again. I feel confident that it is a smart wager on my part even though the odds are not in my favor. Winning the wager will have the even more important effect of showing one-and-all that the stories of Fritzholm Hammermill are not to be doubted!
Success! Fritzholm Hammermill has once again consumed 30 pancakes in one meal. I also drink a carafe of orange juice and a bagel just to hint that my limits had not been reached. But wisely, I skipped lunch.
NEWSFLASH - Years after our game Fritzholm's exploits are now popular culture. Check out this comic strip
We sold our entire cargo of food in practically no time. A local merchant family bought the whole load of grain and the fruit was quite popular in the market. The same could not be said for the fine furs, velvets, jewelry, gems, and marble goods. My customers would simply run off during my sales pitch. Soon, no one was coming around at all. What nonsense! There was surely nothing wrong with the quality of our products. I had seen to that personally. Zeke was as puzzled as I about this strange turn of events. He went off to speak with a local merchant about our problem. We took the man to dinner and he solved the mystery for us. Evidently, the last offworlder who came by selling similar (but from what I could tell, inferior) luxuries had brought with him a particular virulent plague. The customers were literally avoiding us like the plague!
We modified our sign to relate that we were from Ginsel and we spread word that our items were 100% free of infection or curse. Maybe business will improve tomorrow.
My romantic life, on the other hand, improved dramatically when Bambii arrived at her waitressing job at The Scaver's Grin after she had previously endulged in a relaxing day off.
Since it is illegal to import weapons to Bral, we met with a gun buyer by the name of Smithcoster on a small asteroid a short distance from The Rock. After examining our goods he bought the whole shipment, gunpowder and all, for about twice what we paid for it. It was a tidy profit. We'll have to run another batch of guns up here from Ginsel next time we get a chance.
Today we also met up with Terio, the stylish leader of some kind of underground anti-slavery group. Mayla is also a member of this group. They had heard tales of our late night slave freeing operation Liam had organized a couple of months ago and wanted to hire us to smuggle a small cargo to Greela for 5000 gp. We agreed and made plans to leave the next day.
So guess what our cargo turned out to be? Mayla herself. We didn't find out until the last minute. I wonder what all the secrecy is about. It's a good thing that we have extra bunks on The Royal Flush.
We landed in a small frontier town on Greela, and delivered Mayla safe and sound to her destination. The trip was remarkably easy considering all the trouble and expense Terio and Mayla's group went to. Oh well, I've never been one to be too distrustful of good fortune.
There's not much to do here, but we'll probably spend a few days selling goods before we leave. That will give us time to figure out if we want to go right back to Bral or stop at Ginsel first.
The Royal Flush was attacked by Berserkers just after we left Greela. We're back on Greela now making repairs to the ship. These Berserkers were holding a mage named Lareth Eln hostage as their spelljammer. In a very unusual coincidence this mage (who we rescued of course) is a native of Solune, Mustafa's home planet. He was very relieved to be rescued and just wants to return home. It's a long trip to Solune, but get this - the helm they were using was a Major Helm and Lareth is more than happy to give it to us if we take him home. We would have brought him home anyhow, but this is some serious icing on the cake. That reminds me I haven't had really good cake in a while.
I haven't written in this log for so long it was all covered with dust and even some cobwebs. Don't worry, I cleaned it up good as new.
We landed on Solune to yet another surprise. Mustafa is going to have to stay here for a few years to take care of some family business relating to food somehow. It's a real shame to see him go. This crew works together so well we've become like family. I'm going to miss Mustafa and not just at dinner time or in a fight. Good luck Mustafa. I hope to see you again.
So Lareth and Mustafa are back home again. This is a nice little place. It's got secret defenses, though, so I wont say too much about it. Shhhhh.
We're going to stay here a couple of weeks to unwind and do some trading. The crew could really use some time off from space travel.
