The Butcher of Gadobhra

Woodrat came awake. Someone was holding him by the back of his coat and shaking him. Had he been caught slacking again? What had he been doing? He didn't want to wake up. What ship was he on? He was hot, and sick, and wanted to go back to sleep. But someone wouldn't let his stay asleep.

Abruptly, someone forced his teeth apart and shoved something down his throat. It was hot and awful, not food fit for man or beast. He was dropped on to something soft and springy and an unintelligible voice boomed nearby. He felt worse. He laid down to go back to sleep. The wouldn't let him.

Woodrat came awake fully, feeling horrible. He was held by the back of his coat and being shaken again. The shaking stopped and he closed his eyes.

"Dammit, wake up!"

Words? Those were words. Woodrat's ears were recovered enough that his brain made that connection. Again, something held him up and shook him. He opened his eyes. His first mate was looking at him and yelling. Woodrat raised a finger and pointed at him. "See here now, your captain needs a little nap. Just go away and raise a sail or make chain or something like that." He closed his eyes.

Captain Woodrat felt himself held tightly and a large hand put repeated pressure on his abdomen until an explosion started in his stomach, ran up his throat, and he found himself breathing out a plume of fire 10 foot long. He felt better. His mate set him down and handed him three dried red berries. Was that what he had eaten before?

"Make some smoke, you're nearly dead. Then chew these up, and force out some more fire. You need to drop your heat before you burst your furnace." Ozzy took a handful himself and chewed them up, followed by burping up his own plume of fire that was significantly bigger than Woodrat's had been. He was jealous about that. He was captain! Where did his mate get off having bigger fire than he did!

Looking at his furnace, he was appalled.

Woodrat (Mate, Veteran Shipwright) Level: 8      OVERHEATED. Furnace ready to burst!!

With haste, Woodrat burned 150 fuel and 150 heat to bring himself back into balance. As he did, he immediately felt better and the fever left his brain. He was confused, but could think clearly. He'd been close to death!

Captain Woodrat (Mate, Veteran Shipwright) Level: 8      HOT! and getting HOTTER!

Smoke: 1525/1525  Heat: 2805/2825  Fuel: 4802/1623   Furnace: 32/32  Smoke Eating: 15/15

"What the devil is going on?"

Ozzy ate another handful of berries and blew out another plume of fire. "The eruption must still be going on. There's a hot wind blowing and we're taking on too much heat, too fast. Watch your furnace, it's going up a little bit at a time and you'll be losing smoke trying to control it. Here, have some salad. It's delicious. You need to be eating to keep up your fuel."

Woodrat watched as every minute his furnace ticked up. A wonderful thing, free heat. Too bad it was killing them. His mated dumped a bundle of salad in his lap, most of it brown and brittle with little or no green stuff. He realized he was sitting on burnt salad. and all around him was burnt salad. It stretched out before him, a huge island of it, and beyond that was the Smoke. Angry waves of smoke, with rolling swells. They'd run aground on a Sargasso, which should have been their death. The green tendrils should have reached up and strangled them. But the Sargasso had been a victim of the Eruption just as every other thing in the smoke had been. The huge floating island of salad was brown and crisp underneath a thin blackened crust.

The stuff was brittle and tasted worse than splintered wood, something else the captain had been forced to eat a time or two. The salad went down easier, but the wood tasted better. He managed a bite of it, and then another. The small berries were dry and tasty, but his throat was sore from breathing fire. He picked them out and made a pile of them before eating more of the dry strangleweed.

"By the gods, what a jest. Reduced to eating burned salad as fast as we can to survive an excess amount of heat."

His mate laughed at him. "It's not bad, tastes just like chicken!" Woodrat just stared at his chuckling mate as he shoved another handful of sargasso weed into his mouth. The poor lad had gone mad. Chicken was a delicacy only found in the islands. He'd had a bite one time. Wonderful stuff and first rate fuel.

"Now that I've finally woke you up from your little nap, it's time to get to work. This isn't a place to hang around, and we need a ship. Luckily, we have quite a few to choose from, all in the finest of condition."

The splinter was nearby, and his mate had carefully gathered all the parts of it into a pile. The Deadman's Chest sat at the top of the pile of broken wood. His eyes turned to the Sargasso, leagues of deadly vegetation and dead ships were now a charred wilderness. Broken masts stood up at odd angles. Some ships were hull up; others were hull down. Excitement filled him. There was more unclaimed wood here than he had ever seen!

Ozzy was walking towards the first ship; Woodrat ran to catch up. The ground was spongy and he wobbled a bit as he ran, used to a firm deck. As each of the big swells moved across the smoke, the salad under him moved up and down. As he caught up, Ozzy bent down and tore up a chunk of burnt salad, handing it to him. "Eat. If you run out of fuel, you die. Save the berries. Helpful for getting rid of excess heat. And I'll show you another use. You need to be constantly eating, and we're going to have to sleep in short shifts." Grumbling, Woodrat stuck the tasteless stuff in his mouth. Ozzy ate a huge chunk, licked his lips and chuckled.

There was something odd about his mate, and it extended beyond his odd sense of humor about food. Whereas Woodrat felt feverish with more heat than was good with him, Ozzy looked comfortable. And it was more than just stripping down to his kilt. The man's skin was darker than before, the shade of an old copper coin.

Woodrat grew more and more curious. "We shipwrecked running from that wave of heat, I remember that much. Do you want to tell me what happened next and why we're both alive?"

Ozzy smiled at him, a manic look in his eyes, white teeth gleaming. "I will, as soon as I figure it all out. For now, we need to go shopping for a new ship. Oh, and we may have visitors." Woodrat asked more questions, but the answers were always cryptic. His mate was up to something...and then Woodrat realize what he fevered brain had been trying to tell him.

"You made Mate! Congratulations!"

Ozzy smiled at him again. "Aye, it happened as we past that big ship, but we were a little busy at the time for either of us to notice.

You're promotion to Ship's Mate has been accepted!

-You're own captain approves of you and has given you the responsibilities of a mate on his ship, Splinter.

-You have earned the respect of a captain of one of Her Majesties Ships of the Line, and taken his salute. Such respect is not given lightly.

You have earned 10 core skill points.

You have gained access to the Mate's list of core skills.

Woodrat grinned at Ozzy. "Well, look at that. If I'd have known that riding a whale was all it took to make mate, I could have saved myself quite a few years."

"Or been food for the fishies. I was pretty certain that was where we were headed" Ozzy flexed his arms and hands. He'd held so tightly to that chain, it was like he could still feel the pull of the leviathan on his muscles. His arms ached and his hands were painful.

"Oh, aye, I won't say the thought had crossed my own mind. Every time that whale shifted, he nearly cracked us in half. I was fixing the deck over and over as planks warped and cracked. But we made it. That's what counts."

The first ship they came to was a three master with two full decks above the cargo. the masts were splintered stubs and she sagged everywhere from dry rot and woodworms. Not a lot of good wood to find in this one. As if in response to Ozzy's earlier statement, charred sailors began to line up on the rails, screaming at them. They began to climb down the ship, using the burnt vegetation. Many fell and then got up.

Ozzy screamed back at them. He was overheating and spoiling for a fight. Two flensing hatchets appeared in his hands, created from smoke. He turned and jested to Woodrat. "Tell that little knife of yours it's time to get to work, captain."

Captain Woodrat unsheathed Blackfyre. The sword moaned in anticipation of a meal. The charred raced towards them, not knowing what they were running to. It wasn't a fight, so much as a slaughter. Ozzy ate a full handful of the spicy berries, and suggested Woodrat do the same. As the hoard of charred shambled towards them, first Ozzy and then Woodrat breathed out cones of flame. Woodrat again felt oddly jealous of his mate's larger flame. He reminded himself that he had a much better hat.

The fire reached the charred, beings who lusted after more heat, but could never acquire it. What was left of them blackened further and they grew spindly. Ozzy stepped into the mass of them, humming to himself and put down one with each swipe of his hatchets. With extra heat to power his Strike Undead ability and add extra damage to Hack Undead, he was doing a huge amount of damage on each hit. Normally, the horde of charred would be a thing to fear, but their numbers meant nothing when each hit a hatchet or cursed sword dropped one of them.

The creatures fell into black dust, and as another group appeared on the rails, the two sailors loaded up on more of the berries, venting their overloaded furnaces and destroying the creatures in their way. The last was a pitiful creature in a rotted coat that might once have belonged to a captain. Woodrat motioned Ozzy to step back. "Captains work, best we not risk him putting a curse of mutiny on you. Some of the charred officers have strange magics." Woodrat swung with his sword, decapitating the once-captain in one blow. As it fell, he noticed a small bauble pinned to its chest.

Bilgewater Academy Annual Swimming Contest - 1st place.

He might have cheated, but he swam faster than anyone else.

+4 Ranks to Swim the Smoke

1.5 x normal swimming speed

Woodrat pinned the little medal to his own coat. "I'll never be accused of having gone to an academy, but this will come in handy if the two of us are swimming for our lives from a shark. I don't have to be faster than the shark, just faster than you."

Ozzy laughed at his captain's joke, as Ship's Law required, then replied, "I'll just eat the shark. Swimming makes me hungry."

Ozzy grabbed Woodrat and tossed him up to the deck of the ship. The captain yelped as he flew through the air and landed on the deck. He straightened up and looked around. Nothing stirred. "A good plan, Mr. Ozzy, I've scouted the ship and dealt with hostiles."

Ozzy threw his chain to the rail, a hook catching tight, and climbed up. He had to be careful of the rotted deck that Woodrat navigated across with ease. He weighed a lot more, and his steps were heavy on the old wood. The cargo area was empty of anything but salad. The ship had settled over time and the vegetation had moved in.

They quickly looked in the cabins below the first deck, but found nothing of use. The galley area had been destroyed with not even a wooden plate left whole. Only the captain's cabin contained anything worth taking, the contents protected by a stout door that the charred hadn't been able to break open, but that splintered when Ozzy kicked it in. Woodrat found an ancient rutter with maps of the smoke and description of the currents. Each rutter was a navigator’s own log of his observations and discoveries. They were frustratingly personal and might also be in code. Each navigator was jealous of his knowledge. With time though, they could reveal knowledge of currents, islands, and other places of note. Woodrat tucked the book into his coat.

Besides the journal, Ozzy found two bottles of some dark purple beverage which Woodrat immediately tried and proclaimed to be "Good enough to drink."

Having searched this ship, they moved across the empty island of burnt vegetation. "One ship down Mr. Ozzy, and a hundred to go. I'm a bit worried about the charred though."

Ozzy stretched and flipped one of his hatchets in the air and caught it. "Better now than before. You were sleeping like a newborn babe when the first two batches attacked. I was standing on top of you, hacking them down."

Woodrat wondered if he was serious, and decided that he was. The thought of laying there helpless with charred nearby made him shiver. He reached down and tore up more crispy veggies, and pocketed a handful of the berries. "I see your point. Let's concentrate on goading them out of the nearest ships and clearing it out. We need to dump this heat somewhere, so it might as well go into ridding the area of those creatures." They both began chewing more food and swallowing it, one person enjoying the meal more than the other, and headed towards the next vessel.

Mr. Ozzy, Ship's Mate   Level 10    Burning Brightly

Smoke: 3200/5770  Heat: 15000/15250  Fuel: 600/5570   Furnace: 0/150  Smoke Eating: 0/130

You have gained a Legendary Title: Whale Rider

Fire Eating has reached Rank 10

Active Fire Resistance has reached Rank 10

Hack Undead has reached Rank 9

Strike Undead has reached Rank 8

Playing with Fire has reached Rank 10

Smoke of a Distant Fire has reached rank 10

Aspect of Radiance has reach rank 1

You are Marked by Jack Fyrebeard

Perk: Shielding has been gained.

You have gained a new choice for Heritage.

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