Sarenith 4, Toilday morning, Day 1

My head was pounding, my mouth was dry and tasted like shit alcohol, and I was laying face down on a hard wooden floor. I tried to get back to sleep; the whole world was swaying back and forth, so most likely I was still drunk. Unfortunately I couldn’t block out the loud creaking noise driving its way into my skull like a spike. I reluctantly sat up to take a look around the room, and realized this definitely wasn’t my dorm. 

I initially assumed that last night had been a lot more intense than normal for me. The throbbing in my head and foul taste in my mouth implied a hangover, but as I slowly came back to reality that seemed off. I wasn’t thirsty, for one. I tried to roll over, and my cheek met the wooden floor. Wood? Someone’s deck? No. No birds. Just creaking. 

I admitted defeat and pulled myself up, looking around the strange grey room. Shit. Who the hell are these people? The room was dimly lit, but I could blearily make out four people. Two kids, two adults around my age. 

One of the adults was a gym rat in a black bandanna, the other was a girl with completely white eyes. Blind, I guess? I didn’t recognize either of them, so I figured I had no chance of identifying the kids. The little guy was still sleeping, but the small girl with long dark hair was sitting in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees. 

“What the hell happened last night?” I croaked, sitting up unsteadily. 

The blind girl reacted to my voice, looking vaguely in my direction. “I think someone drugged us. Probably taggit oil, from the aftertaste. Did you eat anything spicy last night? That can mask it.” Paranoid Chemistry Major? 

“Why, though?” 

Gym rat rolled his eyes. “Well if we’re unlucky, slavery.” 

Shit. “And what if we are lucky?” I couldn’t think of any way that this could be a good thing off the top of my head. 

Before I got an answer, the door slammed open, letting blinding light spear directly into my eyes. Asshole! Colorful spots consumed my entire field of vision, and a word appeared at the edge of my vision: (Blind). In case I didn’t hate the man with the lantern enough, the first thing I saw was him kicking a sleeping kid in the gut. 

“Look alive, ye dogs! Yer needed on the deck!” A trio of men with heavy sticks filed in after him and glared at us. 

What the fuck? The bearded man looked at me with a sneer. “Enjoying the view? Or just deaf?” 

“Uh, actually,” he cracked a long leather whip at me and I felt a line of fire on my shoulder. (5 nonlethal damage) I almost missed the strange floating text that appeared with the pain. No time for questions. Better just do what he says for now. “Ah so you do speak common. Get moving!”

As we filed out, the tiny woman gave me a sympathetic nod. Woman, not child. No kid has a rack like that. Or muscles. She was roughly four feet tall, at most, and her dark tanned arms rippled with muscle. It appeared that I was kidnapped alongside the world’s shortest female bodybuilder. 

As we trudged through the hallways, I noticed colors shifting in and out of greyscale. The walls in front of Whip Asshole were mostly a light yellowish brown, but they would fade to a cement grey as he walked past. What the hell is with his lantern? My fellow kidnappees were a little more colorful than I thought, too. 

The littlest amazon’s hair shifted back and forth between black and chestnut brown. Gym rat’s bandanna was navy, and his cheeks were flushed. Blind girl’s skin was a smooth khaki color that I couldn’t quite place. What the hell was happening? 

(Intelligence check: 6. Success! You have darkvision.) 

I took a moment to process those 7 words. I had a minute to think while quietly following Asshole. Darkvision, as in the ability to see in the dark? Plus “intelligence check”. D&D? You roll intelligence to know things in D&D, right? I was grasping at straws, but those were words I’d mostly seen in tabletop games. For fucks sake, out of all the religions in the world, do not tell me that anime is right about what happens when we die.

I wasn’t paying attention, so I was completely blindsided when Asshole opened the door to the deck, jamming two more spikes of pure light directly into my eyes. Fuck! A large hand grabbed me by the shoulder and gently guided me out. 

Perception 11: minor success. The person guiding you is slightly taller with large hands.

So, probably gym rat? It seemed unlikely that one of the asshole brigade was being particularly helpful, and blind girl was… well, she was blind and her hands didn’t seem unusually large. The two shorties were right out.

When my sight returned, I was standing with the other four in the middle of the deck. I squinted, looking around at the rickety old sailboat. I didn’t know anything about ships, but I had a new resource to draw upon. 

Intelligence 19: success. This is a three masted barque. It is optimized for hauling cargo, but as a Shackles pirate ship it has likely been outfitted with a magical engine to allow for greater speed. 

Just slipping in the magic engine and that I’m on a pirate ship, are we? My thoughts were interrupted by a loud “Ahoy!” boomed from the helm. A towering man with a braided beard was looking down at us with a grin. The glowering men around him contrasted with his jovial tone as he continued.

“So glad ye could join us at last. Welcome to the Wormwood, I hope ye’ stay with us but if ye think there was some mistake, the exit is right there.” He gestured with a crooked smile at the railing on the side of the ship and the empty ocean beyond. “No? Excellent. Name’s Barnabus Harrigan; that’s Captain to you. There’s just three rules for a group of recruits like you. Follow em, and I’ll be able to ignore ye.” He had a thick Shackles accent, according to another intelligence roll. Apparently the shackles accent consisted of talking like the most stereotypical pirate imaginable. 

“First.” Harrigan held up a finger. “Don’t speak to me. Unless there’s blood already being spilt, yer yappin will never be worth my time. He brought out another finger with a flourish. “Second, there’s a keelhauling waiting for anyone caught killin’ anyone. No excuses. Even with you lot, we are short handed.” He gestured with three fingers at a clean cut man standing near us. “Finally, you listen to this man. Mr. Plugg, if ye’d be so kind as to make pirates out of these landlubbers, it’ll save me the trouble of throwing them into the sweatbox until it’s time to make pies out of them.”

One of the glowering officers, a man with a shaved head and a jacket open to show off his abs, stepped forward. “Aye captain.” He had a posh accent. I couldn’t place it, but he definitely didn’t sound like the captain. “You five. Form one rank. There are things we must discuss.” We complied. Not like we have much choice. 

Once we were in place, he started talking about propriety, schedules, respect, and the good grace of our new captain. All very serious and accompanied with the tone of a teacher scolding unruly children. My eyes were glazing over by the third sentence. Instead, I was looking at the new text message rising up in the corner of my vision, perfectly clear despite the piercing light. 

Mission 1: Gain the position of “rigger” or “cook’s mate”:  rewards- 1 exp, Seal of Alternative Payment

Mission? Sounds video gamey, but if I’m reading this right if I get either of those two positions, I’ll get rewarded? if I go with isekai anime logic, I’d better go ahead and at least try. Anything else will just be throwing away resources…. I don’t know how much an experience point is worth, but I can guess what it’s for. What the hell is a Seal of Alternative Payment? Helpfully, my popup shifted, answering my question almost immediately. 

Spellcraft check: 22. Success! 

Seal of Alternative Payment

Aura: Enchantment

Description: by touching this ring to the bare flesh of someone and proposing a trade, you may convince them that sexual service is an appropriate and reasonable payment for something. This may be used as an offer of or a demand for sex, as appropriate.The price of the service or object in question will determine how much sex (and of what quality) will be required to pay (generally speaking, each successful perform: (sexual act) check deducts an equal number of gold pieces in value). On a successful Will saving throw, the target will still accept the basic premise of exchanging sexual favors without any offense, but will generally value your sexual service far less, their own sexual service far more, and in the event of incompatible orientation or total lack of interest they will respectfully decline. After this ring has been used in this manner once, its magic fades and it becomes a mundane signet ring worth 15 gp. 

I didn’t have much time to process that, as Plugg had kept droning on while I zoned out. I refocused when he raised his voice and clapped his hands twice for emphasis. “Now then. We have a few positions that require specific skills. I will be selecting the best among you for those two positions. The rest of you will be swabs until you prove yourselves worthy of something else. First off, we require an additional Rigger. It is a physically demanding job in which you will be climbing in the rigging frequently. As such, the first to reach the crow’s nest shall get the job. Go.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. Weird reward or no, I didn’t have anything to go off of except that mission. I was obligated to at least try. I looked up at the crows nest and lost control of my body. 

Climb check: 17 Success!

I was a passenger as my body dove for the ropes and started hauling itself into the air. Good call, too. I heard the crack of the whip and a grunt of pain behind me. Someone hadn’t wanted to compete, apparently, and this was not an optional race. 

Climb 18: Success! 

Whatever was piloting my body was doing far better than I would have. I’ve gone rock climbing with friends, but gradually navigating a rock wall with a harness could only barely be compared to the manic ascent that my body managed in that moment. Watching my hands working independently was jarring; they weren’t my hands. They were impossibly slender and narrow, with spindly fingers and manicured nails. Stranger still, they were charcoal grey. Obviously I found that unsettling, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I had a race to win. 

Climb 15: Success! 

Trying to focus on anything but my weird hands, I checked on my competition. I was glad to know that the miniature muscle mommy wasn’t a kid, because an actual child keeping pace with me while I climbed faster than I ever thought possible would have been embarrassing. She was hauling ass, keeping pace with a man twice her size. 

Little dude was struggling. His stubby little arms didn’t have the muscle necessary to launch himself upwards like his feminine counterpart. If I’d been bereft of my handy autopilot feature, we would have probably ended up neck and neck with him. Blind girl was shockingly nimble, but once she’d seen short girl and I massively overtake her, she relaxed and took her time with her progress. I was starting to question if she was really blind; from how she moved, it seemed like her eyes were perfectly functional, just a little bit odd. Gym bro’s physique wasn’t for show; he’d been the one that got whipped, and even with a late start and a fresh welt he confidently started his ascent, moving faster than me or the little lady. He must have some experience. 

Climb check: 7 Fail! 

I slipped, and had to spend the next several seconds clinging to the ropes to steady myself. That was all the time short queen needed; I wasn’t going to catch up with her at that point. I took a page out of chemistry girl’s book and started phoning it in until the winner was declared. 

“Alright. Everyone come back down.” We all started to descend, but it wasn’t quite as much fun as climbing up. I looked down, gauged myself to be maybe ten feet off the ground. I was a good bit more athletic and I was some kind of video game character; I figured I could safely jump down. I could not. 

Acrobatics check 12 Fail. Full fall damage. 6 nonlethal. More nonlethal damage than maximum hp. 4 excess nonlethal damage converted to lethal damage. 4/8 health, 8 nonlethal. 

I landed with an unpleasant thud, accented by a wave of nauseating pain. It wasn’t a crunch. No broken bones, hopefully. You dumbass. The only thing I could see was a set of text options emblazoned across my field of vision with perfect clarity. I frantically searched for anything helpful. 

Character sheet

Party

Missions

Rules

Party was blank; no prepackaged allies for me, apparently. The character sheet reinforced my D&D theory, but unfortunately I didn’t find anything related to healing in my frantic search. Rules seemed to just be a general reference document, and I didn’t find anything immediately useful there. By the time I opened missions, I wasn’t really expecting to find anything of use. I scanned through the page anyway. 

Chapter 1 missions 0/18

Gain the position of “rigger” or “cook’s mate”:  1 exp, Seal of Alternative Payment

Ally with 3/6/10 crew members from the following list before 7/4: Caulky Tarroon, Owlbear Hartshorn, Ambrose Kroop, Cut-throat Grok, Sandara Quinn, Rosie Cusswell, Crimson Cogward, Conchobar Shortstone, Syl Lonegan, Jakes Magpie, Fipps Chumlett, Jack Scrimshaw 

Reward: 1 exp, Sudden Coaxing Spell/ 1 exp, Advance Pay, Boots of Authority / 1 exp, craft magic arms and armor

Kill Barnabus Harrigan: 3 exp, Mythic Ascension

I hardly had enough time to process that the text boxes in my head were telling me to commit murder in order to “ascend” before I was abruptly pulled back to reality by a warm tingling sensation that settled in my legs and the welt from that whip strike earlier, before fading away along with the pain. I opened my eyes to see the little dude giving me a worried smile. “You ok there, buddy? You took a spill, you did.” That’s the good shit. I feel great! Plugg was glaring at our exchange with disdain; he hadn’t moved from where he was standing. Harsh.

I let the short guy help me stand. “Uh. Thanks..?”

“Conchobar Shortstone, at your service.” He had a pleasant tenor voice. I was expecting squeakier.

“Cool. Thanks, Conchobar.” He cocked his head and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. Maybe the cool kids here don’t use the word cool?

I got my bearings and tried to not look stupid as my fellow kidnappees returned to the ground. I tried to speed read the character sheet, and got through the top segment. It wasn’t a D&D sheet, but it was close enough that I could still get at least some information out of it. Male, physically agile but weak, almost as naturally charismatic as it is possible to be, and a drow sorcerer. 

Drow were sexy evil underground BDSM elves with really dark skin. Nearly charcoal grey hands? Check. Eyes super sensitive to bright light? Check. This was probably me. Assuming I don’t get dragged away by evil matriarchal priestesses or caught up in some kind of anti-drow movement, I could probably live with that.

Sorcerer was the exciting bit; I was a magical trust fund baby. Sorcerers get magic genetically, they had no need to put much effort into learning spells, and didn’t lose much, compared to a wizard, except that they didn’t have too much control over what spells they learned. I was just about to check my spells when the short girl got back to the deck and Plugg started talking to her. 

“Name?”

She stood up straight and met his gray eyes with her brown ones. “Rosie Cusswell, sir.”

“You will be our new rigger, working directly under me.” He turned to the rest of us. “So, do any of you know how to cook?” 

Sense Motive: 13 Success! Rosie seems disappointed. It is likely she knows how to cook and enjoys it. 

I paused just long enough for me to read that bit of vaguely interesting information. This was my chance. I was a pretty mediocre cook, but how much skill did I really need to be the cook’s mate? Plus, it’ll hopefully get me out of the goddamn burning sun. 

(Secret roll, Bluff: natural 1, critical failure)

I didn’t see any roll this time, but when I “ordered” my body to come up with something I heard my new voice speaking. “Oh yes sir. I’m a professionally trained Chelish chef, actually.” I don’t know what Chelish is, but it certainly sounded fancy. Right on, autopilot me.

“Oh, excellent. You’re the new cook’s mate, then. I look forward to seeing your work.” Plugg brightened substantially at that news. Cool, so he was in a good mood now. “Caulky! Bring this man to the galley. I imagine Kroop managed to drink himself into unconsciousness again.”