Sareneth 5, Wealday

According to Grok, the only problem with my cooking was that there wasn’t enough of it. That wasn’t a compliment, either; I just hadn’t made as much as they were accustomed to. Pirate officers eat a lot. Got it. Even so, I’d saved Kroop a whipping and he was grateful enough that I didn’t need to do clean up that day. 

I took a scoop of soup and scurried off before he changed his mind. I plopped down next to Syl, nodding at Conchobar and Rosie as I did. I greeted them warmly, “good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you all had a lovely day.”  I took a few bites of the thick, fishy sludge and found chips of black carbon suspended within; I hadn’t stirred the pot all day, so the sediment at the bottom of the pot had burnt. I guess I get what I deserve. Oh well, food is food. 

“Nope.” Conchobar groaned, “I was stuck chest deep in dirty water all day.” He looked at his freshly stained shirt mournfully; it was forever ruined by one day as a bilgerat. 

Rosie shrugged. “Could have been worse. Just a lot of pulling on ropes.” She drawled, “Thanks for the water, by the way.” She stared across the room at a man playing a fiddle. More accurately, she was staring at the fiddle with longing.(Sense Motive 20+2 = critical success)

I made a show of looking across the hold before asking her, “Rosie, do you play?” If that’s something she wants, I might be able to get on her good side. Assuming I can find a fiddle somewhere. 

“Yeah.” She replied, blushing lightly at being caught. “It’s back in Port Peril, though. Probably someone’s nicked it by now.”

“Ouch. I’ll let you know if I see a fiddle lying around, eh?” I offered, prompting a general chorus of agreement from Syl and Conchobar. Rosie’s warm brown eyes roamed over each of us as a smile crept onto her lips. 

I waited until our dinner was finished before pulling Syl off to the side. “Did you get an opportunity to look him over?” I asked, my voice low. 

“Oh, yeah. He’s in a pretty bad way.” Syl answered, perfectly nonchalant. “Good catch. Not exactly sure what it is, it looks like aboleth slime but the effect is localized to his arm. Krine didn’t seem to care though; said that he’d need to wait for treatment until he was out of the box.” 

“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked. Probably, unless my HUD is trolling me. 

“For him? Absolutely. It’s localized, so he might get away with just losing the arm if he’s lucky.” She spoke about his condition as if it were interesting trivia, continuing, “Aboleth slime kills within 48 hours without treatment, but affects the entire body. If he’s not allowed to have treatment, his best bet is probably to pray for a nice hard rain to flood his box.” 

“How the hell would that help?” I spluttered. There were holes to let the water drain out in the bottom of the box, mostly to prevent drowning, but a hard enough rain could probably overwhelm those. 

She rolled her eyes as she continued. “Duh. Best known treatment for the symptoms of Aboleth slime is to submerge yourself in water; the entire problem is that the body doesn’t retain water well. Generally speaking, you need to let the skin rehydrate through submersion every 24 hours until you can get a proper magical or alchemical treatment to restore the skin’s ability to retain moisture.” 

“Can you do anything about it?” If a guy is dying she’s got to care, right?

She shrugged. “Could. Won’t.” She answered coldly, “I told my work crew leader what I knew, and she told me to mind my own business. Shame he’s gonna die, but I’m not a charity. I’m not sticking my neck out for someone I don’t even know.” 

Dammit. I don’t blame her really, but I was banking on altruism. “Fair enough.” I grumbled. “I’ll talk to you later.” I left to check to see if anyone else had a solution, working down the list of people I knew who might be able to help. 

Sandara could probably flood his box, but wasn’t about to take fifteen lashes for interference. Not many people on the ship could cast create water, so it would be pretty obvious who was responsible even if she could sneak up on deck; she wasn’t exactly subtle while casting. 

Conchobar soundly declined any involvement. “Look, helping you didn’t cost me anything. I’m glad I did it, but even if I tried a basic cure wounds wouldn’t do anything from the sounds of it. I can’t even fix a broken bone if it’s not already set properly. Weird alchemy dehydration is completely off the table. Just let it go, keep your head down.”

“Sorry, Emrys. I hope you figure something out, but I don’t know anything about healing.” Rosie admitted sheepishly. “If there’s anything I can do, I’ll help, but I can’t think of any way I’d be useful.” Filing that away: Rosie would risk punishment to help a stranger. 

I was stonewalled by the risk of punishment, so I even tried going through legitimate channels. Alas, Kroop didn’t have much authority; he made food and was unreliable even with that. I’d saved him a whipping, but the officers all knew why they’d gotten small portions today; it was a bad time for him to go asking for favors. “You’d need to go through Scourge,” he explained, “he’s in charge of punishment. He gets to decide when exceptions are made like this. If you tell him and he doesn’t do anything, Grok might be able to get him in trouble if Magpie actually dies.”

“That won’t really do any good, though.” I complained, "Tattling would probably just piss Scourge off.” I need to save Jakes for the mission. Avenging him won’t get me anything. I didn’t know the guy, so don’t judge me. I had two possibilities left, so I went with the less extreme one as the sun started to set: I got directions and knocked on the door to the room shared by Master Scourge and Second Mate Plugg. 

I heard a muffled “Come in” through the door, and opened it. In doing so I exposed myself to the confused stares of the two men as they poured over a large map. Scourge recovered quickly, growling out “What the hell do you want?” 

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sirs, but it’s come to my attention that the man known as Jakes Magpie might the victim of an ongoing murder attempt.” (Diplomacy 1+4=5 critical failure) Woah there buddy. A bit intense there, don’t you think?

Both men looked at one another as their expressions darkened. Plugg was the first to speak. “That is quite the accusation, Mr. M’Dair. Do you have any proof?” His eyes bored into me as he asked. 

I wrested control from autopilot and tried to smooth things over myself. “No, one of my friends just had a look at him and said it looked like aboleth slime, so I thought we might give him some medical treatment and maybe track down whoever is responsible. Murder is a keelhauling, right?” You know I don’t actually know what keelhauling is. I hope it never becomes directly relevant to me. 

Plugg nodded. “Yes. I’ll look into it, but I want you to stay silent on the subject going forward. The last thing we want is for anyone to get the blame pinned on them. Tell no one, and don’t get further involved. You are dismissed.” I tried to force a sense motive check, but autopilot had nothing to say about Plugg. (Sense motive 2+2=4). Given the timeline I was working with, Jakes might be dead by noon tomorrow; I just couldn’t leave my mission’s success in these two assholes’ hands. 

I only saw one option: bribing someone into risking punishment. Unfortunately, I only had one chip to cash in. I rubbed the Seal of Alternate Payment on my finger; I didn’t want to waste its magic, but money that you never spend is just a number. This will be an investment; how do I make sure I make my money back? 

I considered my options. So I can trade sex for a good or service with this. Thankfully, both of the women that could help me out here are pretty good looking. So do I try to get Sandara or Syl? I started tallying up the pros and cons for each woman, and everything seemed to be pointing in the same direction. Syl claimed she could actually fix the problem, while Sandara could only reset the timer. I’ve gotten a few points of influence with Sandara from normal interactions, but Syl hasn’t been impressed. The seal can be partially resisted with a will save, and if I remember right priests are good at those. 

I approached the ivory eyed chemist as she was getting ready for bed. “Hey,” I whispered, “I have a business proposition for you. Can we go talk it out?” (Diplomacy 16+4=20. Success)

She gave me an appraising look before tossing her bandanna onto the hammock, leaving her messy curls to run wild. “Alright. I’ll bite. You’ve got five minutes to impress me.”

We walked together to the kitchen, one of the few places on the ship that would be both empty and well lit. As a courtesy, I summoned some dancing lights to illuminate the path for her on the way, finally getting some use out of that spell. When we arrived, I showed her the Seal. “How much would you say this is worth?” I asked. 

She pursed her lips as she looked at it. It was a reasonably fancy ring; the tooltip implied it would be worth about 15 gp without the magic. What was important, however, was how much she thought it was worth. “Eh… I could probably pawn it for about 10 gold, I guess? It’s decently nice.”

“Would that be enough for you to stick your neck out and help me with something? Ten gold, I mean.” I asked her seriously, hoping the answer was yes. 

“Ah. This is about the Jakes thing? Yeah, that ring would cover it, sure.” Her nearly invisible pupils focused on the ring as she answered. 

I pressed it into her hand, and triggered its magic. “So would you be willing to help me out in the future if I gave you something worth around ten gold? A night together, perhaps?” There was absolutely no way to bring that up without sounding at least a little creepy. 

She examined the ring, casually rubbing it with her thumb. My tastelessly forward proposal didn’t seem to bother or shock her in the slightest. “Yeah, sure.” She murmured, “Why not? So, if I’m gonna make a poultice, I’ll need to raid the spice cabinet. Is that acceptable?”

I bobbed my head. “Probably. Try not to use too much of anything scarce though.” I let her work while I checked my party screen. She was under magical compulsion to help me out for a bit of hanky panky in the future, which would normally disqualify her to be added to the party, but this first job was being paid for with a no-longer-magical ring. She was helping me out willingly, and she was level one, the same level as me. I selected her and smiled. I had my first party member.