Sareneth 20, Starday

I ladled out everyone’s daily allotment of tan dinner sludge with my mouth set in a hard line. My icy gaze silenced chatter in the queue, and half a dozen members of the men met my hollow eyes with sullen glares of their own. Sandara had been well liked, and any voice that wasn’t hers was an offense against the silence. That didn’t stop chatter completely, of course; any true seaman loved nothing more than the sound of his own voice.

I was holding it together by clinging to the hope dangled before me. Syl squeezed my wrist after getting her bowl, knocking me off guard with a sympathetic smile. Tears welled up in my eyes and it took a few moments for me to center myself, but the support helped to dislodge the heavy weight in my chest. When Rosie tried to give her condolences a few minutes later, I was more prepared to receive them.

“Hey, I’m really sorry about Sandara.” She whispered, holding up the line for a few moments. “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

I nodded. “I will. I doubt it though.” I pointedly shifted my focus to Tibbs, the next lady in line.

Who can do anything, anyway? We are basically just hoping someone can perform a miracle in the next town. I froze, the spoon still in the bowl. Wait. A miracle. I don’t actually know if there’s anything I can do, but fuck moping. When you don’t know something, you fucking look it up. 

••••••••••

“Oi. Cogward.” I called, approaching the most religious guy I had available. “I want to talk about death. Are we doing this here or would you prefer somewhere more private?”

The muscular man put down his spoon and sighed. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He agreed. He spoke as if I were interrupting him, but frankly I didn’t care. (Sense Motive 7+1=8)

“How likely is it that someone in Goatshead can resurrect Sandara?” I demanded. He worshiped a goddess of death; if anyone would know about this shit it was him.

“There’s a chance.” He said, “There are a lot of forms of resurrection out there, after all. That’s not the right question, though.”

“Oh?” I huffed.

“Have you considered whether she will want to come back?” Cog challenged. “If the answer is yes, good, but do you even know where she is?”

That caught me off guard. What? I… shit. Maybe he’s right. I just kinda assumed being dead was bad for her. What if she’s in some kind of pirate heaven?

“I didn’t think about it,” I admitted, “but if the afterlife is so great why would anyone want to come back? So, smart guy, where is she? Convince me that she wouldn’t want to come back.”

“I can tell you, sure.” Cog answered. “She was pretty clearly pledged to Besmara and seemed to take it seriously. Long term her destination would be in Besmara’s fleet as a new recruit. Short term, she’s awaiting judgment in my goddess’s realm.”

“That doesn’t really sound like her scene.” I said, "I don't think she’d object to being pulled out of some long line. Especially if the end of the line was basically just more of this.” I gestured vaguely at the ship in general.

“Sure.” Cog shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

“Then why were you such a dick about it?” I asked, exasperated.

“There are a lot of reasons to grieve.” He said, “Some are more healthy than others. Anyway, there was something else, something a little more practical, you didn’t think about. How are you going to find them?”

“I assumed that the captain was going to ask around at a tavern or something.” I answered lamely. “He’s already going out of his way. I assume he knows what he’s doing.”

“That’ll work if they are out in the open.” The muscular man pointed out. “I doubt that the captain cares all that much about her. She’s a cleric, so she’s worth a token effort, but he’s not going to make waves over an initiate. More likely he’ll buy a few extra barrels of water, make a few inquiries, drug half a dozen people, and leave before they wake up.”

“Then I’ll just need to look for myself.” I resolved. “Will you help?”

“If you can tell me why you want her back so much, sure.” He proposed. “I have a few ideas, but it’ll be better for you if you make your peace. Even if she comes back, you’ll be able to appreciate it more.”

“Sure, whatever you say.” I agreed, “I’ll think about it.”

••••••••••••

“Alright, guys.” I plopped down next to my normal dinner companions and dove straight into my pitch. “I’m planning on doing a sweep of Goatshead looking for anyone who can bring Sandara back. Can I count on you guys to back me up on this?”

Rosie, Conchobar, and Syl considered my abrupt question for a few moments; in retrospect, I may have interrupted an ongoing conversation. Rosie was the first to nod.

“Of course, Emrys.” The small woman assured me. “A friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

“So what’s your plan?” Syl asked, taking it as a given that she’d be helping to bring her new friend back. “All I know about Goatshead is that it rebelled against the Shackles when the Hurricane King restricted who they were allowed to raid. They don’t sound like the most savory people on average.”

“We are going to canvass the area, moving in groups to make sure we don’t get mugged.” I proposed. “I’ll need to talk to more people, but I feel like a group of five to ten should be able to handle most problems. I have no clue if Besmara would actually punish us for the way she died but I can sure as hell bring it up as a possibility. Between that and her popularity, we hopefully won’t have too much trouble getting people to help.”

I turned to face Conchobar. “Can I rely on you?”

The last few times I asked him for help, he said no. This shouldn’t be too dangerous though, right? He can do his part from the tavern. 

“Yeah, I’ll do what I can.” He answered sheepishly. “I’ll be performing a bit to get people in a good mood? We won’t get much if there’s a brawl five minutes after we start asking questions?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “play to your strengths, man.”

I extended my fist without thinking, going in for a fist bump. My companions stared at me blankly.

“Sorry, is this a drow thing?” Conchobar asked, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

Shit. 

“You press it against your forehead. It is a gesture done by my people to seal an oath.” I explained gravely, not entirely sure what I was doing myself, “doing so makes the agreement binding and sacred.” (Bluff 1+19=20 Critical Failure)

Conchobar looked at my fist with some discomfort before gingerly guiding my knuckles to his brow.

Uh. Hopefully he doesn’t try that with any actual drow. I don’t get the impression they are very common. At least I know he’s taking this seriously, I guess. 

“I’m short on magic, Syl, so we are actually sleeping tonight.” I said, pivoting the conversation away from the awkward gesture. “I’ll think about the plan in my hammock. If you have any ideas for who to ask along, let me know.”

“I’m pretty sure I can get my work team to help if we can offer them a few gold for it.” Syl offered. “I’ve still got that ring, and you’ve got some coin, right? What’s our budget? How much are we willing to spend on this?”

“I could drop ten gold without missing it too much.” I answered, “but I want to keep some in reserve in case we need to bribe someone in Goatshead. I might be able to get Grok to give me a loan if I ask real nicely.”

We spent the rest of the evening planning our day in port. I would have preferred something a bit lower pressure for my first proper day of leave, but I was a main character now. The world seemed set on me living an interesting life.

••••••••••

I worked out with Owlbear again; it was a convenient way to make sure I kept in touch with the big guy. He was on my team, in more ways than one; even setting that aside, he didn’t deserve loneliness.

“Hey.” I greeted him, “how are you holding up?”

“Okay.” He squinted at me in the darkness. “Are you ok? You got really angry.”

I paused, letting autopilot cast dancing lights as a courtesy. Am I okay? No. Not really. 

“I got mad because it was a stupid mistake that shouldn’t have happened.” I assured him. “It got me thinking about a lot of things. I’m doing better now, because I think we might be able to fix it.”

“Is she coming back?” Owlbear asked, startled. “Dead people don’t come back.”

If you’re a poor guy living with his mom, I guess they wouldn’t. Supposedly Scourge is going to be in the hole for more than a thousand gold if this works. 

“I don’t know man,” I admitted. “They need a lot of expensive help, that’s for sure. We are hoping to find someone that can help her come back before it’s too late.”

“Can I help?” Owlbear whispered shyly, “she was nice, sometimes.”

“Yeah buddy.” I assured him, “we’d be glad to have you.”

I completed a few sets of sit ups, preferring to focus my abdominals tonight. Climbing that rope without autopilot meant straining my arms quite a bit, enough that I preferred to hold off pushups for another day. My legs were still sore too, so holding off on squats seemed to be for the best as well.

I can't get this body in shape fast enough. Thank you, dad, for forcing me to play soccer. I was literally never this shit in my last life. 

••••••••••

I lay awake in the darkness, waiting for my fatigue to catch up to me and carry me to sleep. It wasn’t working out. Instead, I was hunting through the SRD in my head, looking at the rules for gathering information.

Gather Information. 

You can use Diplomacy to gather information about a specific topic or individual. To do this, you must spend at least 1d4 hours canvassing people at local taverns, markets, and gathering places. The DC of this check depends on the obscurity of the information sought, but for most commonly known facts or rumors it is 10. For obscure or secret knowledge, the DC might increase to 20 or higher. The GM might rule that some topics are simply unknown to common folk.

Retry? Yes. You can retry Diplomacy checks made to gather information

The example difficulty for obscure or secret knowledge, 20, seems doable for me. I’ve got a +5, so that’s a 30% chance to find someone who is hiding, and an 80% chance if it’s common knowledge. Syl and Rosie have a shot with +0 and +1 respectively, but not a good one. I don’t know if Owlbear and Caulky should even bother rolling, since they have negative charisma modifiers. Of course the person in the party best suited to this is Sandara; +7 to diplomacy is pretty huge… I think. Seems big to me; I only have that +19 to bluff because I have buffs. 

Assuming an average of 2.5 hours per roll and 8 hours of leave, I’ll have three shots. That brings my odds up to about 66%. Syl and Rosie probably bump that up a bit. Assuming we need to rely on dice to make this happen, that’s around a 30% chance of failure. 

Running the numbers was a calming distraction for me, but that meaningful chance of failure settled in my stomach like a stone. I checked my mission log, and let out a hollow chuckle when I saw two successful missions. One for stealing a candle, and one for my oh so marvelous performance as the leader of a mock boarding action.

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

Steal a magic item without being caught or punished for 24 hours afterwards

Reward: 1 exp, Mystery Talent

Successfully Complete Riaris Krine’s trial

Reward: 1 exp, Bonus Racial Feat 

9/11 exp to level up

I guess none of us fell in the water. Technically that was the only requirement Riaris gave me. Sure doesn’t feel very successful. I might as well see what I got. 

I turned in both missions, figuring that since they were giving me feats there wouldn’t be any difficulty explaining magic items appearing from the ether this time.

Drow Nobility

Benefit: You may use detect magic as a spell-like ability at will, and add feather fall and levitate to the spell-like abilities that you may use once each per day. Your caster level is equal to your character level.

A quick hunt for those names in the spell list found that Feather Fall was a parachute spell, able to save me or someone around me from taking fall damage. Levitate would allow me to lift myself or an unresisting target until the air; it was a few minutes of flight, minus any horizontal movement. It could also be used to move moderately heavy furniture, up to 100 pounds per level.

Alright. More spells. Spells… mostly only good for if I find myself falling or needing to fly into the air. But really good to have if that comes up. I could have kicked Rosie’s ass on day one with this spell, then come back down without any consequences. Shame that I already have detect magic as a cantrip, but it’s free. I’m not going to start complaining about free shit. 

The talent was called “shadowboxing” and was a bit more complicated.

Shadowboxing

You can use your total Perform (dance) bonus in place of your Acrobatics or Intimidate bonuses. Any creature which watches you make a Perform (dance) check outside of combat must make a Will save (using the result of your Perform (dance) check to determine the save DC) or be fascinated for up to 1 minute. Once a creature has been affected by this talent, they cannot be affected by it again for 1 day. In addition, you gain the benefits of the Improved Unarmed Strike feat. 

I didn’t actually have any points in perform (dance), intimidate, or acrobatics, so the immediate effects of the ability were an unarmed strike that did about as much damage as Ray of Frost but with lower accuracy, a distracting dance with a very unreliable power level, and +2 to acrobatics. It seemed like it would be quite a boon if I could get some points into dancing, though. Sweet dance moves were not what I expected to be a god-stat, but I’d take it.

Mercifully distracted from my woes by new powers, I was able to let my mind drift. My mind was still racing, but at least it wasn’t locked on Sandara.

I’m not sure exactly what time Syl crept up on my hammock; I wasn’t paying attention.

“Hey, do you mind if I lay with you?” She whispered.

“Sure,” I answered, surprised. “Why, though?”

“I sleep better with company.” She said as we quietly negotiated our spots. “Just sleep, by the way. No funny business tonight.”

“No problem.” I assured her, “I’m not really in the mood anyway.”

“Shit. I didn’t mean to…” she sighed. “Whatever. Good night.”

The hammock was small, so gravity pushed us together. I hugged her, just for practicality of course, and she pressed her back against my chest. She was onto something; having company really did help me sleep.

Her hair smells like grog.