A Thousand Ships

Strazi Year 643
Year 37 of the Mage King
Early Autumn

It was a dark and stormy night.

A Taji nomad crashes in the door of the temple. Urchin says he was dead on the beach and followed him up. We drag him inside and lie him down.

Strange style of robe, can’t figure out how to get this open. Vasco says they sleep in these things, leave it. He makes him, er, repeat and undrowns him. Nanda goes to find Nersa and asks her to get a drink and fix some food for him.

On returning, Nanda notices writing on the sword. She can read it but can’t identify the language. She kneels down beside him and feeds him some damn strong chai. He thanks her in archaic Taji.

He says he was on a ship, travelling to he thinks Elbenstraz. He didn’t care which of the two islands he ended up at, but the first boat he could find was bound there. He had a sheath for his sword, seems to have gone missing mid-swim. Then he falls asleep again.

Nersa comes in with fud.

Nanda tries to make more sense of his robe. Someone clatters through the main temple and Jess goes to check. A small boy, Piotr or something. “There’s a man here who’s hurt, Sir.” There’s a guy leaning on the doorframe, one hand on his abdomen. Strazi sailor. Vasco has him sit on a chair. “I was taking a walk, um…” - he’s concealing something - “…and sudden pain in my gut, like I’d been stabbed.” A voice from behind “It was with me sister. An she didn’t stab him.” Vasco goes to talk to him. “What did your sister do?” “Didn’t do anything. Me ma says to keep an eye an run for help if there’s trouble. She were walking out of town, she passed the cherry trees, he just goes over.” Vasco flips him a coin. “Get back to your sister.”

“Alright. We’re in shore, and we had a few drinks, well the others did, and there was this girl, and she was pleasant and willing, name was Irena I think, and we were walking to some quiet spot she knows, nice sunny day and all that, just getting to the edge of the town and stabby in the gut. Outta nowhere.” It’s faded, nfi what’s going on, so he gets up and heads out the door. Eventually remembers to leave a donation.

Nanda’s trying to get the clothes off him, with some limited success. He has a tattoo over his left breast with script similar to what’s on the sword. Nanda can’t read that, though, looks like scribbles. Vasco’s trying to measure his sword, with even more limited success as the unconscious person reacts every time anyone goes near.

Vasco heads into town. There are a few ships’ worth of sailors in town. He finds a leathersmith and gets a scabard made for the sword. He takes the scenic route back, around the cherry trees, and gets crashed into by a sailor stumbling out of a door. Vasco throws him aside in a panic, and he sits up. “It was a bad night last night. Coulda done with a better breakfast and no fireworks.” This is a codephrase. It means “you’re reactivated. await orders.” Vasco says “young man’s game” and hurries away. The sailor wanders away, another sailor hails him and he stumbles into another alehouse.

Vasco runs back to the temple.

“What’s wrong?”
“Fine” He walks back to where the nomad is sleeping, and sheathes the scimitar. Nomad wakes up, casually puts the sword down and starts to eat.

His name is Khalid Girekh. Nersa asks if that’s missing a bit. “No, it’s not.” We introduce ourselves. He finishes food and puts his robe back on in an atomic action. Nersa feeds him again. Nanda asks if he’d have money. Nope. Nanda says she’ll put in a word for him in the Red Trout to do jobs for bed and board.

There’s another call for the priest from the temple floor.

Where’s he going? Not Elbenstraz, by the sound of it, if he’s going to be jailed or killed when he gets there. He must go to the isles that are at war.

The same boy is back. “Me sister’s starting to think she’s cursed. She was walking out of town with another fella and same thing happened. Same place.” He asks for her to be sent here, and heads back up.

Nanda: “…you are alone. Just one.” Khalid: “I was one when I started this journey. I have my sword and at least one step on the journey yet to make.” N: “What is it you need to do?” K: “When I am there I will know what I need to do. I can find someone who can interpret the other words I have, languages I cannot read. The words on this.” — he shows the decorative squiggles on the sword.” He’s surprised to hear that Nanda can read this. N: “It says ‘this is the one.’ Not very helpful I’m afraid.” K: “More than I had before. And you can read it. I was supposed to come here.” N: “Other things I have not been able to read.”

He sheathes the sword in his belt again and drops the scabbard. V: “No naked blades in this place. Put it away.” K remarks that the idea is ridiculous.

There are footsteps in the temple, Jess goes back to deal with them.

K: “I took this to be some artifact of the desert.” N: “Well were not unrelated by the looks of things.” K: “But the people of Tajidar are hundreds of years out of the desert.”

Pioter is back with a girl of around 17. Her name’s Irina. Jess comforts her, does a detect for curses. She says the ship is back for the second time in three days, military ship. They’re not bad guys.

Fate point - pirate aspected interested in military ship back for second time in three days. Accepted.

Jess mentions to the guys upstairs that there’s a ship he wants to check out.

Vasco’s offered a fate point to “run while he still can.” Rejected. He runs out to one of the privets and dig up one of the caches.

Khalid is reluctant to leave since Nanda can understand the writing, but she’s insistent that he at least find a damn job, hippy. Jess lets him stay for a few days. “Who was it removed my robe? Could you understand what was on my chest?” “Nope.” Jessen: ? Khalid spills to Jess that he’s following a message that brought him here, and here the message on the sword, the sword that is part of this prophesy, was interpreted. He opens the front of his robe revealing the elaborate tattoo over his heart.

Jess and Vasco head off to check out the ship. “The Rose and Chestnut.” Vasco: “Priest, how old are you?” “Mid thirties.” “How much do you remember of the old war?” They stop walking. “More than I’d like to.” “This is, by the way, where the girl had her problems.” Nothing obviously wrong. “You’ve got young men getting stabbing pains in their chest, sailors using code words I haven’t heard in decades.”

Another sailor and a young girl approach, slightly older than Irina. They come up to the line demarced by the cherry trees, and crossing the line he falls down. We go over and check. He’s behaving precisely as a man who’s been stabbed in the gut. We move him away from the line, and we see him getting better as we approach the main part of the town.

V: “Where are you from?” Sailor: “Lukaston.” “Just come in on the ship?” “Yeah. It’s getting better now.” He’s a rope boy. He’s form the Rose and Chestnut, can’t say what port they sailed out of. Vasco uses an obscure and out of date codeword. He blinks a couple of times, straightens up to attention, and says “Sir, most recently Hammersport, Sir” “Going to” “Pick up, well, drop off an operative Sir, wait four days, pick up the operative and back to Hammersport Sir.” “Get outta here.” Vasco gives him the name of a reputable crashhouse, backhands him “don’t salute me” and lets him go.

Vasco puts his hood up and follows Jess (in attendants’ position) as we go to check out the Rose and Chestnut.

Khalid has been exploring. Most of the people here are inclined to get out of his way. He encounters Nanda returning to the temple with take away from the trout. She spots him whether he likes it or not. They head back toward the temple.

Jess and Vasco stop in at a small blacksmith, and Vasco asks for three Surgeons’ Nightmares (”items that I said I’d need.”) He’s handed a wrapped leather box.

We approach the sailor at the end of the gangplank and make smalltalk. Vasco tries to scan the ship. He remembers that the Rose and Chestnut is a specialist espionage carrier. It’s the ship they send out when they want someone Important dropped off somewhere and retrieved, preferably alive. The marines on it claim they’re rope boys and they’re clearly here for something.

Awareness roll: there’s something peculiar about the ship, the water below the ship is very bright. The ship has no reflection in the water. We head away and have a conversation.

We get back to the temple. We spill.

Vasco explains that he’s operated out of one of these ships. “The rope boy could have killed the two of us.” N: “Are they here for you?” V: “I hope not.”

Knock on the door. Big burly sailor outside. Holding his abdomen. Jess carefully opens the door. Vasco gets out of sight and listens. Jess interrogates him. He was trying to walk up to the lighthouse and got not half way there. Pain in his gut. Stepped back a bit, sat down, it faded, tried again, it got a lot worse. This guy’s an officer. He’s been to the lighthouse before, but years ago. He’s expecting to leave tomorrow. He heads back to his ship, leaving a couple of coins outside.

Khalid: “There’s some protective spell.”

The officer was passing under the cherry trees, like the other three - the stone bench there is practically under the trees. They speculate about talking to the Marmoset. Vasco goes out to another rose bush and digs up his Strazi military leather, and comes back into the temple. “They’ve probably marked me in the robes. By the way, the rope monkey was not a rope monkey.” Nanda puts her cap on, we perpare to head out. Vasco travels separately.

The Marmoset’s lair is down beside the sea in a half-cottage, half hole in the ground. The inside is hung with nets, glass, net floats, bits of wood and stuff. Claustraphobic. The Marmoset is a small, plump man, twitchier than Vasco just now. Sitting on the Marmoset’s shoulder is a marmoset, on a leash.

N: “Tweet tweet”
M: “it’s an odd night”
N: “no one else here?”
M: “everyone’s staying home and looking after things. It’s an odd night.”
V: “someone else is here”
M: “it’s an odd night”
Nanda does a danger sense. Nowt here. She’s moving along the walls.
V: “Somebody came off that ship, not the sailors. You know what that ship is, don’t yoiu.”
M: “Mm hmm. Odd though. Three nights ago, was in here, stopped in overnight quiet like. Came in just after sunste, stopped, couple of peopel came ashore, talked to a couple o fpeople here, went back aboard, sailed before dawn.”
J: “No one stayed off the ship?”
M: “No. Yes. Same number of peopel went back, but one of them stayed.”
J to V: “You know what that means.”
M: “Second mate. Siarten of Vasili. Funny. Man doesn’t like him.” *scritch*
V: “Why is that?”
M: “Dunno. But something not right.”
N: “Did he come to see you?”
M: “No. he — three men laeve ship. Mm? Down the pier. Into the town. Two men go this way, one goes that wya. Comng back, two men this way, one man that way, they come onto the ship. One man has something worng. He is … something wrong.”
J: “That ship ahs no reflection”
M: “Nothing in the water?” He gets up, goes over to the door and peers out along the bay at the ship. “Your’e right. Nothing in the water. Word was they were to sail out of here, drop somebody off, wait four days, pick ‘im up and get back to Elbenstraz.”
V: “Hammersport.”
M: “But they didn’t. Because they’re back here, three days later, all ashore and getting drunk. Given that the ship is usually used for quiet things, why its full complement ashore getting drunk?”
J: “They can’t get past the cherry trees.”
M: “The cherry trees?”
J explains.
M: “The cherry trees. It is an odd night.”
N: “it gets odder. This guy here. This is Khalid.” Introductions. “he would like to ask you some questions about writings and prophesies.”
M: “I know things about ships, and cargo manifests, and things that go ona nd come from ships. Youw ere on the beach. They thought you were dead.”
K: “Many people thought that. All of them have been wrong. I arrived here. I am perhaps cargo from a ship. I do not know why I am here.”
M: “Do any of us know why we are here?”
K: “Yet I am, and I find more things here than I expected. Translations of words. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
He unsheathes the scimitar with a flourish.
M jumps back. M: “Are you sure that that is writing?”
N: “I can read it”
V: “No Taji I’ve seen”
M: “I cannot claim to have great literacy or powers of books, but I do know the languages in which records are written, and that is not Taji, not Strazi, not the Isles tongue, not Pas’hrau, not the dwarven tongues– it is not a thing I have seen before. Not even like anythign I have seen before. And you” to N “can read it.”
N: “I can understand it”
M: “What makes you doubt that that is reading?”
N: “I can’t understand the letters”
K: “and she can’t understand something else in the same script
M: “That looks like it must have hurt”
K: “It didn’t. A bolt of lightning.”
N: “Can you think of anyone who might be able to help?”
Drew cracks his knuckles. Ow.
M: “There is a man. His name is Creomor. He lives in a cave. He is not a nice man. He is an unpleasantly smelly man. It is postulated that this has something to do with the cave.”
K: “You obviously say this as someone who has never ridden a camel”
M: “I would propose that this man may equal a camel. But camels do not live in caves.”
N: “Where is he?”
M: “In the mountains.”
He shows us on a map. Middle of nowhere.
Peers out the door again.
M: “They are going back to their ship.”
There was absolutely no indication. No bell, no shout, no nothing, but they are all staggering back to the ship. About 60 go back on - a full complement. So the guy at the gangplank was, at the time, the only one there. They’re running up the sails.
N: “They’re all drunk”
V:”No they’re not.”
The Marmoset shrugs. M: “In that case, they have sponges concealed in their throats.”
The ship is sailing. Something really peculiar out there. There’s almost no wind, so we can see the lack of reflection very clearly. They’re sailing with the sails up full, and out into the bay. 200 yards out from the pier, it disappears.
K has a rant about ships being a bad idea. To be fair, on his part that’s two for two.
The Marmoset is backed up against the back wall staring out through the door. “Unsettling is one word, yes. That would be very good magic.” J: “Is it gone or invisible?” M: “It would be very very good magic to make a whole ship vanish without leaving a dent in the water for invisibility. One would think that invisible ships would be a very good advantage in naval warfare.”
Nanda offers him smoked chicken, preserves, soap, fresh bananas. Man will have a banana, The Marmoset will have soap. He weebles. The ship has reappeared, sailing into the bay. It pulls slowly on wind we cannot see in any other way into the end of the pier, the gangplank goes down, and around thirty men come down the gangplank looking like they’re about to have a good time.”
K: “Did it arrive at night before? And did this many men get off?”
M: “Maybe slightly less. Maybe twenty.”
It’s the Rose and Chestnut. No reflection.
More men are disembarking. One is standing with something in his hand, glaring after the others and taking up a post by the end of the gangplank. 59 men have left the ship, plus the dude at the end of the gangplank.
It disappeared going out of the bay proper, so a little further than the ring of trees.
V: “So say one young girl tries to earn a couple of coins, takes some guy to the cherry trees, he gets incapacitated and is brought through the cherry trees, what would happen.”
K: “in the desert there are voices that are heard on the wind, and if you follow them, you are lost. These men, have the aspect of someone who followed where they should not have gone. They are cursed in some way, to reenact something, locked within a tiny part of a small island. What did they do here that would have caused this? Why were they here in the first place? What is on this island in this town?”
K: “Did you see the captain leave the ship? Just there now?”
M: “Yes. But I did not see the second mate. I saw him leave the first night only.”
On the first night, three men left the ship. The second mate, and two midshipmen. The two midshipmen returned to the ship. Another man, not the second mate, returned to the ship. There was something peculiar about the other man.
On the second night that they arrived, last night, all except one left the ship, and came ashore - including the captain. On this third occasion, the same happened. None of them were the second mate’s replacement.
K resolves to go aboard the ship.
N suggests that Jess should speak to the people from the other temple in case they’ve had visitors too.
M: “It is likely that if the officers had abdominal complaints, that is where they will have gone.”
Somebody’s coming down across the beach toward the Marmoset’s hut. A girl. M peers out. She calls as she gets close, he invites her in.
E: “Marmoset, the sailors from the ship at the end of the pier, they all went away a little while ago. Now they are back and they seem to think they have never been here before. Something is wrong.”
M: “We are looking into it. From here. My friends, this is Erzai, she is working in the town. She tells me things sometimes. I am starting to think that perhaps some of you should go and speak with the sailors.”
V asks N to come with him up to a tavern. He thinks he could expect somebody. He thinks the second mate holds answers, but wants to see if he can find somebody first.
E: “They all came to the Rocking Tavern this time.”