Norm was a good guy. After returning his ship with minimal damage during his exploration of the Seaside Cave, Cain had hit it off with the old, semi-drunk bastard and there really was a point in which the muse thought that he and Norm were gonna be great bros, with all the benefits of friendship in the form of discounts on future boat rentals. And yet, why was he still here, 50 gold pieces poorer, sailing on a shitty fishing boat through choppy waters while his curse of bad weather had descended upon him once more? Why, because all the friendships in the world wouldn’t make alcohol pour from the heavens like the tears of the Goddess of Festivals. Business was business, sadly, and of all the times Norm had picked to be ‘professional’, the ship-owner had picked this time to be. Ah well, money was just money. Not like this cheap, half-rotten raft was going to be the death of them, right? Standing at the prow of the small vessel, Cain flicked out a simple telescope, overlaying it with Investigation mode as he scanned the empty waters around him in search of a particular vessel, one that had a ‘poorly drawn cat skull and crossed claws’ symbol overlaid on black fabric. It had been three days and three nights ago since that particular quest had been pinned to the village’s ‘help wanted’ board. A Felis mother’s fifteen or so adolescent children had somehow hit their rebellious phases all at the same time, taking up piracy on the high seas because it sounded cool and fresh and neat. After stealing their late father’s fishing boat, they sailed off and there had been no word of their exploits afterwards. To detain them before they committed any serious crimes had been the task, but for the time being…well, everything was pure suffering. Elmyra and Zelrius were his party members’ names, and between the three of them, no one actually knew how to navigate this shitty ship through the rough seas properly. It was basically a rowboat, after all, something that would be attached to another, bigger ship in case of emergencies. As a standalone vessel, they were way out of their depth, but Norm wasn’t going to rent out his bigger ships for any nobody with no seafaring skill, and so, here they were, crammed together and cracking their oars against the thick waves. Not having a destination made things even worse, and it didn’t help that neither of his companions held any magical cheat code that let them divine the location of their quarry. Ah, just a support and two physical meatheads. Overhead, seagulls flew to the coast, seeking shelter as the gray clouds thickened. The wooden boat continued to rock and sway, clearly out of its depth, but at least there was a thick whaleskin tarp rolled up on the side of the vessel. If the rain started coming, the trio could at least use that for shelter while they hauled their seasick asses back to shore. Maybe Elmyra’s berserker tendencies could even come into play here? Cain smiled at the thought, before tossing the telescope back into his inventory. A salty breeze caused his midnight mane to billow as the map came out next, eliciting a small sigh from the muse. Search missions were always frustrating, especially when they had so much ground to cover. For all he knew, that Fisher Cat Crew could already be halfway across the continent, charting new lands, becoming accidental pioneers of a new age! Or they could be stranded on a desert island, forced to eat each other to survive. “Well, that’s the Southwestern Quadrant done,” Cain said, taking his oars up once more. “Unless their ship has some funky invisibility power that just leaves…the Shallows of Nacre and the Tora’s Wedding Ring now. Pick your poison, friends. Hopefully we can beat the weather, eh?” @Zelrius @Elmyra Cressen
She hadn't actually considered navigating ships by herself beforehand. Oh sure, the graphical system of the game itself pretty much told every player who looked at the mastery part of the game about the availability of seafaring as a possible mastery point that you can pursue, but that’s not quite what Elmyra had in mind when using up the precious mastery point to make her initial build path. She’s rather confident about staying on solid ground, content to not make a sojourn for the watery areas until it’s absolutely, positively necessary to do so. So why is she here in the middle of the ocean, on a dingy raft with two others, pretty much chasing something that may or may not exist in the first place? Well, in the first place the quest that had been posted inside the quest board had been the catalyst to all of these. Was the reward substantial? Well…no, not quite, but she figured that the detaining a few teenagers that had one too many delusions of grandeur and adventure was an easy enough task to undertake. In the first place, why become pirates in order to search for that elusive freedom? You’d think in a world where adventurers and travelers are actually legitimate professional undertaking people will gravitate towards those job to hit their adventure fix. Guess the romance of sticking it up to the authorities by operating outside of their laws is still alive and well. Regardless still, apprehending some teenagers with little experience in piracy and probably little in the way of preparation on seafaring should be easy enough, right? Well…not if your preparation on seafaring amounts to the same amount as theirs. Elmyra, as she helpfully pointed out to her party members, isn’t what you’d call a sea person, as the big fat zero in her seafaring mastery would attest. She figured she’d just assist in the negotiation and contribute an arrow or two as warning should the negotiation goes south and it’ll be a-okay, right? No, not quite. Turns out that with their meager amount of experience with the ship, any sailor worth their salt will just balk at lending a number of bumbling landlubbers with their precious ships. If they sink they’ll sink after all, and the concept of insurance doesn’t exist in this world just yet. Cain had assured them that he had a contact that could probably get them a ship, but cold, hard reality set in. In hindsight, they were lucky they can afford the strangely-rescue-raft-looking ship in the first place. It must’ve been the friendship at work. Or perhaps the ‘ship’ is rather old in the first place and the old man was looking to offload it in a convenient way. One or the other. Regardless, you know the saying about how some people were made for the sea? They were not those people. With instinct alone, the three of them managed to row with enough speed to escape the waves – between the three of them there’s enough physical bullheadedness to spare – but instinct alone can’t save you when you don’t exactly have a concrete direction to go on, instead relying on ‘is there a sufficiently large ship in the horizon’ talk. Elmyra took a sip from an impromptu medicine she cooked up in order to ease the budding seasickness. She thought that, with three amateurs handling ships for the first time, there’d be plenty of seasickness to go around…well, mostly hers, and indeed she was the one who needed the medicine the most. She made enough to share around though, so might as well pass the bottle around just in case, right? Of all the realistic features to duplicate in-game, why motion sickness? She already felt nauseous enough to throw up a couple of times, but the medicine helped. It helped a lot, and she has a sneaking suspicion she’d be needing it a lot more in the coming hours. “Does the ‘Shallows’ in ‘Shallows of Nacre’ mean shallow waters? If so, I propose we go there first, if only to wind down for a bit.” She answered Cain’s inquiry, resting her oars’ handle on her lap while the ship – nay, rowboat – drifts slowly by the waves. “Besides, if the weather took a turn for the worst in shallow waters we’d be better off than if we brave the open seas once more…though I confess I don’t know what this…Tora’s Wedding Ring region entails.” Again, there’s a churning sensation inside her throat, like its contents trying to forcefully escape through her mouth. With just a little bit of will however, Elmyra managed to suppress said sensation with just a little bit of pretension on feigning to suppress a cough. The medicine really does work wonders for her. “What do you think?” She, in turn, asked Zelrius about his opinion, partly because she’s also curious about his answer and partly to distract from her increasingly common motion sickness. @Zelrius @Cain Darlite
And then, there were two. The fabric of reality twisted as the fates of Elmyra and Cain shifted ever so slightly, a nameless, faceless individual removed from their timelines seamlessly, without notice. Blinking, the midnight haired muse felt a sudden onset of fatigue rest on his shoulders. Was his Energy bar really that low? No, it must have been. This physical exhaustion was familiar after all. With the two of them being terrible seafarers, it made a metric ton of sense that they would have been tired from fighting with the waves. Yeah, what the hell were they thinking, doing this with two people only? Ah, no, he could imagine a dozen reasons for wanting to do this with a smaller than normal group. The challenge, the sport, the fun, and the chance to have some one-on-one encounters with someone that he never met before…but another contradiction. Cain’s brows furrowed. He already knew Elmyra, so why would he wan- No, that made sense as well. It wasn’t as if he had much of a chance to talk to her while helping Bob out with his turkeys, right? The constantly rocking motions of the broiling ocean must have been getting to his head, is all. Seating himself and stretching out sore muscles, he turned to face the stone-faced (if slightly green) Elmyra as she clearly directed a question to himself. Pulling out his map, the muse laid the aged parchment against his lap as flat as possible, before going over the geography (oceanography?) of Dunnstad’s waters once more. “Shallows here, Lady Elmyra,” Cain began, “does mean shallow waters, but it also means plenty of rocks present. I heard that the citizens of Nacre went out of their way to chisel large boulders from surrounding cliffs to make the waters more treacherous here. It’d be safer to be near the shore if the storm is truly coming, but if our boat’s sunk there, I doubt there’s anyone in Nacre willing to offer us a helping hand. A delicious den of rogues, after all.” Of course, it went unspoken that perhaps the Fisher Cat Crew had docked there, but if that was the case, they were already criminals by association…or in much deeper trouble than what a Muse and an Alchemist could comfortably deal with. “Tora’s Wedding Ring is pretty brutal too,” the muse continued, almost enjoying this dramatic run down of how absolutely shitty their last two options were, “You’re aware of Bermuda’s Triangle? It’s Terrasphere’s equivalent of that. Heard there’s a whole menagerie of beasties swimming within there, from Krakens to Leviathans to Loch Ness Monsters to Dragon Whales. Not to mention how compasses are absolutely trashed over there. I doubt any of those giants would be interested in a vessel as small as ours, but...” If the Fisher Cat Crew were there, they had much more to worry about than just getting into trouble with the law due to piracy and all that. He wasn’t sure how skilled those adolescents were, but considering how they were described by their mother as a bunch of good-for-nothing rascals, Cain was fairly certain they weren’t going to have a good time in that part of the waters. Still, the sun hadn’t set yet. Day hadn’t ended and the storm, while foreboding, had not yet unleashed its load upon the two questing landlubbers. Perhaps if they were lucky, they would be able to make it? Perhaps they would even be able to slay one of the great sea beasts roaming Tora’s Wedding Ring? Perhaps perhaps perhaps. “If we picked up the pace, we have a high chance of outracing the storm, doing a quick scan of the Ring, and make it back to the Shallows,” Cain said, not mentioning the fact that he might have to go all out and teleport in order to make it back, “What say you, Elmyra? Either way, there was a good reason to leave these two unpleasant options as the last. So Mistress of Poisons, pick yours! The treacherous shallows? Or the eldritch depths?" @Elmyra Cressen
She could’ve swore that there was another one with them. But now that she had enough of a time to compose herself – and enough time for the medicine to do its job, admittedly, she can honestly say that she remembers the third one of the party – the one who had been expressing some serious doubts about his own ability to navigate the open seas – to have declined their invitation and went about his merry way to do sensible-looking quests in good old dry lands. Can’t say that she found fault in that decision. In fact, judging from their present situation she can say that he made the right choice. …Again, all of those revelation and she looked like a right fool when she just realized that she basically talked to a thin air on the supposed empty space of the rowboat. They say that drifting out on the seas without a clear destination for an extended amount of time isn’t good for your mental health. They’re just out and about on the seas for a couple of long hours now and she’s already hallucinating. Imagine if they’ve been out here for days… Nevertheless, before she thought that the flamboyant muse in front of her was just a particularly vicious, man-eating hyena, Elmyra tried to focus her thoughts on to finishing up the task at hand. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. The sooner they finish these the sooner they get to once again walk on those precious, solid soils. None of these constantly rocking, swaying boats who looked like they’d just sink if you look at them funny. Elmyra cleared her throat as she mistakenly called out to someone who wasn’t there. Luckily for her, Cain had no intention of calling her out in her own budding insanity and decided to just answer her question in a somewhat professional, if flamboyant, manner. Deciding to leave her episodes of hallucination behind, Elmyra tried to instead concentrate on the map that Cain took out from his belongings. Maybe distracting her mind by concentrating on the intricacies of this current task would help stave her mind from its inevitable degradation by constantly swaying waves. The more she concentrates on the little points however, the more she realized that they’re basically did all the little things wrong in approaching this quest… “So let me get the points right.” Elmyra made sure to compile all the little things that Cain so helpfully pointed out I detail. Makes their situation that much more ridiculous. “Our choices boil down to either colossal monsters lurking beneath the waves or inhospitable natives in a wretched hive of scum and villainy.” She’s really starting to sound like Cain. Looks like the extended amount of heart-to-heart speeches worked. “If I’m looking about it from the logical point of view then Nacre should be the destination to be when you want to be a pirate, yes? It is, after all, like you said, a den of rogues.” “However-“ She wanted to slap herself silly from suggesting this particular course of action, but judging from what she heard about the boys this seems like what they’re actually thinking… “If I am to put myself in the shoes of those who’re looking for adventure, then Tora’s Wedding Ring is the region of the sea that I’ll be heading. Think about it, what kind of sea region a romantic would most likely head to, a shady port town or a mysterious strait of sea where there are rumors of giant monsters that sink ships?” “Of course, those who are truly prepared for adventures would probably point to the fact that compasses are pretty much useless in that region and have second thoughts unless they have an alternate methods of navigation…but as evidenced by the quest request itself, we don’t seem to be dealing with rational individuals. I’m willing to bet that they just heard of ‘giant monsters’ one day and just made plans to head straight to the sea region, complications be damned.” “Well, that’s my take on the whole situation at least. I’d say that they’d be more likely to head to Tora’s Wedding Ring, but to be honest there’s still a possibility that they went to Nacre. Take it or leave it, I say. Besides, if we’re to go to the Wedding Ring waters ourselves, do we have any…well, backup for the whole compass situation?” Elmyra pointed out, now using her oar as a foundation for the veritable tower of hands she made. “…And what’s with the Mistress of Poison bit anyway?” She didn’t know that she had that kind of reputation. Was it just because of all the cheap potions she sold to the Falderen merchants or that one time she just poisoned a pack of wolves? If it’s the latter…well, they kinda asked for it, to be perfectly honest. @Cain Darlite
Astute observations and acute deductions elucidated the matter of where exactly they would be going next. Elmyra’s points were solid, after all. Regardless of how entrancing a wretched hive of scum and villainy was, if those Felis teenage rebels sought adventure and freedom on the high seas, it was clear as day that they would be floundering about within Tora’s Wedding Ring instead, seeking glory or death even though none of them were capable of resurrection if tragedy did strike? Perhaps they were brave. Perhaps they were courageous. Perhaps the possibility of death was better than a life spent stagnating within a small, small fishing village out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps they just wanted to feel alive, out by their own, grasping their destiny with their own hands. It wasn’t noble or saintly, but it was still something that the midnight haired muse could agree with. A contract was a contract, however, and he flicked out his compass stylishly, determining the general direction of Tora’s Wedding Ring before stowing all his navigational tools back into his inventory. “Poison suits a berserking alchemist more than potions, does it not? And I suppose it’s off to the Wedding Ring’s waters we go, Lady Elmyra. Can’t just burn away daylight forever, after all,” Cain declared, rolling his sleeves back up and taking the worn oars in hand. Rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, he began preparations for their travels once more, setting a rhythm with his feet. “And hey, as for navigations ourselves, it’s not like we’re trying to get anywhere within the Wedding Ring, right? If we don’t see the kiddos, it’ll be easy enough to just row in a straight line until we’re out of such treacherous waters!” A terrible plan, really, but on the other hand, this entire trip had been ill-planned to begin with, their only salvation in the form of logging out if things got really rough. Did they even bring food and water, in case of the shipwreck into deserted island scenario? “Hahaha, geez, this is going to get rough!” ~~~ Everything was hell and nothing was safe and he was pretty sure his arms were going to fall off any second now, but after another segment of painfully hellish rowing, to the extent where Cain had to wonder if his love for the game had turned into pure white masochism instead, the boat was floating just on the border to the hellish waters that was Tora’s Wedding Ring. A circular patch of water that had a notably different coloration, it was more purple than sea green, almost reminiscent of toxins. Even outside the ‘ring’, the muse could spot dark shadows shifting beneath the waves, following the hidden underflow of the aberrant location. Perhaps, in this case, their rather shallow rowboat would work with them, cresting on top of the waves with hardly any portion of it actually submerged in the water? Hopeful, meaningless platitudes, ultimately. He screwed up his courage, laughed at how the compass needle was already spinning erratically, and spun the telescope in his hands once more, precariously balancing on the bow of the glorified bucket while scanning the waters. The clouds were coming in for sure, and they… “Amazing,” Cain said, in a tone flatter than the boiling horizons, “It appears your deduction was correct, Lady Elmyra. I see a ship there, right in the center of that entire mess. Definitely doesn’t look like a battleship, or even a merchant vessel. Closer to a fishing boat, if you ask me.” He let out a sigh, before flashing his teeth towards that foolhardy target, his magical rhythm burning with aggression now, spiking up as he pre-emptively set up a variety of buffs. Magical Defense, Physical Attack, Evasion Up, Fortitude Plus, Farsight, Hypermetabolism, Grand Magic Evocation. Against the storms and the waves, against the monsters that must have simply been WAITING for them to take a step into their backyard, these preparations were all he could do. The Muse handed the scope over to the Mistress of Poisons, narrowing his eyes as he continued to tap away, utilizing his entire body as an instrument. “Forty seven degrees to the right, if you want to confirm yourself,” Cain clarified, already anticipating the wet and wild hell they were going to toss themselves into. “So hey, ready for a sprint, @Elmyra Cressen ?"
