Duty Session 122: The Ezzo Rescue

Rescuing people from the shores of Ezzo has been an extended project. Lots of boats of various sizes make short trips there and back, ferrying the many, many people stuck at the edges of a place cut off from the rest of the world. There's been a number of incidents getting to and from it, but weirdly, they mostly seem to happen when Adventurers are around...

...which is why Plant Hwyaden comes in force.

Att Syne is on the deck of the ship they're taking across this time, having a quiet word with the captain. The terms of their agreement is simple: Landers do the sailor-related work, while the Adventurers handle any unforseen problems that might come up along the way. Att is sure that the Landers will be part of that problem, but doesn't know when or how just yet; he's just keenly aware of their vague mutual distrust of one another, lingering at the edge of social perception. He wonders idly if they have to grind some kind of reputation to get them to step off.

"Alright! We're about to be underway!" Att heads towards the bow of the ship. "Everybody ready?"

"... Do you suppose that these might have a greater chance of success if we found a way to reinforce Landers rather than go ourselves? That is, do you suppose probability of incidents is skewed towards the presence of adventurers?" Count V wonders aloud, standing on the deck and leaning against his staff. Well, this mission involved Ezzo, so he had to at least try to get involved. But he's not terribly certain about what might happen along the way, and rumors of what's happened to other rescue runs have certainly reached his ears.

"*Any* unforseen consequence?" Whis repeats, sprawled over the side-rail of the boat like an sack of colorfully-covered cargo. "I don't feel like I'm ready for *any* unforseen consequences. In fact, all the things that are totally forseen that will happen is basically this entire quest, which will at some point involve terrible cliche things."

Whis rubs her hands against her face, fingers lingering as she draws her hands down to create a rather silly face-stretch. "We're going to get to the end of this and they'll go 'congratulations! now, walk us back. it's lunchtime, we're hungry! Feed us!'."

Whis groans. "Like that time they did exactly that, do you remember?"

Whis is the most eager helper.

"There can't be -that- many people left over there," Kauchemar muses, mostly to herself. The Nightmare Muse is leaning against a railing, idly adjusting the tuning on her lute. It's probably going to see a lot of use for sea shanties during this trip so she wants to have it prepared. "Even if we've been rescuing Landers as well as Adventurers." She gives it an idle strum, checking the scale, and fiddles some more.

"Maybe, my dear V, but where would the fun in that be?" Another test chord. Better. "Or the strengthening of our reputation? Better to be known for what we did than what we did not."

Proteus has always been dedicated to helping out her Ezzo compatriots. There might be no honor amongst thieves, but there is respect, and Proteus respected those who lived in that harsh, ruin-strewn land. Already, she wishes she could return.

And one day, she will. Once she finds the key for that door.

But for now, she stands on the foredeck, staring quietly out to sea with her arms crossed. An ocean wind ripples her cloak and hood. "Yes." Her response is short. She probably wouldn't have said anything at all except someone might mistake her for getting in Ominous Posing Practice instead of packing her stuff. She has no idea why some people might have that idea.

"Like that time they did exactly that," Att sighs.

He glances at Count Villainy. "Yeah, probably. But I bet any direct intervention on our part is going to setup Adventurer-level problems, even if we're just handing them boaring pikes and saying 'have at.' At least we're probably out of people to scoop up."

     To his credit, Shin's only *a little* late. He has a piece of toast in his mouth (again), indicating that he in fact forgot - immersed in his drawings - and had to bail as fast as possible, probably with a 'sorry!' as he ran past someone out the door.

     He jumps onto the deck at the last minute as the ship starts to leave, landing in an Iron Man pose, scarf flowing around him. Then he stands up, chews, and holds out a thumbs-up.

     "Guuf t'gu," he manages around his toast.

Shin lands in a Superhero Pose. Still leaning over the bar, Whis L-bends her right arm, palm up, and rests her left wrist against the side of her right.

"Ultraman!" She deadpan 'yaaay'-s before clambering over the edge and landing bare feet in the water, wandering onto land trailing a wet train of soggy-wet robe.

     Shin returns the motion immediately, because he is, in fact, a proper toku nerd.

"Ah, well... you know. Sometimes if you do things right, no one will be sure you did anything at all?" Count V replies to Kauchemar, feebly. He doesn't seem all that concerned about 'reputation loss' in concept at least.

The notion that the Landers will subject him to a considerable amount of severe banality and then force him to make their lunch elicits an immediate heavy sigh and visible drooping from Count V.

"Even now," he laments, "escort quests are bad."

"Alright! Anchors, aweigh!" Att points off the bow.

The captain sighs, gesturing to his first mate. There's some more nautical-sounding shouts as they do that exact thing, but with more precision, and from the guy who hasn't simply watched a lot of pirate movies in recent years. There's a clanking as they wind a wheel to pull the anchor up to the deck, and one comes up, but the other...

"Hey! It's caught!"
"Must be a rock or somethin'!"
"HEAVE!"

They heave.

Nothing happens.

Att sighs. He swings his leg off the rail and heads over to the big spoked wheel in the middle of the deck. "Okay, okay. Minor problem. Let's just...!!" He heaves!

He is not super strong. It moves a little, though!

"You know, my dad always would tell that to people complaining about the car's speed. He liked driving real smoothly." Whis drawls, sliding under the rail to get out and help push.

"Whenever anyone complained about it, he'd say 'Well, you can get out and push.' and nobody ever took him up on it."

Whis smiles faintly. "Not once."

And like that they start hitting a problem. Not really a surprise all things together. Kauchemar sighs and sets her instrument aside, because this is going to take a bit more than a rousy shanty to get the men hauling that thing up and loose.

Hooves clonk against deck planks as the were fang walks over, grabs onto the chain amongst the Lander sailors, and pulls with all the strength one would expect a large equine to be able to apply to such a task. "Looks like aweighing this anchor is going to take some extra HORSE power!"

Like she's passing up the oppritunity for that terrible pun, either.

Count V goes to help with the anchor but-- he immediately hurts his back and releases the chain, stepping back with a grunt of pain and leaning /more/ heavily against his staff. He mumbles a 'fairy healing' that summons relief-granting sparklies around himself.

"I never had much to do with cars," He admits, "but I've always been in the city. I've had a scooter or two, though. Occasionally think that a motorcycle would be nice, but there's not much gain there. Maybe a town car...? I suppose it doesn't matter much now."

Proteus continues to stand there looking out to sea. The dramatic beginning causes her to set herself, expecting the familiar lurch of a ship moving into the ocean when.... Nothing. Because anchors. With a sigh, she turns and heads over to the wheel with the others. Some might think the mage is something of a wimp, but her muscles bulge, and she braces herself, pushing forward and anchoring the others... And then taking a step forward. And another. And another. She still doesn't say a lot at the moment.

     Shin moves over to help with the lever.

     He fails utterly. He slips, flat on his face, toast shoved against it. With a groan, he struggles to his feet and tosses the toast (now soggy from the deck) away. "Dang."

"Flew a plane, once," Att grunts. He pushes. Proteus pushes, too, and he's surprised to see her able to do it at all. "My dad made the same -- get out 'n push -- joke!"

Eventually -- eventually! -- the anchor comes free of whatever it was caught on. It practically shoots out of the water, the winch yanking it out with a spray. It gets to its proper berth, and the wheel turns easily. Att falls forward when it does, gripping one of the handles with both hands, basically stretched out across the deck behind it. He lets out a wheezy, "Woo," and then lets go. Exhaustion stacks are mounting, but they're the temporary kind. They'll go away while he sprawls for a moment.

The sailors don't much appreciate them being everywhere, though.

Not long after that, the next issue that has nothing to do with the rescue: scurvy. Probably. Maybe. "We have no shipboard doctor for this voyage," the quartermaster explains. "Perhaps the carpenter could...?"

Behind him, a man with two peg legs sharpens a saw with a wide, wide grin.

Att stares. Eventually, he suggests, "Uh -- lime?"

     "Stand on your head until the disease falls out," Shin replies from where he's sitting with a piece of paper, sketching.

When the time comes to try to do something about a guy who has contracted what is most probably scurvy, Count V goes about the business of attempting to imitate one of Whiskey's recipes with stuff that happens to be onboard. This includes a barnacle that he just shaves off the hull with a jet of water. What he actually ends up creating is a horrible diuretic, which really just keeps the status quo about where it was in the first place at absolute best.

The crew promptly decides that anything he makes is not to be consumed.

V shrugs.

Once the anchor is up and they're on their way properly Kauchemar wipes grime and saltwater off her hands on the edge of her cloak as she wanders back to her spot to retrieve her lute. Resumes her reclined stance and playing along with the sailor's santy chanting. It's not hard to do, since the Landers know so few songs in the first place.

Someone is actually sick? Oi vey. You'd think these people would be more experienced by no--oh, right Landers. They're only as good as they need to be to get common jobs done and have odd things so Adventurers can do something.

"Eh. Sucks to be him." She has nothing useful to add, so goes right back to playing her music.

At least she's not trying to play something nausiating to make it -worse-. That would be funny, but pretty cruel to her Guildmates, and not a good kind of prank at a time like this during SERIOUS BIZNIZ.

A sick sailor? What ever is there to do?!

Clambering back on-board, Whis grunts at V's attempt to make a home-cure out of ~essential elements~ (AKA: total nonsense) and rolls up a sleeve, pulling out some dried spins of fruit. "I can probably make a scurvy tea, sure."

Everyone else largely proceeds to be useless.

"We really need to find some help." Whis laments dryly as she sets about boiling a globe of water to get some tea for the poor guy before he dies of Barnacle Juice (It's The Juiciest).

Things get underway and everything is great. For a short time. The report of a sailor coming down with scurvy of all things causes Proteus to rub her head in irritation. "Already? Who the hell designed..." There is a grunt as she cuts herself off before she says something that pisses off the Landers for breaking the fourth wall.

She sighs and goes to tend to them, summoning up healing spells to try to stave off the worst of it... But some things can't be solved with cure spells.

Proteus eventually returns to her position, even more broody after the fate of the sailor is sealed. "I hate this." She mutters.

The sailor FUCKING DIES.

No, he just turns out to be totally useless, even with treatment. It's enough to be sure he doesn't perish, but there's going to be this background sound of him groaning in sick discomfort for literally the entire trip. Even Kauchemar's musical interlude doesn't quite cover it up. It sours moods, but at least it doesn't mean they have to spend time having a burial at sea...

The carpenter, for the record, is incredibly disappointed they can't replace the malfunctioning parts of the body with peg-equivalents. They're very nice peg-equivalents, you know. Ask about his peg-gallbladder!

"Well," Att says, "at least all our problems have been excruciatingly mundane so far."

He looks out at the sea, folds his arms, and waits.

Onward the venture to Ezzo sails. For a while things are quite and easy... Too easy. Sure enough, the peace is shattered by an ominous crunching noise! Fortunately the ship itself is not shattered, just shaken a bit.

Kauchemar stops playing for a moment and looks up as something thuds hard into the ship, in time to see the fish with undead limbs and massive toothy maws climbing onto the deck and trying to take bites out of shipwork and sailors with equal frevor. "What nerd programmed zombie Sharkticons into this game?" She huffs, rolls a shoulder... and resumes doing what Bards do.

" o/~ Hold your head up, keep your head up, hold your sword up -- Fight! Fight! Fight!
When you sleep keep one eye open. Know your friends but watch them tight. o/~"

But it's not like she isn't making an effort, as while doing her little ditty she's also releasing her Ghost Sword and Shield and sending them hurtling into the fray to skewer undead fish and shove them back off the ship.

" o/~ Hope I loaded my gun... I know I'm loaded with rum...
My fear is low and I hap'n to know the world is full of scum. o/~"

     Kauchemar starts singing as the zombies arrive. Shin stands up from his paper, stuffs it into his coat, and then goes hopping forward. His foot whips around as he dives in, smacking one of them with a blast of wind. He ducks under a swipe. His hands smack against the ground, both feet snapping up for a blast of wind to send them up into the sky as a lay-up for somebody else.

     He rolls under the lay-up and brings his hand around for another shot at another of them, to shove it forward into the arms of waiting meleers.

     Shin believes in being a melee support.

"Cutting gale!" Count V turns, lifting his staff lightly and bringing its tip down on the deck in reaction to the arrival of what he can only estimate to be minibosses. His wings shine for a moment as whipping winds begin to surround him and then arc out across the ship, hammering the undead shark... men? He's not really certain exactly what these things could be described as. Regardless, it's not the only effort he puts into getting them clear of what's happening.

Simultaneously he raises his staff and waves towards the sails, summoning a great gust of wind that fills them and begins to drag the ship onward-- and hopefully away from any further adds that might choose to join the melee were they to remain stationary through the battle.

"Well," he asides to Kauchemar, "it is that kind of game. I've seen quite a few references. Wouldn't you be at least a little disappointed without some of that?"

"There! Finally!" Att Syne goes from impatiently waiting for the sea to disgorge a monstrosity to a combat stance in the blink of an eye. Staff, sword, grin -- he's ready to rumble.

Hitting the skeleton fish is a lot like playing a xylophone. Halloween-appropriate music comes to mind, though Att is pretty sure that's months from now, Out There. The counterattack causes more of that sound, as he uses his quarterstaff one-handed to deflect, and his sword to deliver damaging attacks, even if the general lack of flesh makes it kind of unlikely it'd actually do much of anything. He doesn't think too hard about it.

"I'm excited to find a Holy Hand Grenade," Att asides, mid-violence.

Noisy useless asshole. As if there wasn't enough trouble, there's the constant problem of, well, crossing the ocean in general. Her brooding is once again interrupted by the arrival of a bunch of annoying undead fish. "Can't you damn things leave me to sail in peace?!" She hisses. Not that the undead respond. Monsters never really do.

Still, Proteus has her own resources to deal with this. She turns irritably, and cuts her hand through the air in precise patterns, the letters gleaming as she inputs the gesture commands. V S M

A moment later, the unexpected happens. A pillar of earth erupts from the deck of the ship, a fist surmounting it as it simply thrusts out suddenly to smash the fish away. "Get out of here." She does, however, spare a moment to give Kauchemar a thumbs up for the song.

Whis is just about to make a second serving of tea - with her hot water - when a ZOMBIE FISH attacks. With Att Syne smacking the xylophone bones, Whis shies away, throwing up her hands in defense as a buffeting wind spell is cast onto the deck, extending the party's air juggle AND being a nautically useful activity!

Hoory, themed activities!

The sudden surprise of seafaring sickness may of thrown them off a little. But when it comes to exherting their dominance in a fight Hwyaden is right on top of the matter. A multitude of attacks are flung into the fishfaced fiends to fillet them from the ship, while a healthy blast of wind magic to the sails keeps the ship moving away before of the buggers can board.

Ezzo's shoreline is coming into sight now... and with it the latest problem to crop up as crewmates go to ready the landing boats, and find damage done by the undead ichythants storming the ship.

The Good News: The crew does have the foresight (or coding) to have spare materials on hand.
The Bad News: With their goal quickly arriving they don't have time to do a thorough repair, so it's going to take Adventurer grit and makeshift crafting to get the boat usable in less time than usual!

Kauchemar recalls her Ghost Weapons, and summons a small elemental from the briney depths to help try to pound boards back into shape.

"I'm surprised no one has found one already." V replies to Att.

Things continue on-- until they discover their longboats are damaged! As the they're pulled up for further examination and repairs, V meanders over to one of them and begins to look at it closely. He frowns, pulling a nail out that had been rocked back and forth and worn a hole into the boat. He shakes his head, "This isn't going to do..."

He goes about the business of repairing This Specific Longboat.

Unfortunately, it's not that V isn't adept enough to repair it, it turns out that he's too much of a perfectionist. After a while of working V stands up abruptly and holds a hand out to a member of the crew, "Wood glue and sealant, high quality."

Nobody has this.

V's longboat is abandoned as unusable until a fetch quest is completed. To his credit, apart from being simply too slow, he did pretty well.

"I made the tea!" Whiskey complains, before flopping back on the boat, rocking it just a skosh.

"And fought the stupid fish. And I'm doing the thing for Shin, too, so... Not this one!"

She raises an arm limply to hold a finger aloft. "The boys can handle it."

     Shin does not know how to make boats.

     He does, however, know how to chop wood.

     So, as Whis does the thing, he chops the wood in half with his fist. It's actually surprisingly precise, rupturing in very expert ways to make it way easier for other people to work with. That's about as helpful as he can be, other than giving Whis a thumbs-up. "We got this!"

The water elemental's efforts don't do a whole lot in actual pounding things in place, but the splashing of it's arm leaving water splattering does, if unintentionally, test out the repaired sealing so there's no surprise leaks afterwards.

Violence does Att some good. Mundane bullshit is pretty irritating, honestly; he doesn't play-slash-live in a fantasy adventure game in order to deal with mundane bullshit. He wants his problems to be monster-shaped, not... scurvy-flavored. Is scurvy a flavor? It's probably anti-citrus, Att thinks.

He thinks this while the zombie fish is being dispatched. Dang, he's getting good at this killing-on-autopilot thing. That bugs him a little, too, but for a different, more existential reason. "Maybe someone found a number line of 'one, two, five' and doesn't get the reference," Att thinks aloud. He shakes his head. What a waste. What a total, absolute, disgraceful waste.

The damaged boats, though, are easy to solve: go bother the carpenter. Att goes below deck, to the carpenter's door. He raises a hand to knock --

'OUT TO LUNCH - BACK IN 30 MIN.'

"Figures." Att grumbles on the way back up to the deck. He goes to handle damaged boats himself. They're not chunks of rock, but...!!

Through a combination of actual skill, grit, and some phenominal luck the Adventurers manage to get the boats at least in servicable order to hit the water once the ship pulls near to Ezzo's shoreline. This time there are no supplies going to the island, just gathering up hopefully the remainder of the refugees so this matter can be put the rest. And maybe they can start on something more important like trying to figure out what the hell actually happened here. But for now, that has to wait for another time.

That they are just picking up survivors doesn't mean things are going to be any easier. Case in point one unusually large and burly looking fellow that wades -- moreso shoves -- his way through the lines to get to the front with no concern for others he's pushing out of his way. But just as he's about to step onto one of the longboats he comes face to face with the Nightmare staring at him. Not quite eye to eye, as despite his height Kauchemar is actually a couple of inches taller.

Doesn't stop her from staring right into his eyes with her own inhuman gaze, flecks of dark magic whisping from the corners along her lashes as she does so. "No." He backs up a step in spite of himself, and Kauchemar follows by just leaning forward as the proper start of the line starts filtering onto the boat. "You are going to go back, take your proper spot in the line, and wait your turn."

Then opens her mouth wide, wider than should be possible thanks to her monster heritage, viper fangs on full display. "Or I won't have to worry about having a snack on the way back to Alne."

That's enough to get the bloke to scramble waaaaay back towards the end of the lines. And probably weird out some of the other people already in line into behaving as well.

Intimidation is totally viable as a means of Negotiation.

Att Syne fixes a boat largely because he has craft skills adjacent to what is actually needed to get it floating. The thing that goes to shore... well, now it looks like a lion-prowed longboat, albeit kind of a short one -- a short boat? -- and it's sort of ungainly from the shape, but it floats and moves when oars are applied, so what else do you want?

The Landers waiting at the shore look astounded. He steps up and clears his throat. "Alright! Limit fifteen! Form an orderly line, and no pushing! We'll do this in turns-"

They do not form orderly lines or cease pushing. Att becomes embedded in a Spriggan-shaped depression on the beach while his dragon ship sails.

     Shin does his best to stand there and look intimidating.

     He is not especially intimidating.

     Except when he cracks his knuckles. When he cracks his knuckles, the odd scars across the back of his fingers become very obvious. They look like the sort of scars you only get from punching the hell out of something - either a wall, or a human skull.

     It's probably helpful for keeping people in as much line as possible. After a while, he also pulls Att out of the chaos.

Everyone arrives and Proteus hops off the boat to look at her compatriots. As far as things are concerned, this has been a regular occurance and the people who are still here are probably progressively more irate about the situation. Still, this is one of the last flotillas... Not that people need to know that.

"Come on, everyone. Let's all get out of here." She says, gesturing to the remainder as they probably continue to squat in Att's sandcastle fortifications (with sand cannons!). She moves along the lines, working to keep order. More than a couple of the more irritating people probably arrive on the boat vacant-eyed and slackjawed, however, Proteus looking particularly smug about it as they are shoved off.

After that, this is going to basically be smooth sailing. Finally, Proteus goes back to standing at the front of the boat...

But this time, she's smiling as they head back.

Down one longboat, Count V still joins the 'away team' assisting with the landing and getting people back to the ship. He sees a rare few people he actually knows -- the last stragglers who insisted on staying in Ezzo for a little while -- and brings them halfway into the fold, organizing them to keep everyone else from getting completely out of line.

At one point, he has a group of three -- himself, and two other Support Mages of some kind -- producing some sort of weird overlapping triple Nightmare Sphere to make it very difficult for anyone to do much of anything without immediately being controllable by a member of the guild.

This squad of three is among the last batch to return to the ship, two at the rear of their longboat and one at the front.

As the boats are pulled back and roped down onto theship, he wanders off to find a hammock and sleep off the riot control.

He makes his nook too dark to see in when he gets there, just to deter bothersome attempts to make him do things.