31/03/2020 - Beach Brawling and Announcements of Admiralty

## TL:DR

* As the group left Faldor they met up with Khrom  and his new friend Kelda, a witch from a local village who was on a mission to find a cure for her unconscious friend.
* The group returned to the ship to find it once again under attack by pirates.
* The pirates were eventually defeated, but Trimaeus's  ship suffered irreparable damage.
* The boon-bowl given by the mage’s Goddess turned into a new ship that the self-proclaimed Admiral Rocky  re-named the Wildmane.
* After some arguing about Rocky’s  new found title, the group boarded the Wildmane and set off back towards Ilbidor.

## Finishing in Faldor

Having received the Goddesses boon, the group prepared for their journey back to the ship. Ves  confirmed that she had updated Dr T on their progress. Or at least, she thought she had, as the letter she wrote appeared to have magically disappeared from her pocket. Rocky  countered that perhaps she shouldn’t be so sure, as things go missing from his pockets all the time, and that maybe sneakly little Blagden  had stolen it. Having not met Blagden  yet, Ves  was interested to hear more about him. Rocky  explained that Blagden  was an adept thief and general troublemaker, though harmless. Narko  said he was a little shit, and that Steve might disagree with the statement that Blagden  was “harmless”.

The group then moved on to discuss where the heck everyone was, who in fact should be here anyway, and why on earth the group was now so big and complicated. Gimble  helpfully pointed out that in his military days those who got lost were simply left behind, and that he got lost a lot. The group therefore decided to make their way back to the ship in the hope that they would find everyone there. Rocky  enthusiastically took the lead, holding the magical boon-bowl high above his head like a talisman of victory. As Rocky  happily charged through the swampland on the outskirts of Faldor, Gimble  noticed that the swamp was much drier than it had been a few days ago. Suspicious of this change, and still concerned about where everyone else had gone, Ves  decided to write a message in the clouds saying “Super Fish Pals have left, check out your swamp”.

## A New Friend

Soon after Ves’s  cloudy script appeared in the sky, Khrom  and some unknown figure were noticed walking out of the forest towards the group. Rocky  gave Khrom  a large hug, whilst Gimble  watched on jealously. Khrom  then explained that he had been off exploring and had found a new friend called Kelda in a local village. It transpired that Kelda was a local witch, who was embarking on a journey to discover a cure for a friend who had been unconscious for days. Rocky  informed Kelda that she had come to the right place, as this was a group of “intellectuals”, before asking her if she’d lobbed some water at her friend as she might just be drunk. Kelda ensured Rocky  that she had indeed tried such complex methods. Narko  then asked Kelda if her friend required immediate help, but Kelda seemed totally confident that there was no need to rush. Ves  then asked Kelda if she was aware of the recent astral-island-space-time-hopping shenanigans. Kelda said she wasn’t, but had noticed the island moving and the sky changing colour. Finally, Gimble  completed Kelda’s interrogation by asking her if she knew why the swamps moisture content had changed. Kelda replied that the swamp was not normally there and that it was usually lush forest.

## Pirate Punch-Up

With Kelda’s interrogation complete, Rocky  once again began leading the group “towards the ship”. Unfortunately, it transpired that Rocky  had no idea where he was going, and he ended up leading the group in a massive circle. Thankfully, Ves  was on it enough to realise, so she took over direction duties and quickly led the group back to the beach. As the group neared the beach, the sound of shouting reached their ears. It was quickly realised that some sort of fight was occurring, at which point everyone charged off towards the battle, Rocky  throwing the boon-bowl to a very surprised Ves  as he ran. The longer-limbed of the group emerged out of the trees first to see their ship half-beached on the shore, and several figures engaged in combat both on and off the ship. Behind the groups ship was the same pirate ship that had attacked them before. As they approached, Khrom  tried to motion to Narko  to slow down and sneak up on the combatants, but unfortunately Narko’s  rage-charge was too intense, and he was unable to stop himself from crashing forward and alerting the pirates to their presence.

Realising the time for stealth was over, Narko  and Khrom  charged into the fray, followed closely by the other tall’uns, Bayul  and Rocky  (plus Gimble , who Rocky  was carrying). This vanguard attack was met with mixed success. Narko  and Rocky  succeeded in killing two of the flimsier looking pirates, but Khrom  narrowly missed another with his javelin, despite raging at the thought of Krieg Venusto’s general impoliteness. Bayul  then used his natural air of command to order “horny” Narko  into making a sneaky extra attack, but sadly Narko  was so surprised at being called horny that he totally messed up his strike, which allowed one of the pirates to rake at him with their weapon. At this point, two huge ogres jumped off the ship and struck viscously at both Narko  and Khrom .

By now, the less-long-limbed of the group had caught up, and immediately got stuck into the fight, with Kelda summoning some spirit magic to heal Rocky  (who was still nursing injuries from the box fight earlier) and Ves  turning into a giant black bear. Gimble  then charged into the mix, easily taking out a pirate with his hand axe. However, the pirates had reinforcements too, and several more of them appeared. The first pirate newcomer, a skeletal mage still aboard the ship, fired several magical missiles into Narko’s  ample rump, dealing significant damage that even Narko’s  giantish resistance was unable to mitigate. The second newcomer, a heavily armoured man, jumped off the ship in front of Khrom . To their fury, Khrom  and Narko  both recognised this as the man who just managed to escape from them a few days ago. Rocky  and Ves  then noticed that one of the figures still fighting the pirates was Captain Trimaeus, but that the rest of their friends and much of the ships crew were tied up on the shore.

Over the next few moments the fight raged fiercely. At first the outcome remained in the balance, with the strong melee attacks of Bayul , Gimble , Narko , Khrom  and bear-Ves  more or less matched by that of the ogres. However, as time passed, Khrom , who had been repeatedly blinded by the skeleton-mage, began to weaken, as did the others. With the battle on a knife edge, Kelda then summoned a metric ton of healing magic in the form of a unicorn (or “gay horse”, according to Rocky ), which allowed the group to regain their strength and turn the tide. Rocky’s  magic also proved invaluable, as he used his insult-based inspiration (“you Naddy bastard”) to keep the group motivated, and literally cooked the annoying armour-clad pirate to ash with excellent use of a heat-metal spell. Rocky  also succeeded in heavily de-motivating the pirates by insulting their beards and genitals. Finally, after much exchanging of blows, Gimble  successfully killed one ogre by chopping off its knees, whilst Khrom  killed the other by doing a helicopter-blade manoeuvre into its head.

## Confessions of a Drunk

With all of the pirates on the beach now defeated, the skeleton-mage on the ship abruptly disappeared. Seeing this, Bayul’s  leadership qualities came to the fore, as he ordered the others to quickly search for footprints and attempted (with admittedly little success) to smell out the skeleton with his long old nose. Whilst Gimble  and Rocky  looked for skeletal footprints, Ves  cleverly cast faerie fire on the ship to try and reveal the skeletons location, whilst Narko galloped over to check on Trimaeus  and untie the others. Seeing Leo , Narko asked him what had happened. Leo  explained that the pirate ship had attacked in the night and managed to take most of the crew hostage without any fight. As the group converged together, Narko  asked Leo  how they were taken by surprise so easily. Slightly embarrassedly, Leo  explained that most of them had been “fucking blazed”. As Narko  muttered something about the great perils of alcohol, Kunai  spat that only cowards attacked at night. Bayul , hearing both of these comments, raised his eyebrows at the blatant hypocrisy of his companions, remembering that Narko  regularly gets high on weed, and Kunai  is a self-proclaimed expert assassin. Ignoring Bayuls  eyebrows, Kunai  asked Captain Trimaeus  what the losses were. Trimaeus  replied that at least 20 of his crew were dead, and that the ship looked damaged beyond repair. Bayul  then somewhat angrily proclaimed that from now on not everyone should be drunk, and that there should always be some sober lookouts. Gimble  then asked what they were going to do about the disappeared skeleton-mage. Kunai  replied that he would go and scout their ship for it, whilst Bayul  pointed to the now receding sails of the pirate ship in the distance and suggested that the skeleton had probably escaped back onto the pirate boat.

## Admiral “Private” Rocky

Growing bored of all the talking, Rocky  then asked Ves  for the boon-bowl back and headed towards the sea, with Ves  and Bayul  hot on his heels. With the bowl placed into a small hole in the shallows, the group watched in amazement as the bowl began to grow bright and move out towards deeper water. The light grew brighter and brighter before exploding outwards, temporarily blinding everyone. As everyone’s sight returned, there was a communal gasp of wonder as a large, brand-new sailing ship now existed where the bowl had been. Gold writing on the prow indicated that this ship was called “The Archiver”. Leo  asked how they would crew such a ship. Rocky  quickly suggested that Trimaeus  and his crew could do it, seeing as how their ship was destroyed. Rocky  then proclaimed that the ship should actually be called “Wildmane”, as the only reasons he was here was that Narko  had saved him from Krieg Venusto. Whilst Narko  gaped with speechless gratitude at such a gesture, Rocky  went on to add that he should definitely be the Captain. Gimble  kindly suggested that Admiral would be a better name, but quickly changed his mind as Bayul  said there was no way Rocky  got to be admiral, and that Private would be more appropriate. However, having heard the word Admiral, and liking the sound of it very much, Rocky’s  mind was not to be changed and he insisted he was to be Admiral. As his first act of Admiral, Rocky  decided to make Trimaeus  the official Captain, but only on the condition that he didn’t drink whilst on duty. Despite Leo  and Ves  suggesting that this was a harsh condition, pointing out that Trimaeus  was the most drunk of them all last night yet the only one still fighting come the morning, Trimaeus  agreed to the terms. Whilst all of this discussion was taking place, the sneaky pairing of Tamsin  and Blagden  were going through all of the pirate bodies, looking for treasures. They found 12 gold pieces each, as well as an interesting set of knucklebones that Blagden  kept.

Everyone then made their way up onto the Wildmane. Ves  marked the location of Myriath on her map and then went to re-paint the ships prow with the name Wildmane. However, to her astonishment, she found that the name had already magically changed. So instead, she decided to draw a smiley face and a very sketchy looking centaur. As Captain Trimaeus  began getting to grips with the new ship, Rocky  suddenly remembered that Wilbur, and presumably Scribbulus , were still stuck on the other ship. Thankfully Trimaeus’s  magic was once again able to transport the ankylosaurus safely onboard. Finally, as the ship began to sail away from Myriath, Rocky  told Bayul  that he was in charge of the ship’s defences. However, Bayul , who was by now pretty fed up of Rocky  bossing everyone around, retorted that Rocky  was not in charge of this boat, that he was not going to let himself be ordered around, and that he was going to bed. A slightly shocked Rocky  simply proclaimed, “Fuck that guy”, and then asked Khrom  to be in charge of the defences instead.

The day ends as the adventures sail away from Myriath on the Wildmane, excited for whatever task Dr T has lined up for them next…