The Great Sea Road Campaign/Session 4

At the tavern in Fisherhome, Maureen Klopovich recieves word that her companion Billblo Jobbins has been forcibly impressed into the navy and is being held against his will on the currently-docked *Royal Royal*, where he is being made to work as a painter. Maureen arrives at the mayor's office to ask for help with Billblo's impressment and encounters Sam Clementine waiting for an appointment with the town's magistrate. When told to calm down and submit a request to the magistrate in writing rather than screaming at the clerk, Maureen becomes unhinged and hurls an inkpot at one of the town guards, before being calmed down by Sam. Sam is in fact seeking out the magistrate for the same reason, having seen Billblo's abduction take place while working on the docks doing freelance boat blessings earlier that day. As it turns out, the magistrate is not in the office, so Sam and Maureen decide to go looking for him elsewhere in the town.

Sam and Maureen find the magistrate in the tavern. Grokkus Babooff and Simon Graves are also at the tavern, and tell Sam and Maureen that the magistrate has been drinking for about an hour already. The magistrate is sitting with a town guard ("Henry") and two other townsfolk and playing a drinking game with a deck of cards. Maureen is familiar with the strip version of the game they're playing (a trick-taking game called "Skrum") and asks to be dealt in. Maureen learns that one of the other townsfolk playing is in fact a mate on the *Royal Royal*. After the round of Skrum finishes, Maureen wants to follow and spy on (and potentially kidnap and ransom) the mate, but Sam instead asks his assistant Gale Sternheart to distract the mate by offering to buy him a drink, while Sam takes his place at the game table next to the magistrate. Sam tells the magistrate about Billblo's abduction, but is told that the whole town of Fisherhome only has three town guards and is therefore unable to help much with rescuing Billblo.

Sam, Maureen, Gale, Grokkus, and Simon come up with a plan to rescue Billblo themselves by dressing as Cult of the Tides members and having Sam lead them in blessing the *Royal Royal*. By bringing an extra cloak with them, they hope to find Billblo and smuggle him off the ship disguised as a fellow cult member. The rescue party arrives at the docks the next morning (coinciding with high tide) to perform the blessing. Sam heads to the *Royal Royal'*s main mast to perform the bulk of the actual blessing, while the other four party members split up to search the ship under the pretense of performing blessings. Simon sees a crewman bringing a can of paint into the captain's cabin and moves in to investigate.

In the cabin, the *Royal Royal'*s captain ("Baron Wussname") sits to have Billblo paint his portrait. Billblo, however, insists that he only paints nude subjects and asks the captain to strip. The captain takes off his shirt, but is hesitant to take off his pants. Billblo assures the captain that he need not worry, since he promises to paint the captain's member six inches longer than its actual length. Tom still doesn't want to show us the captain's dick, but then the captain crit fails his Sense Motive roll and so we do in fact get to see his peen. (Craig looks up random generation tables from FATAL and calculates that the captain has a 5.16-inch penis)

Outside the cabin, Simon convinces the ship's navigator to take a peek into the cabin window, where he sees both the nudeness happening and also the prominent "HELP ME" that Billblo painted onto the wall facing the window. With Simon's help, the navigator is convinced that the scene unfolding in the cabin very much needs to be interrupted. Unfortunately however, the cabin is locked and the navigator wimps out and fails to get the captain to open up. Inside, Billblo feigns a leg cramp, and then manages to get the captain to summon the guards after he tells him that the cabin's wine bottles (which Billblo had used to send out his messages for Maureen) had instead all been consumed by other crewmembers. The navigator manages to get himself and Simon into the cabin so Simon can perform a blessing/intervene in the depravity that seems to be unfolding. Simon tells the captain that the incense being used for the blessing is skin irritant in order to convince the captain to leave the cabin, and afterwards gives the spare cultist cloak to Billblo so that he can disguise himself and slip away.

On the lower decks, Grokkus and Gale find rows of galley slaves while performing their blessings. Grokkus, in a moment of revolutionary libertarian fervor, whispers to the slaves that he is going to free them and asks them to make a distraction so that he can pickpocket the slavemaster's keys. One of the slaves begins moaning and shouting as if having a nightmare, and in the commotion Grokkus manages to steal one of the keys from the guard's keychain before being noticed. Grokkus passes the key to one of the galley slaves, then pulls out his crossbow and tells the slavemaster to back off. The slavemaster is unimpressed and moves to pull back Grokkus's hood, so Grokkus shoots him in the chest. The slavemaster is bleeding badly, but pulls out a black powder pistol and shoots Grokkus in return. The slavemaster yells to one of the other two guards ("Jim" and "Bob") on the lower deck to run upstairs and get help. Gale is very upset about the violent turn of events and very nearly tackles Grokkus, but decides to tackle the guard that was leaving to get help instead. Gale rolls a crit and knocks the guy unconscious. Grokkus rushes the slavemaster and stabs him with his dagger.

On the upper deck, Simon realizes that shit has begun to hit the fan and dives overboard. On hearing the cry of "man overboard", the crew of the *Royal Royal* look at Sam in confusion, and Sam explains that everything is fine and that it's standard procedure during a ship blessing for the underside of the ship's keel to be blessed.

Meanwhile, below deck, several of the slaves have unchained themselves. The slavemaster is now potentially mortally wounded, and Grokkus begins to carve a swastika into his forehead with his dagger. He gets as far as carving the letter "L" before more guards start to arrive and Gale convinces him that they need to leave now. The two of them jump out of portholes, Gale swims to shore, and Grokkus slowly swims his way towards a fishing boat tied up at the harbor.

Back on the upper deck, the crew has been mobilizing in response to the slave revolt that is unfolding below. The Royal Royal's captain (wearing nothing but a cloak tied about his waist, along with his saber) is on deck and, seeing Grokkus swimming around the side of the boat, attempts to catch him with a fishing net, but Grokkus narrowly manages to escape onto the other fishing boat. Sam quietly announces to the distracted crew that the blessing is all finished, and he, Maureen, and Billblo discreetly disembark the ship. The whole party manages to successfully escape back to town. The slave revolt is ultimately a failure though, with eight slaves killed (along with the slavemaster and two other guards).