Ongriss nods thoughtfully at the information. Gratefully she pulls the blanket on; she won't be here too long, no sense getting Jestrynara's clothes wet. She relates their own adventures with the scanian sailors and how she cut their tillers! "Do you know how the pirates will react to a couple of ships approaching? Will they immediately assume that they're hostile or do they think that they own the sea here? If I can tell Vincentas how they're likely to react, that will help us. If you can spread the word to trusted people that help is on the way, that would be good! Do you have any ideas on how to proceed?"

While she listens to Jes and Wellawut, she helps herself to a few anchovies.

"I doesn't think they was expecting any more ships," Wellawut says.  "But I know how they reacted to OUR ship."

Wellawut tells the tale.  They had embarked on a small coastal transport, thinking to get back to Anteverpia, which was a familiar place.  With waffles.  From there, they could get back to Theoderic's area, or even Wellawut's home turf.

"T'wasn't a big ship we came in on.  It's over there, in fact."

The Gnome points to a small sailing ship.  It's a little shorter than Vincentas's boat, but wider.  It has no banks of oars, as cargo ships generally aren't rowed.

"The Sea Mouse," Wellawut says.  "Strange name, unless it was built for catching Cat Fish. Then it would make sense.  But they let us in, and as soon as we got in, they impounded the cargo, and Jestrynara and I skedaddled, so we wouldn't get grabbed by them no-neck sludge muckers.  Probably, if they think you've got cargo they can steal for themselves, they'd let your ship in too, and do the same."

Jestrynara nodded in confirmation of the gnome's report.

"I'm rather fond of the Sea Mouse," she added, somewhat proprietarily. Jes had become a bit fascinated with ships, while traveling about with Ongriss and her mariner husband. This was as near to having one of her own as she'd come.  "I think it's cute. A little smaller than even most of it's type, if I understand.  Sort of a Mini Mouse, I guess."   

On how to achieve the objective-  "These pirates are not the sort to bravely support any cause.  What drives them is greed, and fear of their masters.  But their masters are not here.  The morale of such creatures is often reduced, or broken, if the strongest among them go down.  If we were to take down the troll, and the veterans among the orcs, the others might lose heart. Perhaps disband and leave, if they think the immediate threat is large enough.  We have bait," she added with a faint smile. "They hate elves."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:23, Tue 31 Jan 2012.

Ongriss smirks at Wellawut. "See? I told you waffles and anchovies go together!"

Seeing the other ships she has to ask. "Where are the crews of the other ships? I'm pretty sure that they'd join up and fight in a heartbeat!" When she hears the pirates' methods she wonders aloud "The Voyager is a lot faster than any other ship. Do they wait until the ships dock or do they go out and 'escort' them in?"

She gives Jestrynara a thoughtful look. "As long as the ship is seaworthy, the size doesn't matter." She smiles. "I'm glad that you like the sea. As for dealing with the pirates? I hope that it doesn't come to using you as bait Jestrynara. If we can come in and break the blockade, do you think the townsfolk will rise up? Especially if the sailors of the other boats start something?"

"That would probably be easier...however, it is not a matter of a blockade. They are not surrounding the island with ships, nor cutting it off.  They are instead landed, and their general approach is something like 'we're here, we're tough, and we're in charge now, and anyone saying otherwise is gonna get his head smished,'" Jes described sagely, in her best imitative pirate voice.

"So, I think, it's a matter of how we might quickly down, defeat, or badly humiliate their leaders. Without getting ourselves diced up in the doing of it. Trolls are nasty.  And veteran orc warriors nothing to sneeze at, either.  Trolls of course can be harmed by flame, and often have to be burned, to be stopped for good.  I have had some thoughts.  Perhaps trapping him in a building, or on a boat prepared with oil, then igniting it.  And luring or scaring the orcs off the docks, and into nets, where they could be easily threatened or speared."  She shrugged.  "Easier said than done, probably. But those are my thoughts so far."

 With a final look at the ships along the shoreline and harbor he waves the helmsman back out to deeper water in case the enemy wished to test their luck away from shore.

 Alright, we will wait till dark covers the harbor then slide into the port and see if the guards are awake while we "Liberate" a couple or three ships they dont need at the moment. Still we need to be ready in case the pirates want to offer combat.

A night approach is always risky, but Vincentas has a foolproof collision night navigation system- Ongriss can tell guide the ship in so it doesn't run aground or hit anything.

(I am assuming, that once arranging things on shore, Ongriss returns to the boats.)

Under cover of darkness the two Breton vessels sail towards the harbor.

** ** ** **

On shore, Wellawut and Jestrynara watch over the harbor, aware that their allies are moving in.

Walacria's harbor is not natural.  This area has too many shifting sands for any such gift of geography.  The harbor is created by a heavy breakwater, built by the Romans.   There is a broad sand beach extending as far as one can see, but the harbor is artificial, created by a large stone and concrete jetty ending in a small tower.  Smaller vessels are generally beached, and larger ones use the jetty as a pier.

Two of the pirate vessels are tied up along the jetty, and the third is beached.

And there is something that can make Vincentas's plan go astray.  The pirates are slightly defensive about their boats.  They don't want the townsfolk getting any bright ideas about sneaking aboard at night and causing mischief.  So they have a night watch.  Tonight it is two men, scruffy looking men in leather and bronze armor, walking up and down the jetty.

"Would spoil the picnic, if they saw Miss Ongriss's boat coming in, and raised an alarm," Wellawut observes.

Once they arrange things, Ongriss does indeed go to Vincentas to let him know that there is help available in Walacria. <purple>"I found Jestrynara and Wellawut! They'll help us rally the townsfolk and fight the invaders. They've got a troll which we'll need to deal with somehow."</puple>

Once they start in, she takes point so that the ships can approach in the darkness. Carefully she leads the boats past the sandy shoals.

Wellawut sees the impending crisis.  Ongriss leading the boat in towards the dock... the two night watchmen will certainly sound the alarm, and Vincentas will have a battle at the dock instead of the sneak attack that any Gnome knows is preferable.


He has one thing going in his favor.  He and Jestrynara have been hiding out since they arrived, and the pirates do not know that there's an Elf and a Gnome in town.

Maybe, in the darkness, he can pull this off... he retrieves a tunic with a hood he retrieved from a laundry line shortly after his arrival, knowing the time may come when he needs it, and puts it on.  It's his size... more accurately, it's made for a Human his size.  It's got a pale blue fringe and silvery bow on top, and embroidered flowers around the collar.

"Whatever you may be asked to wear in the future," he tells Jestrynara, "remember  that it can't be as humilinatin as this.  You know what to do."

Wearing the child's tunic, he does his best impression of a child's awkward, floppy run towards the jetty.

"Oh help, help!" he squeaks in a falsetto.  "It's me mom, she's drunk again, and wandering about!"

He gets the attention of the watch men.

"Yer mom?"  one asks.  "Who are you?"

"You know us, we've got the dairy," the Gnome says. "And my mom's the pretty dairy woman the men always want to talk to.  Always coming around for cheese.  But she hit the wine pretty hard, and she's... well, she's over there and needs help getting home."

Lower Walacria, showing the "commercial center", the Jetty, and the ships.  The two ships at the end of the Jetty belong to the pirates, so does the one in the middle part way up on the beach.  A big transport is anchored, and the other boat part way up on the beach is the one Jestrynara and Wellawut arrived in.

 ooc: prebattle talks with the other skipper and crew.

 Ok, with the two pirate raiders, iam thinking they are more a threat to us then the cargo boat. So either Ongriss disables their vessels by cutting the keel and hopefully flooding the ship or we sneak on board and subdue the enemy, the last choice was not my best desire. One other choice would be to set the pirate ships on fire with oil down in the holds and then capture the cargo ships. What do you think?.

From just off the jetty, obscured from the watchmen's view by one of the ships, there drifted the sounds of a woman's laughter.

Followed by a feminine but immodest belch.

"Egbert! EGBERT!! Ya little rotter-- where the 'ell ye gotten too, now?  I swearsh...just like yer good fer nutin' pappy, wanderin' off like that!  Mama'sh not in the mood, for hide & sheek, by Neptune'sh latrine!  'Shpecially, wh-when sh-she can barely shee shtraight... *hiccup!*"   

Ongriss swims in front of the boats, staying close enough so that the lookout can see her without too much trouble. She doesn't want them to make any more noise than they absolutely have to. She has the magic saw on a lanyard around her neck as she guides the boats in.

The two watchmen are surprised when they see Jestrynara.  One of them looks down at Wellawut.

“Well Egbert must have gotten his big nose from his father, then, right?”

Wellawut suppresses a grunt of displeasure.

“Now where did you say you lived?” the other watchman asked, trying to think through the situation.

“Oh, you know, over past those dunes, the dairy, of course,” Wellawut says as he directs them towards what both of them know to be a deserted area of dune and beach shrub. populated

The first is still looking at the Gnome.

”I mean, all kidding aside, miss, that’s quite a honker he’s got there.  I mean.. he could probably smell stuff all the way in Hibernia with that humungous…”

”Yer no Adonis yerself!” Wellawut growls.

And it is at that point where the first hint of “something is very wrong with this otherwise promising picture” crosses their faces.

Meanwhile, at the boats…

Ongriss has learned a thing or two about boats.  She’s gotten quite used to them.  She swims among the two pirate vessels tied to the jetty.  They rock and bob with the waves, and there is the creaking of wood, the slosh of the water, and thumping as the boats bump against each other, and the jetty.  She looks at the waterlines in the moonlight.  The boats are riding high- empty.

And she hears not a sound.  They are empty, of course.  If the pirates have taken charge of this town, they’d hardly want to sleep in the damp, rocking boats.  She can sabotage them easily enough if she wants.

Vincentas sees no one moving on the jetty after Jestrynara and Wellawut distract the watchmen away.  His boat comes in without opposition, with the other one trailing behind.

Ongriss slips into the boats and works stealthily. She doesn't want to trash the boats completely, cutting through the keel will probably take far too long anyway. She takes the time to cut the tillers and all of the oars. If a boat has a mast, she'll cut that too. This way they won't be of much use in escape, but they can be made useful relatively easily.

As she works, she hopes that Jestrynara and Wellawut are ok and that Vincentas and the others make it to the docks soon.

 Watching the mast's drop down onto the decks with a crash he used the brief moment of confusion to signal the other fox tail ship forward and swarm the two cargo ships.

 He sends part of his crew over the railing to board the others ship and swiftly take control and to get the ship ready for sail as fast as possible. He himself keep a watch on the other smaller boats in case they wanted to challange the raid themselves.

 Stationing archers along the shore side to futher confuse any of the pirates trying to interfere with them and make sure that the two larger ships got away from shore into deeper waters.

Leave it to a gnome's sense of vanity to prematurely spoil a good ruse.  Now it was time to get all professional like.

She nodded sagely.  "Heesh exactly right. Yer not."

Jes instantly reached behind her back, and grabbed the dagger hidden by the mane of her hair, from her belt -- its blade softly aglow like a sliver of moon.  She had prepared it with the moonflower oil she'd gotten from the dryads, when she had first met Ongriss, Vincentas, and Wel.  While she hated to waste what little she had left of it on the likes of these, she wanted no protracted fight, here.  These two needed to go down as swiftly as was possible...

Vincentas can tell in moments that the pirates were not planning to move their ships in the near future.  Things are tied up, and put away.  Ships are typically prepared for winter this time of year, but these two ships haven’t gone through that yet.  It looks as if they were left ready to be used again, in case of need, but not at a state of “instant readiness”.  Most likely, if they were not needed again in November, by the end of the month they would be clean, covered, and sealed up for the winter, and hauled out on to the beach.

The pirate ships are sailing ships of fairly advanced manufacture, for this age, likely coming from Atlantic coast ports.    Vincentas and the Bretons swarm over them quickly as Ongriss goes to work sabotaging.  Quite quickly, they put and end to Ongriss’s sabotaging.  Vincentas wants the boats ready to move.

The watchmen are the first line of defense, but not the only ones.  Like most Human towns, Walacria has dogs.  Orcs are suspicious of dogs, finding them to be overly gentle versions of wolves, the very opposite of their own Worgs, and much too closely allied to Humans.  Getting rid of the dogs is typically part of the process of Orcish occupation. But they haven’t been here that long, and there aren’t nearly enough Orcs to impose their visions so completely.  The townsfolk still have dogs, and several in the commercial area of Walacria are aware that something is odd, and start to bark.

Meanwhile, the two watchmen are surprised by Jestrynara.  Wellawut moves around their legs, tripping them up, and Jestrynara is quick and merciless.  The moonflower oiled blade flashes in the darkness- the pale silvery light is even visible to Vincentas.  Night watch is important, but a very unsatisfying duty, and both of the pirates are fairly low on the totem pole.  In moments, Jestrynara leaves one on the ground, and the other wounded, with a betrayed expression.  The surviving pirate doesn’t really analyze, he just reacts, drawing his own sword and cursing at Jestrynara and Wellawut.

“One down,” the Gnome says, maneuvering around to keep the man distracted.  The dogs bark in the distance.

Typical merchant ships of the era:

Ongriss hasn't been busy with her saw for too long when the ships show up and the sailors tell her to stop what she's doing. She takes the opportunity to get back in Vincentas's boat and put on her armor and get ready to fight.

Once she has her armor and hat on she goes up to Vincentas and whispers "I think Jestrynara and Wellawut distracted the watch. Should we send a few people to help them?"

 Looking at the boarding crews and how much danger might exist yet for the ships under his command he looks around at the harbor area for signs of enemy activity building up as the enemy became aware of them.

 He waves his first mate and two crew men to go with Ongriss to find the other two.
 I hope you know where they are lady, because iam thinking the orcs are going to wakeup here soon and it will be hard to get away then. So hurry and get them back to the ships quickly.

Since leaving Beda, she had fought with malicious dryads, walking trees, demons from the Abyss, and the personal assassins of the Hun lords.  Pirate lackeys were nothing.  Time to wrap this up.

"BOO!" she said, as she moved in with a feint.  Then followed with the actual blow...
This message was last edited by the player at 23:58, Fri 17 Feb 2012.

Jestrynara is quite right.  She has faced far more exotic opponents than these simple thugs.  But the pirate does not know that.  One of the problems with amateurs is that amateur does not know when to quit.  And so it is with the pirate- a dumb little gnome and a chick with nice hair, sure they got the drop and got lucky, but what could they poss...

The pirate stops wondering about that.  Mostly, because he is in too much pain to waste his time speculating about the possibilities.  Wellawut deftly loops a rope around one of  the pirate's ankles and pulls, and the pirate winds up on the ground, bleeding from several wounds and looking up, hastily reassessing things and groaning in mortal pain.

They hear the dogs barking in the town, and a voice calling out for the watchmen, calling again louder when they watchmen don't respond.

“And now things get intristin,” the Gnome says.  “They're gonna get themselves organicalized, and head down to the beach, I'll bet.  Whatch you wanna do?”

Meanwhile, at the beach...

After taking control of the two pirate ships on the jetty, the men gather and take positions.

“This won't stay quiet much longer,” the Breton captain says.  “They'll be coming down in force, once they realize what's going on.

Ongriss and Dalmar and a Breton sailor run off towards where Ongriss saw Welalwut  lead the watchmen.  They find Jestrynara and the Gnome just after the two defeat the watchmen.

Ongriss runs up to Jestrynara and Wellawut. "Vincentas and the others have the beach! I think they're going to make sure to steal the pirates' ships. We'd better get back there fast."

She gets her crossbow ready, just in case they run into anyone.

Jes nodded to her selkie associate.  "Aye, you're right, Ongriss. Let's move quickly. Well met again, Dalmar,"  she smiled to the former Blackguard, glad to see him.  Working with this group was all so very familiar.  They were all effective together -- it felt at once both comfortable and professional.

Well, now was the part of the story where things began to heat up...

Jestrynara and Welawut go down to the harbor with Dalmar and Ongriss.  They hurry, because behind them, they can hear the sounds of the pirate mob alerting themselves and getting organized.  Rough people like that don't take security for granted.  They know the world is full of dangerous villains, because they prime examples themselves.  If the watchmen don't answer back when the others shout for them, something is very wrong.

As they get near the harbor, the sailors are all over the two pirate ships.

"These are good ships," Meriodoc, the Breton captain, says to Vincentas.  "We could be off with them becfore those jackals got down here. Steal their ships, hah!  And not a man lost, that's the best way to do it.  So what are your orders?  Is it a theft, or are we staying for the fight... hey, that's Ongriss coming back, I think she's found someone.  What is that... a kid?"

As Wellawut scurries to keep up, he says, "Ya know... there are others in this town who would join a fight, if they thought we'd actually win it.  If we're picking a fight, maybe I could go roust us up a few volunteers.  It's their home, ya know."

The pirates decide to play it cautious.  Certainly they can see that there are two more boats in the harbor than there ought to be.  Instead of charging in mass towards the harbor, they send out a team of scouts, who start working there down past the houses, towards the beach, to get a look at the intruders.

 Waving his hand towards the other ships he shouts to those on the captured ships.
Pirates have no place in these waters nor the huns they work for. Ship into deeper waters and set anchor and a anchor watch, everyone else man the dorys and let us take the fight to the enemy.

 Sliding on his armor and weapons he moves to the front of his crew. He knew he would not ask the crew to do what he was afraid to do.Stepping into the dorys until the boat was full of men before motioning the crew to make stroke for shore.

 Once ashore he will search out Ongriss again.