All in all, Judoc was not in a good mood.

He kept returning in his mind to his original voyage to Three Corners just after Christmas.  In that trip, Judoc recalled, his ship had been quite large, with a whole deck and cabin below.  The trip had been efficient, the ship sailing straight as an arrow once it had gone around Min and stopping once every few days for supplies.  Judoc remembered the sail as enormous and triangular, constantly needing of attention of the crew what with trimming and letting out based on the winds and the currents.  The sailors too, had been quite cordial, professional but chatty, always in possession of a good story of a pub, a fight, or a woman, or occasionally all three together.

In retrospect, Judoc is wondering just how much the trip had cost the Templars, for even offering ludicrous amounts to procure his own ship, Judoc was mostly laughed at by those he approached.  No one, he was told, went as far as Azer, though he was told would be possible to purchase a ship and hire a crew if he wanted to go that far himself.  Eventually, Judoc managed to find John Tibbets, who said he was taking his ship, the Silent Watchman, as far as Dekamera, asking nearly price and a half of what Judoc was actually willing to offer for the whole trip, though at this point, Judoc was so disheartened at the prospect of never getting back to Azer that he agreed despite his reservations at the cost.

His second guessing did not nearly stop there.

Before even he had boarded the ship, Judoc began collecting irritations like flies upon a freshly minted shit.  Judoc was surprised first at the relatively small size of the boat, not more than seven or eight paces long, perhaps thirty five feet at best.  When he had first alighted on the ship from the brow, he was further surprised by the four men, chained into their seats by the oarlocks, misery carved into their faces as if by an overzealous chisel.  Even his attempts to secure himself a place below came to naught as Tibbets angrily rebuffed Judoc, informing him that the hold was only for cargo, and that if Judoc wished to keep his belongings there he would have to relinquish them for the trip... Tibbets would store them below.  He would not be allowed to go in or out as he pleased.

As they departed, each and every new realization seemed to fester with the others.  John Tibbets turned out to be a sour shadow of a man, castigating his own crew at their every misstep and threatening his slaves even as they continued quietly at their exhausting task.  Instead of every few days, the ship made landing every night, sometimes at port but most often just on a beach, as if the night time was too dangerous a prospect for any serious sailor.  And finally (and most infuriatingly after having been so late to start his journey to the east) Tibbets seemed to think that the fastest way eastward was constant turns back and forth at interval, such that the ship carved a massive sawtooth pattern through the water.  Normally not one to profess expertise outside of his realm of magery, Judoc never the less had to bite back several impulses to educate the despicable Tibbets on simple geometric theory.

And so, after over a month at sea, the sun and heavy salt air again bearing down oppressively, his bag tied securely against the high inner rail of the ship, Judoc wishes he had held his money just a bit longer to see if something else may have popped up.

"Row you curs!"  Tibbets roars from behind the mainmast, a lash held high in his hand to go with the oppressive gleam in his eye.

Judoc muses that Tibbets seems to be making up for the fact that the large rectangular sail is casting a shadow over the slaves, giving them the briefest respite from the midday sun.

"Prove your worth here or you'll be carted off like chattel when we make Dekamera!"  Tibbets shouts, his devious smile curling upwards as his eyes roam across the four, waiting the strike at the first weakness.

"Sailing rig, two o'clock!"  Reve, one of the crew, calls from above, his voice nearly drowned out by the wind.

Tibbets cups a hand over his eyes, glaring out the right side of the ship before he calls back to Orgon, his man on the rudder.  "Tack left!"

Judoc watches as the ship turns slowly to the left.  He watches the ropes on the sail being tended by the last crewman, Trisso.  He watches the heavy boom from which the sail hangs swinging slowly as the wind crosses from the other direction.  He watches as the tiny speck of white on the horizon shifts from the right forward quarter of the ship to the right rear.  And he watches as the shadow of the sail drifts off towards the left, exposing the rowers again to the full brilliance of the day.

"Row, row or I'll take it out of your hide!"  Tibbets smacks the lash against the mast, resounding a heavy thwack as leather meets wood.

~Does he have to be so loud?  Aiah laments, shaking her head before shoving her beak into her wing, preening out the water and salt that seems to constantly harass her.

OOC:  It is 1130 on the 7th of August, 2005.  Thanks for the patience here, as your thread is not just a new story, but also a new genre, a new setting, new characters, and a completely new set of rules for me it took me some time to think through things.  Your ship is now somewhere in the Mare Medium, you would guess close to the end of your journey (at least the leg to Dekamera), though you aren't entirely sure.  You've been traveling within a few miles of shore the entire time, so can see green hills far off on the left side of the ship.  There are a total of 9 men on the Silent Watchman - Tibbets (the captain), Reve, Orgon, and Trisso (the Crew), the four slaves, and yourself.  The travel has been slower than you hoped, and you are estimating that if you can make good time, you can just make it back for the start of term without resorting to magic.

Let me know if you have any questions.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:41, Wed 17 Aug 2022.

It had taken a couple of days for Judoc to get his sea legs. At first, the pitch and yaw of the ship had thrown him off balance. Soon, however, he had adapted to the continual rocking of the boat. If only his temper had adjusted so easily.

Judoc hated being on the ship. He had taken an instant dislike to the captain. Tibbets was insufferable and seemed utterly clueless regarding the finer points of navigation. Judoc had paid good money to join this trip, a windfall for Tibbets, and the man couldn't even provide a bunk or space for Judoc's things. The man even kept other men as slaves! Tibbets seemed like the worst kind of captain, and Judoc couldn't help but wonder how far the man's cruelty would be tolerated before the crew snapped.

After his stomach had settled down, Judoc had spent his days reading through the books he had acquired from Haj Umr, first with the astronomy journal and then The Lesser Keys of Solomon and The Many Planes of Hell. He was sure he would run into Agares' fellow conspirators again, and he resolved to learn as much as he could about demonology and battling demons.

Now, as Judoc sits quietly on deck, taking a break from studying and considering whether he should break out some hardtack for lunch, he hears the man in the crow's nest announce another ship. Desperate for a reprieve for his boredom, Judoc turns in the direction Reve had called out and with his right hand, shades his eyes to better see the passing ship.

OOC: Mad props for the "Prufrock" quote. That's one of my favorite poems.

Wanting to turn his attention anywhere to avoid thinking of Tibbets, Judoc cups a hand over his eyes and stares out into the sea, though he finds that the glare of the sun coming up from the water is just as bad as the directly light of the sun from overhead... and much harder to block out.

Still, he can make the ship out, though just barely.  It appears just a bit of white sail on the horizon, not even close enough to break out the hull of the ship from the waterline.  There isn't much detail to make out from this far away, though Judoc thinks he could Haj Umr's mask if he wanted to.  He had not much occasion to now to try the magic he had pilfered from the necromancer, though he knew the mask was imbued with a Far Vision spell which the previous owner had used to survey the night sky.

OOC:  I rolled vs. IQ for you to remember your mask.  Feel free to use it here if you want, just stipulate what level of the spell you want to cast (1 level of the spell is already accounted for with the 2 points of self power in the item).  Otherwise I'll keep fast forwarding.