Mysteries of the Floating Islands

[GoldenCityBird]

The Deck

@Florien: You roll a ???

You manage to track down the source of the smell! It's within a pile of broken-up crates on the Port side.

@SmilyCube112: You roll a ???

You manage to track down the source of the smell! It's coming from the smahed-up remains of superstructure on the Starboard side.

Staff Stairwell

@Matthew:

The staff stairwell gets darker and darker the further up you go. By the time you reach the end of it, you can barely make out where you are.

To your left, a beam of sunlight can be vaguely seen. To your right, some kind of indistinct noise.

Grand Stairwell

@MadameButterflyKnife:

You make your way into the civilian area of the lower decks. Upturned tables, smashed-up chairs, stray pieces of silverware... and a suspicious lack of dead bodies. This area might be worth investigation, if only to find out more about the ship.

(Also, quick notice: there will likely be no update on Tuesday due to IRL stuff.)

[MadameButterflyKnife]

(hope you're alright, GCB!)

No bodies. It's at least appreciated, Hadil thinks. This appears to be a civilian area; maybe they were using a civilian airship to transport equipment of some sort. Or maybe it was being sent over for storage or repair. Or maybe, military use. She figures the latter is what the attackers most likely thought was going on.

>investigate the civillian area

[Mr. Lee Hammer]

Mordecai puts his hand on his sword should the need arises for it as he

> inspects what the noise could be

[Florien]

Irekhin. It's a job. It's a way of life. It's something I'm not. I couldn't find a suitable translation in your language, and I don't have translation equipment on me, so it's not going to pick a close-enough word and ruin the meaning.

Annnyway, boxes!

>Break them open more and look inside.

[SmilyCube112]

Okay, now Magnus is partially confused. He decides to take a closer look at the smashed-up remains.

> Investigate the superstructure remains.

[GoldenCityBird]

@MadameButterflyKnife:

You manage to scrounge up quite a few odd items - a couple of small signet rings, three letters, one vial, and a plain wooden lockbox. Quite a lot of stuff to rummage through.

@Matthew:

You carefully navigate your way to the source of the noise, finding yourself within a bit of an odd room. The room itself is full of twisted metal, with just a few pinpricks of light giving a minute amount of vision. You also make out the noise a little better - some sort of laboured breathing, and boots clanging against metal, if you were to guess.

@Florien:

And within the crates, you discover... quite a lot of stuff. Plentiful piles of ingots - iron, brass, copper, even a little gold; many barrels labelled as water, wine, and waste; and the Captain's Log, for some reason.

You also start to realise that it's creating a slightly different smell than the one that dominated the area. Perhaps you were misguided.

@SmilyCube112:

Yep, that's the smell, alright. And the source of it seems obvious - the decaying corpses of two guards, much like the ones you met at the farm, alongside a cannon. Seems like they were crushed by the ship. You'd try to free them, but the rubble atop them is too heavy to be worth the effort.

[Florien]

...

Avanyiss stares blankly at the gold for a moment.

Under salvage law this is legally mine now. I think. Either way, money just became significantly less of an issue.

Avanyiss >Hides a few gold ingots on her person, seeing as no one else is in the room to see her do this and really she should get more she found it right the logic is flawless

then...

HEY EVERYONE GET IN HERE AFTER YOU'RE DONE WITH WHATEVER YOU'RE DEALING WITH! I FOUND VALUABLE RESOURCES! A DRAGONHOARD OF THEM! Oh also low-grade alcohol if you're into rot-waters.

Then she >Reads the captain's log
because why not.

[SmilyCube112]

"May I direct your attention to something more important, such as these two dead GUARDS?!" Magnus says in an unapprovingly condescending tone of voice, to Avanyiss.

[Florien]

...That's less important. Killed in the crash. Get your priorities in order, they're not stabbed or shot or hung. They're dead from a non-present danger, and thus irrelevant for now. We can deal with that later. For now, these resources are far more important to figure out the deal with, and to catalogue. More importantly, it seems whoever came through here and may still be here wasn't interested in the valuables, and so there must have been important intelligence on board, but I assume the other ones of us are looking for that.

[SmilyCube112]

"Don't know what the others are looking for, and frankly, I don't care about that. Not unless they find important stuff." Magnus says, before reluctantly adding "What is it you have found?"

[Florien]

Gold, copper, and brass ingots! Enough to be... not starving, assuming we can get these boxes moved. Salvage laws say this belongs to me, by the way, but I'm cutting you in as my salvage team.

oh also iron I guess but iron is kind of a nothing metal. It's the ash of better materials in both directions, or so the saying goes. I suppose you can make armor out of it.

The only way this could be a better haul is if there were some aluminum, mithril, whatever you want to call the light, hard-to-extract, durable silvery metal. Anyway, you should care, what if they find syphilis? Or something that's not a disease, that could also be something you should care about. Lots of potentially important things that may not be important at first. Now don't interrupt, I'm reading the captain's log and maybe we'll unleash an eldritch terror! Or... you know, it'll just be helpful information. Or it could be five hundred pages of "nothing to report" and "saw an interesting bird"

[MadameButterflyKnife]

Hadil examines the items. She decides to specifically...

> try and identify the sigil rings; do any of them look familiar? Maybe one of them matches the ring on one of the dead people in the farm.

> also, what is in the vial?

[GoldenCityBird]

@Florien: You manage to take five gold ingots, about half of the eleven present.

Here are some passages of note within the pages of the Log you've read:

"Day 1 of voyage: Started journey at Ozubené with 50 passengers, 30 crew. Set off for Yakni. Technological divide known, as of now, to be drastic. Sent off supplies in exchange for payment. No passengers embarked or disembarked there. Crew notes: major tensions among crew from different lands. Nakayama Makoto, engineer, Kuyama, almost died from assault. No known culprit.

"Day 3 of voyage: arrived in Bir-Amal. Arranged for ground caravan to move passengers. Provided water, no payment. 10 passengers disembarked, 20 embarked. Set off for Risam with haste. Crew notes: Moritz Frey, security, Ozubené, placed on disciplinary duty following passenger complaints.

"Day 10 of voyage: still on track to Rashbold as sun sets. Crew notes: ______, engineer, Cheng'en, missing."

@MadameButterflyKnife:

The signets on the rings are not ones you've encountered yet. Probably not of Bir-Amali origin.

As for the vial, it seems to be labelled perfectly clearly: "Cyanide Potassium - (skull and crossbones) - Graf & Sohne, Ltd., 25 Schwarzgasse"

[Florien]

Avanyiss starts to get weirdly excited at the information she's just uncovered.

... 60 passengers 30 crew minus one crew for disappearing engineer day ship went down presumably, security guy placed on disciplinary duty probably still on the ship thirty crew is pretty short-staffed implications abound. Hostility towards crewmembers from different territories, different engineer heavily injured minus another crew roughly minus two found in the walls three on the shore minus the captain makes six

25 crew no known fate. Five engineers at least. Probably. Two casualties unidentified. One shipboard soldier in trouble with passengers, fate unknown. Captain exists. Fate unknown. How many numbered mates? Seventy minus ten passengers unaccounted for. Fate unknown.

Ten passengers off probably not relevant twenty passengers on possibly relevant ten passengers off include engineer? Unlikely, seven day gap between disembark and notice of disappearance. Cargo of precious, semi-precious, and utility metals. Questions? Several. Answers? Lacking thus far. Let's... DO THIS!

>Look for a crew manifest and RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN THIS SHIT

[MadameButterflyKnife]

Hadil then looks to the box, and the letters

>investigate wooden box and letters

[SmilyCube112]

"Huh. On-board hostilities. Why must people be so uncivilized? But I suppose if this ship was carrying such materials, perhaps they would've gotten help protecting it........." Magnus says, before thinking about how covens had people who were hired to help with stuff like this, so he turns to Avanyiss and asks them "How recent was this ship crash?"

[Florien]

On board hostilities? Unclear. The guard might just have been an obnoxious dick, or might have been doing the right thing by complaining loudly about the existence of monarchy. Time of ship crash? One or two days ago most likely, for a few reasons, most important of which is that the crew at the food place were still wearing damaged uniforms from the ship. Even if they're professionals, which they probably are, and they had trouble getting new clothes because of the whole "different creatures to what are normally here" thing, they'd probably have cleaned themselves up a little if it had been longer, yes?

[SmilyCube112]

"Fair enough, I suppose." Magnus says, before proceeding to help Avanyiss with their search.

> Assist Avanyiss

[GoldenCityBird]

@Matthew: The breathing and bootsteps seem to be getting much further away now.

@MadameButterflyKnife: Two problems:

1: The lockbox ain't opening that easily. You'll have to break it or find a key.

2: The letters are clearly labelled with "CONFIDENTIAL BY MEANS OF MONASTIC PRIVELIGE". Not the sort of thing you can usually get away with opening.

@Florien and @SmilyCube112:

Your search takes you to all the way to the far end of the deck, where you ecounter half of a piece of paper.

The half you found

Crew Manifest, 17th Voyage

Captain: Green, Balthazar, M, orc, Rashbold
First mate: Souleymane, Eman, F, human, Bir-Amal

Security (5):
* Aelius, Julius, M, human, Columnassos
* Frey, Moritz, M, gargoyle, Ozubené
* Takeyama, Noriichi, M, human, Kuyama
* Urban, Jesse, M, fairfolk, Ozubené
* Xao, Mei, F, human, Cheng'en (HEAD)

Engineers (10):

* ██, Yuxian, █, Leung, Cheng'en
* Chang, Bao, M, Human, Cheng'en
* Laqi, N/A, F, Human, Qullachaka
* Lewis, Hortence, F, Human, Rashbold
* Lewis, Simon, M, Human(?), Rashbold
* Nakayama, Makoto, F, Kappa, Kuyama
* Rudjorus, N/A, M, Avian, Risam (HEAD)
* Schuster, Norbert, M, Elkfolk, Ozubené
* Smith, William, M, elf, Rashbold
* Thorn-Tail, Aaron, M, Draconian, Rashbold

You also start to hear someone descending a ladder.

[Florien]

...Shit.

That gargoyle at the bar wasn't an engineer. No engineers on the manifest match the description. That was On-Disciplinary-Duty Frey. Almost certainly. So why did the others go along with that? Also the turtle one's accounted for, who was heavily injured before. Alive at the bar. Incidentally, what kind of name is thorn-tail? Is that a normal dragon name? I've met zero dragons here so far so I need to know if that's a nickname or if it scans as a name to you.

Wait. Someone's coming.

Zyarpachytya! You! On the ladder! We request your immediate showing of yourself and prompt surrender, we do outnumber you, and we do suspect you broke in to collect something important to quote unquote national security that is within this wreck, seeing as you clearly are not here for wholesome salvage operations! This does not have to escalate further, we can talk this out, but you do have to stop sneaking around first! I do think we can come to an agreement that may suit us both!

Avanyiss then 

>sneaks and takes cover on the side of the room she wasn't on when she shouted

so that if the person finishes using the ladder and tries to take a shot towards where she was, it'll be a miss and she can ambush.

[MadameButterflyKnife]

Monastic privilege. Hadil wasn't one to respect the privacy of a fellow devotee like herself. As for the box, she didn't have such vows or attachments towards it. There must be a key. And if not, maybe she'll just hand it over to one of those bloodthirsty folk to break.

> search for a key

[SmilyCube112]

Magnus has already decided to make himself hidden as well, but not for the same reason(s).

> Find a hiding spot in the room.

[GoldenCityBird]

@Florien: You roll a 4 on your stealth.

@SmilyCube112: You roll a 3 on your stealth, with an additional 1 from your skills bringing this to 4

The two of you are perfectly camoflagued, and can see the ladder (clearly brought here and not part of the ship) clearly. And with that, you also see the figure descending - vaguely dragon-like, with a tail but no wings. They seem to be wearing some light armour, and a rag across the lower half of their face.

"I halt," the figure says. "Didn't think anyone would be coming at this moment. I swear, you better not be royal shitstains, or I will not hesitate to wipe you out."

@MadameButterflyKnife:

There doesn't seem to be a key anywhere, despite your very thorough search. Maybe there's one elsewhere.

[SmilyCube112]

Magnus just stays hidden, unsure if he can trust the dragon.

[Florien]

Can't speak for the others, Dragonling, but I'm Kyronic politically myself. "Nobility" has no place that is not at the end of a rope.

Avanyiss steps from her hiding spot, though holds up one of her hands to signal to Magnus to stay hidden for now, hoping desperately he understands.

So, Name, Gender, and purpose here, interrupting my salvage operation and hunt to find this dragon queen who may be more interested in Kyronism than the... presumably human king you currently have?