Emboldened both by our defeat of the Codpieced Cohort and by our domination of the tavern rats, we chose to set out in search of the killers of our intended contact:
Ah, the downsides of fame. In our modern world, you're stalked by paparazzi. Here, you're stalked by unknown Giaks and assassins. An even trade, I reckon.
Consulting my handy-dandy Random Number chart, I get an 8. And so, continuing the theme of our life, we set off in a random direction:
I swear, I did not choose that number to coincide with the opening of the newest "Pirates of the Caribbean" flick. Although if we come across a drunken Giak dressed like Keith Richards, I'm totally out of here. Our chart gives us a "4", and so:
That's a pretty cool looking guy! I mean, sitting here in my jammies he's cool. If I were the Lone Wolf and he was charging at me looking that way, perhaps "cool" is not the appropriate word. You do have to admire him for his willingness to take to the seas wearing three hundred pounds of armor and another thirty pounds of cape, though. One misplaced step and he's the baddest looking anchor in the fleet.
We do have the combat edge on him, though, coming in at a respectable +8. And so we whip out our spear from its undisclosed location and lay about us with vigor. On the first round of combat, we get a "5", which inflicts eleven mighty points of damage to the Helmeted One, while taking two ourselves.
Since that move worked the first time we try it again, with the same result -- eleven to him, two to us.
Finally we tire of playing with our adversary and tear into him with a vengeance, knocking aside his sword with the haft and flicking the pointy end past his shield and into his chest -- with a roll of "8" we dish out sixteen massive points of damage while taking none ourselves, finally putting an end to his reign of fashion terror on the high seas.
When the heck did we get to be such a badass?! That leaves us with a total of four points of additional damage, bringing us down to 19 END.
They like us, they really like us!
Aha, hence the name of the book! We do not have the Kai Discipline of Healing, so we only recover 5 of our lost END, bringing us back to 24. And at last we have a choice facing us:
This is a tough call. Given the massive increase in our testosterone levels as a result of having dominated our erstwhile attacker, I would think we'd charge off into the hold to single-handedly defeat the fire with our wooden spear. Shouting "FIRE!" on a crowded ship does seem to fit our general MO of randomness, however, while alerting the Captain would be what we'd have done in our earlier adventuring days.
Decisions, decisions. Sound off in the comments about what you'd like to do and why. And no cheating by looking ahead!
I think the only option is to tell the captain. If you go down stairs, it’ll end up being something that will kill you, and if you just start randomly screaming “FIRE!!!”, it’ll probably end up being a false alarm and the crew will be pissed at you…
Enter the hold, for fortune favors the bold!
To the hold! That fire is Lone Wolf’s bitch!
I’m for playing to caution, and warning the captain.
Er, why can’t you yell “Fire!” and then either enter the hold or warn the captain? Or, you know, yell “Fire!”, grab a crewman and instruct him to tell the captain, and then enter the hold?
I think in the real world, you’d tell the captain immediately, and let him make the decisions. Captains like doing that. And he probably knows more about fighting fires at sea then we do. But here? Who knows. It’s probably a stowaway giak barbequing the captain down there.
Oh, for a minute there I thought broccoli was growing out of the deck. I guess a mutated broccoli fight IS out of the question.
Well, with our new pair fimly in place, why let it just ride in the saddle now? No “holds” will bar us!
Oh, come on. Admit it. We’ve all had a burning desire to yell “Fire!” ever since we were told as children not to. You know you want to do it.