piperpantomine

[piperpantomine]

Tales of Velicole Chapter 1 - The Voyage of Disaster

Our humble adventure opens on a decedent ship voyaging across the grand divide, destined for The Shattered Isles and housing a party of adventurers that a none the wiser. We start... with a goblin. And our little goblin friend here fits the bill of "rabid lil gremlin" to the letter. So it's not surprising that within just a few minutes of being on board he gets himself thrown in the brig with a boot mark on his face. And he is reeeeally not happy about it. Gnawing at the bars, growling words that barely even qualify as words... Truly the guard stationed down there has my sympathies. Also on the ship are two stowaways, which surprisingly have nothing to do with one another. We'll start with the soldier. Down in the passenger storage hold, hidden away in a large crate, is a mountain of a man dressed head to toe in armor. He bares the insignia of a mercenary troop, though he wasn't necessarily hired for this. He simply searches the hold for some food before deciding to get out of this stuffy hold. He grabs a nearby mop, severing the head and placing it over the head of his halberd, concealing it surprisingly well. Leaving the hold, he makes his way to the extravagant dining room and sits down at the bar for a drink, seated next to a rough looking Dwarf man and a well dressed Tabaxi woman. The three simply enjoy their drinks, served by a strange little dragon man. Now the other stowaway. A little dragon man wakes up, stuffed into a cramped janitors closet. He doesn't know why or how he got there but while rooting around in his pocket, he finds a letter and a pair of red tinted glasses. One of the lenses is cracked but they're otherwise fine. The letter is sealed, but just above the seal are the words "Play your part" A few hazy memories come back to him. Something about a boat?... And being hired as a bartender?... He steps out of the closet and looks around. "Well... definitely on a boat." He mumbles, looking out a nearby window. So he takes what little he's got, the hazy memories, and the letter... and just takes it at face value without even opening the letter. He just walks to the bar and starts serving drinks, playing his part so to speak. And then... there's the cat. A Tabaxi man steps out of his room. His fur shines a royal purple and he lets off the air of... pride. Raw, unfiltered, pride. For a cleric, he was the life of the party. Serving the Goddess of joy will do that to you, I suppose. But he was more than ready to get to exploring the ship, doing what he does best and learning what he can about the destination ahead. But his attention is quickly drawn to the sight of a black tail disappearing down a set of stairs... Curious... Elsewhere on the ship (and sort of a few seconds prior to our dear cat man) we have a noble getting all dolled up for the dinner in the captains honor scheduled for that night. His choice of clothing is nothing less of perfect, but it's missing one final touch... a mask, a very beautiful one from the nobles private collection. But sadly for our poor noble here, the mask has other plans, and he is now nothing more than the catalyst for *her* In the nobles place now stands a rather tall wolf-like creature, fur as black as night and as slick as oil. And sadly, it seems the noble got dressed for nothing since the fine clothes were rather ill fitting of their new wearer. The wolf ducks down a little and looks at herself in the mirror, tilting her head curiously. She doesn't quite remember who she is, or even *what* she is. But none of that's important to her, as her ears perk at a distant noise... gnashing, gnawing, and the rattling of bars and vicious yells of a certain goblin. And so, why not investigate?

The wolf exits their room and follows the noise down the hall, arriving at a set of stairs leading down. She makes her way down to a door marked with the word 'brig' and is quickly stopped by the guard standing in front of it. She towers over him but he's unfazed, it's his job to keep the passengers out of this room. "Sorry, no passengers allowed down here." He says in an assertive voice. The wolf looks at him for a moment before attempting to pick the man up. She's quickly pushed back and the man draws his sword. At the same time, our little dragon stowaway has a run-in with the actual bartender, who promptly sends him on his way, as to his memory, he's the only bartender contracted and surely the captain would have told him if someone else would be working with him. So, while walking back to the closet he woke up in, he hears a commotion, and sees a purple cat man down the hall, looking down a set of stairs with his sword drawn. He walks over, and in all his fantastic wisdom... tries to push the cat down the stairs... The cat gracefully avoids and sends the dragon tumbling down the stairs himself. The soldier also hears the commotion, and seeing the dragon walk off, decides to trail loosely behind the frankly quite suspicions man. He watches from down the hall as the dragon attempts to push the cat down the stairs, only to be sent down himself. He chuckles a bit at the scene and steps up. Standing next to the cat and looking at the scene unfolding down the stairs, he's unlucky enough to have arrived just as the brig door is thrown open. Don't think I've forgotten our little goblin friend from the start now. While the guard is busy outside the room with a giant wolf lady trying to hug him, the goblin is busy at work picking his cell door aaaaand... bingo, the door swings open. He grabs his stuff from a nearby chest and moves to the door, hearing quite a ruckus outside. He readies a spell in his hand, and with a devious grin on his face, he bashes his way out the door. Diving forward, holding his hand up high and unleashing a bright white ball of light, basically flash banging everyone in line of sight. The guard fumbles around a bit, stumbling backwards into the brig. When his vision clears up a bit, he gets to barricading himself in there, shook by the 6 seconds of chaos that just unfolded around him. When the small crowd regain their sight, all hell breaks loose. The goblin tries to make a run for it, tripping over the dragon and getting grabbed by the soldier. The cat quickly runs down the stairs to try and help diffuse the situation. The dragon gets up and immediately gets yelled for trying to push the cat down the stairs, but he explains that all he saw was a strange cat man with his sword drawn. The wolf is just kind of chilling, watching all this unfold when... The goblin... *relieves himself...* in the soldiers face, managing to nail him right through one of the gaps in his helmet. A moment of silence for our dear goblin friend. The soldier promptly slams the goblin against the wall, hard enough to knock him unconscious. He was completely ready to kill him if the cat hadn't stopped him. The cat convinces the guard to unbarricade the door and let them in. So they get the goblin back in a cell and the soldier walks off to get himself cleaned up, while the rest stay in the brig and talk. Aaaaand that's session 1 Sorry if my writing is kinda poopy. I was actually hoping to do this as something of an experiment to try improve my writing, and maybe even try getting some of my art in the future. And just generally to share the tales of my D&D group. Constructive criticism is welcome, since I wanna improve on my writing and story telling and whatnot.

Next time will probably be session 2 and 3 pieced together, cause session 2 was kinda short, and is even shorter to summarize. But that also means it'll be where things get somewhat interesting.

And so... Until next time, adventurers.