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Swords and Oysters; Open to 1-2 others!
Topic Started: Sun Sep 3, 2017 7:00 pm (451 Views)
Pyxidus
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Thus followed a great deal of waiting, punctuated by chaotic bouts of clamorous noise and bright lights, followed by more waiting. The Valiance maneuvered tightly in an inelegant, titanous dance that required most of the crew on deck to clip into lines to avoid falling overboard. Pyx's harness chafed and he repeatedly grabbed at his crotch in an attempt to ease his discomfort. He was not the only one.

Pyx had been assigned to reload crossbows. It was dull work, consisting mainly of sitting around worrying that he might soon have his throat violently ripped out or be turned into a creepy undead serial killer, until the clamor and lights resumed and he recommenced shoving bolts into grooves and cocking bows (and desperately willing himself not to make dirty jokes about it). Flaming projectiles, presumably from the ballista mounted on the foredeck, occasionally shot towards the pirate ship like meteors across the night sky. He gathered little else of the surrounding battle save that the vampires were not yet swarming aboard the ship.

"Oi, Pyx!"

Pyx turned to see Ewan, one of the ship's defenders, walking towards him. Ewan was taller than Pyx and much broader across the shoulders (consequently, he was positively huge). Pyx liked him, for though their interests differed Ewan gladly regaled Pyx and others with tales of his many travels abroad to countries Pyx had never seen. Today Ewan was dressed in full armor, a sword at his side. The mass of him was intimidating, even though he was an ally.

Ewan clapped Pyx on the shoulder. "We have a special mission for you, Pyx. Leave the crossbows to Brax and come with me."

Pyx hesitated, not entirely trusting that Ewan wasn't going to get him killed. "What kind of mission?" he asked.

"The LC and the Captain came up with a plan to ditch these suckers and make way to Balefire. As it turns out, you are uniquely qualified to assist."

Swell. "I am? Howso, exactly?" Ewan's hand was leaning strongly on Pyx's shoulder, guiding him forcibly away from the railing to where the LC and a group of defenders stood.

The ship shifted sharply starboard, and ballista fire resumed. One of the pirate ship's sails had caught fire, and it sailed past eerily, foreshadowing death. Ewan caught Pyx as he teetered sideways, and leaned in to relay the LC's plan in Pyx's ear so that Pyx could hear over the uproar.

Pyx, having heard and instantly rejected the plan as pure insanity, lost his footing as he panicked and tried to flee from Ewan's grip. Ewan seemed to interpret this as clumsiness, and simply lifted Pyx by his shoulders and set him down firmly. "The captain's preparing to get close enough on our next pass to land a boarding party. We've found some mail that should fit you. We have about five minutes, maybe six. Let's get going, eh?"
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Ioann
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It turned out the yellow-orange light was the greater of the vessel’s enormous starboard sheets, aflame.

“CUT THE CANVAS!” roared a commanding voice from high above Ioann’s head.

“Cutting canvas!!”

A blurred form swept across the deck and out over the starboard mast. Ioann saw the dark shape swiftly hack the rigging with a hatchet, low thuds echoing out over the lapping fire. In a few moments, the burning sheet collapsed downward and out, swept aft by the wind. A few more chops and it was free, a giant, burning rag that twittered away out of sight, whether to fall to the earth or consume itself in a blaze long beforehand, Ioann could never know.

The air was dense with projectiles. Forests of large caliber ballista bolts had already sprouted haphazardly from the deck, sprinkled with the undergrowth of a hundred shortarms’ spent munitions. Prone and supine bodies were cast about like street litter. Ioann didn’t look long enough to see if they still squirmed. A quick glance at the ship’s mainsail, torn asunder, confirmed their dire predicament.

“THEY COME!” the commanding voice announced. A macabre sense of anticipation bled into its voice.

As they came about, Ioann saw their intended prey, even from his place in the mouth of the aft deck. It was a schooner of considerable size, whose paired starboard and larboard sails were pregnant with favorable currents. A massive flame appeared on its foredeck, wobbling with the wind. In response, the deck beneath him tipped violently and Ioann tumbled stem-over-stern out the doorway and onto the main deck. As he crawled to his knees his eyes were drawn to the foe that seemed so determined to knock them from the sky. The pyre suddenly erupted from the other ship’s foredeck, and, in a low arc, shot across the sky.

“HAHAHAHAA!!”

The ship dropped like a stone. Ioann seized hold of the starboard rail with both hands to stay on the deck as his gut rushed to his throat. It was only a pair of heartbeats until the enflamed projectile screamed overhead like a shooting star. Its fiery shroud clipped the top mast ever so slightly, but the glancing impact jarred the vessel and sent a deafening CRACK across its decks.

“That’s the main, Cap’n!”

“HAHAHAA!! GOOOOD!” And then, “READY FOR BOARDING!!”

Ioann scrambled backwards until he found cover beneath the aft stair. From his new vantage, he saw a tiny dinghy with folded sheet and collapsible mast secured across the deck beside the fore stair. But between him and his escape, the battlefield loomed.

He closed his eyes and drew in a measured breath. There was only the dinghy. Only the dinghy. Only the dinghy. Ioann snapped his eyes open and charged out.

In the preternatural darkness over Balefire, the deadly, whistling rain of shortarms fire between the two ships was impossible to avoid. Ioann scrambled, using what cover he could behind rigging, torn canvas, barrels of sand and water, and even the great, cracked mainmast, but it was only a matter of time until the inevitable happened. A burst of too-hot fire shot across his hamstring and threw him to his belly, a mere three paces from the fore stair.

He landed face-to-face with a pale, gaunt creature impaled through the chest by a quarrel of considerable girth. Its head was fixed at an unnatural angle as if to regard him, kohl-rimmed pale blue eyes and long teeth casting it as distinctly inhuman. A long necklace of shrunken, human heads spilled out across its ruined body.

Ioann stared at it, heart frozen with terror.

Suddenly the eyes focused and its jaws lunged toward his throat.

Ioann jerked backwards with start, though the suddenness of movement brought a searing pain to his leg and tears to his eyes. The snap was ineffectual, the distance between them too great.

In response, the vampire wheezed a silent laugh.

“Di’ja think this wee li’l prick through meh heart would kill meh? HA! Stupid sheep!”

Ioann shook away the fear and dragged himself the last few steps to hide beneath the fore stair. He propped himself up against the forecastle’s deck and surveyed his passage for a moment, drawing courage to inspect the wound.

As he did, he saw the assembled remnants of the pirate crew before the aftcastle. Only five of them. They were thin, spindly creatures of hate and sharp teeth and each was armed more heavily than seemed possible. Crossbows, sabers, hatchets, and other accoutrements of death decorated their persons, along with the grisly trophies of past foes. He recognized the creature who dropped him on his face among their thinned ranks.

And then a flash of red in the darkness and another slammed down between them. In a resplendent longcoat of scarlet, filigreed in gold, with tall, dark boots, a broad-chested vampire smiled broadly. Uneven, wicked fangs seemed to gleam even in the darkness. In each hand, it casually held a massive arbalest as if they were sidearms.

“LET THEM COME!” it called.

The others howled in delight, stomping the deck and smashed steel against steel, hungry to fight.
Edited by Ioann, Sat Sep 30, 2017 2:43 pm.
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Pyxidus
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The Valiance's defenders escorted a reluctant Pyx to the armory, where he was equipped with a chainmail vest. This seemed sensible in anticipation of the captain's ludicrous plan to send Pyx over to the pirate ship while not allowing him to be eaten by vampires. Pyx supposed in some distant alternate reality the armor might have been reassuring, but he didn't quite comprehend the rationale behind it as the vest didn't cover his neck or femoral artery. He wondered vaguely if there was a market for specialized anti-vampire armor...

The vest dropped onto Pyx's shoulders, at once physically manifesting the heavy realization of his likely impending dismemberment. Pyx was crushed beneath it, both mentally and physically, and crumpled to the ground where he vomited upon the deck.

Ugh, he thought nauseously. Whose idea had it been to hinge the escape of the Valiance on Pyx's ability not to run away in terror from bloodthirsty vampires?

"AIEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAWWWWW!!!" shouted the captain, as the ship lurched suddenly to the side and a barrage of flaming projectiles soared overhead. Right. That guy.

Ewan hoisted Pyx upright, settled him onto a pair of unsteady legs (away from the pool of vomit), and clapped him on the shoulder. He seemed to like to do that. "Easy lad, the excitement's barely started! Now, let's find you someplace to take cover while we clear you a path through the vampires."

Pyx was quickly ushered/dragged to a relatively sheltered location on the main deck, where there was a somewhat lower likelihood that enemy fire would impale any of his essential body parts. After ensuring that his armor was secure, the defenders clipped Pyx's harness to the nearest anchor and left him there, trusting he would follow through with his part of the plan.

HA.

How could they do this to him? Pyx couldn't think of a single merchant whom he would trust to selflessly endanger his life for the benefit of others. Did defenders normally trust others this way? Or did Pyx have a sign tattooed to his forehead that read "Please shoulder me with as much responsibility for human lives as possible; my unwavering moral compass will ensure that I follow through, even if I die trying"?

Cripes. Probably.

Given time to plan ahead (and the absence of abject terror), Pyx would have preferred to conceive a clever means of escaping air pirates before they attacked to avoid the need for violent altercations altogether. For instance, it might be possible to enchant one of the ship's ballista bolts to achieve what Pyx was planning to do currently...

A violent impact knocked Pyx down, and he realized that he hadn't been paying attention as the defenders had instructed. When he was able to hoist himself and his extremely heavy chainmail shirt back up again, he saw Ewan and the other defenders, having already boarded the pirate ship and engaged in battle on the main deck, frantically communicating the signal indicating that Pyx should follow them on board. Whoops.

Pyx steadied himself, concentrated on his destination, and muttered a few words. Blink.

He again felt the weight of the chainmail vest and the added effort it took to move the increased mass. Surely there must be a market for lightweight armor that is easier to teleport with...

Pyx disappeared from the deck of the Valiance and reappeared about 10 feet above the deck of the pirate ship, where the defenders were battling the vampires. In the few moments between when he'd uttered the spell and teleported, the pirate ship had dropped. Because why would an airship hold still? Idiot.

Pyx, with his ridiculously heavy shirt, fell towards the deck. He flailed his arms in a futile attempt to slow his fall, and landed heavily with a loud crunch on something oddly shaped but much softer than the hard wooden deck. Pyx sat up tentatively, checking himself for injuries, but seemed unscathed. He looked down to see what had broken his fall.

Black-lidded, red eyes and a broad, pointed grin returned his gaze from an unnatural angle atop a broken neck. "AAAHHHH!" Pyx shouted, jumping up off of the vampire. The broken form tried to rise to come after Pyx, hissing menacingly, but Pyx must have landed on something critical because his legs seemed to not work.

"Oi, Pyx!" Ewan shouted from nearby as he parried with an especially large, well-armored vampire. "Get to it, ay? Keep behind us and be as quick as you can."

Pyx nodded nervously, distracted by the broken vampire that was now dragging itself slowly along the deck towards him. What was he supposed to be doing? Right, finding a way to use his Seek spell on the pirate ship. He turned from the battle, searching the area quickly for anything he could use...
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