It all started as a very quiet and uneventful morning. Tried to earn some quick gold by sailing for the merchants which gave me a bit of pocket money. After unloading the last crate at Dagger Tooth, I decided that'll do for today and parked "The Crusty Seahorse" for some well-deserved rest. As I walk towards the inn, I suddenly hear a laugh that everyone that sailed with this humble pirate would recognize.
“Hello Mr. FishSt1ck, it’s been a while” @Clumsy-George says while running around the outpost scrounging around the barrels. After asking George what he’s up to, I decide it would be nice to catch up a bit while doing some casual sailing. After stocking up the ship with whatever the barrels were willing to give us, George says he’d be up for anything so I can decide what we’ll do. Looking around from the docks I notice the big skull in the sky.
Before we set off, George tells me that he doesn’t like giving orders so I can be the helmsman of his ship "The Lone Limper" and he’ll take care of repairs / cannons. With the roles clear we set sail towards the fort, which was just a few islands over at Shark Fin Camp. The skull fort went as chaotic as expected when you leave the killing to two casual pirates. After a lot of explosions and quite a few visits to the ferry we ended up facing the Mutinous Helmsman which really didn’t like us. Luckily our refined lemming fighting skills of throwing ourselves at him till he dies paid off and gave us the shiny fort key.
Back at Dagger Tooth while handing in booty at the weird looking Sovereign guy, we notice we still have a few pieces of loot that cannot be handed in. We are left with several gifts that need to go to The Reaper’s Hideout and a crate that can only be handed in at The North Star Seapost. Since the fort went without any problems, we decided we could just as well hand these in for some extra cash / reputation. What could possibly go wrong….
We set sail towards North Star Seapost, making a quick stop at a small island on the way there because there was a cannon rowboat that just wanted to be docked to our ship. We can see the seapost already in the distance when we hear a bubbling sound on both sides of the ship. Two skelly sloops emerge from the water and open fire on us. As we return fire and get some hits in, a third sloop emerges from the water. We just throw everything we have at them using the rowboat cannon for some extra fire power. After sinking them we talk a bit that it’s weird to see 3 skelly ships spawn randomly as we fish some bits and pieces of loot from the water.
Suddenly we hear a horn and two galleons come up, with no time to waste we get back to work. We sink one galleon but the second one is a bit harder because we’re out of cannonballs. George risks his life by trying to get on the galleon and he succeeds to get a bit of resources. Eventually the galleon had enough and slowly sunk to the bottom of the sea. Our ship however is badly damaged, which meant we were repairing when the galleon went under, we didn’t see where. After searching a bit and spotting the shining stuff in the water we only manage to get a single storage chest before another three new sloops come up.
We’re getting pummeled by the three sloops with barely anything to fight back with. To make matters worse, we notice that the planks are getting dangerously low. We don’t feel confident we’ll win this, so we discuss our fleeing tactics when I spot a ship heading towards us. Naive as I am, I tell George “Look there’s a pirate sloop incoming, we’re saved”. It started off well with them sinking one of the ships, while we shoot our remaining cannon fodder of cursed cannonballs and chain shot to one of the other skelly ships. However just as we start getting our hopes up, our new ‘friends’ point their cannons towards us and start shooting.
After repairing the damage that was done, we assess the situation and steer our ship away from their broadside. With the cannonballs no longer hitting us, I decide to have a word with the pirates and shot myself over. By nothing but complete and utter luck I manage to shoot myself against their mast but land on top of the sail. I slide down the mast and immediately go below deck and see they are taking on water from a recent skelly barrage. One of our saviors is patching holes, so I let my cutlass of friendship do the talking and they seem to have bonded quite well. I run upstairs and take care of the helmsman too. After I had the ship to myself, I help myself to the open buffet and stock up on everything we don’t have anymore. I also notice their food is almost empty so I quickly ate whatever I had so I could take the last pieces of that too. After managing to keep them out for a while, my ego got to me, I ran upstairs only to realize you shouldn’t bring a cutlass to a blunderbuss fight.
Back on our ship George managed to grab some more supplies from a floating crate and I had full pockets from our friends. Which we used to make short work of one of the two remaining sloops. While battling the last skelly sloop we suddenly see our friends again, on a ramming course with our ship. We try to change course but they’re going to ram of head on. I thought I could hop on their ship from the bowsprit but when I get there, their ship is already on top of ours and they rain firebombs on us. Surprisingly we both survived, so we patched up our ship and put out the fire. After barely surviving that attack, we hear the horn sounding which means the skelly ship sunk which gets us in gear to get out of there.
With cannonballs flying around us and through the hull of our ship, we set sail for The Reaper’s Hideout to catch a breather. We hand in the gifts we still had on the ship, seeing the two galleons waiting in the distance. We decide to also go to The North Star seapost because we weren’t in any shape to fight the galleons. The skelly galleons did not agree with us though, as they chased us as soon as we got away from the island. The wind also wasn't did in our favor. We quickly harpoons some shiney things from the water which surprisingly was the captains log of our 'friends' and some loot. No cannonballs though, but with the galleons closing in we got ready for battle.
Since we did not have enough cannonballs to waste them and not enough planks to survive their attacks, we harpooned ourselves to the back of the closest galleon. While George was shooting them, I climbed on board to prevent them from fixing the holes. This went well as I watched the hull fill up until they overpowered me on the second floor. George informed me it went down shortly after. The last remaining galleon would seem like a tough battle as I didn’t have any cannonballs and then George started laughing. He found a few more on the island and in the storage of the cannon rowboat. We broadsided that last galleon and double cannoned it until it went down and showed us that the battle was done.
After the last galleon sunk, up came a boatload of loot. No matter where you shot the harpoon, it would grab loot. We were close to North Star, so we decided to do a drive by there to drop the package off before going to the nearest outpost. The nearest outpost would be Golden Sands, however the storm between us and golden sands seemed like a bad idea. With the wind going south we decided we might as well go to Plunder instead.
The plans quickly got interrupted though when George noticed there was a reaper heading our direction. We did a quick 180 anchor turn and we could see them in the distance already. We sailed back into the wind, going around the bottom of Wanderer’s Refuge. Our cowardly tactics seemed to have worked as the reapers didn’t feel like giving chase against the wind, or they just didn’t see us yet before we went behind Wanderer’s Refuge. Either way we had a lucky streak and to the victor comes the spoils. For the second time that day we were harpooning booty from the sovereign tower.
Thanks again for the fun adventure George 😊