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The most common color for highlighters is yellow because it doesn’t leave a shadow on the page when photocopied
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Last Seed 8
Before arriving at Jehanna



The encounter at Smuggler's Cove gave Ariane a bad concussion. Her formerly pristine forehead now sported a nasty bruise. If she was an expert illusionist like Keegan Vasque, she would have hid it with magic. Except that she's not as competent in illusion, so she made do with the limited cosmetics in her bags. The end result looked terrible, far from presentable in public. This meant Ariane socialized even less than she did before. She locked herself in her own cabin, only interacting with Maj to decipher artifacts from the airship, and attending Gustav's mandatory officer meetings.

The first order of business was to recover from the battle. Mercenaries that could still walk and use tools were put to work patching up the ship. Some of them also rounded up gold fragments from the airship, which was then redistributed (after Gustav taking a large scoop for himself) to roughly 100 Septims value for each person. Next came disposing the dead. The dreughs were obviously stew material, and thankfully one cook survived the battle to make tasty meals out of them. The dead people, well, the sailors were buried at sea per tradition. Ashna, badly burnt in the incendiary blast, held some contention among other mercenaries. In the end, a vote decided on a proper burial in Jehanna. Ashna had no home to return to, and the mercenaries wanted to properly say farewell to one of their own, after so many had been brutally killed and left to rot.

The second meeting over dinner was fairly mundane. Ashav was relieved of duty and expelled from the company; he would have to leave when the Kyne's Tear reaches Jehanna. Gustav would be personally overseeing aspects of the company's management; he would handle contracts and funds, since all of the company's ventures in the last week were paid out of his personal funds. However, Dumhuvud would assume Ashav's duty in the field and around the camps. That's right, the Cat-Kicker was now the ultimate authority in tactics and morale. Edith wasn't happy, and Sevine appeared downright angry.

On the bright side, Ariane had been promoted to a senior officer; she stood second in the line of succession, after Edith. Sevine was also promoted to the same rank, though Ariane suspected it was mostly because of Sevine's friendship with Edith. The redheaded "huntress" was pretty dumb, not exactly the dumbest (that honor probably went to the meathead Piper, or the illiterate Do'Karth), but still four planes of Oblivion away from smart. Did she even understand transliminal summoning? Could Sevine even comprehend aetherial fluid mechanics? The answer is an obvious no.

But hey, if Ariane wanted the companionship of intelligent peers, she wouldn't have joined this mercenary company. She was here to run away from her mistakes, from that terrible deal she made with the Beldama Wyrd. So she nodded her agreement to Gustav and went back to studying Tmeip'r's artifacts.

The artifacts were interesting, more interesting than the personalities of Daixanos and Narzul combined. Ariane's initial plan was to have Maj clean her cabin and do her makeup, while she studied. But upon finding Maj's penchant for enchanting, Ariane let her take part as well. Maj's involvement was, well, entertaining to say the least. Maj was clueless (not far from Ariane herself, as much as she hated to admit) about the artifacts, but she had no shortage of sailor's tales to tell. Some of them were about the magics of the golden slug, surprisingly.

Unlocking the artifacts' secrets wasn't too hard. The dreamsleeve transmitter, a plate where documents are burned in order to be sent, contained only residuals of...bad rap songs? The translator (the microscope-like device) was already powered by an odd-looking soul gem. The challenge was fitting the gigantic eyepiece, originally designed for large Sload faces, for human observation. The original eyepiece was too large to see through, so Ariane and Maj had to add another optic (burrowed from a dead sailor's spyglass) on top of it. Next came the fish skin-paper document. Tmeip'r wrote with a form of invisible ink that only appeared visible with the proper alchemical treatment. Thankfully, Maj knew a little a bit about nautical ingredients, and with the assistance of Dar'Jzo, they were able to concoct the solution using dreugh secretion. The document revealed a gibberish of characters, likely the Sload's own language and unknown to everyone else. Now, the final step, putting the document under the translation device.


"Maj, you've got to see this." Ariane said, shocked at what she discovered. "Someone important's got to see this."
Here are the dice rolls for people getting thrown overboard.

roleplayerguild.com/campaigns/390

1, 2 and 3 go over, while the rest doesn't. Sevine volunteers for a dip.

Marcel, Adaeze, Niernen, Keegan, and Sevine are going for a swim.

Kyne's Tear



The sky was burning.

Gustav thought he'd seen the end of fire, but the ballista shot was merely a spark compared to the massive inferno burning above. He saw the devastation caused by the bolt, how several mercenaries were engulfed in flames, and how one of them was completed incinerated. It did not bring joy to Gustav in the slightest, though he also did not despair for Ashna's death. He was a pragmatic man in both business and life. Gustav understood making choices in a world of scarcity; choosing one death over many.

But now, everything he had done would have been moot if the golden airship, situated above Kyne's Tear, crashed and destroyed everything beneath it. They had to move the ship, and even though fire still burned on deck (and some personnel were still seriously injured), they had to get away. It did cross Gustav's mind that certain members were still up there, but he had just witnessed one of them falling back down with...whatever that thing was. This meant that the rest of them were either dead or dying; surely no one survives these fiery explosions.

On the bridge, Karena was doing everything she could to pull her ship out of the cove. The airship had powerful engines stronger than momentum generated by the Kyne's Tear's sails. As much as she hated admitting it, the task would have been easier with Hargjorn here helping her. That man knew Kyne's Tear like the back of his hand, and loved it even more so. Sometimes Karena wondered if Hargjorn had some sort of weird passion for this ship, the kind of passion he spat out in their arguments, and the kind of passion in their late night "discussions". Whatever the case, Karena knew that it was better to go the wrong way rather than arguing and going nowhere at all. It would be easier just to let Hargjorn and his followers fail, learn from their mistakes, instead of fighting to drill the right decisions into them every single time.

She had just spent the last fifteen or so minutes fighting against the airship's pull; what if she let the airship pull them in?

Karena explained her plan to Gustav. They would rearrange the sail so that the ship sailed into the cove instead of out. This would allow the change in momentum to swing Kyne's Tear on the chains, and hopefully past where the airship would be crashing. In addition, this maneuver would rock the chain anchors within where they burrowed into, allowing for them to be loosened enough for extraction. The chains had to be extracted soon, for if they were not by the time the airship sunk, the Kyne's Tear would be risked getting dragged down with it. Of course, Karena had to be up there on the bridge, carefully piloting them through the maneuver so that they wouldn't crash into the cliffs surrounding the cove.

Upon hearing the plan, Gustav set out to rally the mercenaries. Edith and several sailors had already made progress prying out one of the starboard side chains from the lower decks, and with mercenaries there to lend a strong hand, this one and the other starboard chain was removed. On top, in addition to rearranging the sails, Karena now wanted to shift all the weight starboard, in order to counter the imbalance caused by the port side chains. Thankfully, moving the dead dreughs and crew members starboard should do the trick. That was, if everyone could avoid being crushed from an increasing amount of descending wood, brass and gold.

With a lurch forward, the Kyne's Tear threw itself just beyond the airship's shadow. During the brief process, the ship rocked so violently that a few of its passengers were thrown overboard. It was just in time for the airship balloon to blow up spectacularly. The remaining chains on the port side crumbled down from the top, as whatever attached them to the airship no longer held. One half of the airship split from the other half, thus quickly plummeted into the sea. The other half didn't wait long to crash either. Somewhere in between, the surviving mercenaries jumped. They might have dropped into the water like pebbles, or settled for a hard landing on Kyne's Tear's deck. No one knew for certain as the airship husk touched down near Kyne's Tear, creating tall waves and a screen of particles that blanketed the air. The fires that burned on the ship were suddenly washed away.

"Man overboard!" Gustav screamed. It would be impossible to survive that kind of fall, he's certain, but he's also certain about recovering personal equipment (and possibly bodies) before they sunk forever. He marshaled those that still stood to rescue those that were flung over (or jumped from the airship). As he had done so, Gustav tripped on a piece of debris; it was a gold bar the size of his leg.

"What are you looking at?" Gustav scolded at a nearby mercenary. "Go fish our people out!"

"I have more important things to deal with." Gustav declared to no one in particular, and began hauling the gold bar, perhaps the biggest of many that had fallen onboard, back to his own cabin.

The Airship



The threats were gone, yet, the airship was the opposite of safe. Collateral damage from the explosive jellyfish and the Sload's spell had severely destabilized the vessel. Fabric of the balloon caught fire and was being eaten away. The main structure cracked, split and began disassembling itself. It addition, the golden chains anchoring the airship to Kyne's Tear placed heavy strain downwards, and when combined with the turbulent winds, made the airship increasingly unstable.

However, the lone surviving sailor was not ready to get out of this death trap. Seeing his fellow crew member and first mate killed, he wanted some loot to make this perilous venture worth the effort. With the Sload (and Sadri) sent back down to Mundus, and the big zombie cut down, the sailor made a run for the Sload's cabin. He also beckoned Sagax, Tsleeixth, Alim and Do'Karth to come with him, for there would be more treasure than he could carry alone.

And there would be just that beyond the doors of coral and brass. Tmeip'r the Fiftieth-Sent was a Sload obsessed with gold. Everything in his personal quarters dazzled with golden shimmers, so much that it hurt the sailor's eye just to look around. There was a giant circular bed in the middle, made with layers of gold-colored velvet sheets. A tall workbench seemed to be plated entirely with gold, and on it were dreugh limbs and body parts from other organisms. Several large closets sat on the cabin's side, and upon closer examination, they contained golden plate armor like the one Tmeip'r wore. There were also sparkling robes, an assortment of enchanted jewelries and a massive golden crown that was at least three times bigger than those worn by Tamrielic monarchs. What caught the sailor's eyes was a strongbox made of coral, secured with a dwarven lock and just big enough to be cradled with both arms. It sat on a smaller table beside the rear-facing windows, along with several oversized quills and a microscope-like apparatus.

The sailor called dibs on the strongbox and apparatus. He forwent the jewelries, having heard too many tales of cursed lockets to justify the risk. The strongbox would be carried in his arms, and the apparatus, apparently sturdier than it looked, went into his bag, for it would fetch quite a price with the mage types. Before he left, a tremble rocked the airship, causing the table's drawers to fly open. One of such drawer revealed a concave curved tray, with traces of ash lining its inside. The dip in the tray was just the right size to fit a sheet of paper. What mattered for the sailor though, was that it could top up his bag.

A second tremble came a minute later. The airship was now swinging back and forth rapidly. It was getting difficult for the injured mercenaries to stand on their feet, which meant; time to go.

Throwing open the cabin doors revealed a whole another world. The rain had mostly subsided, the wind remained strong, and the morning sun was peering out of the horizon. The airship frame was becoming a skeleton of its former glory. Looking down to the Kyne's Tear, it was apparent that two of the four chains have been detached and thrown into the sea. The entire balloon was a giant ball of fire, but for some miracle, whatever exotic material Tmeip'r used contained the fire to the outside. It all changed seconds later, when a third chain was ripped free and nearly flipped the airship onto its side. Some sharp, mast-like object pierced the balloon, uniting flames and gases in a brilliant combustion. The sailor stood there in awe for a brief moment, then quickly decided to run for the last remaining chain. But before he or any mercenary could reach it, a secondary explosion (likely causing by the Sload's arcane cargo) blew its anchoring away.

At that point, further explosions occurred throughout the airship. Whatever was not blown up caught fire. The husk that the sailor and the mercenaries stood on dipped down nose first. The Kyne's Tear, now free to move again, was pulling away to avoid being crushed; it would also be beyond their reach soon.

"Gotta jump now." The sailor concluded, holding onto a railing as the airship husk nearly canted forty-five degrees. The airship was rapid losing attitude, being only three or four storeys above sea level now. He did not specify whether to aim for Kyne's Tear (which was a leap of faith away), or the sea. Wherever the mercenaries jumped to, the sailor settled on water. It would be the safer choice; no uncertain distance and no hard landing. It would only be a short swim. Plus, he even picked out a soft landing spot; a big fluffy jellyfish.

In his haste, the sailor forgot about how these jellyfishes served as sea mines. He jumped first, landing gracefully with a plop, and was followed by a thunderous explosion, the blast of seawater and the confetti of body parts. Some mercenaries may be glad for the sailor clearing out the only jellyfish in the water below, or they could have have seen his death as a lesson against jumping in unknown waters. Whatever the case, it was now the mercenaries' time to jump.



Kyne's Tear



Ariane was having a nice nap until the sound of explosion, the heat of fire and the smell of burned meat awoke her. She found her new world to be a wasteland of dead dreugh, dead people and some sort of healing aura. Some big stuff fell; some poor soul was crushed. The rain is dying down, and the formerly chaotic deck was falling quiet. Through the hole created debris, she saw Edith and some sailors have managed rip out three of the four golden chains. The ship immediately started moving, or at least that what Ariane felt, as her entire world was still moving in the aftermath of her headache. Of course, more explosion would be the finale of this unsavory event. It was like the plays of one (in)famous stage director, Mikhail Bey; big booms, flaming set pieces and a dramatic escape.

The detonation in the water made Ariane felt a lot less embarrassed about her own jellyfish blunder. A strongbox and a bag of loot was sent flying towards the ship. One of these landed beside Ariane on the right, while the other on the left. The content they held was surprisingly intact, though the lock on the strongbox was cracked open (with fish scale-like papers spilling out), and the sailing bag opened itself to present Ariane two late birthday gifts.

"A dreamsleeve transmitter?" She picked up the tray gingerly, and then saw apparatus below it. "And a translation lens?"



The guard looked at Eshref Nafiz with the most puzzled expression. His face, half shaded by the oversized brim of his Brody helmet, betrayed the youthful inexperience behind his poor attempt at being stoic. His uniform was clearly too big for him, and the khaki was far too clean for any possible field use. He leaned down closer to Nafiz, unaware that his loosely slung Lee-Enfield rifle could easily be grabbed, and compared the oriental man's face to that of the passport photo. Clearly, he had not seen a visitor of this particular extraction, as most were either Spanish or from other parts of the British empire.

"Going to the gala, Mr. Safir?" The young guard's voice was a mix of suspicion and curiosity, all of them spoken with a hint of incomplete puberty. "You are from, uh, Arabia?"

"My cousin's out there, in the mid east, fighting the, um, auto men?" A small chuckle came as the passport was handed back to Eshref. "Guess what I got? Guard duty!"

When the same guard began inspecting Evelyn's papers, he was focused on complaining (and bragging) instead of actually doing his job. "They say I'm too young to fight, but I'm already past my seventeenth birthday last week!" He scanned Evelyn's passport and a spark lit up in his eyes. "I can haul thirty pounds of cargo all by myself! Do you see these muscle, m'lady?"

Already skittish, Stephan really couldn't stand this naive boy any longer. His own passport was approved without hassle (the only thing said to him was something about the flu and sanitation, as if he never washed his hands before), but the guard seemed to have some sort of fascination with Eshref (someone that could have possibly killed his cousin). The border crossing was an uncomfortable place of dust kicked up by horses, exhaust emitted by motor vehicles, and busy noises generated by both. Sandbag and barbed wire reinforced guard houses flanked both sides of the road into Gibraltar, with one of them sporting a water-cooled machine gun. Some travelers were let through easily, while a select few had to be thoroughly searched. Plus, a gruff looking sergeant was headed their way impatiently and had his hands gripped too tightly around his shotgun.

"Happy birthday!" Stephan blurted out. His fellow agents have made their own attempts to get them away, but Stephan had to try a different approach. "They are wrong, and if you let us through now, we'll put in a good word for you at the recruitment office."

"Really?" For the first time, the guard perked up with excitement. He straightened up his helmet and scrambled out of the car's way. "Enjoy your stay; just remember, no lollygagging!" He waved them by and made a crisp salute.

As they pulled away, Stephan let out a long and relieved breath, one that he held too long for his own good. In the distance, he could hear the sergeant berating the young soldier.

"You bloody idiot! You're supposed to search them for weapons! What if they are fecking spies!? This happens again and you're scrubbing toilets for the rest of the year."

Oh well, that kid should have known what he signed up for. But then again, Stephan didn't quite know what he signed up for either. Despite his worry, Stephan smiled faintly to himself, and silently prayed that this encounter won't come to bite them in the back.



Finding where the "Almond Dealer" lived was easy enough, but finding the man himself, was not so much so. Arriving in front of a dull brown and the most average looking apartment, in the south-western town area, only an hour and a few detours got in the agents' way. There was a surprising amount of motor traffic in Gibraltar, with a large portion being military trucks, and some private cars going in between. Horse-drawn carriages and cable cars further crowded the streets. Even though navigating through the city did not prove a significant hurdle to Evelyn's driving ability (and Stephan's map reading), it was nevertheless a claustrophobic experience on the peninsular city, where someone was always watching from the sidewalks or out of the tightly packed buildings.

Now securely parked, Stephan had just realized that they had no idea which suite their field contact resided in. For a minute, Stephan just stood, letting the cool sea breeze wash over him and listening to chirps that sounded more like small mammals instead of birds. There were five floors in the apartment, and each floor had ten suites.

"Well, should we just knock one by one?" Stephan asked, and was quickly shut down as expected. However, Stephan found a better idea in the form of an old woman walking out of the front entrance.

"Excuse me, ma'am." Stephan approached the granny without hesitation, figuring that she was the last person to do anything bad to him. "Do you know if there's anyone selling almonds around here?"

The old woman stared at him confusingly. She smoothed a wrinkle on her fluffy dress, as if an annoying bug had just landed there. "No." She said simply, and began to walk away.

"Wait!" Stephan jogged after her; somehow, this senior individual moved rather fast. "Why? My friends told me that there's a whole market for almond out here."

"How silly of them." The old lady scolded Stephan. She pointed to a nearby tree, where some animal jumped between the branches. It was where the chirps came from. "You must be from Britain, young man. Let me tell you, we don't leave nuts outside; the macaques would pick them off in a heartbeat."

Any attempt from Evelyn and Eshref to coerce information out of her was rebuffed by "get lost" and "sod off". "I don't have time for you tourists; I have to help my darlings at the Bristol Hotel get ready for their gala." With that, she sauntered away rather proudly.

"Ragged old hag." Stephan cursed when they were alone again, showing off some English swears he learned in England. Maybe they'll have to knock on every single door after all, suspicions be damned. The gala's happening in less than six hours, and there's no time to telegraph Schwarz for clarification. Eshref and Evelyn proposed some ideas, but none really stood out. Alternatively...

"Monkey see, monkey do." Stephan grinned. He noticed the very same Barbary macaque (or whatever Schwarz's travel brochure called them) the old woman mentioned leaping from overhanging tree branches to a third floor balcony. It was then followed by a second emerging from a well hidden bush, and a third. "They're after the almonds; the Almond dealer must be there! Second suite from the east, third floor. Let's go!"

Stephan ran up the stairs excited, thinking that he had just performed some expert detective work. He brushed pass a descending couple in the stairway, forgetting all about being discreet in the process. When he approached suite 302, Stephan reached out to knock, despite caution from his fellow agents. Nothing responded to the first knock, and silence continued on to the second, the third and the fourth. Checking his watch impatiently, Stephan realized that they had almost wasted twenty minutes since they arrived at the apartment. He placed his hand on the doorknob and gave it a twist just for the sake of trying. To Stephan's surprise, it actually unlocked.

"Strange, what can this mean?" He asked his companions; it was asked in a whisper and a few steps away from the door, so that whomever inside couldn't overhear.

"We have to get inside, no matter what." Stephan concluded from the others' responses.

Stephan spared fast glances down the hallway, and seeing no one else but the three of them, went to open the door. At the last second, a hasty warning from one of his partners reminded him to extract his pistol from its hidden holster. Nodding to thank them for the precaution, Stephan flicked off the pistol's safety, turned the knob, and entered suite 302 with gun muzzle sweeping over the immediate vicinity. What greeted Stephan was not the firefight he expected, but instead, a perfectly normal living room. An empty dinner table, orderly pillows arranged on an plain leather sofa and a cabinet full of neatly placed cups. The suite branched off to two sides, the kitchen and bedroom/bathroom. Stephan moved towards the kitchen, he also signaled for one person to search the bedroom, while the other would be securing the door behind them.

Taking the most quiet steps possible on the creaky wooden floorboard, Stephan's hold on his pistol was nervous and shaking. When he finally crested the threshold, he almost shot the first moving shape in front of his eyes. It was the monkeys, three of them rummaging through the kitchen drawers. There was no almond, but other food, such as canned ham and crackers, were being examined by the escaping monkeys. One of the fidgety bastards also held a kitchen knife.

"Faff off, little wankers." Stephan shooed the monkeys out of the window. They chirped in protest, but otherwise left with a handful of crackers. Out of the open window, the macaques bounded from balcony railing and onto the tree branches hanging above. As Stephan was busy looking outside, he failed to notice something on the ground, until he stepped on it.

"Kacke!" In his surprise, Stephan shrieked in German. There was a medium stature, Caucasian man (dressed in a nondescript gray suit) lying on the kitchen floor. A quick check found no pulse, and flipping him over revealed no wounds beside thick rope burns around the dead man's neck. The skin was cold, but the body did not smell decomposed; not yet. This man was dead for more than a few hours, though not many days.

"Ja, okay, what the fuck?" Stephan shook his head. His first reaction was to close the window and the blinds; the last thing he needed was some nosy local finding this death scene. Next, he called out to the others. Turns out there was nothing in the bedroom or bathroom either, though whoever searched there found scattered papers and clothing, signs of hasty packing. No suitcases, bags, money, weapon or other travel essentials were found in the bedroom. However, a few pages of notes were left there. Meanwhile, a nosy neighbor decided to knock, and had to be told off by the agent responsible for the door. When the suite was secured, Stephan told his partners to close off every window and curtain, and only had they done so did he finally reengaged the safety on his pistol.

"So, the monkeys are gone; no almond. But, um..." They gathered back in the living room; Stephan sat down on the sofa, wiping off a sheen of cold sweat that had covered his forehead. The air inside the apartment felt stale with the windows shut. "There's a corpse in kitchen." He whispered the last part.

"I found nothing on him besides his clothing. Nothing in his pockets, not even a wallet or a pocket watch." Stephan described, after the other two had a good look at the corpse. "Look, what if this is not our field contact? Schwarz didn't tell us what the 'almond dealer' looks like, but he is supposed to be someone smart. So, he's got to be smarter than getting killed in his own home, right?"
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