First and Final Voyage (IC)

[Ari]

Chewing over the problem of what exactly he was supposed to do in the event they met this killer, Wave-Eye nodded once at Bloduwedd's suggestion, silently falling in step behind her, making a bizarre contrast with the much shorter human. He casually inspected his conch, pouring out and tossing a clawful of seawater into his mouth experimentally, and sighing with relief when he found it unaffected by the enchantment. He had no idea why he had thought it might be, but better safe then sorry, he supposed.

Where has that child got to? he wondered with sudden irritation If she's gone looking for trouble in the ship we'll never hear the end of it if she dies he turned a cold black eye towards Volodimir and the smiling Lord Steam, recalling abruptly that neither they or the rest of the crew were as durable as he was. If that has any bearing at all on how this killer strikes. Maybe he has the right idea after all, finding out about this enemy.

Still looking at Lord Steam with one eye, the other twisted to observe Bloduwedd "I am unfamiliar with ships of this type, where will we start our patrols?"

[Shofet]

GM

Volodomir nodded silently to Blodeuwedd, giving her a brief thumbs up, while the Captain nodded to Lord Steam and Blodeuwedd.

"I shall do what I can. I can't promise much, but we have been keeping the remains..." The Captain's eyes became distant for a moment. "...We've keeping them in storage."

He looked about at the men. "Alright, I want all of you to tell as much as you can to any of them who asks you a question. Additionally, there will be no eating in our bunks anymore. We've already lost two men when they were unsupervised in their rooms. We'll all be resuming eating in the mess, as usual."

The Captain nodded to Lord Steam, leading him off to the storage area, which was a musty, dark place. He flicked on the light, though it was dim. He grabbed a jar, and opened it up. "This is the teeth... They seem to be the only thing that last very long. I don't know what to say about it."

He handed the jar to Lord Steam. "About seven men so far."

He then looked at Lord Steam, beckoning him to follow. He brought him to the bunk area, and sighed as he opened the door. The smell of seawater was strong, and the Captain moved forward, bringing Lord Steam to the scene where some sea foam remained, along with some teeth and scraps of hair.

"This one happened just a while before you arrived... I've not been able to get anyone to pick it up." He sighed, looking at Lord Steam. "Can you make anything of the jar and the evidence here?"

[Tiffany Korta]

If Blodeuwedd was surprised by Kit’s sudden appearance she didn’t show it, her voice was as flat and matter of fact as normal though it dropped to a whisper.

“I’m not so sure about Lord Steam he is still a fop but I believe he is more skilled as he lets on. As my Taid use to say To play the piano badly you have to be either very bad or very good indeed. “She looked back to make sure Wave-Rider was still behind her “As for him I do not plan to ditch him yet. We need him around in case this threat is too much for the two of use to handle. When we get closer let me know and we will carry on alone.â€

She nodded to Wave-Rider and began to walk, following Kit’s invisible lead.

“I not an expert on ocean going vessels, but I think I might have an idea where to start.â€

[Supercape]

"Muaha!" smirked Lord Steam, a powerful magnifying monocle stuck to his eye, distorting his features.

"There is more to this than meets the eye! even this eye!" he said, pointing to his monocle and promptly removing it.

He stood up, dusted himself off, and packed away his tools carefully.

"The teeth....heavily decomposed, most likely years ago. Salt and mineral deposits on them, so mostly they were exposed to sea water for a long time. As for the hair...manually cut, not torn or shed. "

He turned to the Captain.

"So, we have remains that most likely died years ago, in the sea, and hair that has been cut off. Can you shed any light on that, sir?" he asked, suspiciously.

[Shofet]

The Captain looked up at Lord Steam grimly, and shook his head.

"I..." He sighed, looking at the remains, obviously frustrated. "That's just it. They seem to age so fast... The remains, I mean. The hair probably won't even last the night..." He looked up at him. "I know it's hard to believe, but I need you to believe me. I... You can watch the hair sample. Watch it age before your own eyes! Just wait the night and I can prove it!"

The Captain was frantic, but seemed sincere.

"There's something terrible on this ship!"

[Blue Rose]

"Hey, hey," Kit begins, not worrying one whit about volume. "I'm not talking about ditching anyone. Well, maybe Shiny. But we'll need the big guy when it comes to a scrap; just not right now. We can actually get some scouting done, find some things out, then come get the others. Besides..."

Suddenly, she drops her veil against Wave-Eye and Lord Steam, staying hidden to the crew, and anything else in the vicinity. She turns to the two of them and speaks up so that all three can hear. "It's probably a bad idea for anyone to go off alone. Wave-Eye, Lord Steam, stay together. I'll stick with Blodeuwedd and we'll scout things out; it's kind of our specialty."

And without waiting for a reply, she goes back to being invisible to all but Blodeuwedd as she makes her way in, hanging her jacket on the first usable hook she can find that isn't right next to a dripping rain jacket or something.

[Ari]

"That is an incredibly foolish idea Kit," the bulky fishman retorted "but if that is your will I'll abide by it. I will do as you ask and guard Lord Steam as best as I can. Do not expect much of it..." he gurgled under his breath as he stalked over to the Earth-Victorian's side. "You race's children are strong enough for this?" he asked Lord Steam dubiously "I fear greatly for their safety" he added softly, hoping it wouldn't reach the ears of the two human girls.

[Supercape]

"You race's children are strong enough for this? I fear greatly for their safety"

Steam nodded without immediately answering. It was true they were young, inexperienced, and probably rash too. But on the other hand, they had abilities beyond that of normal men.

"That remains to be seen, my amphibious friend" he answered, with a heaviness to his voice. "But neither are destined for a safe or mundane life, I fear. There mettle must be tested at some point, and in our current position, we could well use such a testing..."

"And we ourselves may face peril. I, for one, have no intention of ending up dust, teeth, and hair!" he continued. "But there is a mystery here. Why the cut hair? Why seawater? curious...curious!" he muttered.

He turned once again to the Captain, who was, he judged, being as honest as he could.

"Dear Captain, what can you tell us of this something on the ship? please, calm your fear and go through the events as carefully as you can. Our survival may depend on the smallest detail!"

[Tiffany Korta]

Bloeuwedd smile at Lord Steam answer. Poor Wave-Eye probably wasn’t aware at how good her hearing was, or that the Comms were already active.

“Here you’ll need on of these.†She handed Kit one of her Earbuds “My concealment is more technological based and almost perfect so you won’t be able to see me, but I’ll be right behind you.â€

With that she activated Ffoniwch Eluned and faded completely from view.

“And thank you Wave-Eye for your concern, if we get into trouble we’ll let you know. So Kit let’s go scout this vessel.â€

[Blue Rose]

"Don't worry," Kit replies, not hearing what Wave-Eye said. "I have more than eyes to see you with." She puts in the ear bud and continues on, into the ship.

Then she hears something. A fight? Maybe relevant, but not what we're looking for. Better to skip past it and keep mo-

Wait. Hero. Bah. Jobs are easier when you just go in, grab the mark, and leave.

"Hear that, B?" she asks, heading closer, towards the bunks and feels ahead for the combatants.

[Shofet]

The Captain looked up at Lord Steam, nodding slowly.

"Well... it started a few weeks ago... It's blurred a bit with the hunger and the fear... But we departed from Plymouth, in Devon, with new cargo. We were supposed to head here, then up to Halifax, and then we'd cross over to Reykjavik, and finally head to Galway City in Ireland before returning home. We took a different route on the way here... We... Um... We went down Portugal, passed a few small fishing towns there and picked up new cargo there as well to send to the Azores, which we dropped off at Ponta Delgada. They gave us some cargo, then we sailed to Bermuda, up to Miami, then to Myrtle Beach, then here."

He rubbed his temples, sighing.

"Then... We ended up here. Everything was going fine up until that point. We were moving at normal speeds, everyone was healthy... Then, suddenly, we just stopped moving. We tried to leave but we just couldn't bring ourselves to. We tried to manage everything, to stay sane, but the rations started running short, and about fifteen days... Was it sixteen maybe? I don't know... Well, that's... That's when men started disappearing. First, just at night, but then all the time. They always left the seafoam and the remains, which decomposed so, so quickly, it was unbelievable. We started to panic... One of us went mad. Eric. He strangled another sailor... who survived, but disappeared later that night... Eric, Eric was locked up in the broom closet. We feed him occasionally but he's so violent. He claws at us, says strange things, and he sometimes speaks in this strange language... It sounds like Basque, almost, but it's too guttural to be Basque and the grammar's off..."

He looked up at Lord Steam. "Does that help? Does it help at all?"

[Ari]

"if this human speaks a tongue you do not know, bring me to him." said the hulking triton with gurgling authority "I can understand the speech of all, and speak all tongues in turn. This strange dialect will be no barrier for me." he leaned his bulk against the wall, waitng for the captain's response while he mulled over the story the man had just told them.

It certainly fit with what he had heard about such curses. Of course, he hadn't ever been trapped by one himself until now, but the legends that had filtered down to the murky depths about the binding power of sriens left a deep impression on the wandering armies of the marine gods, and few of Wave-Eye's comrades had dared to make their way to surface for many years after hearing the tales, fearing to fall under the spell and be devoured without being able to fight. The idea of 'going down fighting' was something universally desired by all tritons, who knew that their lacking of true immortality meant a widely-remembered death might be their only chance to make any real impact in the aquatic world.

[Supercape]

Lord Steam nodded, attentively listening to both the Captain and Wave-Eye respectively.

"Interesting, Interesting!" he concluded "And if my amphibious friend here has a chance of understanding the foreign ramblings of your ship-hand Eric, then I suggest we visit him...please lead on, Captain...!"

As they made to move off, he flipped in an off-hand casual question.

"But you lost me at one point captain...why exactly did you take a different route home? a scenic one, at that...." he asked in polite and innocent tones...

[Shofet]

The Captain nodded to Lord Steam.

"We got orders after leaving the Azores to go that way. It was from the top, so we felt obliged to listen. I mean, I don't normally like to cross those frostbitten waters up North, but it gets me back to Devon quicker so I can pop on a train to Canterbury to see my grandkids. That's all, really..."

He stood. "But yes, I'll take you to Eric."

He walked with them, his keys jingling, before coming to the storage closet.

"I'll not be lookin' at him, I'm afraid, so I'll just a bit away. You two, feel free to talk to him as long as you want, but don't let Eric out no matter what he says to you. He's a savage and a liar. He'll do terrible things if he's freed."

The door opened, and the sight inside was rather disturbing. Eric was a once-attratice young man in his twenties, that much was obvious, but he seemed unnaturally aged by emaciation and self-abuse. Deep bags hung under intense brown eyes, whose pupils had become eerily dilated, and his brown skin slightly greyed through stresses. More worrisome, however, were the strange symbols on his body, which to Wave-Eye read as "Kill the Horserider, the First People shall rise. In their extinction, we will find absolution. Flay their children, eat their old, no mercy for them for what they have done is unforgivable."

Finally, he spoke, a madman's grin on his face. His language was odd, very odd, ancient even, and though Wave-Eye could understand and speak it, it seemed to have something about it that made it oddly difficult to speak easily.

He leaned forward.

~~~~~~

Inside the bunks were two men, furiously wrestling with another, who was pleading with them in a thick Gwynned accent to not be taken too. The men seem not to listen, conversing amongst one another in a strange tongue neither of you can understand. They are both brandishing fire-axes, and are quite disheveled. Their clothes, similar to those of the other members of the ship, have been torn rather badly, and all their hair seems to have fallen out, as well as many of their teeth.

[Ari]

"You should know, if you know enough to dub me 'godfish', that I have been the interferer of many quarrels that have had nothing to do with me" snarled Wave-Eye in return, "and if I can understand your garbled tongue correctly you have become possessed by some old ghosts who wish to continue a long-dead war." Making a long scar on the wall next to his left hand Wave-Eye hissed "Is the 'Horserider' leader the captain of this ship? And who is this Priest? If they desire a war to contine beyond the grave surely they know the powers that will descend upon them for such a sin?"

he glanced over at Lord Steam "An ancient struggle between humans thousands of years ago, on the land of Europe. Invaders from the eastern lands defeated those who already lived there. The human soul possessing the man before us is from the tribes the invaders defeated."

[Shofet]

He slipped back into English. "It was genocide on us." Suddenly, he shifted back into the old tongue.

He shifted back into English once more. "None shall stop us. Victory is assured. We shall eat the flesh of the Horseriders while the Greatest shall consume the Horserider Gods who abandoned us and condemn them to having never existed. If we are to be the ones who fail, others will win. The Punishment is coming." He leaned forward. "So don't interfere if you value your existance outside of the Greatest's belly."

[Tiffany Korta]

Blodeuwedd only took a few second to take in the scene before leaping into action.

“We’ve found some crew who been affected they seem to been affected as though rapidly aged. I’m attempting to subdue them now.†She whispered to the others through to comms.

Positions herself behind one of the men, still unobserved by either of them, she waited for chance. It took a while the struggle made it difficult to judge but eventually she saw her chance and grabbed the man trying to use her strength to pull the man off of the poor victim.

[Blue Rose]

As Blodeuwedd draws closer to take one of the thugs down, Kit keeps her distance, staying in the shadows. She launches her own attack, of course, but she doesn't go for the body; she targets the mind. She finds a dimly-lit corner obscured by a couple racks and drops the veil that was hiding her before, instead shifting her influence to the un-manhandled sailor's head. She starts stripping away all rage and passion, replacing it with ennui and the impotent frustration of the futility of reality. Or whatever hodgepodge of feelings she can string together to say, 'Nothing is ever worth doing.'

[Shofet]

The man struggled against Blodeuwedd's grip, but found himself unable to break free against her strength. Snarling, he continued to struggle futilely, barking at Blodeuwedd in a strange, incomprehensible tongue, while his companion simply sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands, his hollow eyes peeking just barely out of his fingers as he slumped as the sheer uselessness of it all overtook him, the depression consuming him like a void and leaving him unable to do anything but just stay there.

The man with the Gwynned accent looked up at them.

"Th-thank you! I... They almost got me!

[Blue Rose]

"Happy to help," Kit answers, thinking it an appropriate thing to say as she steps out of the shadows and around the man she left a quivering pile on the floor. "But what happened? Did they just jump you out of the blue?"

She turns back around to the one she took out and studies him, quite literally poking him with a stick, broken off a rack in the struggle. She's done this before, and she knows just how far gone he is right about now; examining him should be perfectly safe. For the next couple minutes, at least.

[Tiffany Korta]

Whilst they seemed to have lost their faculties she didn’t want to harm them too much, they were still basically human. So he swung the sword round the flaming blade tracing a faint blue trail in the air, she grabbed the flaming blade for extra leverage, and struck the man with the hilt of Dyrnwyn.

Having got the formor crew mans attention she moved around to draw his attention from his former college.

<â€Find somewhere safe whilst we subdue your former colleagues.â€> she switched to Welsh as for most of Gwynedd it was there primary language and he would probably react best to his own tongue.

[Shofet]

The violent man tumbled to the ground with a surprised look in the face as consciousness faded from his face, while the man with the Gwynedd accent's eyebrows raised first in suprise at the use of Welsh, but he nodded in recognition, and scurried out of the room while the others dealt with the incapacitated men, letting the door swing behind him. The others showed signs of being down and out, though the depressed man might soon rouse from his artificial emotions and return to his violent nature. The Gwynedd man watched from outside the room, eyes wide with horror.

[Blue Rose]

"That was sloppy, Blod," Kit tuts as she starts pulling sheets from the nearby bedding. "I took mine out in one go. C'mon, let's get these guys up top. Maybe we can learn something."

She begins tying up the man she put into an existential crisis, making up for her lack of knowledge about knots by making a lot of them, going for something vaguely resembling a hogtie. "Hey, Popeye," she shouts to the man they just caught. "Come drag this guy up top for us... and tie him up better than that, 'kay?"

[Tiffany Korta]

Blodeuwedd scowled at Kit but said nothing; she knew some heroes used humour to deal with stress. Instead she knelt down to the sailor she had rendered unconscious and made sure the frail looking man was still okay.

With a little effort she lifted the man onto her shoulders, shifting the weight around so she could carry the man comfortably if not slowly.

“Let go find the others, they may find these victims interesting.â€

Normally in these circumstance s she would just disappear and travel alone, but here it seemed to be unwise to be alone.

[Supercape]

"What have we here then, what have we here?" said Lord Steam as Kit and Blodeuwedd returned, complete with their captives.

"Two men, out cold...." he said examining the prostate bodies.

"Well, I complement you two on your pugulism, I talent I didn't quite think you had the build for young lady" he said, referring to Kit. "But perhaps other talents will suffice in your case, hmmm?" Now then, lets place these floows down and see what we have.

He placed his monocle in his eye, bent over and started examining the two men....