Reading the Heavens
Day One, Year Unknown
"Quiet!" the voice of captain Antonio Giustiniani rings out over the deck. His face is just as florid as you have ever seen it, but not more with excision than with drink you would judge. He had been bellowing orders during the storm and even helping with his own two hands when the need was greatest. "I said quiet! Stop gawking at the sky and..."
"Who are you to tell us son of a poxed whore?!" a scarred sailor calls from behind you. "You lead us into this cursed storm, you and your dealings with the heathens! God is punishing us for dealing with those whose hands are stained with good Christian blood!"
"You speak boldly of the mind of God for a layman," you interject quietly, laying a hand upon the hilt of your sword. A part of you hates to make the call. The image of Cardinal Pelagius consecrating the Cathedral of Daemieta while its steps were still stained with the blood of its former worshipers seeped so deep into the stone is seared into your mind. You very much doubt his like would be able to make any more sense of this storm that made day into night than any of your here, but either way it is the fate that has fallen upon this ship and those who sail upon it. All that remains for you to do is decide how you face it and that in turn shall be what sees you to the shore or to the bottom of the sea.
While the eyes of the sailors turned to you the captain seems to be reconsidering how to approach the matter. "Are we such men as upon living through that storm should now turn upon each other?" he asks in softer tones. "If this be a sign from God, and I confess that I can think of no other thing it could be, then should we then meet His test divided and clawing at each others' throats?" He motions at the broken mast. "Behold, we have made it though alive but not unscathed. There is yet work to be done and there is yet a long way to Sicily. Let us then take up the task."
There is a moment of stillness, broken only by the voice of the waves and the creaking of the galley's timbers as the crew consider his words. Antonio had taken a gamble by not meeting the scared sailor's words with swift punishment. It might make him look weak in a time when men seek strength, yet at the same time he had reminded them all of the fragility of the ship and all of you upon it before the vastness of the sea.
"You would know poxed, wouldn't you Marco?" the carpenter jeers and the other fellows seems to deflate.
"I would be honored to speak with you over dinner I suppose it would be now, noble Sir," the captain himself says in thickly accented but understandable English that you doubt anyone else on deck speaks. A good thing you had not paid mind to your mother's admonitions about learning 'the barbarous Saxon tongue'.
***
The lantern sways slowly, casting fitful shadows over the faces of the two men already waiting for you there, food still untouched, though the wine is half drunk. One is the captain Antonio Giustiniani, his face seeming grimmer and more lined than you have ever seen it, while the other is a deep chested fellow with a thick black beard almost long enough to tuck into his belt. You faintly recall him introducing himself as Doctor Zaia, though given the fact that he had to do so first in Greek, which you do not speak, then in Latin, of which you know but crumbs, the only things you had managed to catch was that he was some kind of leech and that he was a Christian, 'Copts' you think they call themselves.
"Thank you for your aid there, Sir Roland," the captain says with a smile and a shake of your hand. "It was closer than I like to think of to have all the men run hog wild and add more dead to the pile."
"I will take those thanks in the spirit they were given," you reply courteously. "Yet I cannot help but feel that I was not summoned here so soon merely out of gratitude. Is there some trouble that I could...?"
"You seem a man of reason, yes? Of logic?" Antonio interjects.
"No need to walk circles upon me like a fretful horse," you reply more sharply when you meant to. You are weary in mind, perhaps even more so than in body, wondering what the events of the day mean.
Antonio throws up his palms in exasperation. "Fine then, I will give it to you straight as acquavite and hope you do not choke on it. The stars are wrong, not in their proper places for the time and the place we should be."
"So the storm blew us off course as well as losing a day somehow?" you ask, trying to grasp what he means. The ship is well-provisioned so worst comes to worst the cargo is partly grain, as long as you do not sink you will make it to some shore.
"If only it was but that Sir Knight, if only..." for a moment he sounds much older than his years. "The guiding star, the North-Pointer, she no longer points North. The doctor here, he is a man learned in many things and he has confirmed my observations. The stars are
wrong." The words hang heavy in the aid, like some foresight of doom.
How do you react?
[] Disbelief, two men can be wrong as easily as one, especially when you do not know either enough to judge their skills or their trustworthiness.
[] Horror, perhaps that fool of was sailor was not wholly wrong.
[] Acceptance, you have already seen the order of the earth break, why not that of the sky also?
[] Write in
OOC: You guys rolled for an interesting passenger, I will say that much. 
