Under the Stripped Banner
8th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
Though you and Sirim spend the last of your days in port searching high and low, and there are certainly plenty of rats for both of you to find and yet more left over for Pepper to drop dead at the feet of startled sailors, none show any sign of being more than stew stock. At least you, Gorok, and Cob think of them as stew stock. Mina is horrified at the notion in spite of the fact that she will gladly eat 'goat', 'sheep', and 'cow', all distinct only in that they are larger and have horns...
"They... they carry sickness," she finally manages to find a rejoinder, but you point out the same is true for any wild game.
"That's the whole point of turning them into stew, well that and you can get more out of the bones that way than if you just burned them. Either way, no one but me can drink the light."
"I... you... it's 'no one but I,'" she finally settles on correcting your pronunciation.
"Master Akorian, we all have our peculiar taboos that must seen absurd when seen from afar," the magician Gavhaul steps up from behind a pile of crates lashed to the deck, one of them clucking. He points at a 'chicken', a sort of clumsy waddling bird that is unable to fly. "Even the gods are not free from that small folly, for the Lord of the War the fierce Rhinoceros, for fair Desna the butterfly, for Old Dead-Eye the stag with horns held high. When I was a young lad my great grandfather, barely a man's years at the Death of Prophecy, told me about the black hens sacred to Aroden before his death. In the old empire it would cost you a heavy fine and penance to kill one, and if you ate it the priests would take your tongue. Only at the highest holy days were they sacrificed for haruspicy, divination through the reading of entrails."
"What happened to them, the black hens I mean?" you ask intrigued.
"All of the estates that raised them belonged to the Church of Aroden by a charter of royal monopoly. So those that were not sold outright reoriented to other products. As for the last of them hens themselves, sold off for pennies and thrown in the cook-pot. Rather a waste of tongues when you think about it. Do you know priests have a word for men who would in pride think of themselves as akin to the gods? Hubris they call it. I cannot help but wonder what would one call a god who thought too much of his chickens."
"Dead?" Cob offers.
"From the mouths of... goblins," the mage mutters. "I'll see to it the cook makes the rats into fish bait, the sailors and soldiers will eat that right enough."
"Thank you," you offer to his retreating back, not saying anything more.
The captain, Mel of Azir, takes the news that her patron had seen fit to change something about her ship and the ordering of her crew with all the calm and even temper of a snarling
gut-ripper not
quite able to tear through a coat of plates and looking for the straps, which leaves Sirim thoroughly engaged in trying to figure out the dynamics, Gorok dropping the whole mess to figure out fishing in the sea from the side of a boat, Cob in the ratlines trying figure out how the sails work, and you feeling a touch guilty about having started the whole thing. Reasoning that there isn't much she can do about you under present employment you decide to find her and offer an apology.
Just have to try not to be too convincing...
There is a cat on your shoulder by the time you find her, a warm somewhat comforting weight, if not a little unbalancing since you still haven't gotten your sea legs yet.
"I did not mean to call your authority into question on your own ship, captain," you offer, pulling out a pouch of coin to offer restitution, in silver not gold. Niddle of the sea or not you do not value her good graces
that much.
"What's that for, lad? You didn't do shit... oh, the rat thing, that's just
the agent throwing this weight around. If it hadn't been that it would've been something else. Swear to the Black Lady I'm getting too old in my bones to deal with this shit, but the old girl's still got a few journeys in her so and so do I." She pats the side of the ship as you might pet Warty then looks at you more closely, squinting against the evening sun in her face. "You're a wizard, know any ship magics?" Seeing your confusion she adds. "Spells of use aboard ship?"
Now that she asks you are surprised no one thought to do it on your last journey. Oh sure they had taken healing from you and Mina readily enough after the fight with the sea raiders, but this is the first time you'd been asked in so many words if you can help as a matter of course as a traveling companion, that wasn't one of your friends or party of a explicit negotiation.
Of course there's a part of you that's aware she's trying to get use out of your skills without paying, but still you can't find it in yourself to think poorly of her for it.
What does Kori do aboard ship for the first leg of the journey?
[] Help out where he can with his magic
-[] Write in what kind
[] Try to learn more about your traveling companions
-[] Loric Gavhaul
-[] Captain Mel
-[] Urgor the dwarf
[] Write in
OOC: Rolls hidden on the wererat finding action. That does not necessarily mean there was something to find and you failed, more that you cannot have surety out of character because Kori and company do not have it IC. 
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).
