Well at Least I’m a Magic Pirate Now

Sareneth 13, Toilday

Syl patched everyone up while I sorted through the supply bag for dinner. To my distress, even a successful roll from her healed a grand total of one hit point each, which couldn’t be repeated. Rosie and I were in pretty good shape, but my phenomenal cosmic powers were spent and a stiff breeze might knock Owlbear into the negatives. By silent agreement, we stayed on the fucking boat until the Wormwood came back.

We had a couple barrels that had been intended to hold live lobsters, and a conspicuously dead reefclaw we needed to preserve. Hoping that they didn’t go bad as quickly as lobsters, I cast my ray of frost cantrip to freeze the water. Each pale blue beam of light created a small disk of flash frozen ice around the size and shape of my palm, which I packed around the reefclaw. Once I’d made enough to cover the catch of the day, I found to my displeasure that my hands were stiff with a persistent chill, and neither rubbing them together nor grasping the sun baked wood of the jolly boat did a damn thing to warm them up.

Shit. Do I have poor circulation now or is this an ice magic thing? I mean, I was handling ice with my bare hands there. It’s not like it’s weird that my hands would be cold. 

I rested my stiff digits in the warm water, surveying the rest of the team. Rosie and Owlbear were quietly fishing, intently watching their lines. Syl was curled up near the center of the boat, dozing in the sun and occasionally letting out a soft snore; she’d objected to Owlbear’s involvement in the activity, but she just didn’t have the energy to argue the point.

“You know what, fine.” She relented, “If you want to risk splitting your wounds trying to land some hundred pound fish, that’s your problem.”

I felt very naked without my magic; cantrips did not seem like they’d do me much good in a real fight, no matter how useful they were day to day. There were only two fishing poles and my eyes glazed over any time I tried to read the SRD without some kind of goal in mind, so I decided to try a bit of strength training.

I hefted the harpoon Rosie used in the fight. It wasn’t excessively heavy, but right now I had tiny noodle arms. I didn’t want to hurt myself, so a lot of reps with light weight seemed like the best way to get a better feel for this body.

Hey, how much does this weigh? About 6 pounds. (Appraise 17+2=19) Seriously? It felt heavier. Whatever, it’s time to see what I’m capable of. 

“Guys,” I called out, not wanting to look too weird, “I’m going to try to build some stamina.”

Rosie glanced over and shrugged, “Go for it.”

••••••••••

I did just do a fairly intense dive and drag a heavy weight out of the water. I’m probably just worn out from that, right?

I worked up a good sweat, and my body felt like jelly after an embarrassingly short period of time. I forced myself through one more rep and let myself rest. That means I’m making progress, right? I’m starting low so it’ll be easy to improve? 

Actually, how the hell did autopilot climb the rigging like that on day one? I mused as I sat down next to Syl and collapsed against the side of the boat. There’s no way I could lift my own weight in this shape. 

Autopilot had no comment, so I spent a long while combing through the basic rules in the reference document looking for an answer. I didn’t get anything straightforward, but I pieced it together. By the rules presented, if I succeeded in a skill check then I succeeded, even if that requires exceeding my own physical limits, overriding other peoples common sense, or pulling knowledge out of my ass that I had no way of knowing. If I failed, I failed even if doing so required acts of unfathomable stupidity on my part.

Choosing to roll injected chaos into a situation. That chaos was stacked in my favor, generally, but if I wanted reliability I needed to do things myself. My party members had a similar situation, though in their case it only kicked in when they were pushing beyond their normal limits. Syl had +7 in Knowledge (Nobility); if she saw the ruler of a country she’d never heard of she might take a penalty, but she could still potentially pull his name, title, and proper forms of address out of a hat.

I can summon dolphins for 6 seconds and randomly know trivia about magic. Fear me!

••••••••••

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Owlbear and Rosie caught a dozen small reef fish between them, and once they packed up their poles I had a bit of fun looking through the clear water and flash freezing fish. I needed to aim carefully, as the water’s surface refracted my beam, but I managed to catch a few fish myself before they were all scared off. I had to swim to pick up the fishsicles, but they floated to the surface and were still edible even if they were a little freezer burnt. It passed the time, at least.

I actually had to sleep for once, and to make it worse I was expected to wake up and keep watch for a few hours. Owlbear wasn’t well qualified to keep watch solo even at the best of times, so I was voluntold to take two shifts. I wasn’t a fan of this plan, but I was of a nocturnal species, completely uninjured, and had the least physically demanding job waiting for me on the ship. The only silver lining was that my shift started at around midnight, so I could pass the time reading system updates.

The mission of the day was a repeat: steal a magic item for a mysterious bonus feat. If I’d been in port I’d have at least considered it, but it still seemed way too risky to do in a closed system like the Wormwood.

On a positive note, this confirms that missions can come back. The rule book said they would, but I’m mostly just taking it on faith that everything in there is accurate. So, the real question is what I got from leveling up! 

Congratulations! You have reached level 2 of the Sorcerer class! 

You have gained:

1 hit point

1 point of Base Attack Bonus

7 skill points automatically allocated to your most used skills

The Mending cantrip

1 first level spell per day

I groaned a little. At level 2 I had 7 hit points, fewer than any of my party members had at level one. I had to check what base attack bonus and the mending cantrip were, but at a glance it didn’t seem like I’d gained very much from my level up.

So I’m still made of tissue paper, I’m slightly better at hitting things, I have a broader out of combat skill set, I can magically fix small objects, and I can summon one more angry badger per day. I’m trying to decide if Profession (cook) as a trained skill or the ability to fix chair legs with my mind is the highlight of this level up. Adventure ho! 

I consoled myself by looking up sorcerer and salivating over the far more substantial bounty waiting for me at level 3, and made myself feel worse by checking everyone else’s stats. Rosie and Syl had 18 and 17 hp respectively, more than double my max. They also picked up talents at level 2; Rosie passively debuffed targets when she hit them, reducing their damage and chance to hit slightly. Syl gained a scaling damage boost that only kicks in when she’s fighting with a finesse weapon. Even Owlbear, who had an outright NPC class, was being carried by his raw physical stats to a staggering 23 hit points.

Dammit, me. Stop being salty that your front liners are good at fighting in melee. This is a good thing! You’re part of a team!

The last member of my party, Sandara, had a level up much closer to my own. She was a fellow spellcaster, so that made sense I suppose. 9 hp total, one more spell per day, and a handful of skill points.

Wait, what? 

She was at 0 hit points right now, unconscious and mostly spent in the magic department.

What the fuck happened?

••••••••••

Sareneth 14, Wealday

I spent the rest of my watch freaking out over Sandara’s status. I didn’t have any way to check on her. She was alive and she was stable; that was all I knew. It didn’t stop me from worrying about her all morning.

I almost wish I didn’t know about it. I can’t do anything for her, I’m just freaking out for no reason now. Seriously though! What happened? What got her down to 0 hit points, but didn’t kill her? She was planning on getting drunk in a bar; was this some kind of super excessive brawl?

I eventually relaxed enough to make breakfast and get to fishing. (Profession (chef) 1+5=6 Critical failure!) I started by starting a fire to- No! None of that! We are not doing that on this tiny boat! 

After handing out the last of the ship biscuit and dried fish while suppressing the urge to set the boat on fire, I replaced the ice in our barrels and did another set of improvised exercises with the harpoon. No need to go diving again; Owlbear’s multiple injuries were all the proof we needed that we did our best, and we weren’t coming back empty handed regardless.

When the Wormwood finally picked us up, I flagged down the first recognizable person I saw. Conchobar was apparently working on the lower decks, so that meant Crimson Cogward, the gym rat himself, was the first friendly face I saw.

“Hey, man.” I opened with a friendly smile, “I haven’t seen Sandara around. Do you know what happened to her?” Please tell me she’s at least still on the crew…

“Oh, the cleric of Besmara?” He answered, splitting his focus between me and a coil of rope he was tidily putting away. “Yeah, she’s in the hotbox for a few days. Apparently she picked a fight with a couple of riggers. Lucky she didn’t kill either of them or she’d be up for a keelhauling.”

Shit. I don’t actually know if that’s in character for her when she’s drunk. I’m going to need to ask her… and hopefully she hasn’t been slimed. I don’t want to repeat the situation with Jakes. Ah well, no rest for the wicked.

Trying to keep my head down, I helped Kroop haul both seafood barrels. As nice as helping her would be, Sandara didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger and I didn’t want a reputation for meddling in punishments. Instead, Kroop and I set about making a 3 part dinner heavily featuring reefclaw. I did my best, just in case I needed to intercede on my cleric’s behalf. The reefclaw bisque was all me and it was the best damn thing I’ve ever made. (Profession (Cook) 19+5=24, Success!)