How I spent my Sunday:

 (Moderate Tall Tale Spoilers) My story starts at Dagger Tooth Outpost.  I’m grinding the Tall Tales so I head to the North Star Seapost to start the Stars of a Thief Tale.  I collect the Enchanted Spyglass, Star Jewels, Crab Totem, and Shroudbreaker Stone without incident in just over an hour.  I’m on my way back to the Seapost when a four-man-galleon comes out from behind and island and rams me.  Me, being a one-man-sloop, I try my best to run, but to no avail; I’m taking on water and I’m outnumbered 4-1.  I jump on their ship and manage to take one out with a blunderbuss but I’m swiftly charged by the remainder of the crew and after a quick brawl, I succumb to lead poisoning.  

 On the Ferry of the Damned, I ask the sailor I’d killed, Redbird Ninja, if I could have the Shroudbreaker Stone back since they couldn’t sell it and would therefore be of no importance to them.  After I return to my new ship, I am sent a party invite by a crew member of the galleon.  They propose an agreement, a reaper’s chest for the Shroudbreaker Stone.  Me, being young and naive, gladly accept their offer, after all, it’d only take me a few minutes to get a reaper’s chest and I wasn’t about to do the whole talk Tale over.  I get a reapers chest and meet up with them close to Dagger Tooth Outpost.  

 Throughout this entire conversation, a third party consisting of a brigantine and a sloop are attacking the galleon and they start to suspect that I am with them.  Knowing that they have a distinct advantage over me and after I had confirmed that I was, in fact, not in an alliance with the brigantine and sloop, they decide to make the switch.

 A member of their crew climbs aboard my sloop and takes the reapers chest and sails off in a rowboat.  I actually expected them to hold their end of the bargain but the Shroudbreaker Stone is no where on my sloop.  I bring this up with them and I’m promptly kicked from the party.

 So, that’s it right, they have the Shroudbreaker Stone and now a reapers chest and I am in no position to make any sort of bargain.  “It’s the Sea of Thieves, not the Sea of Friends,” one of them tells me.

  So I sail away and after a few minutes I am close to just getting off and heading to bed.  But just before that though is finished, I get sent a party invite.  They said that I was a man of my word and delivered on my end of the deal, so to set things right, they’d give me my Shroudbreaker Stone back.

 I didn’t expect this at all.  I was 100% convinced that I was never going to see the Shroudbreaker Stone again and I would just have to complete it on another date.

  They instruct me to meet them at Plunder Valley, where their row-boating-crew member has ended up.  They can’t stop, however, as the third party is still following them and landing some critical hits to their ships hull, but they have managed to board the sloop and take it out of the fight.

  I’m on my way to Plunder Valley and the brigantine that has been following the galleon has now directed its attention upon me.  I’m a sloop after all and they’re in a brigantine; easy pickings right?

 Wrong.  The two members that make up of the brigantine’s crew board me but a blunderbuss shot and a couple of sword swings send them to the Ferry of the Damned.  I hop on my cannon and fire off ten cannonballs in rapid succession.  They sink in no time and I turn back towards Plunder Valley.

 A member of the galleon’s crew jumps off with an object in hand.  I fully expect this sailor to be carrying a gunpowder barrel, but upon closer inspection, it’s an ancient chest containing one Shroudbreaker Stone.  I thank them for keeping their word, we form an alliance, and then I sail to the North Star Seapost.  I turn in the Shroudbreaker Stone to Sudds and log off for the night.

 That’s where this story ends.  In hindsight in the time it took me to recover the Shroudbreaker Stone, I could’ve completed the tall Tale twice over, but I learned something that day that kinda restored some of my faith in humanity, it is a Sea of Thieves, but it doesn’t have to be, with a little communication and understanding, it can be a Sea of Friends.