While quietly drinking my grog in the George & the Kraken on Sanctuary, I decide to go for an adventure. Hearing all the rumors that Larinna is the place to be for anything adventure related, I have a word with her. I'm guessing my general way of words didn't have any effect on her, because she refused to tell me anything.
A bit disappointed, I walk to my ship and I see a little man rummaging around on my ship. I grab my cutlass and run towards the ship, only to see it's my new crew member @clumsy-george. "Hello Mr. FishSt1ck, oh oops, I mean Captain FishSt1ck... what will we do today?" he says while putting away some bananas in my food barrels.
And so it begins...
Looking at the sky, I sense that we might get lucky hunting for some skeleton ships today. George agrees and quickly helps raise the anchor. After only a few minutes of sailing, we hear the water bubbling and a pair of sloops emerges from the sea. We make quick work of them and they are followed by a pair of galleons. They got us in a bad position, we where still raking in floating loot and they both broadsided us and open fire. Our little sloop has several holes so we both head down for repairs and bailing.
After our repairs it's our turn, I drop sails slight and turn towards one of them. George goes into battle mode and starts singing while he jumps behind the cannon. One hit after another follow with the galleon being unable to return fire. Instead they decide to just ram us and sail next to us for what seems to be 5 minutes. We decided to change tactics and just started bailing water on their ship. This one was almost down, however the other galleon decided to join in on the action and also rammed into us. What happened next was a bit of a blur. The first galleon moved away, shot some more but George managed to give it some last cannonball gifts to send it off. However before it sunk it managed to hit us a few times too and the other galleon was hurting us badly. As we both walked up to throw a bucket of water out, we were suddenly both on the ferry.
Surprised we started talking, about what happened but neither of us could explain. As soon as the ferryman allowed us we hopped through the door. The darkness seemed to last several minutes. When the light came through it wasn't the creaking of the ship but the noise of the George & The Kraken that greeted us. By the curse of the Sea of Thieves gods, we ended up back at the tavern.... as if it was all a dream.
As I walk to the ship, I see it setting sail without me. "We need to hurry Captain or we might miss out on some nice treasure" George shouts from the ship. I quickly talk to Sherry and manage to convince her to sell us some planks and cannonballs, after which I find a friendly merfolk person to get me back to my ship. In the distance we already see the galleon but we scout the water for shining treasure. George hops in the mast and blurts out several direction "Captain FishSt1ck, 3 o' clock, oh no 9 o'clock... uh to our right". Our previous treasures (and book/flag) float in the water and next to it some new booty. We quickly harpoon it up and continue our hunt.
The other galleon is nowhere to be found, we scout everywhere and cannot make anything from the clouds. There's a storm brewing close, so we decide that it must be hiding there. Just before we wanted to give up, George starts shouting and ringing the bell. "Over by that rock in front of us, it glows so bright" he says. We pick up a huge load of treasure. The galleon probably didn't survive the storm, which saves us the trouble from fighting it.
After cashing in for a nice fortune, we decide to go for a fort. On the way there we realize it's pretty far away and the closer we get the more clear it becomes... it's Molten Sands. It's gonna be an annoying one, George agrees. As we get closer to the Devil's Roar though, the sky seems to clear up. With mixed feelings we make up a new plan. We found a map for one of the Shrines, so we would explore that and on the way there we sunk another skelly sloop.
While George "guards the boat", it's what he calls fishing. I swim down in search of the bottle. I couldn't remember my way around this shrine, which resulted in me completing it all. The bottle was the last piece of loot I managed to find. Although it could have been over much faster, we did get a boatful of loot again. As we drop off this fresh batch at Ancient Spire, I tell George I'm getting tired so I'm heading off soon.
Friends or Foes
Back on board, we inspect the ship to see if we left some stuff unsold. Apart from the 12'ish Shork Forks laying on the deck and an equal amount of storage crates the ship is loot free. Suddenly I spot sails in the distance, we decide to greet them. We're always looking for some friendly pirates so we'd be happy to give them our cannonballs, preferably through our storage crates unless they force our hand.
With the wind in our sails, we head towards the sloop. Although George is good with the cannon, he's even better with the shout hole. He let the other ship know very clearly what the terms of the deal are, they can get all our resources as long as they don't shoot. A pirate replies, "I'm all alone, I'd like some resources and I can give you some treasure in return". We decline and explain that we're heading off anyway, so he can have everything.
After parking close to the sloop, George and me talk to the pirate while carrying the storage crates aboard his ship. He seems to be thankful as he was almost out of planks. As we jump back into the water after dropping off some of the last crates, we suddenly hear the sound of firebombs. Apparently this pirate wasn't alone and his crewmate was on our ship setting it aflame.
Feeling betrayed we immediately stopped talking to the guy and focused on saving the ship. The plan to head off got put in the freezer as we killed the pirate on board our ship. The other guy however got a several good shots off on our ship. With our anchor dropped, the capstan broken, wheel broken, everything on fire, the mast down and the ship taking on water, it was definitely not looking good. To make matters worse they were outside cannon range and we just gave away most of our resources.
Although we did occasionally end up on the ferry, we held our own. The initial pirate announced to his friend on three different occasions that we sunk, but we managed to stay afloat. Although the guy boarding wasn't incredibly good, the added cannon fire made the situation quite problematic. George managed to extinguish most of the fires, fix the capstan and raise the anchor, while I kept the boat water free and boarded up.
We still needed to fix the mast though so we could get out of range of their cannons. Our planks were diminished to a small stack in the last the storage crate. We seemed to have gotten a lucky break as we hoisted up the mast and started to board it up. However our luck quickly turned as George got hit by a cannonball and dies. With George gone, I try to fix the mast and get hit as well, with a little bit of health left I run to the sail and drop it but I black out after the other pirate shoots me in the back.
George tells me that we're close to sinking. As I run downstairs I see the water is reaching the window and the ship is going down. Our boarder is still there though and managed to get to my crewmate that was still trying to save the ship. I jump out to the water and swim towards their ship and find the pirate behind me, shooting his blunderbuss from a distance. While he's telling his friend that I'm still alive, but he will take care of me.. I introduce him to the tip of my cutlass. He died but his friend quickly takes off with the ship.
The end... or is it?
As I'm updating George about the current situation, I look around the wreckage of what used to be our ship. Suddenly I notice the rowboat that we had on the back. On my way to the rowboat, I grab one of the storage crates that still had some food in it. When I'm finally out of the water and safe from sharks, I look around to see our "friends". I'm surprised to see that they're not going towards a skeleton galleon that was already close. This might be a good thing since they'll be circling and I might be able to sneak up on them.
I inform George of any landmarks which is quite hard to do when the waves are high and you're in a rowboat. Old George knows the seas as no other though so describing the tip of a rock or the color of a palm tree is enough and he quickly set sail to meet me. In the meanwhile I was rowing in the general direction of the sloop. As I got close to an island, next to which they were fighting I jump off to find me some bullets. I grab my spyglass to see what they're doing and to my enjoyment I see their ship going down. George laughs like a madman as I tell him the news and informs me he's still 5 blocks away.
Looking from a distance, I see that one of the pirates survived the battle and is collecting loot on the rowboat. So grab my eye of reach, but get reminded fast that I'm out of ammo. After quickly rummaging around the island for ammo, I decide I just have to go surprise him and sword lunge into the water. As I swim closer I can see him loading up chests and he didn't notice me yet. His weapon of choice is a blunderbuss so I have to be careful. With the boat as my shield, I poke out from one side hit him and get back under it. After taking some hits he jumps in the water and tries to eat. He shoots me from a distance but it seems to act like confetti. As I get closer I see him charging up a sword lunge but that doesn't really work when your in the water. As he's exhausted I easily finish him off.
Loading up their remaining loot, their flag and several books they left behind I started rowing towards George. Shortly after I could see my beautiful ship in the distance. I greeted George as we quickly docked the rowboat and made our way to the closest outpost. The way there was very joyful and we laughed a lot. Nothing better than handing in some treasures of people that betrayed you and thought they got away with it. We even buried everything we couldn't sell, just to prevent them from seeing a single penny of that what they lost.
They definitely deceived us good and almost got away with it, almost.
