Chapter 2: Into the sea

A few days have passed since you sailed away from land. So far, you’ve kept close to the coast, following the landmarks that will lead you into the open seas. However, this morning saw the sailors became uneasy.

"Red sky at night, sailors' delight.
Red sky at morning, sailors' warning".

Indeed, the morning sky was blood red...

CeeBee Uriah stands at the rail of the ship watching the sunrise cast a evil premonition across the morning sky while other deckhands around him start their morning routines. They work silently, but Uriah can feel the turmoil all around him. Things are bad.
A short, pudgy crewman with a large gut named Belfort, who the crew aptly call "Belly", wanders up to CeeBee and stands at the rail next to him and says nothing for a long moment. His presence begins to irritate CeeBee who gets the feeling that a standoff is happening for who will be the first to speak. Finally, just as CeeBee decides to concede, and opens his mouth to bark at the little man to be out with it, the man speaks up first: "The crew has been ill at ease with the presence of the woman on board this vessel. They think she's a witch. They've kept quiet about it mostly, but skies like this all but confirm our suspicions."
'Our' concerns..., CeeBee notes to himself. Belly began his concerns with what 'they', think, but he slipped an 'our' through there at the end. He's among them.
"There's no fuckin' witches, Belly, shut yer damned mouth. You ought to be more concerned with the crew's preocupation with her, than what she is, or why she's here. Mind yer work, an' see to it the rest o' the crew does too, you fat shit, and you'll find no signs of witchcraft aborad this vessel. Start distractin' yerselves with one eye on her instead of what you should be and you'll be findin' witches everywhere you look."
Belly's quiet for a moment chewing on what CeeBee said, then in an almost frustratingly nonplussed manner, he pushes himself off from the railing. "They're none too happy with the generosity that Verne fella's been handing out the lashes either."
CeeBee thinks this over and takes one more long look at the crimson sky overhead, then sets out to work.

Josephine is acutely aware of the attention she is drawing from the sailors wherever she is going. On multiple occasions, she has heard a muttered "Witch!" when she passes a member of the crew. This could be a problem. If something bad happens and it gets blamed on her, she will be in big trouble. And on a journey this long, there is bound to be something bad happening eventually.
Josephine makes it a point to not only spend time with the officers, who seem to have less of a problem with her than the sailors, but also with the lower people. They may not like her yet but she is good at making friends. Since she doesn't have any official duties on the ship, she can spend a long time every day just mingling with the crew, even helping them a bit with their tasks if they let her.
She has in general spent a lot of time familiarizing herself with the ship and the proceedings here - and making sure that the officers notice her efforts. She is hoping that the captain will allow her to help with navigation, which would in turn give her access to shipping documents.

When the sun rises red in the sky one morning, Josephine decides to stay in her quarters. She knows of sailor superstitions and even though most of the crew at least somewhat like her by now, she is almost completely sure that she will be blamed for this bad omen.
Instead of leaving her quarters, she spends some time writing in her journal. When there is a knock at her door, she quickly closes it and hides it in her bunk. She then glances at the mirror, fixes her hair a bit and sits down on her bunk, legs crossed and putting on a warm smile. "Come in", she says, curious who it might be.

For the last couple of days, Conrad was seemingly very angry due to the lack of order among the sailors, of course, when he is on deck everyone is working but the moment he leaves, he knows, they stop working. He shouts at Lieutenant Meyers a lot as the soldiers are not at their posts at all times, the patroll routine is terrible, there are a lot of gaps in their defences, which lazy and irresponsible sailors use to their advantage. At this rate, it is only a matter of time before the supplies will start missing. So he decides to personally oversee the security setup.

---

There is also a matter of the object of all misfortunes, according to sailors, Lady Cominero. The superstitious fools will always find something to blame and it will never be their incompetence. After a particularly heated "conversation" with his men, Conrad needed to ocupy himself with something else and let his men to have some time without his watchfull eye on them. They might gamble a bit, which is forbiden, and Conrad knows that they do, but it is good for moral to let them play from time to time. Of course, he cannot admit it or permit it when he is on deck. So, he decides to check on Lady Cominero, she may raise mens moral and, at the same time, she may be the reason men are lacking discipline. He adjusts his hat and clothes before knocking on her door.

As he gets the permition to come in, he enters the quarters and closes the door behind him, "Good day, Lady Cominero," he takes off his hat and bows, "I hope I am not distracting you."

---

As Sir Hammington stands on the deck, explaining to Javier, in great and vivid detail, the different ways a fall from the ship could damage a sailor body, Ceebee gets back to work as he attempts to put out some of the sailors' less advisable chit chatting. The talks about the witch and the beating has been somewhat persistent, and it seems to have stuck on Ceebee's mind for a while now... This has not gone unnoticed to Josephine, the reason for all this talking. Hoping to ease the sailors' minds, she puts extra effort into mingling with the crew. However, she remained in her quarters, knowing to lay know when confronted with superstitious omens. Fully aware of what is happening on board, the Captain of the Guard, Conrad Verne, decided to check on the Lady himself. He had been trying to set up an efficient security system, despite the lack of discipline from his men and wanted to reassure that he has Lady's Josephine's security in mind. He advised her to be careful with her frequent dealings with the weak-willed crew and that it would be best to have Lieutenant Mayers ensuring her safety. She tries to dismiss his worries, providing in confirmation of the crew's disapproval of his methods, in an attempt to show her usefulness, yet again, to the ship officers.

As Conrad leaves Josephine's quarters, he notices a rolling mist blanketing the ship. Two sailors run past him. "Heave to!" the first mate Francisco Veryard shouts to the sailors. Captain DuVaile approaches Conrad "With this visibility, we're stopping the ships. We need your men to watch out for the other ships of the fleet." You all hear the shouts of men and the beat of drums as the ships try to signal to each other thought the wall of fog. "All eyes on the sea captain!" DuVaile adds before he leaves.

Despite not wanting to mingle with the crew on this day, Josephine decides to leave her cabin when all the commotion starts. As she exits her cabin, she notices a man stand guard there. Verne works fast. He is her husband's age, but more muscular and handsome, with dark hair and dark eyes. This must be this Lt. Mayers that Verne told her about. Josephine is not surprised that he is married. She is more surprised that he is faithful.
She smiles at him and nods her appreciation. As she walks about the ship, he follows her with some distance, like a personal bodyguard. Useful for her safety, very hindering for her other ambitions. She will have to find a way to get rid of him whenever necessary.
Many of the sailors whisper about her when she passes, some openly call her a witch or bark orders at her to get rid of the fog so the expedition can continue.
Josephine ignores them but it makes her not feel safe. At least for now, she is glad Mayers is with her. She looks at him, silently asking him to come closer. He understands and they walk together.
They talk, about marriage, about the expedition, about children. Mayers mentions multiple times that Martin should have gotten Josephine pregnant before the trip and that she could have stayed home and takes care of the child while he is away. Josephine smiles, nods along and tries to be as agreeable as she can despite dreading the thought. He talks about his lovely wife and children back home and Josephine truly believes that is very loyal and devoted to them. Interesting
Together, the two of them arrive at where the scribes and helmsmen are discussing the way forward. Seeing the navigational maps and tools laid out in front of them, Josephine decides to join them. The men look at her with open dislike on their faces. The master helmsman comes up to her and tries to shoo her away before she can cast any more bad luck onto them.
Josephine argues for a while, pointing to her escort and informing the group that Conrad Verne himself told her she is free to roam the ship and assist where assistance is needed. That may not be exactly true but the fact that Mayers is accompanying her makes her words very believable and the scribes let her have a look at the charts and navigational tools.
This is not Josephine's strong suit but she has taken her preparatory studies seriously and together with one of the helmsmen, a young, bearded man by the name of Jacome Tavares, she quickly figures out where the navigators are disagreeing with each other. She is not completely sure of her interpretation of the charts either but she explains to Tavares what she thinks the correct interpretation is. Joespehine notices that Tavares doesn't show any interest in her at all. He isn't hostile like many of the other sailors but he also doesn't lust after her like most of the others clearly do, even if they're hiding it.
The thought crosses her mind that he might not be interested in women at all but with so little to go off of, that is less of a theory and more of an idea so far. If it does turn out to be true, it might be some leverage against the man however, so she decides to keep looking into it.
Tavares and Josephine present her results to the master helmsman and scribe who would be much more unhappy with taking suggestions from a woman if her results didn't line up with those of the master helmsman. This way, he thanks her for her help, although begrudgingly, and uses her support as an argument to strengthen his position in the ongiong discussion.

Once Josephine has done all she can to help here, she wanders the ship a bit longer, trying to see if she can assist anywhere else - make herself seem useful - before heading back to her cabin.

The discussing briefly stops, interrupted by the ship's doctor. The Master Helmsman looks at Harold Hammington surprised. He still doesn't understand why such an educated man would be in such a ship. "Oh welcome sir. We didn't notice you were listening to our discussion. We do have a compass yes." the man quickly replies. However he points at the scribe's maps, some old documents negotiated out of a wealthy merchant running from the western empires as they crumbled. "With this visibility we have no landmarks to follow, so we tried to guess our route from these maps but they don't agree with the recorded direction from the compass and hourglass." He looks at the master scribe. "Ratface" tries to put the doctor at ease by adding "I got one of my boys to grab the celestial records so we can compare it with the sun's location"

CeeBee begins taking charge, dropping sails, pulling, ropes, and doing other sailorly things to stop the ship. Completing that, irritated by the amount of work he had to do alone, he looks around for his fellow sailors only to notice Belly whose attention is on the woman again.
In anger, he storms over to the round sailor and backhands him across the face with an open hand. The deckhand staggers and looks up in surprise at Uriah, rubbing his meaty jowls with a shaking palm. "Let me catch you lookin' at the young wench again, you fat bastard, an' I promise you'll be the witch's first casualty! Get your sorry ass on the lines."
Belly staggers off to mind his work, looking once over his shoulder at CeeBee.

As Josephine walks the deck, she notices one man in particular who is staring at her intently, a very overweight sailor.
She wants to instinctively retreat behind her guard for safety when another sailor, this one almost grotesquely muscular and strong-looking, comes up to the fat one and slaps him across the face, scolds him for staring and threatens him with the witch's curse - hopefully well-intentioned but still potetially dangerous to her.
The fat sailor notices that Josephine watched his humiliation and wanders off with an angry frown on his face. She is not quite sure whether that anger is directed at her or at the other sailor but after the fat man is gone, she walks up to the muscular sailor and says: "Im Josephine Cominero, the master of inventory's wife. What is your name?" She looks in the direction that the fat man disappeared in and says: "Thank you for this, though I doubt he has learned his lesson. Who is this man?"

Interaction Thread