Blackstar awoke in an iron cage on board a ship sailing to Drakkenhall. His captors presented themselves as a travelling circus but in truth The Broken Spider was a slaver ship. Blackstar laughed silently to himself. Ironically he had intended to head east before this turn of events. He'd received, via raven, an invitation from Nyíl Íj, a ranger he had met some time ago, to meet her on the southeast edge of the Wild Wood. He had been preparing to set out from Glitterhaegen when he was set upon by the slavers.
In another cage nearby was a centaur who called himself Ixion. Blackstar and the centaur had had a whispered conversation the night before, hatching an escape plan. Busting out of their cages would be the easy part. Overcoming their captors might prove a challenge, but getting safely to shore was the dilemma. Seeing that Blackstar was awake, Ixion scanned the horizon and with a flash in his eyes, murmured, "I have begun gathering the storm. It will descend upon us within the half-hour. Unleash your chaos now. We will be free of this ship today, one way or another." The centaur was a storm druid. And Blackstar? Well, Blackstar was something these fools had never seen before!
Blackstar cackled to himself as the slavemaster walked past his cage. In the ringleader's belt were two weapons: a jagged shard of titanium-alloy that belonged to Blackstar, and Ixion's shell khopesh, an odd, curved weapon with a blade made of the husk of some ancient animal. That was another thing: Blackstar would be loathe to leave his weapon behind. Thankfully his captors had ignored the rest of his gear, hidden away in pockets in his suit. They'd even ignored the rubber hose lashed with elastic cord to his back, mistaking those for two of his tentacles.
Those tentacles began to lash at the cage now, and the mage began to tremble as the chaos magic overtook him. His eyes shot up in his head and a low moan escaped his lips. Meanwhile, the sky began to darken and a sudden wind lashed the sails about. Lightning flashed. The slaver crew rushed about the deck to get their vessel in order but couldn't stop staring at their two strange captives. There was a moment of deafening silence before Blackstar's eyes came back into focus and chaos erupted on the ship. Suddenly there were rats everywhere. Rats pouring out of crates and barrels and every tiny crack in the ship's planking. Rats in crewmen's clothes, and dropping from the masts to swarm knee-deep on the deck. The crew flailed about and yelled at each other, only to find they were speaking in the tongues of wild animals. Chirps and squeaks, roars, barking, hissing and bellowing echoed across the now churning water. Still cackling gleefully, Blackstar flung out his hands and purple flames rippled across the deck, singeing crewman and rats alike. The tormented crewmen then began unwillingly teleporting all over the ship, switching places, appearing upside-down in the air to crash onto the deck or into the water. Unexpectedly, the chaos mage & the druid got switched in their cages as well, before being teleported quite randomly into the captain's cabin where the slavemaster was cowering under a table. The centaur smashed the table with his hooves, and Blackstar used his tentacles to flip the gibbering slaver on his back and retrieve their weapons. They charged onto the deck and jumped over the side into the water just before the druid's lightning tore The Broken Spider apart.
It was a few hours and near dark before Blackstar clambered onto the shore near Shark's Tooth just north of the Wild Wood. Of his new friend or his foes there wasn't a sign. He searched the shore but only found bits of wood from the slaver ship. Other than a few crabs and water birds there was not a living thing on the surface of the water or on the shore. Blackstar began to make his way inland. Perhaps he could still catch Nyíl Íj at the appointed meeting place.
Last edited May 20, 2015 2:36 am