Patreon Only Chapter: Woodrat (Patreon)

This story comes between the time Ozzy floats off after his fight with the Ghoul Lord in Gadobhra, and when the story picks up again with him in the smoke. It deals with a shipwrecked deck hand name Woodrat, trying to stay alive as he drifts across the smokey waves.

Woodrat looked at his collection of gleanings from the last two days. He had a half dozen small branches that had fallen from trees recently, some them still supple, and man-high piece of wood about 3" wide. The long strip was black and hard with the signs of having been worked before. It might be part of the Indomitable. Or not. Wood floated forever and it could be from any ship that had broken up, its pieces scattered all over the waves.

He decided the the larger strip would go on the port edge to strengthen that area. The branches he'd add to his ore. Someday, with enough bits of wood he might be able to turn it into a mast. The branches would give it more flex, never a bad thing. He held the bigger piece in place and carefully breathed out a bit of livesmoke to power his woodshaping. Carefully he worked the smoke into the wood and then melded it to the side of his raft. He took a small rest and then did the same to the twigs.

Fixer had two main jobs: Keep his raft from breaking apart, and catching fish. Once again, he thought how strange it was how his life had dwindled to just two jobs. A week ago, he'd been running all over a ship, doing any number of jobs, and complaining about it. He swore that if he ever got the chance to haul cargo or sand a deck, he'd never complain about it. A moment later, he chuckled to himself, knowing that he was lying. Every sailor complained.

The woodshaping had taken a little out of him. Fishing would take more. He needed more smoke. Never good to be too low. Things were grim, not impossible, but grim. He'd survived the wreck when many others hadn't. Now he just had to keep surviving.

Smoke = 356/825

Heat = 25/575

Fuel = 76/1200

Furnace = 8/8

Smoke Eating = 0/12

He needed to build up his heat. Thank all the gods he'd decided to increase his furnace when he'd had the chance. Being able to only gain 1 heat a day is what had killed so many of the crew as they floated in the smoke after the ship had broken up. He was cold, but they were dead.

It was a cycle of eat, burn, and fish. That's what kept him alive and building up his smoke. Fishing was giving him enough fuel that he could raise his heat by 8 points at the cost of 16 fuel. Then use heat and fuel to make smoke. The 8 points of gained heat was then burned with 8 fuel to make 80 smoke. With any luck he would be at half-smoke tomorrow.

Smoke = 436/825

Heat = 25/575

Fuel = 60/1200

Furnace = 0/8

Smoke Eating = 0/12

This was Woodrat's third time being adrift on the smoke. The first time was when a Cyclone dropped down from Sky, stirring up the smoke and driving his small ship's boat far away from the Indomitable. Of the four men who were in the boat collecting fireweed, he was the only one still alive when a lookout on the Indomitable saw his small boat a month later.

The second time had been over a dispute about who had actually been winning a game of dice when he was taking some leave in Shaky City. The losers of the game had invited him to take a sea cruise, giving him his own little raft and towing behind their ship into the smoke. It was his own fault, really. Winning money from a nothing like himself was allowed, but not cleaning out a navigator on a respectable ship. A few shinies or a breath of smoke wasn't worth the trouble of having an officer pissed at you. Still, the look on his face had been priceless when the dice stopped moving and he realized he had lost. He was lying again.

Of course, it had been worth it! Losing was something that happened every day. Winning was a memory that could be cherished and keep your furnace warm when the cold winds blew down from Sky.

There wasn't going to be a rescue from the Indomitable this time. The ship was scattered all over the waves, most of its crew either dead, with the 'lucky' ones pressganged into service on the Abominable, serving three years as a hand or seven as an officer. He had avoided both the pressgang and the sharkeys. Now with a bit of wreckage under him, he knew he could survive this.

A little luck finding some wood and a steady diet of fat, smoke-filled fishies and he'd be able to turn this chunk of ship's hull into a proper small boat with a mast. The sail would be tricky. Sails took a lot of heat to make, and more to maintain. That would be easier with a patch of fireweed. Young stuff would be best; something he could keep down and burn without tearing out his insides.

Peering over the edge into the smoke below him, he could see one little trout, a good-sized tuna, and a fat smokesucker down deeper. Hazy movement let him know more fish were swimming below. That was a nice surprise, he must have drifted into a spot where the smoke was thicker. Or maybe the large number of bodies in the water had attracted the smaller fish. The sharkeys didn't always get all of the parts when they made a meal of a floating sailor.

He hated using his oar to fish, but it wasn't good to just use a chain and hook. Too easy for a fishie to pull the chain through your hand. The oar gave a lot of leverage to pull them in. He would have to make the chain a little thicker this time. A hair thin chain could catch that trout, but the tuna would snap the line and waste his smoke. Carefully, he breathed out a long, thin stream of smoke, and then shaped it into a fifty-foot chain with a hook at the end. The chain slowly coiled at his feet as it formed.

One end with a hook for bait, one end tied to his oar, and a small chunk of wood in the middle for a float. All that was left was the bait. This was the important part. He had to move a little bit of fuel and a point of heat up and out of his belly, and wrap the bait in a little smoke, but not let them start burning. He'd done this before a hundred times, but it was a task that could blow up in your face and leave you drained. He examined the little 1" ball of glowing smoke and found it perfect. Just the thing a small fish would ignore because of too much heat, but tasty for a bigger one. He wanted to eat tuna tonight.

Bait on the hook, he carefully swung the chain back and forth before casting it out. Twenty foot out the float bobbed in the water, the rest of the chain falling below it. Now it was just a matter of waiting until something took the bait. It was boring, day after day, but nothing else was on Woodrat's schedule.

The day progressed slowly, and half a bell later the float started moving as something investigated the bait. Woodrat stayed still. It was a newbie mistake to look over the side and scare of the fishie off. He waited, saw the float go under, then jerked the chain to set the hook. He had something! It was pulling on the chain, trying to escape. Slowly, so as not to break the chain, he pulled harder and harder, pulling in the chain and wrapping it around the end of the oar. It was the Tuna, and it was barely leaking any smoke from the hook. It had set perfectly into the hard ridge of cartilage that held the circular row of small, sharp teeth.

The fishie was angry, and weighed at least 20 pounds. He could eat for a couple of days on this one. He had it on the raft and was about to put a hole in it and draw out the smoke when another visitor showed up. Any old hand would tell you that a smokesucker would never jump onto a ship in search of prey. Either this one was following the tuna as he pulled it in, or no one had told it the rule. The lamprey came out of the water and clamped its maw onto the back half of the tuna, expertly draining it of smoke.

Woodrat was horrified watching his food stolen and he did something stupid.

He took the hardened wood blade he had crafted and stabbed the smokesucker. The lamprey bucked in pain, more of it coming onto the raft which heaved up and down in the smoke. Smoke erupted from the wound and Woodrat sucked it into himself, stabbing twice more. The smokesucker released the drained tuna. Woodrat tried to give it room to slide back into the waves, but the long, thin fishie had other ideas. He quickly found himself wrapped up in a coil of the foot-thick body and screamed as the creature’s mouth fashioned onto his thigh.

He began to lose smoke and couldn't stop it. He'd never gained an aura and had no defense against the creature stealing his smoke. His only hope was to strike back harder. He stabbed his wooden knife into the lamprey's soft flesh over and over, trying to breath in the smoke, and use Smokestealer. What saved him was cutting enough of its flesh that he separated it in two. As it died, it let out a huge puff of smoke and heat that drifted off on the wind. Woodrat could only catch part of it.

That's one way to get dinner, he thought. But damn...he had come so close to dying! He should have backed off to the edge of the raft and stayed still. Let the thing have the tuna. It had no way of seeing him when it was out of the smoke if he didn't move. Instead, he'd attacked it. If he hadn't built up his smokestealer skill over the years, he'd be dead.

Smokestealer was at once the most useful, and the most reviled, skill that a hand on any ship might have. It literally let you steal away the smoke from another person and add it to your own. If they were unconscious or hurt, they might not even know. At the same time, it was a way to raise your COR, and gain more smoke permanently. Officially, its use was banned on any ship that operated under the 'Official rules of the Union of Free Cities'. Unofficially, it was used by mates and officers to keep the hands in line. And any serious fight on a ship ended in the loser being sucked dry. And of course, if a ship turned pirate, then you could expect every jack about would have the skill and be using it as they boarded you.

It was fear of being drained that had led Woodrat to toss a barrel off the side and abandon ship as soon as the Indomitable was rammed. Being killed by the sharkeys was bad. Being drained down to nothing and having your body shrivel to a charred husk was worse. Several Pirate Lords liked keeping a few dozen maddened Husks in their holds to turn loose on cities to soften them up.

You have gained a new skill:
 You have lost 181 smoke.
 You have gained 297 smoke.
 You have gained 10 heat.

 Skill: Smokestealer has increased to Rank 4. You have gained +1 COR.
 Your COR has increased to 4. You gain 200 fuel, and your capacity has fuel   increased by 200.
 Smoke Eating has increased to 12. You will gain 12 fuel each morning as you   inhale ambient smoke.

Smoke = 652/825  Heat = 35/575  Fuel   =60/1200  Furnace = 0/8  Smoke Eating = 2/12

He shook off his foul mood. He'd fought and gained, and now he could eat and get stronger. He could feel his luck changing.

The rest of the lamprey was pulled up on board. The damned thing was over fifteen feet long, but mostly fins and tail for the last third. He began to careful cut into it, finding the smoke sacks and pulling them out. Each would have a little bit of stored smoke that he could save for later. When he go to the heart, he saw that imbedded in the side of the organ was a small orb that pulsed with energy. Carefully, he removed the heart, not believing his luck. No wonder the damned thing was so hot and aggressive, it had begun to move up to the next tier. It took a lot of heat to do that and it must have been hunting all the time. Maybe even on some of his former mates. He had assumed it had been sharkeys that got them, but it might have been this thing eating them.

He couldn't eat this much meat. He sliced off the fins and some of the tail to use building the raft. The rough material had many uses. Likewise, the teeth. The head was dumped and the rest of the monster sliced up. Then he made a meal of as much of the lamprey as he could. It was better than he remembered, with more smoke in the insubstantial flesh. He might get one more meal out of it tomorrow before it went bad and dissolved. Each meal would gain him at least 25 fuel.

After he was full up for the day, he considered the heart and its core. Probably a lot of heat in it. If it had come from a bigger critter, he wouldn't have considered it. Or if he hadn't been nearly cold. There was little chance the core had so much heat as to cause a problem. In the end, he shrugged and ate it. He wasn't going to let the heart rot, or take a chance on holding the core until he could sell it. Those were options for less desperate men.

The heart was rich with smoke and still warm. The core he swallowed whole, and it started a fire in his belly that hurt something fierce, like it was going to explode out of him.

You have consumed the heart of Man-taster, a level   5 named smokesucker.
 You have gained 35 smoke from its heart.
 You have gained 10 fuel from its heart.
 You have consumed a mundane level 5 core. You are not ready to move from   Deckhand to Ship's Mate.
 The energies will consume you and you will die if you do not use them in   another way. Choose quickly:
 -Gain +100 heat permanently, raising your current heat by 100 as well as your   maximum heat.
 -Gain +5 to your furnace, enabling you to convert more fuel to heat each day.

Oh hell, what a choice! He needed the heat badly, but he knew that a better furnace was the best choice in the long run. He chose to increase his furnace before he exploded.

Status Change: You have gotten stronger! A little more and   you can begin the process of seeking promotion to Ship's Mate.

 Smoke = 652/825  Heat = 35/575  Fuel =601/1200  Furnace = 5/13  Smoke Eating   = 2/12

And wasn't that just a kick in the head! Going for mate while half-starved and floating on a chip of wood in the Great Smoke!

It was going to be tomorrow soon. He scooped up smoke from the waves, inhaling and eating enough of it to gain two more fuel with his increased smoke eating. Then sacrificed ten fuel to increase his heat by five. It reassured him that he'd made the right decision. Five heat a day would eventually outstrip the one-hundred he had passed up.

He just had to be careful, not take chances, and slowly get stronger and build up his boat. Small fishies from now one and leave the big ones for the predators. He went to sleep, lying to himself that he'd stick to the plan.

As the glow from the fires down in the smoke lightened the dawn and heralded a new day, he looked out over the smoke. It was a perfect day for sailing, if he'd had a patch of sale. The smoke was like glass, all grey and smooth. Up towards Sky it was light, with more pale clouds than dark. The area above him was pure white, as if something had pushed the clouds away.

Woodrat ate some smoke to increase his fuel by 12, and then spent a half bell eating the rest of the smokesucker for 30 more. A Named critter! By the gods, he'd have sat still and not fished all day if he'd had even a suspicion a Named was swimming nearby. At the same time, pride filled him, and he looked forward to telling the tale. Some would scoff, but others would buy him a tasty brew and ask for the tale again. He was already a little infamous for having survived two solo voyages. This one would make him a true veteran in many a deck hand's eye.

He heard a sound from high up that filled him with dread. A far-off roaring. He'd heard it before when the Cyclone had dipped low and sent his boat on an unwanted voyage. Looking up, he saw it, plain as his nose on his face. It was different from the other he had seen. That one had been white with a hint of shining red flames. It had been playing with them, dropping down from High Sky to cause trouble before it ran back up, laughing.

Not this one. This Cyclonewas a true son of Smoke, not Sky. It was dark grey with black flames. Its eyes were huge and showing nothing playful. Caught in its vortex winds were things! As it dipped lower and lower towards the smoke, it began to drop the flotsam and jetsam it had picked up by whim or by purpose. Woodrat saw bits of ship, bundles of cargo, and dozens of bodies fall from the creature of smoke. The last to fall was a body that trailed smoke and fire.

Lightened by the lack of matter it had disgorged, the Cyclone roared in anger and lept Skyward. Woodrat was happy to see it go.
He was already fixing his ore to the socket he'd made for it. There was only a half league separating him from possibly treasure liked he'd never see again. But he needed a sail to get there. He was really wishing that he'd taken the 100 heat, this was going to be tight! He needed smoke for sail chain, heat for the sail, and more chain and hooks to snag cargo. He was better prepared today than yesterday, but there had better be something there that was worth it.

Smoke = 656/825  Heat = 78/575  Fuel =103/1200  Furnace =   0/13  Smoke Eating = 0/12

He had used fifty smoke to rig his mast, a ten-foot pole that slanted across his raft. If he ran the sail straight down to make a triangle, it would give him 6 squares of sale. That was going to take 60 of his 78 heat, leaving him near dead. That was too close. He'd go in slow with 3 squares. The sail would barely have any push, but it also didn't have to push much at all. He spent another 200 smoke to make sail chain and his hooked lines. The sail was tricky, taking a minute of intense concentration, but finally he had a small triangle of pure heat that started to propel the raft straight ahead.

The sail was anchored on its long edge by the slanted mast, and the vertical edge by the chain Woodrat held. It was both a way of controlling the sail, and a rudder. He steered towards the wreckage, keeping a look out for problems. There were always problems.

But the area was rich in what he needed. Lots of wood from wrecked ships, a few barrels that had-who-knows-what inside, and other floating refuse. Some of it had once been alive. Several charred and injured bodies were floating in the smoke. He'd deal with those last. Some had shinies on them, but others might start moving and go for your throat, anxious to take your life for their own. As luck would have it, one of the bodies was smack dab in the middle of a good chunk of wood that looked like the side of a house. Doubling the size of the raft would make things a lot easier! He could even pile the loot on this second raft, keeping his own light in case of trouble. He slowly moved towards it.

Trouble happened all at once. The body on the house stood up, looked around and said "Bloody hell. Well, Toto, I have a feeling we aren't in Kansas anymore!"

Woodrat had been carefully moving into the area, picking up bits of wood and salvage, and doing his best to make no noise. Not this guy! He stood up and made enough that any hungry husk within a hundred feet knew he was there. This wouldn't have been a problem for Woodrat, but some of them were between him and the safety of the wide-open smoke. The best way out was in the direction of the idiot that had just invited a dozen hungry husks over to lunch!