Butcher of Gadobhra Chapter 207 Rough Draft (Patreon)

Woodrat came awake as something held him by the back of his coat and shook him. He didn't want to wake up. He was hot, and sick, and wanted to go back to sleep. Abruptly, something forced his teeth apart and shoved something down his throat. It was hot and awful, not food fit for a captain. He was dropped on to something soft and springy and an unintelligible voice boomed nearby. He felt worse. He laid down to go back to sleep.

"Dammit, wake up!"

Words? Those were words. Woodrat's ears were recovered enough that his brain made that connection. Again, something held him up and shook him. He opened his eyes. His first mate was looking at him and yelling. Woodrat raised a finger and pointed at him. "See here now, your captain needs a little nap. Just go away and raise a sail or make chain or something like that." He closed his eyes.

Captain Woodrat felt himself held tightly and a large hand put repeated pressure on his abdomen until an explosion started in his stomach, ran up his throat, and he found himself breathing out a plume of fire 10 foot long. He felt better. His mate set him down and handed him three dried red berries. Was that what he had eaten before?

"Make some smoke, you're nearly dead. Then chew these up, and force out some more fire. You need to drop your heat before you burst your furnace." Ozzy took a handful and chewed them up, followed by burping up his own plume of fire that was significantly bigger than his had been.

Looking at his furnace, he was appalled.

Woodrat (Mate, Veteran Shipwright)   Level: 6      Overheated, Furnace ready to burst.

 Smoke: 52/1525  Heat: 2900/2825  Fuel: 580/1623   Furnace: 32/32  Smoke   Eating: 15/15

With haste, Woodrat burned 150 fuel and 150 heat to bring himself back into balance.

Captain Woodrat (Mate, Veteran   Shipwright) Level: 6      Much better thank you, Warming up

 Smoke: 1525/1525  Heat: 2805/2825  Fuel: 4802/1623   Furnace: 32/32  Smoke   Eating: 15/15

"What the devil is going on?"

Ozzy ate another handful of berries and blew out another plume of fire. "The eruption must still be going on. There's a hot wind blowing and we're taking on too much heat, too fast. Watch your furnace, it's going up a little bit at a time and you'll be losing smoke trying to control it. Here, it some salad. It's delicious"

Woodrat watched as every minute his furnace ticked up. A wonderful thing, free heat. Too bad it was killing them. His mated dumped a bundle of salad in his lap, most of it brown and brittle with little or no green stuff. Looking around, that was all that he could see in one direction. They'd run aground on a Sargasso, but now the huge floating island of salad was brown underneath a blackened crust.

This also explained why the two of them were alive and not strangled by the sargasso weed. The stuff was brittle and tasted worse than splintered wood, something else the captain had been forced to eat a time or two. This went down easier, but the wood tasted better.
"By the gods, what a jest. Reduced to eating burned salad as fast as we can to survive an excess of heat."

His mate laughed at him. "It's not bad, tastes like chicken!" Woodrat just stared at his chuckling mate as he shoved another handful of sargasso into his mouth. The poor lad had gone mad.

"Now that I've finally woke you up from your little nap, it's time to get to work. This isn't a place to hang around, and we need a ship. Luckily, we have quite a few to choose from, all in the finest of condition."

The splinter was nearby, and his mate had carefully gathered all the parts of it into a pile. The Deadman's Chest sat at the top of the pile of broken wood. His eyes turned to the Sargasso, leagues of deadly vegetation and dead ships, now a charred wilderness. Broken masts stood up at odd angles. Some ships were hull up; others were hull down. Excitement filled him.

Ozzy was walking towards the first ship; Woodrat ran to catch up. As he did, Ozzy bent down and tore up a chunk of burnt salad, handing it to him. "Eat. If you run out of fuel, you die. Save the berries. Helpful for getting rid of excess heat. And I'll show you another use." Grumbling, Woodrat stuck the tasteless stuff in his mouth. Ozzy ate a huge chunk, licked his lips and chuckled.

There was something odd about his mate, and it extended beyond his odd sense of humor about food. Whereas Woodrat felt feverish with more heat than was good with him, Ozzy looked comfortable. And it was more than just stripping down to his kilt. The man's skin was darker than before, the shade of an old copper coin.

Woodrat grew more and more curious. "We shipwrecked running from that wave of heat, I remember that much. Do you want to tell me what happened next and why we're both alive?"

Ozzy smiled at him, a manic look in his eyes, white teeth gleaming. "I will, as soon as I figure it all out. For now, we need to go shopping for a new ship. Oh, and we may have visitors."

The first ship they came to was a three master with two full decks above the cargo. the masts were splintered stubs and she sagged everywhere from dry rot and woodworms. Not a lot of good wood to find in this one. As if in response to Ozzy's statement, charred sailors began to line up on the rails, screaming at them. They began to climb down the ship, using the burnt vegetation. Many fell and got up.

Ozzy screamed back at them, and two flensing hatchets appeared in his hands, created from smoke. "Tell that little knife of yours it's time to get to work, captain."

It wasn't a fight, so much as a slaughter. Ozzy ate a full handful of the spicy berries, and suggested Woodrat do the same. As the hoard of charred shambled towards them, first Ozzy and then Woodrat breathed out cones of flame. Woodrat again felt oddly jealous of his mate's larger flame. He reminded himself that he had a much better hat.

The fire reached the charred, beings who lusted after more heat, but could never acquire it. What was left of them blackened further and they grew spindly. Ozzy stepped into the mass of them, humming to himself and put down one with each swipe of his hatchets. The creatures fell into black dust, and as another group appeared on the rails, the two sailors loaded up on more of the berries, venting their overloaded furnaces and destroying the creatures in their way. The last was a pitiful creature in a rotted coat that might once have belonged to a captain. Woodrat motioned Ozzy to step back. "Captains work, best we not risk him putting a curse of mutiny on you. Some of the charred officers have strange curses." Woodrat swung with his sword, decapitating the once-captain in one blow. As it fell, he noticed a small bauble pinned to its chest.

Bilgewater Academy Annual Swimming Contest - 1st place.
He might have cheated, but he swam faster than anyone else.

 +4 Ranks to Swim the Smoke
 1.5 x normal swimming speed

Woodrat pinned the little medal to his own coat. "I'll never be accused of having gone to an academy, but this will come in handy if the two of us are swimming for our lives from a shark."

Ozzy laughed at his captain's joke, as Ship's Law required, then replied, "I'll just eat the shark. Swimming makes me hungry."

Ozzy grabbed Woodrat and tossed him up to the deck of the ship. The captain straightened up and looked around. Nothing stirred. "A good plan, Mr. Ozzy, I've scouted the ship and dealt with hostiles."

Ozzy threw his chain to the rail, a hook catching tight, and climbed up. He had to be careful of the rotted deck that Woodrat navigated across with ease. The cargo area was empty of anything but salad. They quickly looked in the cabins below the first deck, but found nothing of use. The galley area had been destroyed with not even a wooden plate left whole. Only the captain's cabin contained anything worth taking. Woodrat found an ancient rutter with maps of the smoke. Each rutter was a navigator’s own log of his observations and discoveries. They were frustratingly personal and might also be in code. Each navigator was jealous of his knowledge. With time though, they could reveal knowledge of currents, islands, and other places of note.

Besides the journal, Ozzy found two bottles of some dark purple beverage which Woodrat immediately tried and proclaimed to be "Good enough to drink."

"One ship down Mr. Ozzy, and a hundred to go. I'm a bit worried about the charred though."

Ozzy stretched and flipped one of his hatchets in the air and caught them. "Better now than before. You were sleeping like a newborn babe when the first two batches attacked. I was standing on top of you, hacking them down."

Woodrat wondered if he was serious, and decided that he was. The thought of laying there helpless with charred nearby made him shiver. He reached down and tore up more crispy veggies, and pocketed a handful of the berries. "I see your point. Let's concentrate on goading them out of the nearest ships and clearing it out. We need to dump this heat somewhere, so it might as well go into ridding the area of those creatures." They both began chewing more food and swallowing it, one person enjoying the meal more than the other, and headed towards the next vessel.

Mr. Ozzy, (Crewman, promotion to   Mate pending.) Level 10    Burning Brightly

 Smoke: 3200/5770  Heat: 15000/15250  Fuel: 600/5570   Furnace: 0/150  Smoke   Eating: 0/130

Fire Eating has reached Rank 10
 Active Fire Resistance has reached Rank 10
 Hack Undead has reached Rank 9
 Strike Undead has reached Rank 8
 Playing with fire has reached Rank 10
 Smoke of a Distant Fire has reached rank 10

 Perk: Shielding has been gained.

 You have gained a new choice for Heritage.