Quest: Slight Navigational Error [Ended]

[Dark]

Minh had never really ever been serious about anything in her life, but one of the few constants in her short existence was her dream of someday becoming a pirate. She'd even tried to run away and join a crew when she was eight, though she'd gotten lost not a mile from home and had been promptly dragged back by her ears.

Like so many other people, she put her precious dream up on a shelf to gather dust.

The life she'd made for herself, no matter how haphazardly constructed, was a good one: she had three children, all bright, and only one of which was actually doing something legal for a living; she'd advanced in the Court as far as she could be bothered; and she had an entire building to do with whatever she pleased.

The house seemed rather empty these days, though. Mnem and Aderlass spent most of the time at their respected Courts, and most of the kids had moved out, though they did stop by from time to time. Minh had been spending a lot of time in her lab, and when she wasn't blowing off her eyebrows with another failed experiment, she wandered the bazaar looking for new and interesting ways to waste her money.

The map had been a completely unexpected find, half-lost under a table of loose-leafed, yellowed pages in a ramshackle little shoppe. The seal of Pinkbeard had drawn her like a moth to a flame, and all those childhood fantasies had come rushing back.

The owner charged her a fortune, even though they both knew the map was probably a fake. Minh didn't blink when she handed over the coin.

And now, a week to the day, she was smelling sea-salt for the first time in her life. Standing on the beach, right outside of the small village she'd found herself at, she marveled at the great stretch of blue. She didn't care about the validity of the map; she was going to have her adventure, one way or another.

It started here.

[The Jenn]

The map had been rolled tightly when Minh purchased it in the store, the seal of Pinkbeard inked on the roll. One side of the yellowed parchment held a map, faint ink stains detailing the journey that she would have to take to reach its eventual destination. At one end of the lightly inked trail was a dark 'X' that could only mark the location of the presumed treasure.

There were no words on the aged, inked map, but the other side of the parchment held a small poem written in fluid script. It was unclear who had made the map or written the poem. The only hint was the infamous pirate's mark and the tempting, ambiguous 'X' within the cove of an island. Minh had already arrived at the beach detailed in the upper left hand corner of the map, the beginning of the journey.

Now my treasure do ye seek
Be ye bold or be ye meek
Sail from shore and travel light
Hit the cove away from sight
'neath the inn in cellars bare
Break the cask marked 'Devil's Fare'
Find the key and westward on
Slip into the break of dawn
Hidden by the morning's rays
Speak with Farrows where he lays
Heed his words and take his prize
Go to where the treasure lies

[Dark]

The inn wasn’t an inn in the conventional sense; it was built down on the sand, a quaint structure of lattice, lashed together driftwood, and thatching. The ample bar served doubly as the check-in desk, and the rooms themselves were small, ramshackle huts scattered down the beach.

Minh was sitting at one of the few benches that had been wedged down into the sand, nursing a coke-and-lime while she furrowed her brows at the map she was currently studying. The map seemed relatively straight forward, but the poem had been giving her problems.

She'd been multiple times by different people that she wasn't a deep person, and that anything beyond the obvious was completely lost of her.

She'd never given much weight to what other people thought.

After staring at the same two lines for the last hour, however, she was starting to think maybe they were right, and that maybe it would have been a good idea to get a second opinion. Mnem probably could have figured out this little riddle of Pinkbeard's in a heartbeat--she was wretchedly clever that way.

If she was going to succeed, she supposed she'd just have to forget about trying to dissect the "deeper" meaning in those lines and play on her strengths. Which meant following the instructions as literally as she was able, and hope for a bit of luck.

But first she needed a ship.

She waved down a passing waitress; "Miss? Where would it be possible to arrange passage? Are there any local captains that would be willing to take on an extra fare?"

[The Jenn]

The waitress, a Midori songbird with a sassy sway to her hips that rattled the various ropes of shells strung like a belt around her waist, gave the human a startled look when she was addressed. Such an odd customer, for all that she got in both savory and unsavory sorts all the time. They didn't get many humans in the small village, though tourists weren't all that unusual. This woman was obviously from another region but she wasn't well enough educated on the various patterns to mark her, especially when she wasn't wearing her proper fur. Or feathers. Or whatever she had.

"Well, you might be able to poke around the docks and see who's heading out in the next day or two. Depends on where you want to go, of course. Local captains travel the region, but they might also go to the Lakes for cargo or anywhere else that passes their fancy if there's a waterway they can travel. Where are you lookin' to go precisely? My brother's a sailor and I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the ships that pass in and out of the area."

[Dark]

Lucky for Minh, the names of the island were noted down in the same fluid script of the poem, and she didn't have to chance showing her complete and utterly ineptitude--and risk her journey--by pulling out the precious map and trying to point out her first location. Waving a supposed treasure map that might or might not have belonged to the famous pirate Pinkbeard out in the open for anyone to see didn't seem like a wise thing to do, even to Minh.

"I'm actually interested in booking passage to Fisher's Cove. If I am to understand correctly, there's an inn on the island?"

Supposing she'd interpreted the poem correctly; and assuming that whatever inn Pinkbeard had been talking about was still standing after almost a century.

Still, regardless of whether the treasure was real or not, she was here. That thought alone was enough to dispel whatever doubts she might have been feeling. Everything would turn out alright in the end.

[The Jenn]

The woman's eyebrows raised until they were high enough that, had she possessed a hairline, they would have reached it. "You? Want to go to Fisher's Cove? Um, if that was someplace somebody told you was a good tourist location, they were pretty well pulling your leg. Nobody goes there except for dirtbag sailors of the sort I don't like to hang around. Well, and some of the more decent sort can if it's the only thing on the way and a storm's coming, but really... it's not a nice place. You'd be better off staying on the beach and enjoying the hospitality here if you're looking for a vacation."

She clicked her beak once or twice in uncertainty, then leaned in a little closer. "Jus' between you and me, if it's pirate stories you're chasing - you have no idea how many visitors we get wanting to see 'real pirates' - I guess that would be the place to go. I might be able to give you a few ships' names who won't rob you blind at first opportunity, being a tourist, but it's not the safest place to go."

[Dark]

So the island was still in use, of a sorts; Minh felt a bolt of anticipation shiver its way up her spine. The fact that it was, apparently, swarming with no-account, blue-blood sailors of a rather unsavory sort didn't bother her overly much. She'd been in quite a few seedy bars, and she'd started more than her fair share of old-fashioned brawls over nothing more than a drunken ballad. In general, Minh was a fairly lazy individual, but if there were two things she loved it was bad beer and a good, knuckle-splitting fight. Especially when mixed together and shaken.

She smiled at the woman's concern, "It is indeed pirate stories I'm after--I'm writing a book, you see, combining local folklore and historical documents to try and create a fair representation of the region."

The best lies were, after all, those with a bit of truth in them.

"So if you could point me in the direction of an honest enough captain, that would be greatly appreciated."

[The Jenn]

The waitress looked surprised at the explanation. It seemed plausible to her - anyone educated enough to have their human form was probably the sort to work a lot with books, she figured, especially boring things like history. If she wanted an authentic taste of the locals, far be it from the bird to steer her clear, especially after she'd warned her once. She wasn't going to waste breath again, and who knew, maybe the woman could handle herself.

"You know, if you're going where you said you were, my brother's ship might be a good idea. His captain's a bit of a hardass sometimes, but honest enough, especially compared to a lot of the others who dock at those ports. Your best bet would probably be to look for the Whistler in port and search out Captain Les. Tell her what you told me, and that I pointed you in her direction. She owes me a favor or two and my brother's her second mate." She smirked and fluffed her feathers. "My name's Bettine, just for your reference. Best time to catch the ships in port is early in the morning 'round here."

[Dark]

Minh smiled and nodded her thanks, noting the dimming light and deciding she had time to finish her drink. There was no point in trying the docks until morning--wandering unfamiliar territory in the dark, especially a seedy seaport, wasn't something one did unless they had no other options left. Minh wasn't there yet.

She paid in advance for a single room, eating a light supper before following the trail of tiki torches down the beach. Her room was number four, a small, pale-wooded structure that declared its designation in bold charcoal, burned above the entrance flap. She had to shift to her animal form to fit under the door. Her bed consisted of a sand-encrusted mat and more sand. She fell asleep to the sound of the ocean.

In the morning, she shifted back into her human form, slung her bag over one bony shoulder, and headed towards the docks. It was crowded and noisy and smelly, and she loved it. She probably could have spent all morning wandering the impromptu-booths that had been set up along the length of the docks and sampling the local cuisine.

She managed to pull herself away, finally, and wandered down among the ships, snagging the first likely person she saw passing by.

"Excuse me; I'm looking for the Whistler. Could you tell me where she's docked?"

[The Jenn]

The man she stopped looked like a laborer, dark marks in a complicated pattern tattooed down one of his arms. A bipedal feline, he snorted and shifted the sack he was carrying so that its weight rested more evenly across his back, pointing off to the left. "You'll want pier two for that one, Miss, but you'd better hurry. The tide's setting itself to be ripe for leaving and I think their cargo's just about packed. If you need to speak to any of them, they're almost ready to head out."

Paying her no more mind, the man continued with what he was doing, which seemed to be hauling sack A to point B and dumping it before heading back to grab sack C. It looked tedious. No wonder he didn't seem in the best of spirits.

When she reached the appropriate dock, she would find a flurry of activity as the crew of the ship prepared to set sail. The gangplank was still down, but it looked like it wouldn't be for long.