Our+capture,+Slavery,+and+shipwreck+on+the+GhostMoon

**__Capture__**
Each of us were enslaved in different ways. Some were grabbed while at sea; others were snatched on shore by enemies and sold to the pirates. Once asea, some were traded and shipped around for months, others traveled for less time. We come from different lands, races, and cultures, but in the end we all found ourselves together, unloaded on a dock and marched into a warehouse. There were around 30 of us initially in that warehouse, and we sat there for several weeks. Time doesn't matter much in such situations, sometimes it seemed an eternity, sometimes I just let it fly by. Will I survive to see you again, my dear Mahogany? Will you wait for me, not knowing that I still live? After those weeks we were marched out onto the docks and lined up. Two groups of people were there watching, one disciplined and orderly, the other chaotic and unkempt. A female orc strode down to us and looked at each of us through some sextant-like object. Half of us were separated out and marched off with the Unkempt toward a palisade reeking of disease, feces, and death. I shudder even now to think of their fate, but while our fate seems so much better, it is far from good. We march to another palisade, about half a mile off and not visible from the sea. Here we stay a few more weeks, eating but one meal a day and sleeping on the ground. We are each chained to one other prisoner, and for the most part we all sit and save our scant energy just to survive. Strangely, the Orc woman said something about our having strong fates, and we are being treated reasonably fairly. It seems they even have our possessions, bagged and labeled with our names. I carry the tokens with me; who knows if I may need to trade my goods away for an extra plate of food. Still, most here seem like good folk, and there is little violence or fighting among us. During these weeks we are learning about the personalities of our fellow prisoners, and some are coming to be respected, others not, both by each other and our captors. We await The Ship, which will take us to our fate. After so many weeks imagining both wonderful happy returns and horrible painful ends, I mostly just wait now, I will meet the unknown as it appears, and with the strength that Frey supplies.

__**On Board The Ship**__
The Ship arrived. We marched back to the docks and stood there while a fleet of loading boats went back and forth, since The Ship was too large to come in to the docks. We noticed all our stuff loaded up as well as food and water. We were then shipped out with our guards, and other guards were left back in their places. A change of shift, I guess. The Ship captain made a short speech that was essentially Obey or be eaten by my Ogre. Our guard leader clearly defers to him, but he also defers to 4 or so people riding in a marquis on the stern of The Ship. We've seen a Southern Belle with a parasol (Green Lady), her slutty bodyguard, a husky Amazon, and a lady with Glowing Eyes, who appears to be the true leader (The Lady). There is also a well-dressed gnome who appeared to try to avoid notice.

We started by stripping, hosing and scrubbing down to the deliberate attempts to humiliate by the crew. Saffron and elven bard, and I danced around naked for awhile, which allowed the extremely shy, like the Hunter, to suffer minimal shame. We were then reclothed in clean robes while our clothes were deloused for a day or two. We were then given the duty of scrubbing the decks of a ship hundreds of yards long. To lessen the boredom, there is a competition each day where 5 teams compete for a prize. On day one, it was throwing daggers to get as close as possible to the human strapped to the target. Our elven archer, Feyren, threw at our paladin, Basil, and beat the other 4 teams of slaves and deckhands. We won an entire roasted pig! Ah, health regained after months of living on the edge. The next day was a race. Our gnome, Ogrel, rode our barbarian, Mojo, but just lost to a similar team. The next day there was no competition, so I called out a challenge to the deck crew nearby that we could scrub more deck than they could. The challenge was accepted and we won again, giving us the rest of the day and all the next off. To celebrate, Saffron led some of us to sing and dance awhile, and Siv played the fool. The Lady was not amused and gave us overnight to create and act out a play for the amusement of the crew the next day. Knowing most of us had no perform skill and a number had charisma negatives, most of the group were stage props foraged from around The Ship, while 4 of us (and some NPC slaves in our group) put on the play. We did a good job, impressed The Lady and the Captain, and earned a promotion to working the garden area.

On a side note, The Hunter overheard a secret conversation where our Slaver Leader was warning the Spiffy Gnome that if he wasn't careful, they would all suffer horribly if the Lady found out and that he'd better stop it. Her voice was shaking with fear while she warned him. The Gnome responded that it was all a game for the enjoyment of the Lady, that she already knew, and that if he stopped entertaining Her, she'd kill him. They then separated, afraid they'd be overheard or seen together. Hmmm, trouble may be brewing on our luxury cruise.

**__Gathering Information__**
Here is some information we managed to pick up from the general chatter: 1 = The ship is called the Ghost Moon; it acts as a trader/fence for the pirates. The rank and file of the crew believe that far more is involved than this, but only the officers seem to know more about the operations.

2 = The crew is made up of all types, races and backgrounds. It seems that there are people at ports who scout for new crew members. You do not ask to join, you are asked.

3 = The special slaves "that's you" are requested from the Island Kingdom of Predallen. They pay top dollar more than slaves should cost. You are bought for some sort of contest/games/ to be fought in Predallen. It is rumored that the captain of Ghost Moon was a champion from some such contest.

4 = {The Lady} is a spirit guardian from this Kingdom of Predallen. She has traveled before on this ship on unknown private missions, but this time there is tension in the air when she boarded the ship. She is being quiet and moody unlike her behavior on past trips, not interacting with the crew.. And the captain seems to being avoiding her unlike in the past when he was always seen in her company.

5= The Mistress, the human friend of The Lady, seems well liked by the crew but her behavior is also making the crew nervous. She was always outgoing in the past but now she seems to be putting on a show to draw attention from The Lady's withdrawn behavior.

6= The Lady acting nervous, her human friend acting odd, and the Captain acting odd equals a very tense crew. It was why no games were held on the last day. The captain had ordered that all games be put off and the crew had to run drills to install a sense of normalcy.

The 4 things above are treated as gossip since for every crew member making a comment on the above gossip another crew member disagrees. So you have no idea what to believe on this, and neither does the crew.
 * Gossip:** (The Lady is looking for her crazy sister? ) (The ship is headed for a confrontation with some one, a pirate base? A enemy of Predallen?? ) (The Captain is in trouble with Predallen and is going to lose the ship) (Predallen is at war and is taking control of the ship)

**__Our Response Questions:__**
1. Zephyr. Is everything else going on as usual: The same ports, the same cargoes (excepting special cargoes), the usual number of slaves and crew, etc? Only the Lady's actions and demeanor are different? The Hunter: Are there any children among the slaves? If not, I'd ask if they ever enslave children.

__**We're on the Titanic**__
It's been an eventful trip. Certain party members were able to glean information and reported that the first main "competition" event is a battle royale among all 5 groups until one group is wiped out dead. Certain group members realized we just marked ourselves as the target team given the quick success in head to head competition tests. Group 2 is the biggest group and don't really like anyone. Group 3 and Group 4 are really out to get us, while Group 5 is thinking better us then them. The Groups 3, 4, 5 are about same size as our group. Given that members of Group 3 tried to knife a couple of our guys and Group 4 leadership is some evil necro, our group spokesperson gets Muba to set up a meeting on sly with Group 2 leadership, after some discussion they seem agreeable. We quietly get aligned with Group 2 and during another meeting, maybe Group 5 doesn't totally hate us. Conditions are improving as we obtained better jobs, mostly from doing well in the competitions. We may be heading to our doom but it's not totally uncomfortable. Then the storm hit and forces of the white woman attacked. After explosions and confusion and panic, the ship is possibly going down and the situation leaves us a choice of 4 things:

1) Loot Baby! - Either (a) try to find our possessions somewhere in the 300 chests in some orderly fashion or (b) screw it and start dumping them out to take whatever we want 2) Fight! - Join the attacking force to ensure the slavers do not have control of what's left of the ship when this is decided. After that we can find our stuff (assuming there's time before the ship goes under) 3) Sabotage the ship 4) Flight! - head overboard now and get on one of the small boats that brought in the White Woman's group. Let those 2 groups duke it out while we get the heck out of here

All characters need to pick one of those options for the next session:
 * Basil** - He's fighting! He grabs one of the explosive balista bolts and some coals and is going to find that Ogre
 * Hayden** - Fight! We must ensure the slavers are defeated or they will just cage us back up.
 * Zephyr** - is trying to organize the distribution of possessions and keep things fair.
 * The Hunter** - Fighting for our freedom now, but dearly missing her stuff. Three items have great sentimental value.
 * Mojo** - Dammit, screw it trying to find the box with his sword, its time to take one from the stinking crew. Picks up his iron bar and loads up on belaying pins to throw as missiles. Payback time! "Come on you Apes, do you wanna live forever?!?!?"
 * Ace** - wait? what? attack? WTF? Turns to help Zephry, stops, sighs and turns back again, heads out in storm to see if he can provide any magic support. Safely. Away from combat. oh deary dear madness.
 * Obadiah** is trying to recover chests and helping others recover theirs.
 * Loricifera -** fighting and trying to help whoever is trying to capture the ship
 * Siv** - helping with chests, looking for his and perhaps the contents of others.
 * Arranz** - Looking for her chest and then then ?. It depends on how the story continues to unfold.
 * Saffron** - Fight, but she MUST find her teacher's lute. Other than that, she will grab what she can and help fight for freedom!
 * Ogrel - Loot!** I can't fight until I get my stuff. Or if there's BETTER stuff that'll only help, right? I'm coming as soon as...Ooo! Shinies!
 * Feyren** - Clearly off the main boat and drying out on the small boat. Providing what assistance they can to anyone else in the water.
 * Edgtho** - Working with Feyren to control the small boat. On the job training.
 * Kevlar** - bleh bleh so sick. so noisy, can somebody shut up that racket. i am trying to recover here!
 * Pavelow** - bleh bleh so sick. i hear birdies singing.

__**The Battle**__

As best we can tell, the battle occurred as follows: Amid an unnatural growing storm, Sahuagin appeared over the port side, slaughtering many slaves and some crew before reinforcements arrived. The crew got them under control after the Mistress killed their leader with a lightning bolt. The crew then headed to the bow leaving a few crew to kill/force the revolting slaves into submission. Honne appeared on the starboard bow, and after releasing two slaves from their chains, turned to fight Tatemae, who had quickly appeared on the scene. We slaves scattered, mostly toward the stern to gather our belongings. It appears their personal battle moved towards the bow, but we lost sight of them and never saw or heard anything more about them. While many slaves scrounged for their supplies, a large fight also occurred at the bow between crew loyal to Tatemae and the GhostMoon and traitorous crew loyal to Honne. The Honne crew began to lose once the Mistress arrived and their leader finally blew up the bow of the ship in a huge explosion, killing many crew and the slaves who had never managed to leave their shackles. Most of the crew then went to the lower decks to repair damage to the ship from hitting a reef. A huge series of explosions killed them all and lit the entire ship afire from bow to stern, starboard to port, below decks. At this point, everyone realized the ship was lost and abandoned it. Many slaves went over the starboard side, near the stern, and we ended up on Last King Island. We last saw the Mistress organizing an effort to save 50 crew and 30 slaves over the port side.