The days passed relatively uneventfully. Every morning the quest counter ticked up by a single day. Kaldalis got out of his cot in the cramped sleeping quarters and went to the mess hall for breakfast. He’d socialize a bit with the chefs, the crew, and the other adventurers. Then he would find Myrin and Balrim and they’d spend most of the morning either chatting or sparring. He wasn’t gaining experience from the spar, but during their chats, he’d found out about weapon skills. His spear skill was climbing during the fights, but after only a couple of days it reached the apparent cap and refused to continue. Once capped, he wasn’t gaining anything but muscle memory, which was honestly enough to motivate him to keep at it.

For his midday meal, Kaldalis went out of his way to mix up what times he went. Everyone else seemed to be creatures of habit, and going at varying times meant he got a chance to see and be seen by everyone on the ship. He wasn’t enough of a social butterfly to befriend the dozens and dozens of people on the ship, but he still wanted to get a head start on getting to know the people who he was going to spend the next five years stuck on an island with.

He spent the afternoon fishing. The associated skill seemed to cap at the same level as his spear, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying his time. It also made it easy for the people he met to find him. He developed some good connections with the crew of the ship only because he was always helpful and they knew where to find him in the afternoon and evening. More than once he stepped away from the fishing deck to help move crates around the hold, or act as an anchor for a line that needed another pair of hands to be tied off when the wind was strong.

It became apparent that there was no way to tell PCs from NPCs here. He was positive that the crew were all NPCs, but for the other adventurers, there was no way to tell. They all talked about the game mechanics, and took such discussion in stride, and they all seemed reluctant to talk about their pasts. Did that mean they’d all just gotten here? Or did all the NPC adventurers have some traumatic incident that made them adventurers? Ultimately, it didn’t matter. These would be the people - real or AI - that he would be interacting with for the next five years. The last thing he wanted was to start someone building a grudge against him. Friendly contact with the people he might need to party together with in the coming years was important groundwork to lay. And any head-start he could get on improving his relationship with the people who would be the merchants and quest givers when they reached their destination was as good as putting money straight into his pocket.

The quest counter for the sea voyage was at 9/14 when he really realized that the food aboard the ship was starting to turn. The chefs were good about picking over and using things before they got bad, or discarding things once they were inedible - especially for Kaldalis, who had been providing them with a steady stream of fresh fish since day one - but they’d been on the water for a week and a half. It was only a matter of time before the food entered that grey area between stale and rotten. Kaldalis was, at least, grateful for the fishy gravy from the remains of last night’s dinner that he could mask the mouldy taste with.

He was trying to consider if there was some way he could solve that problem - it would make him a hero to the whole expedition, even if only for five more days - when a member of the crew cut through the mess hall, looking around frantically. She was one of the sailors he’d assisted over the last few days, and when he looked up, she met his eyes and corrected her course to come straight towards him. Her name was Heluna, and she was one of the few finnian crew members; unlike the other finnians he’d encountered, she seemed to have embraced the sailor side of her life rather than the stoic elf side, wearing clothing that was tighter and more utilitarian rather than the flowing, almost gothic outfits of the others he’d seen. She was also much chattier, though she appeared to be on about something very particular now.

Furthermore, the edges of her body seemed to have a slight rainbow shimmer to them, outlining her against the crowd. Nobody else seemed to notice, and Kaldalis wondered what it meant.

“I need you,” she said, uncharacteristically terse as she grabbed his elbow. “Right now.”

His anxiety spiked immediately. “What for?”

“No time to explain.” She practically dragged him out of his seat, and Kaldalis felt his tail whip around behind him, providing the vital counterweight to keep him from landing on his face. “Just come with me.”

He followed, but tried to prepare for the worst. And what was the worst? Her outfit was a bit provocative, but he didn’t think this was that kind of game. And moreover, he knew he was being watched live via Monsoon’s new streaming service. Even if it was, and even if he wanted to engage in that kind of activity - and he most certainly did not - he couldn’t even think about that when hundreds of people might be watching. His anxiety redoubled when she led him to the floor with the sleeping quarters, and led him farther and farther back, towards where he knew the crew quarters were.

“Okay,” she whispered as they approached the end of the passageway towards the room at the stern back of the ship, “I need your help, and you’re the only person I can trust.”

“Help with what?” Kaldalis asked quickly. “What do you need?”

“I fucked up. I fucked up big time.” She stammered, keeping her voice low. “And I’m going to be in the deepest shit in the dirtiest latrine at camp dysentery if I don’t fix it. Totally fucked. Bent over every barrel on this fucking ship, and then when we land, the cooper is going to take apart this ship, build all the planks into new barrels, and it still won’t be enough to express how utterly FUCKED I am.”

“Slow down,” Kaldalis said, trying to make his tone a bit more soothing, “I’m here to help. Whatever you need, Heluna. Your barrels are my barrels. Or whatever.”

There was a little ding and a quest appeared on the right side of his vision. As it appeared, the rainbow outline around Heluna faded.

Sailor’s Favor

Your new friend is in trouble. Help them out before the captain keelhauls them off the plank!

Clean up mess 0/8

“There’s no time to explain,” Heluna said, looking back and forth before pulling out a knife and jimmying open the big door at the end of the hallway. “The captain was working all night and she’ll be back here in like twenty minutes and if the place still looks like this then this is what my hide is gonna look like twenty minutes after.”

The captain’s quarters looked like something out of a pirate movie. There was an office-like area, featuring a table scattered with charts, a big plush-looking bed against the far wall, and various flags and netting hanging from the walls.

The place also looked like the aftermath of a toddler’s tantrum. Furniture was upended. The bedsheets had been dragged across the entire floor. There was a pile of wood that had apparently once been a chair. There was a dresser near the bed that had toppled over, scattering clothing everywhere. An end table had been knocked over as well, scattering a candlestick, a box of candles, and a knife the size of Kaldalis’s forearm across the floor next to and under the bed.

“What happened in here?” he stammered.

“No time to explain,” Heluna said, closing the door behind them and latching it. “Just help me. Please.”

“Of course,” Kaldalis said, rushing to the nearest mess. “I’m right here with you.”

He wasn’t going to turn her down now. Especially not with the guilt he felt over where his mind had gone first. Of course she wasn’t going to proposition him. This was a Monsoon game, not something he found on the sketchiest corner of the internet.

Kaldalis started with the end table, since it seemed the most straightforward thing to clean up. The candlestick was easy to set up and stick the burnt-down candle back in, and then sorting out the other candles before returning them to the drawer. The knife was a bit of a mystery for a second, until he found a belt and scabbard underneath the bed. He sheathed the knife and hung it from the corner of the bed frame.

With that simple task done, there was a little flash on the right side of his vision, and his quest updated to 1/8.

He and Heluna went around the room cleaning up the messes, each time progressing the quest a little more. He had to open his crafting menu and explore it briefly to reassemble the shattered chair, and there was a period of great discomfort as he and Heluna sorted, folded, and put away all the clothes that had fallen out of the captain’s dresser. It felt invasive to be handling a stranger’s clothing without permission, but it had to be done.

With the two of them working together, it was only a few minutes before the place looked good as new.

“Okay, okay,” Heluna said, looking around. She was pacing furiously, running her hands through her silvery hair over and over again, still obviously panicked. “Is there anything else? Nothing? Nothing else? It all looks clean? It all looks good?”

“Almost,” Kaldalis said, joining her in scanning the room. The quest was at 7/8, meaning that there was one thing left. “Something still isn’t right.”

“Shit!” Heluna cursed.

“Relax, Heluna,” he said, “we’ll figure it out.”

“No! Right there!” she hissed, pointing to the window. “The curtain!”

The bottom part of the right curtain was torn apart. What looked like little tooth marks or claw marks or something marred the fabric.

“Do you have any thread or anything?” Kaldalis asked, thinking of the crafting menu. “Maybe we can fix it.”

“Of course not!” Heluna started pacing again. “I’m fucked! We can’t fix a fucking curtain! We don’t have any fucking cloth, any fucking thread, any fucking hope! This is it. This is the end of me.”

“Okay, quick fix. Not perfect. But doable.” Kaldalis grabbed the floor-length curtain, and carefully tore it evenly across the bottom, leaving none of the marred parts.

“How is that a fix?” she asked, gesturing wildly, her panic seeming to build with each passing moment. “Now it’s not just fucked, it’s fucking gone! Like I’m gonna be when she gets back here!”

“The captain won’t know,” Kaldalis said, reaching for the other curtain, “if they’re both even, right?”

He tore off an equal amount of the other curtain.

Heluna stared for a minute. And then said, her voice calmer than it had been since she found him in the mess hall: “you know, that might just work.”

Kaldalis’s quest updated, the task of cleaning the room turning to 8/8 and then fading.

The quest didn’t complete, though. The objective only changed.

Sailor’s Favor

Escape the Captain’s Quarters 0/1

Kaldalis was still trying to process what, exactly, that could mean when there was a rattling near at hand of the door unlatching behind the two of them.