Chapter 2: Well at Least my Boss Seems Ok

Sarenith 4, Toilday

https://www.patreon.com/posts/ladies-of-caulky-84020823

I welcomed the soothing darkness below deck with a grin. Finally, I could stop squinting. I eyed Caulky, the girl who had been assigned to escort me. She only came up to my chin, with full lips and short brown hair. She’s cute; wasn’t she in my mission log? I summoned the floating text box and Caulky Tarroon was indeed one of the people my HUD wanted me to befriend.

The teenager maintained a confident stride even as her red jacket shifted in my sight from red to black, so she either knew the belowdecks very well or it wasn’t as dark as I thought. Wait. Is she human? What if she’s some other species with darkvision? (Int check: 18+2 = 20. Success! She is human.) Huh. Feels like a waste of a good roll.

“So, I’m Emrys. I think I heard your name was Caulky?” A bit of small talk couldn’t hurt.

“Aye. So you can hear. What of it?” She stared straight ahead.

“Well I just wanted to know if you had any advice? You’ve obviously been here longer than me.” I read once that if you want someone to like you, you ask them for help right away. Nothing big. Just something that makes them feel like you owe them a little. Ben Franklin, don’t fail me now.

“We’re almost to the kitchens, landlubber. No time for much. Just do what the officers tell ye and ye should be fine. Most things that’ll get ye the whip are pretty obvious, honestly. Oi! Kroop! Are ye still sober?” She shifted from a conversational tone to a holler as she opened a door I’d barely noticed.

A furry gray head poked out of the door at around waist level, bleating. Caulky blocked it with her knee as she grumbled. “Ah, dammit man! Ye let the goats out again?”

A raspy male voice, probably Kroop, responded.“Knock first and it won’t be a problem!” He snapped, as a big meaty hand grabbed the goat by its collar and dragged it out of the doorway.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/ambrose-kroop-84971452

The filthy man filled the doorway momentarily, waving us in while dragging the goat to a small pen by the collar around its neck. Two more goats followed the first, wrangled by the massive chef. I gazed upon the kitchen that was to be my place of work in horror; it was a madhouse. At least a dozen chickens wandered around our feet, and every surface was covered in dishes, knives, bits of food, and dirt. This place isn’t going to be passing any health inspections. The room was perfect for my delicate drow sensibilities, as I could see color without incinerating my eyes, which was a definite consolation. I searched for the light source and suppressed an initial jolt of panic. An open flame licked against the ceiling, without igniting anything around it. Nothing was even soot-stained. What the fuck?

(Spellcraft 11+6=17. Success! This item is enchanted by the spell Continual Flame, which creates a permanent heatless fire.)

Oh. Neat. I was brought back to the matter at hand when I heard the big guy, Mr. Kroop, reference me. “So, who’s the pretty boy? New recruit?”

“Aye. Says he’s a trained Chelish Chef, so Plugg decided to make him cook’s mate.”

“Oh is he now?” Kroop scratched at his greasy beard while he gave me a once over. I smiled back at him nervously as he continued. “Well I’d best get an idea for what he can do; get out of here. There’s work to be done.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Caulky rolled her eyes on the way out. “Try not to die, landlubber.”

Is that a possibility? Is she fucking with me? I turned back to Kroop and plastered on my most winning smile. “So, you’re my new boss, then?”

The fat chef silently navigated the cluttered galley, grabbed me by the wrists, and examined my hands with a snort. “So, do you have any culinary experience at all?” I clearly didn’t have many options. Bullshit or take a chance? He seems more amused than angry.

“Uh… no. Not really. I’ve made a few soups and such, but I’m not a Chelish chef, no.” Please don’t report me. (Bluff 13 + 8 + 5 = 26) My lips surprised me by continuing smoothly, “I’m an excellent worker, sir. Teach me the basics and I’ll be up to snuff in a week or two at most.” Come on, autopilot me. That’s barely even a lie.

“You really are green, aren’t you? Eh, saying no would be more trouble than it’s worth by half.” He waved me over and pointed at a cauldron. “That’s the forever soup. It’s dinner for the crew most days; I’ve already gotten it squared away for now. If you see the stove getting low, let me know. I’ll show you how we feed it then, I’m not risking a fire on your account. The stove next to it is where I’m making dinner for the officers. Don’t touch that. We’ll find a recipe you can make for days when I’m indisposed later.”

I went along with the kitchen tutorial meekly. I’ve had new jobs before; you don’t ask too many questions during orientation unless you are completely lost or want to kiss ass. I nodded and responded at the appropriate times while he slowly worked his way down from the blindingly obvious (this is soup) to nitty gritty details that even he seemed to ignore (this is the empty rack where all the knives go).

“I’ll be working on dinner now. If you can’t help with prep, you might as well start putting things away. If you don’t remember where something goes, just ask me.”

“Yes sir.” I looked around the disaster area; the goats were already loose again. Well, autopilot? You up to take this one? To my delight, my body started moving on its own.

(Secret: Profession (chef): 3 + 1 = 4. Fail)

Another update scrolled across my vision, declaring that a secret check had been made with no additional context. I’m sure it’s fine. How much could I really fuck up just tidying a kitchen with a chill boss like this. He just wants me out of his way, right? With my body working its way through the pile of trash in the corner and occasionally getting pecked by a chicken, it looked like I finally had more than a few seconds to think.

I recapped the situation in my head. Alright Curtis. So you got blackout drunk and somehow that led to turning into a dark elf and getting shanghaied. You have a HUD, and the magic floating text boxes are encouraging you to make friends with the people around you. I was still open to this being a dream or an elaborate trip at that point, but it seemed best to approach my insane fever dream like it was real. That meant using whatever tools I had at my disposal to their fullest.

I could go on autopilot. If I asked my body to do something, it would randomly generate a number and then try to do that thing based on how high the number was. Experimentally, I tried to stop cleaning and noticed that my body had accidentally left a few carrots on the edge of the table, in reach of the goats. Two of the goats had already gotten their treats; I lunged forward to save the rest. (Stealth: 3+7=10 success!) I managed to snatch the veggies away before Kroop noticed. Ok. Positive note, now I know I can interrupt myself if I really want to.

For the next few hours, I split my focus between monitoring my body and reading my menu. My autopilot seemed to be phoning it in, but I still greatly preferred being a manager overseeing my body’s actions instead of doing it myself.

“Rules” proved to be a gigantic reference document spanning several thousand pages. I tried to read it from the start, but my eyes glazed over before I got through the second page of dense legalistic jargon weaving an impenetrable barrier of non-liability around whoever wrote it. I abandoned the system reference document in disgust and shifted to my missions. All three tasks sat in the center of my vision. Get a good position, make friends, your captain. Just pirate things. The mission to become a rigger or cook’s mate was shimmering; when I focused on it the words vanished and I felt a weight in my right hand.

My ring finger had a new adornment: a signet ring with a stylized E as the design. I had already asked for a description of the Seal of Alternate Payment when it was in the form of floating text, and a simplified version of the description flickered into view when I examined it.

Seal of Alternate Payment: Impose porn logic to substitute sex for gold in a transaction.

There was nobody in the room that I wanted to trade sex with. I shuddered at the thought as I looked over at my hefty superior, who had cracked open a bottle and was taking long pulls from it while he read a book. At some point a chicken had jumped into his lap, and he’d placed it gently on one shoulder. He seemed like he’d be an easy boss to please, at least.

My mission log had a blank space in it now and the ticker at the top had shifted from 0/18 to 1/18, and I spent the next hour combing through the reference document for an explanation of how missions worked. I had to check the index, cross reference multiple chapters, and flip back and forth between segments hundreds of pages away from one another, but I could piece together the basics.

The missions were split up into pools called “chapters,” which would be linked together by the circumstances I found myself in; for example, chapter one seemed to be tied into my new life on the Wormwood. Only three quests were visible at a time, supposedly to keep me from getting overwhelmed. I could dismiss or complete missions and they would be replaced with other missions from the pool at the dawn of the next day. So if I decide that I’m not up for mutiny against a man who looks like he could snap my neck one handed, I just… the mission to kill Harrigan vanished. That just went back into the pool, right? Probably. Hopefully. A “chapter” seemed really poorly defined, so I didn’t actually know how long I had to perform 18 tasks of varying levels of complexity, but I hoped there would be enough time. Current plan: stick around as long as I can bear it, try to do as many missions as possible, and get as many resources as I can manage, then stop being a cook. For all I know, everything will get way more dangerous after I finish a tutorial.

I tracked down Mythic Ascension out of morbid curiosity. If I did just fuck myself, I want to know how big the strap on was. I found an entire segment labeled “mythic” that waxed poetic about the joys of being entirely overpowered, but the important thing was that ascension was the first and hardest step. I didn’t see any obvious evidence that ascension would make me instantly badass enough to take on a whole ship full of angry sailors, so the juice definitely wasn’t worth the squeeze right now, but eventually… Huh. I’m seriously contemplating . That should probably bother me, but in my defense I was kidnapped and enslaved. I can be forgiven for feeling a little vicious, right?

Missions would give one to three experience points depending on how difficult they were, and each level would cost slightly more exp to advance. With any luck, I can get nice and overpowered by doing a bunch of easy missions first. One must always be sure to grind.

I was about to tally up the assets on my character sheet when a bell rang in the distance, and my boss staggered to his feet, now reasonably drunk. “Arright. Make yerself useful Emrys. The roast’s done. Get the veggies ‘n cheese an carry em with me.” Kroop transferred the pork and onions from the cauldron to a platter, which he carried through the halls of the ship as I dutifully trailed behind him with the sides.

We dropped the food off in a small room which contained nothing but a cot, a small lockbox, a table, and Caulky, who took a few bites from each dish with a ceremonial air. (Sense motive 15+1=16. She’s checking for poison.) Ahhh. Yeah that tracks. If my HUD wants this man dead, it’s probably not the only one. She dismissed us as she started to plate the food. “Arright. You two can go. Everything seems up to snuff.”

When we got back to the galley, a few dozen hungry sailors were waiting for us with small metal bowls and spoons. “Eh! Kroop’s walkin straight.” They jeered, “Might be a good meal today.”

My boss responded with a practiced wave and a jovial smile, “it’s soup again.” A chorus of groans emanated from the line, but nobody hesitated when it was time for their serving of fishy slop. My stomach was demanding that I take my share, but I was told that we ate early or we ate last, and Kroop hadn’t been paying attention to the time. (Profession (chef): 1 Critical failure) I wrenched control of my body from the autopilot before it did something stupid, but that meant that I had to focus for the entire time, lest my arms betray me while I distributed the rum rations.

After all sixty members of the crew were fed, I was allowed to scoop some fish stew into a bowl of my own and scarf it down. It was saltier than I’d like, but the random assortment of food scraps floating in the thick broth ensured that it was at least interesting. After we’d eaten, Kroop and I threw the leftovers from the officers’ meal into the soup along with some chopped up fish, a few vegetables (he was too drunk to notice the missing carrots), and some eggs. After that, I was directed to the lower hold, where I’d be sleeping. A few hours of liberty at last.