Interrogation with the Captain

This was Captain Storm, no doubt. She had the same face as always, the same eyes. But everything else was different. Instead of an old woman, in front of John was a lady that looked like she was barely reaching her 30s at the moment. Her hair was no longer white and thin, but voluminous and hazel brown.

Her face was lifted from any wrinkle she had before, and her frail looking body was replaced with something that could've come from a porn movie. Slender legs, voluptuous ass, slim waist and tits that had to be at least D-Cups. Couple that with the fact that she practically now wore a pair of low riding, tight-fitting leather pants in high boots and a red bodice that hugged her curves even more. If he wasn't in such a precarious situation, he might have popped a... nevermind; it happened anyway... he popped a boner for her.

The problem was that she was pointing both a saber and a flintlock pistol at him and the look in her eyes told him that if he admired her any more, he would get some lead into his head... However, his curiosity got the better of him, and he used Observe while trying to find his way out of this mess...

600 years?!?!? What the hell? How could someone live that long? That curse seemed to be real... Could one get to such an age without a curse? Could the matriarch of the Valkyries actually be older than they say? Her age was hidden in the observation...

"Now, I'm going to ask you again, and you better answer if you want to live: Who are you, what did you do with John, and who sent you? In that order."

Sweat started to run down his brows; however, there was no fear. John assumed that Gamer's Spirit took care of that, so he began to explain himself: "Captain, it's actually me, John Newman, I'm not an impostor. Can I prove it to you somehow?"

She looked at him with a barely contained sneer: "I know John, I know that he has no powers, but very well. If you are actually the real John, tell me when you first entered the shop: what did you buy?"

That was something he could recite from the heart, a cherished memory that he held dear: "I bought a figure of Miss Fortune, a Chinese import. You asked me at the time if I liked pirates and I told you 'Yes, I do, miss'. You laughed and told me how fortunate I was and that you were an actual pirate, a Captain at that. After that, you 'put me in your crew' ever since to 'serve you eternally'. In hindsight that seems highly suspicious..." He could see how the tension left her eyes when he recounted their first encounter like that. After he finished his retelling, the prison bars immediately vanished, and he found himself enveloped in a tight hug... Now that Mary, or Mariana, was that young, however, his mind couldn't resist thinking about the big fleshy orbs pressed into his chest.

"Oh John, I could see the honesty in your eyes when you said that, I'm sure you're the real one. But what happened to you? A couple of days ago when you made that order, you were normal, mundane... and now? Now you're in the Abyss. How did that happen?" "The Abyss? What is that? But yeah I got some weird powers just this morning... My life now plays like a video game, I can see levels, stats, I get gear and abilities, and there are some weird people around suddenly... You included," he told her.

Her look told him how ridiculous it must've sounded to her. "Okaaay... To answer your question first: The Abyss is the world hidden in the 'normal' world. It's kind of like the Matrix meets Marvel. It's a world, or rather a universe, hidden beneath the mundane world. People that don't have any powers will never know about it, that is assured. But once you have powers, you know how many people are actually living facades to cover up their more dangerous activities.
The world of politics is full of people from the Abyss, and mundane people in high enough places learn their place at some point. You can live your whole life without ever knowing anything is wrong or weird.

But once you know about the other side of the world, many things shine in a completely different light.
The Abyss itself is pretty much only self-administered justice, or bigger organizations that act like they do what they do for the 'greater good'. In the Abyss the saying 'Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely' is the name of the game.
If you have the abilities, you take the power, so no one else can have it. And now you are in it too, poor boy. You're quite close to reaching the point of no return, where your magic is too powerful to ever fully hide, and people thinking you as an easy target will try to use that. Now, tell me everything you did today up until this point, I need to know how deeply in trouble you are already..."

And so John told his story to Captain Storm. How he woke up with that quest, how he saw people with weird titles in his school, how he encountered the Valkyries and how he almost died. The longer he spoke, the darker the expression on the captain's face was. Once he was finished, she just sighed and ruffled his hair. "Well, I think I've got some bad news for you: you're actually beyond going back already... People will try to find you for those magical artifacts that you have should you try to leave.

"The spear can be resold, but that ring is bound to you, and people in the Abyss are way too interested in stuff like that than letting you live. For them, you're just a bug underneath their heels, ready to be crushed. So, now the question is, what do you want to do? Do you want to rise to power within the Abyss, do you want to make a decent living, or do you want to follow your carnal desires?" she asked him with a curious tone in her voice. When she made her last point, John had to involuntarily think about his encounter with Brun and how he groped her.

"Honestly? I just want to understand for now... I almost got killed within a matter of hours after getting those abilities, so first I need to get stronger to defend myself. That is kinda the reason why I came here for a rule book. I imagined that it could work like with the biology book and I could get some abilities through that."

Mary's face took another dark turn while he said that "A good idea, it could work, but seemingly predictable... So predictable even that someone seemed to have anticipated your idea before you even got your powers," and she took out the Shadowrun rulebook, the Collector's Edition that he saw just before he got pulled into the Barrier

"This book here is actually one of a kind. I didn't order it; I never got any information about who sent it. It looks like a normal collector's edition of the 5th Edition rulebook to mundane people, however: To magical people, it has some kind of message hidden in it, that can only be read by the 'right' person. This is something that can't fall into the wrong hands. I have analyzed it with everything I've got, there are no hidden contracts or anything in it, but someone knew that you would come around and that you would get the idea to absorb the knowledge of an RPG book. Now, I will trust you with this, because I know you, and I know that you will put whatever you get from that book to - mostly - good use. If you want I can train you some more in the workings of the Abyss. But most of all, I need one thing from you: Secrecy. I left the Abyss about 50 years ago to live like a normal person or as good as that can work. I know that I had enemies, and those enemies are still looking for me. So I ask of you to keep shut about anything that happens here, okay?"

John responded with an eager nod. He was ready to take that secret with him to the grave. With a warm smile, she patted his cheek. "I knew I could count on you. Now then, let's pop that book open and pray to Gaia that it won't kill us."

"Wait, Gaia? As in the Greek goddess?"

At that Mariana sheepishly laughed, "Oh right, I forgot to tell you that. We all get our powers from Gaia. If she really is the Greek goddess personifying the Earth, no one knows. Those Valkyries of yours probably think that they got their powers from Odin or something like that. But, the fact stands that these abilities actually come from some kind of deity. That deity also sees to it that the mundane world will never know anything about our world. People trying to break that rule will see that they would cease to exist. I'm also pretty sure those achievements you talk about come from Gaia as well, or some avatar of her. But be aware, Gaia might protect the normal world from the Abyss, but she won't protect you. That, you have to do yourself."

With an understanding nod, John looked at the woman in front of him though. "So, now that I have told you about my story, would you be so kind as to tell me how the old, nice lady I always had fun joking around with, just turned into a certified bombshell?"

With an airy giggle, the buxom pirate just looked at John with a smile "Well look at you, as soon as you got some power it looks like your balls dropped too. I bet the ladies will just fall to your feet once you get some experience and start to know what you do. But alright, I can tell you my story, at least in broad strokes since you promised to keep quiet. Now, you may know through your abilities that I'm actually over 600 years old. There are others in the Abyss living even longer, but that's beside the point. The point is that my father was the once famous German pirate Klaus Störtebeker. He's mostly known by now for his execution and his deception on the local authorities.

"And with his execution, my story begins as well... Not many people knew that he had a wife and a kid, he hid that fact very well, just as well as the fact that he actually had powers. He could melt and bend metal however he wanted to, and that made him a dangerous opponent. When I was around 15 years, we had a big fight just before he departed on his last cruise. Before that cruise he hired a witch that should curse me should anything happen to him.

"And so it did... He was brought back in shackles and was executed in the town square of Hamburg. His crew was promised exemption for each individual that Störtebeker could walk by after he was decapitated. After he reached half of his crew, the executioner made him trip and then killed everyone anyway. At the moment of his last spark of life leaving his body, the curse of the witch took effect. I later found out what kind of curse it was: I was never to grow old and never to die until the time that I had felt true sorrow that would drive me to suicide. The times were hard, bordered the release a lot of times, but some **** had always returned me from my depressions and suicide attempts. For a while I tried to live a normal life with a man I had loved... we had children, I saw them grow old, I attended their funeral, and moved on.

"For another 100 years, I had done just that, moving from family to family, trying to find the family that would finally drive me to suicide, as I said, something always pulled me back. At some point I decided 'Fuck it' and turned my curse into a kind of boon, not being able to die was a useful thing.

"I then started to become a pirate myself, started to draw a powerful fleet but I never really reached any prominence in the world. That's when I properly found my way into the world of the Abyss. I don't have any real magical abilities, but after you live that long you just start to amass powerful items and get an iota of power. In the Abyss I mostly kept my head low, mostly offering my nautical and tactical knowledge to the highest bidder.

"I was a feared tactician, but I never got the same fame on the battlefield, I always waited behind the lines and organized the plans. At some point, it hit me how little I felt about all those people died because of me. That's when I made the cut, took the money I had and the little power I had at that point and went into deep cover. No one heard from me in the last 50 years, and I want to keep it that way... So, that is pretty much my story without getting into too much detail. What did you think?"

At some point during that story, John just went slack jaw. How did he never find out anything about this? That seemed insane... "I...I-I don't know what to say... you lived through all that without going crazy? That is amazing! And are you saying that you didn't have a man now for over 400 years??"

At that Mariana had to heartily laugh "I suspected that you would pick up on that, but yes, I did not feel the touch of a man in the last 400 years. It just seemed like too much of a danger to them and me, fearing that I could once again get attached only to see him die and being able to do nothing about it... so yeah, 400 years of abstinence. I think we have talked about this long enough now though. Don't you have a book to 'read'?" She asked and held the book in front of him.

With a nod, John knew what he had to do. With slightly shaking hands he brought his hand to the book that was still in the hand of the old-not-so-old-yet-really-older pirate. Once a single finger made contact with the book, the pop up appeared.

Book recognized. Update powerpool? (Y/N)

That was not what he expected...