This Merry Band Of Pirates...

As you carefully observe from the shoreline a jollyboat is let down from the ship and several persons climb aboard.

One of them is clearly a druid, carrying a shield made from the shell of a tortoise which has been banded with silver and enhanced with carefully chosen deer antlers around its edges capped with little silver spikes, a Silver Sickle, lovingly engraved with druidic runes and embellished with moonstones, and a Silver Khopesh, (the sickle-shaped bastard swords of the militant druidic orders,) as her armaments. Interestingly, you don't see any animal companion... You can tell by the cut of her armor that she's a woman, but other than that you can tell very little because she is wearing what is known as 'insect plate' a plate armor fashioned from the exoskeleton of giant insects alchemically treated to make it shapeable.

The second one down the ladder is an obvious member of the "Pirate" Class. She's wearing an eye patch, that she obviously doesn't need, and is festooned with tools of mayhem like a brace of pistols and a "Flame-Blossom-Wind-Cannon", the bizarre alchemical weapons of the far east that fire great plumes of burning perfume at the enemy... Besides her outlandish weapons, there's also the fact that she's a human lass of about 21 years with hair that gleams like spun copper in the torchlight and is wearing a scandalously revealing outfit, with shorts cut-off so they're more a bikini, and a top tied off so it covers her ample breasts and precious little else...

This, of course, means nothing to you. So she's showing more skin than your average tannery outlet shop; you're an arthropod: not only is she the wrong species but the wrong phylum into the bargain! Now a female Giant Crab heavy with eggs and somehow miraculously also intelligent like yourself... That would be a different story...

Next down into the boat is one of the bone festooned priestesses of Debatula, The Ascended-Divine-Scion of Togos who was the patron of all Pirates and Brigands, those thieves that used mob tactics and brute **** to steal from the rich and entitled rather than artistic subtlety and conniving. While some Accused Debatula of being evil, like her father she favored neither evil or good, but rather anarchy for its own sake.

The woman wearing her bone regalia was older, perhaps in her fifties, possibly one of the eldresses, the first "Icons" blessed by Debatula herself when she ascended to true godhood. This was proved correct by the two acolytes climbing down into the boat behind her, one swarthy of skin and hair, one pale like a ghost, both carrying the great heavy coffers of bones and other paraphernalia that were required for Debatula's greater rituals.

The last two down into the boat were rough and ready oarsmen, dressed in the pirate's way, with tight stretched shirts of red and white stripes and tough cotton blue jeans, frayed to nothing at the hems. With this group embarked they set off for shore and you stride out onto the beach to await their arrival a sharp stick held in one claw...