agreed. "Pay for goods" lol

You walk over to the general store. Upon entering, you notice a well-dressed Englishman chatting with the shopkeeper.

"Aye, the Cougar is leaving St. Christopher tomorrow," says the Englishman. "It'll take 'til tonight to load the sugar. It's better to wait until dawn to set sail, when the wind might be more favorable."

After the Englishman departs, you purchase the required supplies. You arrange for the provisions to be carted over to the dock over the course of the day.

It is now noon. You stroll over to the tavern for some rum, and converse with a few of the pirates relaxing there. While talking about potential targets for piracy, you mention that you overheard that the Cougar is sailing out tomorrow laden with sugar.

"Ye should find out more information about that ship," advises Robert. "If they be under-defended, we could sail out tonight and ambush them tomorrow."

"There be more landlubbers at the tavern in the evening," notes Dan. "Til then, ye should talk to the lads around town, and see if they know anything about the Cougar or any other ships carrying valuable cargo."

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 6

Traits: Creative

Investigate the Cougar until it's late enough to go back to the tavern and do the other stuff.

I think the more upstanding a citizen we become the more the pirates start hating us. Who buys supplies?

EDIT: run away from home the pirate ship to become an artist. Enlist the help of a wench to pose naked for you to jump start your career.

Considering you're buying the supplies for their benefit, and it's necessary for their survival, they probably appreciate it lol.

You head over to the dock and search for the Cougar. A sailor notices your blundering path, and thinks you're lost. He shouts to you, "Ahoy, matey! What're ye looking fer?"

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 6

Traits: Creative

"You."

With this epic epitaph, knock the shit out of the sailor, steal his clothes and stow his naked body in a barrel of fish. Board the Cougar in search of information.

Ask him where the Cougar is. Go to the Cougar and use your stealth abilities to board the ship and collect information by eavesdropping on conversations. Prioritize finding out how many men the crew consists of, and try to locate the weapon storage.

The sailor finds you a bit suspicious, but points you in the direction of the Cougar anyway. At the end of the dock about a dozen men are loading barrels of sugar onto the Cougar. With only a week of stealth training, and this many people around, you decide it would be impossible to sneak aboard.

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 6

Traits: Creative

Use some creative host powers to get us rolling in the right direction plotwise.

Walk up and use your charisma to talk yourself into a temporary job helping out with the ship's preparations. Once on board, use your stealth abilities to collect information by eavesdropping on conversations. Prioritize finding out how many men the crew consists of, and try to locate the weapon storage.

fix'd

You notice one of the Cougar's officers standing on the dock. Upon asking if you could help load the cargo, he takes you onboard the ship and leads you to the captain's quarters.

"Captain Thomas Blackstone, at your service," says the same well-dressed Englishman you saw at the general store. "Judging by your clothes, I'd say you look like an experienced seaman. So what exactly would a man like you need with a humble vessel like the Cougar?" Captain Blackstone smiles warmly as the officer closes the cabin door, silently watching you.

"Let me guess," he continues, as soon as the door closes. "You're looking to disrupt our business. Ah, don't try to persuade me. I see the look in your eyes and know that you're not really looking for a day's work. It really doesn't matter if you've been hired by the Dutch, or are a member of a privateer crew. The heart of the matter is that I have a proposition for you. How would you like to be twenty doubloons richer?" Captain Blackstone pulls out a pouch of gold and plops it on the table with a clatter.

"I'd estimate this is a share of a year's worth of plunder," comments Blackstone. "It can be yours quite easily. All you have to do is make sure your crew--the Devil's Trident, I assume--does nothing to disrupt the Cougar's peaceful trading missions."

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 6

Traits: Creative

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 1 2013, 4:36 am by rayNimagi.

Take the offer. Go to Your captain and tell him you have an idea. Explain to him how the Captain of the Cougar paid you to leave him alone, and we attempt to do that with every merchant ship we come across. If all of them do decide to pay, then one of them would have an unfortunate accident at sea anyway.

Think of all the paint we can legally obtain with twenty dubaloons.

If we did this, our captain is either going to attack the ship anyways or make you split your payment with the rest of the crew, or probably both. It doesn't benefit him to not attack the ship just because you got some gold out of it.

I agree with the first part, although I'm going to change the rest a little.

Take the offer, convincing him of your ability and willingness to help him for this single voyage. Get the payment and go back to your own ship to store your newly earned money wherever you've been safely storing the rest of your loot. Ensure that it is not exposed or held suspiciously at any time while walking. Under no circumstances allow the money to be stolen, lost, or noticed by anyone on your way to the ship.

Be especially alert for any deus ex machina that may attempt to reveal the gold and consequently the deal you made, which would expose your lies and cause your crew to go out after the Cougar despite the fact you don't want to. Take every precaution to ensure this doesn't happen.

After the gold is stored safely, go back to whoever told you to check out the Cougar earlier, and report that you overheard people talking about how the Cougar has purchased protection for this voyage (which is technically true). Tell them it seemed like far too much risk for such a small payoff, since they're just carrying some sugar, and that you guess the crew will just have to enjoy their night in town having a good time as originally planned.

If you're not at the tavern yet, go to the tavern. Get some drinks, be social with whoever's there, and enjoy a long evening of general merriment. Charismatically engage a wench or other potentially willing woman until you've ensured yourself lodgings and company for the night. Of course, such lodgings don't necessarily need to be free.

If anyone else brings up the Cougar before the above actions can be carried out, use your charisma to nonchalantly defuse the conversation before it can start and change the subject. However, don't do it in a way that might make people suspicious or have them possibly think that you might have been paid off or be lying. If it seems like some supernatural force is attempting to steer fate toward the crew leaving town tonight for any reason, especially anything to do with the Cougar, then be sure to do everything in your power to stop it from happening.

If worse comes to worst and it somehow becomes completely impossible to avoid the crew leaving town tonight, then use your stealth to abandon the pirates altogether, and find somewhere effective to hide until they've left. After all, if they eventually come back, you can pretend you didn't know they were leaving, or say you got caught up with something and didn't make it back in time. After they're gone, continue the original actions which were interrupted.

If it was not only impossible to avoid the crew leaving tonight, but also impossible to avoid you leaving with the crew, then commit suicide in the most efficient way with the highest probability of killing yourself. A good example would be stabbing yourself in the throat repeatedly until you die, or putting a gun in your mouth and shooting up through the top of your head. If even this is somehow impossible, bite your own tongue off and purposely inhale the blood, so you'll either bleed to death or drown. If you're knocked unconscious at any point, and you wake up in the same situation (being forced to leave town, or already outside of town), constantly try resuming this action until you're finally dead.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 1 2013, 2:00 am by Azrael.

Make sure you take a moment to stare off blankly into the distance and let out a nice long "Yarrrrrr...." to enjoy the little things about being a Pirate.

Whatever you do, don't kill yourself.

You accept Captain Blackstone's deal and take the bag of doubloons. As you leave the cabin you notice a few swords on the hips of the Cougar's crewmembers, as if they were ready to fight in case something went wrong during the negotiations.

While walking back to the inn, you contemplate telling the captain about the negotiation, and advising him to do this with other ships. You decide against it, as a twenty doubloon "fee" is a great sum for a single pirate, but would be little when divided up amongst the crew of the Trident.

You return to the tavern with a great "Yarr!" By now, more sailors and townspeople have begun to congregate at the tables. You stroll over to a group of pirates and casually chat with them, consuming rum and roasted meats. When Dan asks you about the Cougar, you say that they have hired protection, and that it wouldn't be worth it to try and attack them over a couple of barrels of sugar. Dan shrugs indifferently and returns to his drink.

The next morning, you wake up in one of the inn's rooms. It appears that last night's company has already left. You check your pouch of coins and determine that nothing was stolen.

The Trident isn't planning to leave St. Christopher until tomorrow. The main interests in the town are the general store, the blacksmith, the tailor, the church, and the tavern.

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 6

Traits: Creative