In the cargo hold of the Second Shank...
Mark, having gotten into the proper shipping spirit, tries to take an inventory of all the stuff and people on the ship. After spending about half an hour walking to and fro, opening barrels, examining people and opening crates, he finds out several things - firstly, a lot of barrels and contain useless crap, and they would require Mark to dig through them all to locate what might be in them. He also finds a barrel of sludge, one and a half barrels of absolutely horrible pseudo-ale (or perhaps wine - it is difficult to tell, and his tree nearly wilts from the aroma), several barrels of near-fossilized apples and lemons, a lot of rope secreted away in the strangest places, a whole bunch of bowls, jars, buckets tankards and more (also put in the darnedest of hiding spots), various foods in the kitchen along with a container of dry ice, a large supply of paper and writing supplies, a crate of spare sailcloth and a few other odds and ends. Oh, and a high quality mop and bucket in the kitchen. Plus the three corpses plus extra organs pickled in two barrels.
As for people, they seem to have everyone - the Artiste, himself, Evelyn, Erin, Art, Justine, Morton, Niklas, Kevin, Sigmund, Tailor Craig, the Captain... Scott's missing. Gods damn it all to hell, how many people will he have to pull back here? Oh, and they also have two guests, Chatty Golden Skeleton Lady and Equally Chatty Painted Dude.
Sigmund, unaware of Mark's highly productive exploits, continues his mass focus creation.
[Sigmund's focus creation rolls: 3+1, 6-1, 2+1, 4+1, 2+1, 6-1, 2+1, 2+1, 5, 5]
He gets ten pages of... varying quality. He would say that five of them came out nicely, one was merely okay, but four others are pretty weak. No immense catastrophes happened, though, so that's good! This is quite tiring, though.
In the deep, spooky depths of the Sea of Pleasant Winds...
Scott, knowing he has but one chance at this, tries to ghostify himself - his knowledge, while hardly complete, should be enough... he hopes.
[Scott's ghostification roll: 6]
As his soul peels out of his head, Scott lets go for a moment, his soul slipping out of his mortal remains and, for a split second, beginning to fly off into the afterlife. Scott is ready, however, and, in a single, mighty effort, asserts his powerful need to be here, in this very spot. Fortunately enough, his soul immediately responds, suddenly becoming very, very still. There it hangs for a bit, Scott wondering if this is it. Did he mess something up? Can he fix it?
Then, in a moment that feels like a longer wait than it really was, it starts. The area around Scott's soul becomes foggy and thick suddenly, forming a sphere of what looks like a milky, blue-greenish fluid. It swirls and moves all around for a bit, reminding Scott of mushroom soup more than a little bit - he supposes it has less bits in it, though, so the similarity is imperfect.
However, before he can consider this further, the fog suddenly implodes on itself, congealing around Scott's soul with great rapidity and not an insignificant amount of light emission. Blinding, painful light emission. For a good minute or so, Scott is in the middle of a dense swirl of what he realizes must be ectoplasm. And with this realization, the swirl stops, assuming a definite shape over the span of a second. And then, just as abruptly as it happened, it is over. Scott can only see the sea around him, rather quiet now. When he looks down, he can also spot a whole bunch of body parts that he knows are his own lying around - including his former place of residence, his fleshy, traumatized head that still manages to look devilishly handsome despite having been vacated of its inimitable occupant.
As he looks down, however, he realizes another thing. Though he is now a ghost, he still seems to have no body. Combined with the fact that Scott can still see his own nose, this leads him to strongly suspect that he is still just a disembodied head, albeit a spectral, floating one. He'd have to get confirmation on that, though. And after that, he could certainly use spectral flames enveloping his head. That is definitely second on the great checklist.
Author
Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 540908 times)