From the Diary of Rudolpho Milano

Dear Diary,

Boy have I had a bad couple of days. The one good part is that Z and Cheri were able to cure my sandy condition with some kind of magic scroll and a bead. After that, things went to shit as usual.

Our crap-delivery mission continues to piss me off with every minute that I spend on this damn ship. I want to get back to Sasserine so I can get my damn adamantine falchion.

The other day we had to make a run through the pirate-infested waters of the Scarlet Brotherhood. Lavinia's brilliant suggestion was to slip through one at a time. That sounded just fine and dandy to me. I figured we could wait for the Sea Nymph to go on ahead and then turn our ship around to head home. But nooo! Gallant Sir Vin convince everyone to keep the two ships together in order to fight off any attacking pirates. I’m all for pirate-killing I guess but now we’re still stuck with Lavinia on this mission.

Since we were going to try to slip through at night, I decided to try to take advantage of the fact that most pirates are a superstitious lot. We painted the name of the ghost ship, the Cresting Wave on the Sea Wyvern to spook the Scarlet Brotherhood. I figured the Cresting Wave would have a fair amount of legend behind it and no-one would dare attack us. As usual, I was completely wrong.

As we made our way through the straight, we were attacked by two pirate ships, the Purity’s Prow and the Whaler. That was the strangest ship battle that I have ever been involved in. I didn’t get to do much. I think I fired the bow ballista a couple of times.

We started off with Z launching a huge-ass exploding ball of flames at the Whaler. As the crew ran around like trying like hell to put out the fire, our captain ordered our ship to turn about and make ready to ram. Nesta picked individual sailors off of the deck of the Purity’s Prow with her longbow. She made a game out of alternately offing whoever was brave enough to man the wheel and plunking arrows into the captain with lethal accuracy.

As we made our turn, that silly wizard that we picked up cast some sort of spell that filled our sails with the fastest wind I’ve ever sailed in. I’ve never traveled that fast in a ship, ever! There wasn’t much left of the Whaler after we rammed her. We turned about again to go after the Purity’s Prow and starting to think that finally I’ll get to do some hand to hand killing when the boat just up and surrenders to us.

I boarded first to make sure that I didn’t recognize any of the crew as the pirates that tossed me overboard a couple of years ago. Luckily for them, I didn’t recognize them. None of them had any news of me pa, Antonio or that bitch Maria. Spanky took command of the ship and promptly rechristened it the Vicious Spanking. That guy has issues.

Shortly thereafter, we were replenishing our water at a waterfall when we were attacked by a seven-headed sea-dragon. My dull falchion didn’t even penetrate its tough hide. Luckily we killed the beast and spent the rest of the day diving for treasure. There was a handful of sunken ships lying on the ocean floor there. All of ‘em were all busted up and it was pretty obvious what done it. I couldn’t make out any of the ship names. Ah, well. The losers shoulda’ fought harder.

Sometimes I wonder if something like that has happened to my own sweet pa, Antonio Milano. Then again I also sometimes like to fart underwater just to watch the bubbles. I gotta remember to ask around for Antonio or Maria at the next spot of civilization we come to.

That brings me to my last incident to report. A couple of days before the fight with the dragon, we got to Fort Greenlock, where I was hoping to do some asking around - or maybe even get Vin ‘everyone-loves-me’ Icemark to do it for me while the captains took on more provisions. Unfortunately for everyone, Fort Greenlock has been abaondoned.

There appears to have been an attack, although there were no bodies. Yep, a genuine mystery. As mysteries really bore me, I was quite relieved that Vin didn’t open his big blue mouth and get everyone stomping through the forest an a big loser-hunt.

Lavinia says that we will soon enough come to the peaceful village of Renkrue on the island of Axuxal. She suggests that we can make a short stay there to relax. That sounds good to me. I can’t wait to do some shopping, drinking, asking around, and just plain relaxing someplace other than this damn boat. Yep, I’m sure looking forward this stop.

-R