You finally spot the island known as Morrow's Hope on the horizon, Ripoff has been prowling the deck for hours already looking for it. The crew seems restless to put feet on land again, and you certainly can't say you blame them. The island is oddly shaped, like someone or something has eaten a part of it and left the rest of the cake in the water, but you see some sparse housing scattered around on the side the ship is approaching, and the largest building you see is obviously a church standing halfway up the hill side, bearing the symbol of Morrow.
Touching land the Captain calls together everyone and picks out his work-crew to go along with Ripoff, while the rest remain on the ship to deal with any potential problems, or probably a hasty retreat. To your surprise you're picked as one for the work-crew, from what you had heard from the sailors, you thought the Captain only included the trusted veterans or some such. He also picks Skagg the trollkin we picked up drifting on the sea, he certainly seems intimidating enough. You also meet Sir Ronald for the first time, though you had heard he was on the ship somewhere.
Everyone follow Ripoff toward the church, saying that whatever it was he was after was stored nearby. Once you arrive you present myself to the Priest there, while Ripoff walks around until he finds the grave he was looking for and starts digging. You react to his actions but the priest explains that it is ok, and that it is Ripoff's hiding spot. After the trollkin has shown his macabre and unfitting sense of humor, the priest asks you if we would be willing to help him chase away some beggars and other poor people that sleeps in the nearby catacombs, an old burial house for some of the families of higher standing that has since passed away or move out of the island. You agree to his humble request.
The catacombs are dark but you manage to light the way for everyone, and you manage to get past a hidden door to get further into the catacombs. Once inside the walls turn white, and the entire halls seems to smell crisp and clear, like someone has cleaned the place throughly. A bit further in you spot four men wearing strange armors covering their entire bodies. After a tough fight, where several get injuries, small flying blinking balls came out of the walls and started putting the metal-men together again, and everyone was trying to fight in close quarters. The Mechanik opens up on of these armors and find that there is nobody inside, just lots of gears and metal, and some sort of weird contraption that seems to radiate a strange energy, making your skin crawl.
Between the Mechanik and yourself, you guess that this might be a soul-cage or something similar since it does not seem to be of cryxian design, and you extract and keep all four of them until we can find out more about them, and how to properly release the souls to Urcaen.
After more walking we find a big doorway, and the trollkin looks inside, you don't know what he saw, but suddenly he just slipped in and you heard a scream then all hell broke loose. As you and the others start rushing in through the doors into a huge room you notice more metallic looking men, a few of them that looks human runs towards you with some glowing staffs, and one release a gust of fire into the door hitting several of you. Further in you see some misshaped metal creations, that you assume are steamjacks of some sort, and a huge metal creature with many arms, legs, weapons, and what not. In front of these lies the trollkin bleeding and broken on the ground, you can see where his side has been crushed by some attack and how his ribs has broken, and you try to rush forward to get to him, but run into one of the Steamjack things instead. Sir Ronald fires off his rifle at incredible speed and the big metal thing with arms and legs collapse, and the steamjacks seems to just stop by themselves. The three humans still alive surrenders. And you run toward the trollkin and try to patch him up so you can get to the ship at least.
The Nyss starts trying to interrogate the prisoners, but the Captain insists that he should do that. Meanwhile the troll is busy trying to destroy every single scrap of the big arms and legs thing, and the Mechanik and Sir Ronald seems busy rummaging through the remains for things. Since you don't have anything else to do, you just stand guard and watch over everyone else. Your ears perk up once one of the prisoners starts talking about the soul-cages and their cult, and you're abhorred that people would store others souls in devices like this and deny them Urcaen. The Captain asks what happens if he breaks one, and the prisoner responds that the soul will go back to where it belongs, and before you even have time to react the captain takes one of the soul-cages and smashes it against the wall. You stand agape, in shock, that anyone can act so rashly on such a weighty matter, not even considering that the prisoner might not speak truth, and that checking this with other more trusted sources would be the wise thing to do, before irrevocably smashing the device. But no, while you're still stunned, he picks up and smashes two more of the four ones we had gathered up.
He then proceeds to question the cultists some more, and asks one of them to explain how something works and the cultist responds with arcane sounding words, after concentrating on them, you think they sound like some kind of mathematical formulas, like the ones you learned in the Church, but much more complex and with many parts and words you have no idea what means. The captain starts shouting to he cultist that he makes no sense, and the cultist tells him that it is difficult to explain things like these to uneducated people like us, the captain orders him to talk so he understands it, and the cultists stops and ponders this for a second. Then the Captain blows his head off from point blank with his pistol. Your mouth hangs ajar, and you're to stunned to do a thing.
The Captain points his other gun at the next prisoner and orders him to talk, or he will shoot him as well, sensibly enough the two remaining prisoners kept their mouth shut, why talk and die if you can at least deny them the knowledge and die anyways. You rush over to the now dead man, hoping for some sign of life, and finding none. You wonder what kind of madman slaughters helpless people like this, you're supposed to grant mercy to the enemy that surrenders, and you're starting to really wonder what kind of people you've gotten mixed up with. But the only thing you manage to get out are some half strangled sounds, and staring at the dead body and the Captain, wanting to do something, anything, but no idea what, and not certain if you have the guts to go through with it anyways. Looking back, this is the weakest moment in your life, and you've sworn to yourself that you will never let something like this happen again while you do nothing.
Half in a daze, wanting to hurl, shout and scream your frustration out on the captain, and just to get the heck away, you see the Captain still trying to get more out of the prisoners. You quickly suggest that you take a couple of the other people, the more sane ones like Sir Ronald and Kyros the Nyss, and bring the remaining prisoners up to the church and find something to tie them up with before delivering them to the authorities. And letting the others help the Mechanik with the salvaging of the battlefield, hoping to separate the Captain from the prisoners. Unfortunately it backfired, and the Captain insisted on going along.
You get the prisoners up, and tie them up in the church, and send the Nyss off to fetch the local constable. Meanwhile Ripoff seems to be done with the digging. The others finish most of the salvaging, and brings out several strange things, but before you get to look much at them, the Nyss returns with the Constable and a huge amount of other people with all kinds of makeshift weapons, this looks more like a lynch-mob than a police force…
You feel that your contact with the rest of the crew grows, many of them are Morrowans and have asked you to read from the books or hold small sermons. It feels good to do these spiritual tasks, even though you know how inadequate you are for the task. You have also done a good bit of work on the sick-bay, categorized the tools and medicines that was vastly in disarray, cleaned the entire room from all the filth and old blood stains and so on, with more work and some new supplies you might be able to get it up and running in as good a shape as you can reasonably expect on a ship. You feel a bit guilty that you've probably spent to much time on these tasks, and not enough on fixing sails and ropes, but at least the Boatswain haven't complained yet. Looking through the small collection of medical books you found in the Sickbay, you've started pondering some ideas of improving your tools, especially with trying to sterilize tools and bandages so you can improve chances against diseases and infections, which seems to be the main problem with ship based medical care.
You're not certain if you can even put your thoughts about the captain into proper words, it seems that every time you try to form a sentence it feels insufficient for the task of describing him. But his recent doings has certainly made you question his sanity and empathy. He seems obsessed with his own power, tries to flaunt it continually, and revel in any situation where he can put himself in control. This obsession seems to also include life and death, where he seems to get a kick out of decreeing who gets to live and who gets to die, and mete out the death penalty himself. You don't know if he actually enjoys the murdering itself or just the feeling of power and control, but you wouldn't be surprised if it was both.
You're starting to wonder if this man is a Thamarite, or possibly corrupted by the Dark twin, this bears some looking in to. He certainly seems to match every horror story you've heard about Thamarites save bringing back the dead. One thing you are certain of, and that is that this is not a good man in the eyes of Morrow, and His light does not touch upon the Captain. You need to consult with some higher ranking priest for advice, like Joseph Thirsk, but for now you're certain that the Captain might be the greatest danger you will face on this journey, you won't turn your back to him, and you will do everything you can to help others from this vile man.
You're starting to think that her single-minded fascination and dedication to all things mechanical is bordering on obsession, you're very uncertain on how to approach or deal with that. Her knowledge is however very useful. Your main concern however, is that she seems to be completely fine with all the atrocities the Captain does, seemingly without caring one way or another. Perhaps she has some sort of mental trauma or other problems ? Probably to touchy to ask about.
The little you've spoken to him so far, he seems a civilized and mannered person. He is obviously some sort of man of higher standing, and insist on begin called Lord, but doesn't answer what he is lord off. You think it is easier to just call him Sir from now on. You can't really say if you like or dislike him yet, but at least he is polite and doesn't try to chew you up for talking to him. He does seem to be a remarkable shot with the rifle.
It seems that the Nyss have changed from a reckless berserker into an overly cautious person, you're not quite certain what has happened, but the change from the first time you saw him in combat, to the next time is profound. You still find him difficult to approach, but perhaps you should try to ask him a bit and see if there is anything you might help him with ?
This person gave you a bad vibe from the start, not even caring enough to talk to people properly, grunting replies non-committing, and looking down on everyone for no apparent reason. Later he has shown a complete disregard for other people and their lives, and seems to be engrossed in slaughtering as many as possible. You're trying hard to look for a spark of something good in this person, but you wonder the effort is not wasted from the start. And his sense of humour is just macabre and disgusting!
You've learned quite a few things about yourself as well as others on this trip, not all of them things you're proud off. You're particularly ashamed of how you froze up in critical situations where you might have been able to do something, you're still not certain you would have been able to do anything, but at least you would have tried. And you question yourself if the lack of action was due to surprise, lack of faith, cowardice, or something else? This is something you intend to sit down and ponder as soon as you get the time, and find a way to overcome, somehow. You also surprisingly find that you enjoy the routine of stitching together sails, it is somewhat soothing.