Now I don’t how many of you have ever sailed on a ship, so let me tell you one important thing: Fire is bad. Explosive fireballs with killing intent…worse. When these things started being fired at us, any plans of capturing the enemy ship undamaged were gone, we were fighting for survival now and we had to use everything at our disposal. We were too close to use the catapults now, but the cannons and ballistae were still at our disposal. But most importantly, we had two things that could even the scales a bit, speed…and a bloody giant naval ram. Our captain told most of the crew to follow him and rushed towards the upper rowing deck. He ordered everyone to either start or keep rowing like they never had before, to sink the bastards to the bottom of the sea for damaging our precious vessel. Flotsam started accelerating towards the Zhaarhasian ship, which was now showing its broadside and unleashing hells upon us. Whilst cannons are not that ordinary, I expected at least some weapons on board, but from I understand it now, Zhaarhasian weapons are not of the metal kind. What I saw instead was a line of fiendish flaming creatures, chained and frothing with rage and madness and being ordered to shoot fire at us by some fancy dressed humies. What was however maybe more terrifying was the array of beautiful female goblins with wings flying towards our ship. I am not the one to resist temptation, but I’ve heard stories of creatures that made good sailors lose their minds with lust and jump overboard, these creatures seemed like the ones to do those kinds of things. But now was not the time to look around, the enemy ship was changing its course so it could dodge our ramming and I would have none of that happen on my watch. I alone couldn’t do anything about it, but I knew of someone who could. The Stormcaller was running around the deck, creating sprays of water and small rains to quell the ongoing fires on the ship and seemed too busy to notice the flying creatures and the turning ship. I ran towards him, dodging one explosion after another, making may way across the maze of blaze happening around until I got to him. “We have to stop them, they’re turning their ship around!” “Are they now?” answered the shaman. He then quickly made his way towards the and I followed suit. On his was he quickly gestured towards a few other crewmen that remained on the main deck to follow him. “I need to concentrate on this. You six, protect me from those rotten fiends.” He then raised his hands in the air and I could see his body tense up and exert itself, almost as if he was trying to hold a heavy invisible above himself. I didn’t know what the shaman could do here, but I hoped he would be capably of stopping the ship. After some moments of nothing happening, I almost said “I knew not to believe those charades of wizards and magic” but then I realized that the enemy ship was turning no more, and it wasn’t for the lack of trying. No, it was trying to turn alright, but then I noticed the giant hands of water emerging from the deeps and holding the ship in place. Shiver me timbers and call me a gnome, I was a believer now. But the fun was not yet over, we still had those pigeons to take care off. Our chosen group of six goblins were tasked with protecting the shaman, thus shooting those winged fiends down. Unfortunately two of us had shortbows on our hands, fortunately the bow was equipped with a few…alternatives. There was a bigger ballista used mainly against ships on a raised platform in the middle of the bow, but that one was cumbersome and slow to reload. But in addition to that, there were also two smaller scorpions on the railing. The four of us without bows divided into pairs and we manned these overgrown crossbows and started shooting like our lives depended on it. Up to this day I still don’t know how we did it, but we managed to send at least a dozen of these sparrows to the depths before they reached our ship; But some still did. The two of them winged goblin ladies landed near us and exposed their long claws and fangs to us. Looking at them I suddenly felt the urge to help them, to kill my companion near me, Now I usually don’t refuse a beautiful lass, but this didn’t seem like the proper time. I realized what was happening and I knew I had to do something to clear out my mind. I smacked my head upon the railing as hard as I could and the pain sure made me cool down. I was afraid that my friend near me was having similar problems, so I did him the favour and smacked his head as well. We both drew our scimitars and charged at the lady nearer to us. They seemed taken off by our conviction, as not one of us six was beguiled by those wretched harlots. I could see fear in their eyes as we charged at them, and they tried to take to the skies once again. Upon trying to do so however, the flesh around the chains their bodies were wrapped with started sizzling and burning. The chains started glowing with red and blue light and seemed to put the demons into massive agony. Now I understand that they were probably defied the orders of their Zhaarhasian masters and that’s why the chains did what they did, but at the time I was glad that I had an easier time while cutting their head off. I was blind with bloodlust and triumph that I didn’t see that others on the deck weren’t as successful in getting rid of those bloody seductresses. Our men were fighting against each other and against the clawed harpies and they were losing. There were about twenty more of those demons on board and they were quickly cutting their way through our crew and they were quickly getting closer to us. We were lucky that we managed to defeat the two of them when I saw how they could dismember an orc in seconds with those razor-like claws of theirs. We were tasked with protecting the Stormcaller and that’s what we were going to do, it was our final hope. But in the midst of being slaughtered, a sudden impact hit us and nearly threw us on the ground. The impact was accompanied by painful creaking of wood and by shouts of terror from behind. Our ram had finally found its target. And with that all of our rowers were free to join the battle, and join it they did. They arrived like a tidal storm upon the main deck, crushing the damned chickens against their feet. But we weren’t the only ones waiting for a proper fight. The chained and bound hellish creatures and their masters were preparing themselves also for the bloodshed and they began boarding our ship as well. The proper battle was about to begin.