Death is a Boat
You follow the sacred river Alph through caverns measureless to man (believe me, we've tried), until you reach the river's mouth, which gives onto a vast, sunless sea. A thousand, thousand slimy things crawl along the surface of the sea, which is pretty disgusting, all things considered. There's water everywhere down here, but you wouldn't want to drink any drop of it.
You see a sizeable ship moored next to a pier on the edge of the sea. It doesn't look particularly seaworthy, though: it's covered in barnacles, anemones, and random jagged crusty bits. In fact, it looks more like something you'd find at the bottom of the sea than something floating on top of it.
The crew that you can see look even weirder than the ship, if that's possible -- there's a guy with the head of a hammerhead shark swabbing the deck, a guy with spiny, pufferfish cheeks raising the sails, and a dude with an elephant seal for a leg busily lashing ropes together.
The gangplank's lowered, though, so if you can go on board -- if you dare!
Was that over the top?
| Go up to the crow's nest |
- Without the No Vertigo effect:
You start to climb the riggin' up to the Crow's Nest, holding your breath and trying not to look down. Before you can get to the top (well, to be honest, before you can get more than three feet up), you start to feel an uncontrollable urge to find a woman who looks just like your dead girlfriend and dress her in all your dead girlfriend's clothes. No doubt about it -- you've got a bad case of vertigo.
You climb back down the rigging sweating, gasping for air, your heart pounding. No one's likely to see you waving from such great heights anytime soon.
- With the No Vertigo effect:
You climb up the riggin' to the Crow's Nest. There's a man with a pegleg up there, but he has his back to you as he scans the sunless sea with a telescope. "Excuse me," you say, and have to stifle a scream as he turns around.
"Mmmph," he says, then reaches up into the mass of tentacles and eyeballs where his head should be, pulls, and removes the octopus that you had mistook for his face. "Sorry," he says, "this is my octopus, Ringo. He likes to look through the telescope sometimes. The name's Short Fred Mercury. I'm the cook here on the Dour Roger."
You strike up a conversation with the cook, and find he's a good old-fashioned lover boy, though he wants to break free of the sailor's life and go ashore from time to time. You tell him some anecdotes from your adventures so far, and he's so entertained he gives you his lunch to take back with you.
 | You acquire an item: S.T.L.T. |
| Walk the main deck |
You walk up the gangplank and onto the main deck of the ship. You try to make your way across the deck to the captain's cabin, but the ship is in constant motion. You stumble and fall in that way that always looks comical but is actually really, really painful.
"Steady as she goes there, matey!" pufferfish-head says, laughing. "Ye need to be getting yer sea legs!"
"Um, these are the only legs I've got," you say, nonplussed (which means, you'll note, "in a state of lacking information.").
"Nah, matey! Ye need to pretend ye're about half drunk and half drag queen -- walk like this!" hammerhead-face says, demonstrating a peculiar staggering, swishy gait that allows him to roll with the motion of the ocean (regardless of the size of the boat).
You spend a while practicing, and before too long you're walking like RuPaul after three martinis. You feel a little more suave now that you're not constantly on the verge of falling on your face.
| You gain approx. 1*Mainstat in Smarm. |
| Check out the helm |
- Without Unusual Fashion Sense
You wander over to the "helm" of the ship, which in landlubber terms means the giant steering wheel where the captain stands. You see a grizzled, ancient mariner at the wheel, busily spinning it back and forth. This is slightly odd, since the ship's currently at anchor, but you decide he probably knows more about sailing than you do, so you let it slide.
What you can't let slide, though, is his thoroughly bizarre taste in accessories. Instead of a necklace, or maybe a nice bowtie, he has a dead albatross hanging from a rope around his neck. It looks as stylish as its smell is pleasant, and it appears to have been dead for quite some time.
"Man, what's with the dead bird?" you ask him.
"It's not dead! It's pining for the fjords," he says. "Nah, just kidding, it's dead. This albatross was a good omen on the last sea-voyage we took -- it faithfully followed the ship, and as long as we could see it in the sky, we had a fair wind and smooth sailing. But one day, as it flew over, it took a giant crap on my head, so I took my bow and shot it. As soon as it fell dead to the deck, the wind went all weird and we ended up stuck in this underground sea. I tied the albatross to my neck as penance for offending the gods."
"That's ridiculous," you blurt out before you can stop yourself. "People kill birds all the time. Birds kill birds all the time. Birds kill themselves all the time -- they're barely smarter than fungus! I mean, this is the sort of ridiculous symbolism you'd find in some kind of -- I don't know -- romantic poem!"
The mariner's face twitches as a few barnacles sprout on top of his five o'clock shadow. He pulls you close until bird-stench fills your nostrils and snarls, "you best start believin' in romantic poems, adventurer....ye're IN one!"
You turn and flee back down the gangplank and off the boat. Gah, man. That was freaky.
You wander over to the "helm" of the ship, which in landlubber terms means the giant steering wheel where the captain stands. You see a grizzled, ancient mariner at the wheel, busily spinning it back and forth. This is slightly odd, since the ship's currently at anchor, but you decide he probably knows more about sailing than you do, so you let it slide.
What you can't let slide, though, is his thoroughly amazing taste in accessories. Instead of a boring old necklace, or maybe a dorky bowtie, he has a dead albatross hanging from a rope around his neck. It's like that one rapper who wore those giant clocks around his neck, only way more hardcore."
"Wow, where did you get that dead bird?" you ask him.
"It's not dead! It's pining for the fjords," he says. "Nah, just kidding, it's dead. This albatross was a good omen on the last sea-voyage we took -- it faithfully followed the ship, and as long as we could see it in the sky, we had a fair wind and smooth sailing. But one day, as it flew over, it took a giant crap on my head, so I took my bow and shot it. As soon as it fell dead to the deck, the wind went all weird and we ended up stuck in this underground sea. I tied the albatross to my neck as penance for offending the gods."
"That's ridiculous," you blurt out before you can stop yourself. "People kill birds all the time. Birds kill birds all the times. Birds are barely smarter than fungus! I mean, this is the sort of ridiculous symbolism you'd find in some kind of -- I don't know -- romantic poem!"
The mariner's face twitches as a few barnacles sprout on top of his five o'clock shadow. He pulls you close until bird-stench fills your nostrils and snarls, "you best start believin' in romantic poems, adventurer....ye're IN one!"
"No I'm not," you say. "I'm in a browser-based MMORP -- er, I'm in a fantasy kingdom trying to defeat an evil sorceress! I could sure use that bird you've got -- it'd make me look like a total badass. I mean, maybe you have such bad luck because you need to get rid of the albatross, eh?"
The captain agrees and hands over the albatross necklace. Stylin'!
 | You acquire an item: albatross necklace |
- Occurs at The Stately Pleasure Dome.
References
- The lines "sacred river Alph", "caverns measureless to man", "river's mouth", and "vast, sunless sea" are references to the poem Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
- The description of "a thousand slimy things" and the comment about there being water everywhere but not drinking a drop of it are references to the poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
- The third adventure is a reference to Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
- The description of the ship and her crew in this adventure is a reference to Davy Jones's ship from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
- The concept of death being a boat is referred to in a line from the play (and movie), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. It is also ironically referring to the common phrase, "Love is a River".
- The "Walk the main deck" adventure title ("Savvy?") and the quote "Ye need to pretend ye're about half drunk and half drag queen" refer to Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, who frequently uses the word "Savvy" and has an idiosyncratic swaying walk.
- Fred Mercury is a reference to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. He's also a reference to Long John Silver, a character from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.
- In the same vein, "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" and "I Want to Break Free" are both Queen songs.
- The name of the Octopus is a reference to Ringo Starr and the song "Octopus's Garden", which was the second and final song he wrote for The Beatles.
- The line "pining for the fjords" comes from the infamous Monty Python "Dead Parrot sketch".
- The line said by the mariner in the third adventure refers to Captain Barbossa's quote in Pirates of the Caribbean: "You best start believing in ghost stories... you're in one!"
- The rapper who wore a clock around his neck is Flavor Flav from Public Enemy.
- The adventure titles "Freakin' in the Riggin' " and "Jiggin' in the Riggin' " are references to the Sex Pistols song, "Friggin' in the Riggin' ".
- The description of Vertigo matches that of the Hitchcock Film by the same name.
- The line "No one's likely to see you waving from such great heights anytime soon" is a reference to the lyrics of the song "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service.
- Though possibly only a coincidence, in the Iron Maiden live album Live After Death, before they play their song "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", lead singer Bruce Dickinson says "And the moral of this story is: This is what not to do if a bird shits on you."
