Separately and collectively, you've all fallen into the hands of pirate slavers.  Most of you remember it this way:  You were walking in the countryside near your homes, strolling home from the tavern after a night's drinking, walking down to the river to fetch some water, or gone to visit some lass or lad in neighboring village.  And, suddenly, you heard a thrashing in the underbrush around you, and before you could turn you felt a whale of a blow to the back of your head, and everything went black.

When you awoke, you were in the dark, tiny, stinking hold of the pirate galley, shackled by your wrists to the sturdy beams of the slave bunks, bunks stacked like cordwood.  There were about 40 other captured folk of the archipelago there.  You were sick from the blow to your head and from the tossing of the ship, from the revolting gruel the slaver pirates occasionally fed you, and from the knowledge that you were bound for one of the western slave ports, never again to see your own home.  Mockingly, the keys to your shackles were hung from a hook right by the hatch to the deck, only 5 or 6 feet from the lot of you.  They might as well be miles away.

A few days after you woke up, the ship was hit by a squall, which turned, after half a day of tossing and rolling, into a full fledged storm which blasted spray and curses into the hold every time the hatch above was opened.  Your jailer, a man named Hafkris - maybe a half-orc, it was hard to tell under all that grime and walrus ugliness - brought about half the shackled slaves above decks to man the oars vacated by sailors washed overboard.  The storm continued on another day, and Hafkris took another one-fourth of the slave cargo above decks.  He looked worried.

That was yesterday.  You haven't seen any of the pirates or the slaves since then, and you haven't been fed.  Early today, the shouting and cracking whips indicating that rowers were being kept in line finally faded away to nothing.  Right now, as you're waiting for some sign of life from above decks, there's an enormous crash - a grating, grinding noise and horrible shuddering of the ship around you as it runs aground.  Above decks, there's the sound of snapping spars and a great crash on the deck which you know must be the mast coming down.  You're all thrown toward the bow, but are still held fast by your shackles and suffer more bruises to your wrists.

The bow of the galley is shattered by the impact, and as the galley grinds to a halt, the bow is torn away entirely, letting in a ferocious blast of numbingly-cold air and ram; the port side of the galley is laid open by a huge boulder that the galley has ground against.  A moment later, there's once again only the sound of wind and pounding surf.  Out the open bow, you can see a section of rain pounded beach; you seem to have run aground where a cliff face meets a cove beach.  

Currently, there are nine of you chained together.  There is a dwarf, a halfling, a half-elf, a young woman, and five young men.  The woman looks to be in her early twenties, or late teens, and has long brown hair and beautiful pale blue eyes.  She stands about five and half feet tall and has a good physique.



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OOC: What do you all do now?

"Damn!" grumbles Porcius, the squat dwarf. "Is everyone all right? Anyone needs help?" While speaking, he looks around to see if the keys to the manacles are still in their place.

[Questions: Other than the nine of us, what else is attached to the chain? Does it terminate at a ring affixed to the floor? Are there dead captives attached to it? What happened to the other slaves?]

Poricus tries his chains and finds that it's still firmly attached to his bunk.  Everyone's hands are chained their bunks without any lead, and so it's impossible to get any kind of leverage against the chains.  He turns in his bunk and looks over at the key hook and his stomach sinks when he sees that the keys are not on the hook.  Although it was dark in here, Poricus' dwarven eyes spot something on the floor under some splintered wood that might be the keyring and keys to their chains.

"I... I'm alright. I think..."

Arnould slowly shakes his head, his jet black hair covering his face as he tries to understand what is going on around him. He sighs loudly, as if trying to wake up from a bad dream he had to endure in his sleep. He tries to pull on his chain and break free. Maybe his bunk suffered some amount of damage that would help him rip the chains apart from its frame.

Porcius tries to pry up a few of the planks to get at what he hopes to be the keys. If he can't get to it with his bare hands, he looks around for some loose planks - the big ole' rock coming through the side must have left broken wood all over the place, or at the very least weakened the planks around the hole -, and uses those as a primitive prybar.

Jon shakes his head and squints out the bow, before turning back and saying, "Yeah, I seem ta be ok."

He glances quickly in the direction of the keys, then around the floor as he starts whispering a quiet prayer to the God of the Sea, "Lord of the Waves show your humble servants mercy and please aid us in this time of our helplessness and need. Thank You for your life-sustaining bounty, and for the storm you sent to punish our captors."

Turning his attention to the bunk, Jon begins appraising how securely the bunk is still attached to the ship

Moaning and spitting a bit o' blood "Uhhh..merely bruised it seems!" shaking it off as I squint in the light and spray..."We have run aground!" as I pull inefectualy on the chains and look around wildly.

"Mates, I dunno about any of you, but I think we're on our own here. Don't suppose any of you are hidin' those keys are ya?"

Figuring it's useless to mess with the chains themselves, and it's likely too dark for his human eyes to really search for the keys. Is there anyone close to Jono? With the bunks "stacked like cordwood", maybe he can help someone else break free of their bonds, or use another bunk to apply pressure to his own.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;432906"Mates, I dunno about any of you, but I think we're on our own here. Don't suppose any of you are hidin' those keys are ya?"
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"We are not so fotunate as that man,they are storm tossed as well!" looking for any possible tool to apply leverage to the chain fittings etc. anything potentialy usefull that has been tossed/moved into reach/out of place by the crash.
I will use my feet to move an object if need be...

I wonder if I can slip my hands out of these . Kelavan thinks as He attempts to slide his hands out of the restraints .
The rain and surf coming through the busted hull should give some lubrication ."I yet live!" he replies to the dwarf .
Search with My eyes hands ans feet for anything that might be of use .

Yeah, yeah, I think I got the key, 'ere." - Porcius replies in a loud grumbling. "Gimme a minute. And gimme a loose plank from that large gap, think I need a prybar 'ere."

The two remaining men sound off as being alive, but completely chained to their bunks as well.  

"Unh, I think I'm alive," the only female says weakly in a dazed tone from her bunk.

She seems shaken up, which can be heard in her voice, and she just lays on her bunk while the others struggles against their bonds.  The men try has hard as they can to get their shackled and chained hands free, but it is in vain.  There is only a few inches at best between their chain and the bunk, and getting any kind of leverage to bare against it is impossible.

"Damn it!" exclaims one of the men, "I can't get free!"

"We're going to die here like dogs!" another man calls out in utter frustration and despair.

In a hesitant tone, the woman calls out, "I think my bunk was damaged in the crash."

Everyone can hear her struggle to break free from her bunk.  He labored breathing and Herculean effort resonates in the ears of the men as the wait for the outcome of her struggle.  After what seemed like an eternity to the men, but in reality was only a minute or two, they hear a scream and loud noise.

"I did it!" the woman says in amazement after she rights herself from tumbling backward and hitting herself against the hull.

In the limited light filtering into the smashed hull, the men can see her shape stand up and about eight inches of chain dangle between her still shackled hands.

Arnould watches as the woman manages to stand up. He doesn't waste any time:

"We've got to stick together. Find the key, free us all, and hopefully, we might have a slight chance to make it. Leave now, without us, and we all die our separate ways."

In an indignant tone of voice, the woman says, "I am no wicked or vile person, I assure you!"

She looks to the peg where the keyring was last seen, and then says in a horrified tone, "the keys are gone!"

"Help the dwarf, then! He seems to think he's spotted something...but be careful, in case there's other damage in here."