m9 pirate + essek joins earlier + speedrun any% au 🏝
disclaimer these are just sillies for fun bc i wanted more pirate times please don't think too much about plot divergences; feel free to add your own ideas in the mix!
spoilers for the mighty nein
• fjord becomes a captain earlier
• caleb escapes the prision earlier
• while on the run and covered in tears and mud, he meets beauregard in one of her many cobalt soul escapes
• a lone half-orc captain with a cursed sword but no ship or crew walks into a bar, sees two anxious looking humans in the corner: a scrawny woman with a grumpy face and a scrawnier ginger with a towel to his recently broken nose
• seems easy enough.
• girls night!!! they steal their first boat
• rule #1 of stealing methods of transportation is that you should watch out for blue tieflings stowaways trying to get as far away from a recent problem as possible
• back on land they loose beau (got got by the soul ☝️😔), caleb gets locked up in a shady storage while looking for her and there he meets nott the brave
• fjord's first response upon seeing a goblin following his navigator is to pull the sword on it
• nott's first response upon seeing some green dude shove a sword in her face is to pull her crossbow at him
• they look up and down for beau, but she finds her way back to them eventually
• still, they'll need more hands if they want to keep their totally legally owned ship afloat
• still on land, The Circus Plot happens and they acquire two more crew members 🎉
• molly loves the ocean, yasha likes the wind
• all of them like to go up to the crow's nest and bother caleb, nott more than the others; eventually he stops hiding up there so much
• yasha starts getting anxious about her unfinished business at the same time jester stars getting anxious about their clothes not being pirate-y enough
• they lose their first ship (of pristine papers as long as you don't look at them in the light) and have to travel on land until they manage to borrow a new one without asking it's owner and with promises of never returning it
• they also lose molly :(
• but they get caduceus :) who's not very keen on being in a boat for long periods of time but he'll adjust
• one thing he'll have in common with the cat
• fjord has a problem: The Voices in his head telling him to get back on the water
• jester has a conundrum: they got all of these nice, proper pirate outfits but now they have no ship
• love wins
• she did get frumpkin his very own little coat
• in the night, as the mighty nein crew wispers around two pushed together inn tables, a cloaked figure approaches upon hearing they are in need of help
• dezran, or dez, for short, for friends, an inconspicuous sun elf from, you know, around these parts, who is in dire need of work and oh would your captain be so kind to-
• insight checks fly around the pushed together inn tables
• but all of them know each of them is running from something or someone, and not all of them have a destination in mind, so really it's not like they're going to ask.
• plus nott thinks she saw a really nice boat on the dock with it's lights all out
• welcome aboard!
• cue the guy running from stealing things having to steal things
• cue a disguised drow's inventory slots full of the strongest sunscreen balm he could find this side of the continent
• maybe caduceus or jester finds out first, around when ess- dez, for friends, got a little too reckless and a little too hurt some time or other
• but the wildmother shows caduceus a lonely star when he asks, and artagan hasn't been paying attention, and anyways that's dez, that's right, their friend who has been nothing but helpful and fun, if a little skittish depending on the weather, and who always tries jester's pastries
• besides, far from him being the only person with a fake identity at the function. he's not that special.
• when fjord and beau find out, they're suspicious, but they won't make him walk the plank. there's protocol for that.
• yasha is not one to question someone running from their past
• when nott the brave finds out, she doesn't ask what he really looks like
• when caleb widogast finds out, during a siege on the ship, he grabs essek's arm and sees the drow underneath the disguise, and wants to know who are you, but circumstances are that later, they'll talk about this later.
