Chương 121: 4.11 Ship to Wreck - Florence + the Machine (3:54)

Z3ke (Original Poster) All y'all drastically understated Simon Pucco, which is ironic because I'm pretty confident the man doesn't even understand the concept of understatement. I genuinely don't believe he has the ability to do anything quietly or with even the slightest hint of restraint. We were drifting out on the water, just watching as the Why Not got closer and closer. Like I said in my last post, I didn't really understand why we weren't trying to run.

The captain wasn't giving orders and the crew wasn't scrambling with the sails and nobody was reaching for weapons or preparing for any kind of fight. I've seen those videos of merchant ships out in the Hormuz Strait and even they have firehoses rigged to the ship to spray down pirates, but we weren't doing shit. Everyone was just watching. The Why Not pulled up alongside our ship and, I don't know, I was expecting something dramatic to happen.

I've seen movies and I've read One Piece and I've played enough games to understand what is supposed to happen in those situations. The pirates board with grappling hooks and cannon fire and masked lunatics swinging across on ropes with knives in their teeth. You get a big fight and then it's all over. But that's not at all what happened. Instead, Simon Pucco just strolled onto our ship as calm as you please. And none of you thought to mention what the man actually looks like?

Seriously, was that not considered relevant information? I feel like you all should have told me that he looks like a parade vomited up a man, and then that man somehow gained a pirate ship. His coat was the first thing I noticed about him. Calling it colorful would suggest that whoever designed his coat made a series of conscious and deliberate choices and had some kind of plan. The thing looked like every color in existence all blended together. It wasn't even a rainbow, which would make some kind of sense.

A rainbow has order. It has structure. The colors transition into one another in a way that your brain can follow and you can look at it and understand it. But not Simon Pucco's coat. There was red and then orange and then somehow green while skipping yellow. There was no gradual transition there. The whole color spectrum decided to just skip around and… Jesus it was like skittles puked all over the man. The thing was heavily embroidered too, in some kind of pattern.

I couldn't make it out because it hurt just looking at the coat. Around his waist was a chain that was thick and gold and draped like a belt. It was so big that you could use it to tow ships into a harbor and I have no idea how the man walks around without listing to the side. He's got these red cowboy boots on which… the man is a pirate who lives on a boat. Where did he get cowboy boots? And more importantly, why are they red?

He had rings on almost every finger, scarves hanging from various places, beads in his hair and colored ribbons braided throughout EVERYTHING. Looking directly at him was like staring at fireworks, and I desperately wanted to laugh. I was trying real hard not to, but there was only so much visual information that a person can take before their brain just short circuits and starts demanding an explanation, and I wanted to start laughing just from the sheer absurdity of the situation.

But then I looked around at the rest of the crew and nobody was threatening to crack up. Everyone had their eyes on the deck. They had grim faces and tense shoulders and it was like watching gorillas reacting to a threat display. You know how you're not supposed to look a gorilla in the eye because they flip out and will wreck you? Yea. It was exactly like that. Taking in the sheer fear on everyone's faces, I started wondering if maybe I was missing something important.

The man looked absolutely ridiculous, but seemingly nobody cared because they were too frightened. Simon stepped onto the deck and looked around for a moment. He spotted the captain and waved him over with this little "come here" gesture like he wanted to ask him a question. The captain gave out a tired little sigh, like he realized that today was the day that Simon Pucco stole his ship. They talked quietly for a minute and I couldn't make out what they were saying.

From what I could see, Simon was perfectly pleasant about the whole thing, which might have been the weirdest part. I crept slightly closer to listen to what they were saying and I heard Simon compliment the captain on the ship. He said that it was well maintained and the captain should take pride in it. It felt like a manager taking a walk through a small part of his company. Then, as politely as possible, he told the captain that it was his ship now.

After that, Simon patted him on the shoulder and walked past him to the middle of the deck. The captain just stood there for a second and I saw his shoulders sag. Once Simon got to the middle of the deck, he addressed the rest of us.

"Good news, everyone. I require a ship. It just so happens that you have one. I require sailors. You are, conveniently, sailors. If everyone does their jobs and nobody creates any unnecessary complications, everyone should come out of this with a story worth telling. And isn't that what it's all about?" He paused there and looked around at all of us, seemingly measuring the state of us and if we were going to be a problem. Then he smiled and looked back at the captain.

"And, as an added bonus, once I'm finished, you get your ship back." That was it. That was the entire speech. The man didn't threaten anyone or draw a weapon or demand a surrender - which the captain had already done before Simon had even stepped aboard. We weren't being held at gunpoint and no one was standing over us with a sword. From what I could tell, Simon Pucco had simply walked onto the ship, told us we all worked for him now, and expected that to be enough. To be fair… it was.

None of the crew argued with him. No one reached for a weapon. No one even asked the question that immediately popped up in my head which was, what does "everyone should come out of this with a story worth telling" mean? The captain accepted the new normal. The crew accepted it. Everyone just stood in silence while a man in red cowboy boots and a rainbow nightmare coat casually took over our ship. Which is honestly kinda terrifying if you think about it. Why didn't we run? Why didn't anyone try to fight him?

Why did we all just quietly accept that a man wearing enough jewelry to open a mall kiosk was our new boss now? And what happens next? Reader I mean, doesn't this solve the money problem he has? Let Simon kill the KRILL KRAKEN then yoink the gold into his storage space and he's good. CrushDaddyXx YES!!! This is what I'm talking about. Zeke gets dragged into a crazy adventure, there's going to be a ton of loot involved, and we finally get an introduction to Simon Pucco.

I don't know what you're complaining about Zeke, this is going to be epic. Take my advice and try to butter him up. Get on his good side. Tell him his coat looks great, compliment his boots, whatever it takes. I love me some Captain Pucco. The dood's got flair. He's got style. He's got the confidence to wear whatever he wants and do whatever he wants. PuffPuffKeep I'm going to say it right now: Simon Pucco is by far the best NPC that Zeke has interacted with.

Corva was cool at the beginning, right up until we all learned that the dood was a massive dick who hops bodies. Patch is also awesome and I'll hear no arguments against him because the man is great. But Simon Pucco is something else entirely. I loved him in Syndicate's Wake and was secretly hoping that Zeke would run into him. As soon as Zeke talked about the Why Not floating its way into the story, I was bouncing in my chair.

The only thing I'll cop to being a little worried about is how well Zeke is going to translate him into his version of the Fracture-verse. There are some characters who are incredible in very small doses. The author has control over how often they show up and how much of them you get. Then they become a recurring character and you realize that, maybe three scenes of them was the perfect amount. I'm really hoping that doesn't happen with Simon.

So far we've seen him walk onto a ship dressed like a parade float and that's exactly the kind of introduction I was expecting out of it. HarpoonHoliday ^Puff. I think the reason Simon works is because he isn't like any other pirate. Calling him a pirate is like calling tornado weather. Technically that's true, but you're missing out on all the nuance. A normal pirate wants gold or cargo or power. Even Blackbeard (the real one) was trying to build up Nassau into something bigger.

But Simon Pucco doesn't care about any of that shit. He'll steal a ship if he needs a ship. He'll recruit a crew if he needs a crew. But he doesn't just collect shit to have it. He's not building a kingdom or sitting on a mountain of gold somewhere counting treasure. He just wants to know what's over the horizon. That's what makes him the perfect romanticized version of a pirate.

He wants the next island, the next monster, the next ruin, and the next impossible story that sounds ridiculous until he comes back three weeks later with a tale of his daring. Hambones What is up with all the glazing going on in this thread? Dood is just a flamboyant mess who steals other people's shit and press-gangs innocent sailors into his latest "adventure." I know he's a crowd favorite because he dresses like he lost a bet, but let's not pretend he's some kind of whimsical adventurer.

He takes what he wants, tells everyone involved that it'll all be fine, and then sails directly into the danger that everyone was trying to avoid. Right now, he's about to get Zeke killed because he's chasing a Living Story. Where the hell is Caboodle? Yo Caboodle, aren't you supposed to be Zeke's Proctor? Shouldn't you be at least a little concerned that Zeke got "recruited" into a pirate armada? I feel like that should be setting off alarms. 10161066 | That makes him the perfect romanticized version of a pirate.

| I mean, you're not totally wrong. Pirates were assholes and plenty of them were violent criminals, but the romanticized image of piracy does come from a very real place. You have to realize that the Golden Age of Piracy had sailors who were working under miserable conditions. The whole thing started because the Industrial Revolution displaced a ton of able-bodied men from their jobs.

There were machines that could do the work of four or five people, which meant factory owners didn't need to pay those people anymore. That leads to mass unemployment and men seeking out jobs that could take care of their family: hence the merchants and sailing vessels. But sailors lived in horrid conditions. You had terrible food, bad pay, disease, brutal discipline, and captains who would make life miserable for everyone on the ship.

Imagine you're stuck at sea, you haven't been paid properly, the food is rotting and you're eating maggots for protein, people around you are sick, and the captain is whipping sailors because he's in a bad mood. At some point, mutiny starts looking like a viable path forward. Piracy was the very first labor movement. It was all about the sailors seizing the means of production. And they were surprisingly organized compared to the ships they had sailed on.

Loot was divvied up based on shares, and some crews had rules about compensation and the authority of captains. Obviously, none of that makes piracy a moral good. My point is just that the reason the idea of piracy became associated with freedom, rejecting authority, and taking control of your own life was because… it was. That's part of why Simon works as a character. He takes that idea and pushes it to an absurd extreme. UnhelpfullyHelpful Uh, thanks for that, I guess.

I'm not sure anyone asked for a miniature lecture on the history of piracy, but I respect how prepared you were for this exact moment. You definitely had that sitting in the chamber and I can only assume that you'd been waiting for months for someone to mention pirates. Hambones I can't tell if Hastings is supporting me or arguing with me. Either way, it has no bearing on what I'm talking about. Everyone is talking about Simon like he's charming, but the man is dangerous.

He shows up, steals shit, "recruits" a crew, and then sails directly into danger. That's not whimsical. That's psychotic. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. If a normal person did that, we'd all call the cops on him. But Simon Pucco does it and because he's in a colorful coat we're all supposed to be like, "Oh, that's just Simon being Simon." At least with a normal pirate you could theoretically negotiate.

Give him some gold and cargo and maybe he goes away. How are you supposed to negotiate with a man whose primary motivation is: what is in that deep dark hole? CorvaDidNothingWrong Okay, but that's exactly why I love him. Simon is one of the few people in the Fracture-verse who actually seems excited about the world instead of trying to own it. In some ways, that excitement mirrors what we all feel when we're playing the game.

Someone tells him there's a monster in the ocean, and instead of fleeing from it he starts wondering how many ships he needs to kill it. That is literally the player mindset. Think about when you're playing a game and you see a big drop. You say to yourself "I wonder if there's fall damage in this game," and the first thing you do is jump off the edge. That's Simon Pucco to a T. SignalLoss Bold choice on the username.

Not sure you're going to get much traction when you're saying that charismatic adventurers should be loved and adored though. Z3ke (Original Poster) This is all very interesting, but you're all getting distracted from the part where I'm now working for a pirate armada. I snuck away and I've got my Tech Slate out writing this. I'm hoping that nobody can find me, but I needed to ask the question of: what the hell do I do? I'm not a pirate. I'm not a sailor.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I told all of you that large bodies of water terrify me. I don't even like being in a swimming pool by myself because there's a part of my brain that is screaming at me that, somehow, someone released a shark there. I know that's not a possibility… but it still happens. Now, imagine all that anxiety and throw it on a pirate ship heading to what you all assure me is true danger. So what exactly am I supposed to do? I've got a guitar and a knife and Corva's axe still sitting in my inventory.

I don't know if you've all cottoned onto the fact that I'm not really built for combat. A lot of you have probably fought and killed this Krill Kraken in the games. You know what it does, how it attacks, and all the tricks to taking it down. So help me out. What should I be preparing for? How do I kill it? More importantly, how do I NOT get killed by it? While we're at it, does anyone have any ideas for making sure that Simon Pucco doesn't try and force me into a permanent addition to his crew? So…

uh, tactical advice would be great. Strategic advice would be great. Any advice would be great. IridumSky | I'm now working for a pirate armada. | An entire armada of ships? Sounds like a perfect source of mobile glyph anchors. You have time, and frankly I suspect Pucco would listen to you. We just need to come up with a glyph that works if it's an imprecise position from the target. Don't be a hero. But be the hero's guy in the chair. Malv0lio (Primary) Don't worry Zeke, I've got it all covered.

As soon as you mentioned the Why Not, I pulled a bunch of people from the forum to start theorycrafting how to kill the Krill Kraken that I knew was coming. We've been talking through a bunch of different theorycrafting ideas, and we've got some tactics that you can try. I will say that, for this to work, you're going to need to do what Crush said and "butter up" Simon, because otherwise you're not going to be able to organize his pirate armada into what you need to do.

Thankfully, since you only mentioned that it was the Why Not pulling up alongside you and not the entirety of his pirate armada, you've got some time to kill because you face off against the Kraken. You're going to need it in order to optimize the fight. The Krill Kraken boss fight can be broken down into three different stages. The first stage is going to be the opening and the tentacles. The start of the fight is going to be pretty quiet.

The Krill Kraken will find you and it'll sail under your ships, moving around and looking for someone to attack. Everything is going to be strangely calm and weirdly still… and then something enormous is going to emerge from the waters. You're going to be hit by the Krill Kraken tentacles first. They are freakishly massive and have a truly enormous reach.

The Kraken is going to use his tentacles to sweep across the decks of your ships, smashing through railings and knocking people into the water and overall trying to cause as much chaos as possible. What's going to happen is a tentacle is going to be moving at you and I know that your first instinct will be to run away or to fight it, but you should do that. Well, yes, you should attack. The whole point of the first stage of the fight is to damage the tentacles, but you need to be smart about it.

Your instinct, and the instincts of everyone in the armada, is going to be to focus on whatever the most dangerous part of the Kraken is - which are the tentacles. But that's exactly what the Krill Kraken wants you to do. If all your ships just stick to one spot and hammer away at the nearest tentacle, then you turn yourselves into a big stationary target. It's like you're just setting up as a buffet, asking the Krill Kraken to pick you off one by one. DON'T DO THAT. Instead, you need to kite the Krill Kraken.

Keep it moving and don't settle in one place. And for the love of God, don't clump all your ships up together. The Kraken has some strong tentacles with reach, so if all your ships cluster together in a single convenient group, it's going to wipe you out. Instead, you need to spread out, keep moving, and force the Kraken to constantly reposition itself. You want it spending as much time as possible chasing you and not swiping at you. Okay? Damage the tentacles.

Take the time to hit it when you can, but that's not the whole objective of the first phase. The real objective is to keep everyone alive and to survive long enough that the Kraken gets fed up with chasing you around and decides to move to the second stage. Stage 2: the Krill Kraken is going to realize that smacking at you from a distance isn't going to work and it's going to pick one specific ship to target. It'll close the distance and get within melee range and grab the ships.

That's where you hope and pray that the tentacles wrap around someone else because you DON'T want that to be your ship. The second stage is the introduction of its zombie puppets. The tentacles have these weird bulbous things on them. You'll probably think that they're large barnacles at first, except they're swollen and look almost like tumors that have attached themselves to the Krill Kraken. IT'S NOT A TUMOR. The tentacles are going to latch onto a ship, grip tight, and then the pods are going to open.

Inside the pods are the corpses of sailors and merchants and captains who've been killed by the Krill Kraken. It takes the bodies, eats them, and then creates these weird zombie puppets out of them. I say zombie, but they're not exactly zombies in the traditional sense. They're more like puppets that are just mindlessly attacking anything that is in range. That's going to make the fight horribly disgusting and I'm actually a little excited to hear how you describe it.

In the game, when you try and slice open the puppets, they don't exactly bleed. Instead, they burst and let loose this ink everywhere on the deck. And mixed in with the ink are tiny rotted krill. The deck is going to be covered in a foul black sludge that is filled with tiny decaying crustaceans and this is the absolutely worst part of the battle because everything is going to smell horrible AND it's going to mess with your footing. People are going to slip and fall all over one another.

That's already pretty bad, but then you've got to remember that you're also fighting the zombie puppets AND the massive tentacles that are still sweeping their way across the deck. I will actually let Crush do this next part because it was his idea. CrushDaddyXx Yo Zeke, aren't you excited. This is going to be like the Reclaimer fight all over again. The reason I say that is because glyphs are going to be your best shot at surviving and thriving. We're not going to have you create the sacrifice glyph this time.

That would require too much setup and there's no guarantee that it'll actually be able to kill the Krill Kraken before it strips your ships bare of sailors. Instead, you are going to make GRIP GLYPHS. I've got the pdf <HERE. > Think of them as stickum, but for the decks of the ships. You're going to need reliable footing during the fight, so you should carve those glyphs all throughout the ship.

Put them on the helm, beside the ropes and riggings, and all throughout the deck where the sailors are going to have to cross repeatedly while they're trying to fight and maneuver the ship. You don't need to cover every square inch of the deck. Just focus on the areas where people need to stand, move, work, and react quickly. The grip glyphs should increase friction between the deck and whatever is touching it.

I know, I know, that's not as impressive as a massive sacrifice glyph that could kill building sized kaiju. But during the fight with the puppets, it could spell the difference between staying upright and sliding into the path of danger. Remember, the ship itself is going to be rocking constantly.

The sailors and fighters are going to be moving while the ship is moving, and the Kraken is going to be attacking all of you, so anything you can do to help make the deck stickier before the battle is going to be valuable. Shukuen Given the discussion about Zeke's class effects, I'm surprised no one segued into him offering to play to buff the pirate armada so they could fight the Krill Kraken more effectively.

Hell, Zeke's already going to be the morale officer on his ship, might as well offer to spread the buffs to the rest of the armada that Captain Pucco is building. Byte-Sized I'm not sure that music is going to be the best idea. Sure, it's one of his strongest weapons. But it's also something that draws a ton of attention. What if the Kraken decides to snack on the musician instead of any of the other ships? What if Simon Pucco decides that he wants a musician to have a permanent spot on his crew?

That's exactly what Zeke was most worried about. Malv0lio (Primary) I'll let Zeke decide what exactly he is going to be doing with his music. I'm not going to give him tactical advice with that. He seems to know when best to use his music. I would say, Zeke, that you could probably help boost the fighters during the zombie puppet attack… but your music seems to work best when you're stationary and this isn't exactly a stationary fight.

SignalLoss | That's where you hope and pray that the tentacles wrap around someone else because you DON'T want that to be your ship. | I might have an idea for this. It'll sound batshit until you think about it for more than a couple minutes. Zeke, Simon is gathering a bunch of ships to take on the Krill Kraken, and not all of them are going to be useful. I think you should turn one of them into a fire ketch.

The basic idea there is to figure out what would attract the Kraken so you're not on the ship that it births its zombie puppets on. From what we know, the Krill Kraken is drawn towards heat. So you should give it exactly what it wants. Load a ship up with flares, fuel, gasoline, and anything else. Make it impossible for the Krill Kraken to ignore, and then sail it directly at the thing. Meanwhile, all the other ships stay mobile and spread out.

The fire ketch becomes the obvious target, and when the Kraken commits to attacking it, that gives everyone else an opportunity. Importantly, the fire ketch doesn't have to survive. It's a distraction, and you WANT the Krill Kraken obsessed with it while the rest of the fleet stays out of reach and concentrates their fire on the Kraken. TVEye Oooo. I really like the idea of a fire boat, especially if Zeke can use his glyphs to help with it. I'm actually feeling better and better about this plan.

Malv0lio (Primary) Yep. The plan is mint. Stick with the plan. After you deal with the zombie puppets, you're going to be onto Stage 3. Thankfully, that's the easiest stage. All you have to do is keep your ships mobile, keep the Krill Kraken distracted, and then pour fire and bullets and magic on it until the rest of the fight is a foregone conclusion. Z3ke (Original Poster) Well… shit. Shitty shit shit shit. First, thank you all for the plan. Second, goddammit for that plan.

Hey Crush and Malv0lio, you all said that I needed to get Simon's attention for this plan to work. Well… I've got it. I told you all that I had found a spot that was out of the way and I had my Tech Slate open on my lap to check in with you all. Well… Simon Pucco decided that he wanted to get a tour of the ship so he was wandering around and checking everything out. He saw me sitting there with the Tech Slate and he just stopped and looked over my shoulder for a second and asked me what I was doing.

I looked up at him and broke out into a cold sweat and was trying to come up with a lie, because how exactly was I supposed to explain what was going on without making the whole situation so much worse. But there was a small voice in the back of my head - Crush and Malv0lio - that was telling me this was a perfect chance. This was my shot at talking with Simon and convincing him to go with your guys' plan for hunting down the Krill Kraken. So I told him a little bit about what you all just came up with.

I told him that I was a glyph writer and that grip glyphs could make the deck safer during the fight. I brought up the idea of using a fire ketch to draw the Krill Kraken's attention and to keep the rest of the fleet mobile. And I just babbled all the rest of your ideas out there. He just stared at me for a moment and I was wondering if he was going to do the whole pirate thing and have me walk the plank, but then his face lit up. He was excited, like a kid in a candy store.

"So, you've been thinking about the hunt."

"Yea," I said.

"I mean, if we're going after the Krill Kraken, it would be better if-" He held up a hand to stop me.

"Who told you about the Krill Kraken?" I stopped and he tilted his head slightly, still smiling this maniacal grin at me.

"Because I didn't tell anyone about the Krill Kraken." And that brought me up short. I suddenly became very aware of how horrible this would go, and I had no idea how to dig myself out of this hole. I could already imagine trying to explain the forum and how he was apparently a character in a bunch of games and that there were hundreds of people discussing his behavior and trying to figure out what he was going to do next. There was no version of that conversation that didn't make me sound insane.

And there was no version of that conversation that would end well for me. So I just blanked for a moment and Simon watched me struggling for an answer. Then… he grinned even harder which, I didn't even think was possible.

"A fellow hunter," he said. I blinked.

"Uh…what?"

"You're a hunter!" He laughed and shook his head.

"And here I thought I was the only one aboard this ship who had any interest in the great things hiding beneath the waves." He pulled me up off the deck and clapped me on the back and the man was looking like we'd been best friends for ages.

"Tell me, how could I possibly deprive a fellow hunter of a front-row seat to the greatest hunt." I tried to stammer out something that sounded like a… I don't know, "don't get me killed" or something like that. But I couldn't. I was just next to this garishly dressed pirate who had misconstrued my interest in not dying for interest in hunting a mythical creature, and I'd somehow found myself smack dab in the middle of what would be a horrifically dangerous situation. That's why I cursed at the beginning.

That's why I said I'm in the shit, because Simon Pucco thinks that I'm his good luck charm or a fellow crazy person that wants to fight something called a Krill Kraken, and I'm shitting myself right now.