3) The sheets hit the fan.

Sandra had also turned to face away from her friend. "Guess I can't be too surprised. She was majoring in mortuary science." She shook her head sharply, then grinned at me again.

"Princess. Because it said I can inspire the people who served me. Which sounded a lot better to me than being useless trying to fight while scared out of my mind or getting grossed out trying to heal people."

“I got a choice of three blessings I could pick, so I took the one that could let help everyone in the party do better in a fight. But I don't think it meant party like a “whoo-whoo I'm drunk" kind of party."

I slowly shook my head no. "And your talent?"

She perked up some more. "I got an Everbright Tiara! It said it shines a light in the darkest places, and those Makos sure didn't seem to like looking at it. But it went away after the fight. And I don't want to bring it out again since you said bright lights were bad."

I nodded again. She was coming off as a sort of party girl, but not a brain dead one. I could work with that. "Good thinking. But you need to be able to do more than bless us in a fight. The blessing seems to do its thing on its own once you call it up. You need to do more. I know we got a spear gun around somewhere.”

As she got a scared and concerned look on her face. Erin, my best guess for the spelling, called out from behind us. "Hey! I got an actual supernatural undead skeleton under my command that I'm making do tricks. Pay. Attention. To me."

I turned around and held my hands, palms out, up to my shoulders in surrender. "Okay, okay. You got a skeleton and I'm guessing your class is Necromancer. What else do you have going on?"

Sandra giggled a bit while her friend looked up at us and grinned with a mouthful of very intimidating, very sharp teeth. “My class is Necromancer with the power to raise an undead servant. But only one at a time and it cleans out all my magic points."

"My race is called the Risen which is some sort of half-undead race. Our thing seems to be being able to take a lot of damage and not being bothered by it or anything else including cold and heat. But we take longer to heal. We are also "Untouched by time." for whatever that's worth." She shrugged.

"My talent is Alchemy so I can get my mad scientist on, and I already got a cue that the little guy's teeth should be useful for something. So I need a big strong man to use his special guy skills to find me some pliers or something."

She clasped her hands together to one of her face and leaned into them while batting her eyelashes.

Lister felt the need to chime in at that point. “She should definitely be vashing her hands. A lot.”

I let that go without comment while I replied to our Necromancer. "Well if you want some help with tools. Rob's your man." Then I remembered the two of them coming out of the men's bunk room as she blushed and glared at me.

Turns out Risen blush gray.

"I thought we were about to die and I wanted to go out with a bang. Pun intended. I also decided to give the guy a shot since the way he had been humping my leg there was a good chance it would be the only one he had even got."

She put her hand on her hips. Unseen behind her the skeleton did the same. "And I did ask him. But he was too busy looking at his blue screen, talking to himself, and writing notes to even notice me."

That got a foot stomp, which was repeated behind her.

Ryan emerged at that point. Still looking human as he looked from Erin to the two of us up top, and then back to Erin. "Want to take over the watch while these two get a chance to check their sheets?"

The goth girl gave him cheery smile. "Okay. By the way, let me introduce Snapper," she said as she stepped aside to reveal the skeleton standing behind her.

Ryan looked down at it. "Neat. Tell me all about it."

Which she proceeded to quite happily do. In exhaustive detail.

I turned to Sandra. "Why don't we go downstairs? Rob might have some useful ideas by now.”

Down in the common room, no one was left in sight. Although I could hear voices down below-decks. Turning to Sandra, I gave her a shrug. "Well, let's see what we have to work with. Stats."

Abraham Wayne Hagan

Einherjar

Shaman 1

Might 13

Grace 11

Health 12 ( 15 with race bonus )

Wit 10

Resolve 11 ( 14 with race bonus )

Glamour 9

1 point unspent

Magic 0 / 10

Recovery 1.4 per hour

Wounds 15 / 15

Recovery 1.5 per 3 hours

Spirits

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Lister. Spirit of healing

Talents

Summon spirit weapon. M1903 Springfield

"Well, that's a bit minimalist, and nothing as far as skills go either."

I could see Sandra turn her head at me from the corner of my eye. "Is that a problem?"

"Well, we don't get to artificially improve the things we normally have to learn to do. But we don't get nerfed, or artificially weakened at the things we already know how to do."

"Like I know how to fight and how to shoot. But I didn't lose any of that just because I didn't pay for the ability to do something in this game system that runs things here. But you can't just spend a point and automatically learn how to fight with a sword without ever training in it either."

Her voice seemed to perk up since she understood all that. "So like I still know how to sew, because I already know how to do that. But no freebies."

I nodded. "Yes."

"But it says I have a point?"

"Yeah, let me check into that. Hey Lister. What ability determined how many magic points I get?"

"Vell dat's a bit out of my area of expertise. But it looks like all spirits have access to some basic information. It looks like its Wit and Glamour added together and split in half for how much magic you get, rounded up. And ten percent of jour Resolve for how fast you get it back. Magic classes get it per hour, non-magic ones get it at a rate per three hours."

I had already guessed some of that. But it was always nice to get confirmation. "Thanks Lister."

I informed Sandra that, "Lister is the spirit I call on to heal. He can talk, but only I can hear him."

That got me a bit of a blank face, "Oh, okay." In response.

"So unless one of your scores is below a ten, you might want to focus on the abilities that give you magic so you can do blessings more often. It might also make them stronger, but I don't know for sure. Lister?"

"I'm afraid I only know general things and your race and class. Sorry, my dear lad."

Sandra tilted her head at me. "What did he say?"

"Sorry, he can't help with other people's classes and stuff."

She sounded disappointed. "Well, my Might is only a nine, but everything else is good. My Glamour is a fourteen if that helps?'

"How about your Wit and Resolve?"

"Ahhh. A ten and a ten."

"So that should put your magic at twelve with a recovery of one per hour right?"

She cheered up. "Yeah, sounds like you figured it out. Great. So where should I put the point?"

I thought things over. "I would suggest putting your point in Resolve. It will let you get your magic points back faster."

I could see her head nod. "Okay. "Put the point in Resolve." Yep, that worked. Recovery even went up point one."

I felt a little bad for a moment.

Raising her Wit would have made her smarter and given her an extra point of magic. I also thought having more magic for a fight would be better than a higher recovery. We were more likely to be looking at a quick hard fight on this boat than a fight going on long enough that any of us would get a chance to recover anything.

But a higher Resolve might make her step up and do something useful in a fight after she did her blessing.

Which is why, for myself, I decided to spend my point elsewhere, I already had plenty of Resolve. "Put the point in Glamour." It wouldn't raise my magic points yet. But it would put me one step closer to raising it.

Also at least one of the three girls was still close enough to human to make me want to be more Glamorous, which seemed to be the stand-in for Charisma. The other two actually still looked pretty good too. But I was afraid Sue would break me, and Erin, with all those sharp pointy teeth? Just a big fat nope. Nope, nope, nope.

Glamour was also an old word for a type of magic. So it might help with my ability to deal with spirits. Either by being better at magic or getting them to like me more.

At that point, Rob and Kev came up from below decks, with Rob holding up a yellow plastic case. "Flare gun, I don't know if we want to show off to everyone out there that we're here. But it might be nice to see what's around us."

I nodded, but, "I think we should hold off on that, maybe plan out what we're going to do while the flare is burning and then right after. Do we even know if the boat's engine is working?"

Kev looked down toward the back of the boat. "Seems okay. So is everything on the boat, even our phones. Just no signal."

Sanda got a hopeful look on her face and ran to the girl's cabin. Yelling "Our phones work." to someone inside.

Rob gave Kev a look of disappointment. "Way to get her hope up." Kev shrugged. "I said there was no signal."

My phone was in my cabin and turned off. Which was where I was going to leave it to make the battery last as long as possible. If nothing else I could still use it as a flashlight.

Speaking of which. "Kev? What are we going to do when we run out of fuel? How are we on freshwater?"

The wiry sun-bleached blond looked toward the bottom of the ships again. "Grandpa put in a desalination unit so he could drop anchor for a week or two at a time. It looks like it's still good."

Rob saw the dawning confusion on my face. "He took a class called Captain. He knows where everything is on a ship that belongs to him. As well as the condition of his ship and everything that's part of it. And who is on his ship and where."

I guess that explained how Kev was warning me about the Makoans from below decks. From behind the two of them, I saw an upset pair of Elf and Orc girls coming down the hall with cell phones in their hands and upset looks on their faces.

Might be best to distract them.

I pointed at myself. "Einherjar, Shaman with healing spirit, Spirit weapon." Then I pointed at rob. "Go"

He looked around uncertainly. "Ah… Elder human because Crow shifter seemed pretty racist and I didn't want to be a crocodile guy. Artificer with the repair ability. And Many-tool which lets me summon any tool for a point of magic for ten minutes. But only one at a time so I got to dismiss it to get a new one."

Kev brightened up. “So you can fix the windows?”

Rob nodded. "Yeah but I don't want to spend magic to do it until we're sure we're somewhere safe."

Sue rested a think fingered green hand on his shoulder and leaned forward. "So you can call up hammers and screwdrivers. What about something like an axe and could someone else use it?"

Rob looked at her nervously. "I think so, and it's not just simple tools. I can also call up any self-powered tool I've ever held in my own hands. Including a nail gun. But not a gun-gun because that's only ever a weapon, not a tool."

She ran her hand over to his opposite shoulder, half hugging him as she towered half a head above him. "What a smart guy," she said as she gave him a squeeze.

Then she let him loose. “My turn. Sue, not Susan, and never Suzy, Alverez." She gestured at her green muscular form and tapped one of the two fangs coming up from her lower jaw. "Yeah, I know. I don't look Mexican. I blame my dad's genes."

“Orc, Brawler with Leap of the clouds which lets me do insane Wuxia jumping around for magic points. And my talent is another magic ability called Iron Hide which is what kept me from getting poked for a while out there. Right up until I got hit enough for it to get worn out.”

She looked around and then pointed at Kev. "You're next. Name, class, race, and your special thing."

Kev blinked a few times. "Oh, my talent. Kev Tollough. Captain with the Shipshape ability, Elder human, and Fool’s luck.” He looked around. “Whose left?”

Sandra stopped playing with her phone and looked up for a moment with a smile. “Me? Sandra Voe. Princess that can bless people in a fight. Elf. And I was presented with the Crown of the Shining kingdom which makes me the rightful queen of the land of light." She struck a pose. "'All shall love me, and despair."

Sue rolled her eyes. “Chill out Gladri-elf”

Then she turned to her side and poked Rob in the arm. "So if our phones work, have any of the smart people gone up top and tried the radio?”