My favorite thing is thinking that they'll find some newly discovered shark and everyone will be like "oMG IT'S THE MEG MEG ITS THE MEGALODON MEGALODON WE TOLD YOU S—" and it's just Some Shark. Like average size or maybe even on the smaller size, nothing really surprising... Just an absolute yep a shark.

I want to see these fuckers cry as they learn it isn't their dear Megalodon, no it's just a normal ass modern shark that hadn't been discovered yet because of sheer luck

Ambassador Danny

source: #ghosts-and-bats channel

G Brain: I have a weird idea Me: okay, what is it now? Brain: I know you don’t really like the Ghost King Phantom trope, but hear me out. What if, when Jason comes back to life, King Phantom personally goes to see Bruce and is like… “so, one of my subjects is missing… and I’m pretty sure he’s yours” I need to go to bed

W YES! YES! I LIKE THAT!

S Ghost king is specifically to liaison with the living and Pariah Dark took that as "invade" it's a glorified ambassador role

W EXACTLY!

S Basically no humans took ghosts seriously without some kind of centralized government so they made up a fake one W Danny: explains his role and responsibilities as ghost king The justice league: isn't that just an ambassador? S Danny: Humans respect a powerful title ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

C if it works for king cobras, it can work for ghosts G lol I wasn't expecting my random thought process to take off… but you know, I like the idea of Ghost King = glorified ambassador ….. I now just have this image of the Justice League doing stuff in the Watchtower after the Superboy Prime incident, and Danny, just appearing with all the bells and whistles to go inform Bats that his dead son isn't so dead anymore Constantine is in a corner trying to completely avoid catching the attention of this ghost S It's not the fact that it's the ghost king, but the fact that it's Phantom he's an enigma c He's the megalodon of the infinite realms St yes S Halfas are fucking weird St "The megalodon of the infinite realms" I'm gonna have to remember that one S the magic users are glad that neither halfa was particularly interested in anything like world domination or the end of the world St Lol yeah G So, I have to go to bed. Cuz work. I'm curious what's going to become of this idea S smarmy capitalism is a small thing when they have the power to destroy everything Vlad gave up wanting to be ghost king when he figured out it would involve him needing to be nice to people

Forgot to add to the last ask- the otter comic says Kraw is a chimera, is that a natural species or are chimeras created somehow? Because otter grandpa said they're sterile and that happens to some non-natural animal combos irl. Also is his brother a chimera as well?

After just finding out about mayv and the way she looks, it made me think that chimeras are made by witches and not a natural species so I'm super curious now because why did somebody do that to those 2 kids if that's the case :(

In Hallowed Carrion chimera/Chimereals happen between two ‘primordial’ species that couldn’t normally mate, but it involves a ‘false uterus’ created by consuming the celestial body’s flesh. With Kraw it was his sea drake mother and Fury father. (They’re considered to be ‘primordial’ simply because they’ve been around for quite some time, live longer and are usually giants. Most modern day islanders don’t believe/know their kind exists, kind of like how we are with modern conspiracies of the ‘megalodon still existing in the marianna trench’).

It is a trait among chimereals that they are sterile. They’re also known by their abnormal growth hormones which causes them to keep growing/evolving for who knows how long. There’s actually a lot of prejudice held against them and they don’t often live in regular society like Kraw does, they’re usually considered dangerous and they’re often loners.

Most of this is only known because of Sylvaine learning about Serkan who is also a chimereal, albeit much older than Kraw. She’s actively studying chimereals through Kraw now. (He was actually very upset to learn he was sterile :(

And I’ve wanted to show more about Titus! It’s hard to balance my attention to everything lol.

Titus is also a chimereal. He was born on a specialized mill where they attempted to breed marine chimereals like him for hunting purposes. Most chimereals that come out of the mills end up dead, malformed or ‘defective’, so he was ‘lucky’. He also would have had the ability to breathe fire, but his flint glands were removed, like declawing a cat. He was kind of mean and he certainly had it harder than Kraw with Mayv. She didn’t even know he could speak when she first got him because his throat was fucked after they cut his flint glands out. He was about 7 when she got him and he was already known to be unruly/uncontrollable in the mill. They would have put him down if Mayv hadn’t come along. She took care of him though despite keeping a firm hand and eventually he came to see her as a surrogate mother.

He definitely got a jealous streak when she brought Kraw home. Mayv would often be fawning over how Kraw “came from the sea, so he would make such a great hunter and how beautiful his colors were and-“ blah blah blaaah. Titus hadn’t even seen the sea until Mayv rescued him, and he thought Kraw was just a little ‘flat-faced softie’. He would often goad him into fights. There’s a lot more to it, but eventually he and Kraw came to find their similarities, mostly through comforting each other through night terrors and exploring the swamps together.

Although Mayv also saw them like her own sons, she often towed the line between training them like animals and treating them like regular children. She was of course still very loving but it was often muddled by her militant expectations of them out on the ocean. Titus and Kraw worked for Mayv as ‘mer-hounds’, which are marine creatures that are trained to effectively hunt and catch mermaids or other large oceanic game, sort of like how some fishermen would use ducks. That was what the mills were breeding marine creatures for.

As of present day, a lot had gone down between Kraw and his brother, and a lot happened where Kraw had to leave the Shades as well. Kraw doesn’t know what’s become of his brother and whether or not Mayv is even alive. I do plan to get into that.

I can show you a sort of wip I have of him, but he might get a bit of a cleanup? Just because this is older art. I had planned to make growth charts for he and Kraw for a while now. Awkward teenage years and such.

GET TO KNOW THE MUN.

what’s your phone wallpaper: sylvanas for the lock screen. jaina for the home screen. I'm so gay for them. last song you listened to: summertime sadness by within temptation currently reading : still need to finish tides of war... listen, i've been distracted with other things, alright? last movie: The Meg. now that's a decent megalodon movie i'd recommend. last show: golden girls. what are you wearing right now: ripped denim shorts and my favorite wolf t-shirt. how tall are you? : 5'4" (I always though tit was 5'5" till I went to the doc. close enough.) piercings / tattoos?: one tattoo above my right ankle. no piercings. i want another tattoo though, a combo of an anchor / bow. three guesses what it represents. here's a hint, they're major figures from WoW & they're so gay for each other. glasses? contacts?: glasses. but i never really have to wear them. only when i can't really read tiny-ass letters. last thing you ate?: almonds. good stuff. favorite color(s): blue, any shade of blue. sea green / turquoise. tbh any sea related colors. current obsession: dead island 2, carla, jaina. do you have a crush right now?: lol nah, im done with that for now. got bigger things to worry about. favorite fictional character: don't make me pick. last place you traveled: maryland for a funeral.

tagged by: no one. i stole it. tagging: you. steal it, ya filthy pirate.

for shark ask game 1 & 4

!!

1.) Whats your favorite shark

Hammerheads by far, they're just so...shaped <3. I find the fact that sharks use electroreceptors to hunt super interesting, and hammerheads have an advantage to hunting because their larger, wider head-shape makes them excellent at it and I just think it's so neat. The great hammerhead is my favourite of the hammerhead group, but I also think Bonnetheads are cute. Honourable mentions go to nurse sharks, whale sharks, great white sharks, greenland sharks, thresher sharks, basking sharks, mako sharks, leopard sharks, and salmon sharks, so you don't just get my #1 favourite you get my top 10 LOL

4.) Are you interested in other marine animals or just sharks?

I am so interested in so many marine animals. Crabs, sea horses, nudibranchs my BELOVED... moray eels, polar bears <3, marine iguanas, tardigrades.. sea turtles...orcas...whales <3 and cetaceans in general. Lobsters, rays, octopus...gosh, isopods, squids... deep sea creatures, angler fish, giant squid (love cephalopods!), marine arthropods in general (arthropods both in sea and on land just tend to be super cool) ancient long-dead species like the helicoprion & megalodon (yes I know that's a shark)- and not just the animals but the ocean environments too, particularly the Galapagos islands, the arctic circle, coral reefs & the deep sea. Marine mammals too, love marine mammalogy, ichthyology- all of it. I'm just interested in all of it. That's the simple answer.

well, that arb event was pretty nuts i gotta say lmao

it starts with jyushi doing the equivalent of a “*record scratch* yep that’s me, just crying stuck on the moon. bet you’re wondering how i got into this situation—“ and then we cut to jyushi wishing amanda good night as he falls asleep after a long day training with kuukou. the next morning, he’s rudely awakened by kuukou barging into his room and slapping him awake lol jyushi asks him why is he here and kuukou tells him that they’re going to a forest in yokohama!!! he heard from hitoya (lmao) that the forest is full of rare and exciting creatures and jyushi’s like well that’s cool and all but what’s this got to do with him, y’know???

obviously kuukou’s going to train him there!!!

jyushi put up as big of a fight as he could but it proved futile as kuukou dragged him away lol and so they’re in this forest yeah?? kuukou’s excited, jyushi very much is not when they hear a noise and

suddenly a large moa appears?????? it makes a very unsettling noise btw whenever it’s in frame i don’t blame jyushi for screaming bloody murder on sight lol and it’s very hostile!!!! it starts to chase them thru the forest!!!!

and kuukou trips as it’s chasing them!!!! he tries to get jyushi to leave him and escape but jyushi refuses to leave kuukou behind 🥺 he tries to help kuukou maneuver thru the forest but it’s slowing them down and just when the moa has caught up to them—

a haast’s eagle swoops in and attacks the moa!!!! jyushi immediately uses this to his advantage to escape. once they’ve found themselves in a safe area, kuukou confusedly wonders why there’s all these extinct birds in this forest when both those birds have been extinct for a while, like he mentions that the moa has been extinct for about 600 years. jyushi asks him why he knows this off the top of his head and it turns out kuukou likes researching extinct species (🥺) but he brushes that off and thanks jyushi for saving him. he owes him big time!!!! jyushi is flustered but happy by kuukou’s thanks and jyushi/kuukou bonding time would have continued on

had a sabretooth tiger interrupted them(????)

there’s nowhere to escape save for that lake so kuukou and jyushi jump right on in (after jyushi complains that he hates getting wet lmao) and they think they’re safe

however the megalodon in the water says otherwise lmao

sooooo they hop right back out but it’s not like the sabretooth tiger still isn’t there y’know??? so kuukou decides there ain’t anything left to do but fight it lol jyushi is vehemently against this and as they’re arguing the tiger pounces—

and is stopped dead in it’s tracks!!!!! rio captured the sabretooth tiger!!!!! when they realize who they were saved by, jyushi does his dramatic self introduction lol that kuukou promptly interrupts to thank rio, who tells him to think nothing of it, he just happened to be catching ingredients lol rio offers to take them back to his base rest up and kuukou readily agrees

we next see them enjoying rio’s home cooked meal with sabretooth tiger meat!!! well, kuukou’s enjoying it, jyushi’s kinda like 😰😰😰 but both rio and kuukou peer pressure into eating it but it really is good!!! kuukou continues to praise his food and asks for more and as does jyushi and since they seem to be enjoying his food so much, rio offers another dish alongside it. jyushi takes the dish and immediately starts screaming lol kuukou’s wondering what his deal is, it’s just rice and rio says it’s made out of grilled trilobites and anomalocaris (both extinct bugs) and jyushi gets bullied into eating that one by the power of rio’s sad puppy dog face lmao

meal time ends but it’s definitely late so kuukou makes the executive decision to stay at the base overnight which jyushi isn’t particularly enthused by but the camp base turns out to be a great spot for stargazing!!! he starts pointing out various constellations and quizzing kuukou on them but kuukou doesn’t have much interest in stargazing. rio humors jyushi tho, impressed with his knowledge and asks why jyushi’s into stargazing and it turns out that jyushi wanted to be an astronaut and fly to the moon when he was little (🥺🥺🥺) but he gave up on that dream

and, as one does when a sad boy talks about his abandoned dreams, rio offers to take jyushi to the moon

kuukou and jyushi: uh what

rio has a rocket. and he wants to take them to the moon. and so he does lmfao

and yeah they sure do just land on the moon!!! it’s surreal as hell but rio and kuukou encourage jyushi to just enjoy himself lol kuukou and jyushi have a grand old time hopping about on the moon and jyushi turns to rio asking if he’s having fun too but rio looks very troubled. he asks what’s wrong and it turns out that the engine’s not working so uh, they’re stuck on the moon. jyushi bursts into tears and we are back where we started lmao

kuukou snaps at jyushi to stop crying and rio too asks him to calm down and kuukou points out there’s no use in crying when they can be thinking of a way out of this situation. rio again agrees and brainstorming began to happen but as if this event couldn’t be any weirder

a goddamn ufo just appears!!!!

lmao and of course rio and kuukou are getting excited to see aliens (guess who would like to eat them lmao) but just as the door to the alien spaceship opens—

jyushi wakes up!!!!!! he’s relieved it all seems to have been a dream lmao but then he hears footsteps rushing down the hall and the deja vu hits hard when kuukou bursts thru his door yelling they’re going to yokohama. jyushi is immediately screaming he doesn’t want to go to that terrifying forest and kuukou’s like what are you even talking about??? he was just going to take jyushi out to yokohama’s chinatown to treat him to some good chinese food as thanks since he owed him a favor!!!!

…………………………………..and then kuukou pauses like wait why do i owe jyushi something……? but ultimately shrugs it off and just tells jyushi to hurry up he’ll be waiting outside

and prompting jyushi to wonder if it really was all just a dream……….

reasons why the megalodon can’t come back

Yo I’m bored and want to talk about paleo life so here’s reasons why the giant terrifying mega shark can’y come back from the dead, and why it is not still alive and vibing. 

1. We have no living evidence of the Meg. We would probably have found many big teeth washed up on the shore, or a giant stinky shark carcass would’ve been found and be popping in the news. Fossil evidence of the megalodon also cut to a halt about 3.6 million years ago. 

2. We would definitely know about something that is simply that ENORMOUS in the ocean. It may be a big wide sea, but apex predators don’t stay hidden for too long. 

3. If the megalodon would come back, we may happen to die. Not because we would be eaten, but because of the environmental chaos the ocean would be in. Terrifying as it sounds, things were bigger, scarier, and more battle hardened. We’re talking about elasmosaurs with necks longer than their body width, giant underwater scorpions, and a whole other stack of prehistoric sleep paralysis demons. The megalodon won’t even mean to nuke the ocean. It would naturally go after the biggest animals in the ocean, the whales, first, as it would need the nutrients. Maybe a good whale shark from time to time. Without the whales, krill populations would skyrocket, causing an unbalanced ecosystem. There would be too much krill, and even worse, the Meg is going after the smaller animals. Eventually, the sea turtles would be snacks, leaving the jellyfish population to skyrocket, because a Meg wouldn’t find a squishy bag that stings as a good treat. I won’t emphasize on how bad an unnatural amount of jellyfish is, but basically, life on land would be as bad as life in water at that point. We don’t want too many jellyfish lol

4. It can’t hide at the bottom of the ocean. Be quiet about how “DuH well We HavE thE boTtOM oF thE OCeAN…” nah mate. The reason frilled sharks look freaky? They have to look like that in order to survive at that depth. The water pressure is so high that you can’t possibly try to look normal. Not even whales try to dive to the bottom of the ocean, which is also why the Meg couldn’t live at that depth. And miles below the surface? If you went at LEAST a kilometer below the ocean, you would be crushed like a can of soda. Now imagine a giant prehistoric shark that weighs a good few tons, the thing would be instant chum. You gotta be small and have no structure whatsoever if you want to get real estate down there. The Meg? Not small, and has a structure. The megalodon is officially evicted from the deep. 

I apologize if any of these are false or incorrect. I just came up with this off the top of my head. Anyway here’s a shark fact: 

Basking Sharks were named after their behavior of basking in the sun while filtering plankton. :)

how many seperate animals do you have taxidermy-wise? tails and bones included!! I'm just curious about other people's collections, currently I only have three and I'm trying to get a feel for how many is the ~usual~ number of animals people have LOL

oh gods... 

Here we go.

Coyote (16)

three full pelts (Emon, Cailin Rua, and Brisk)

three tails (the Nomad, Zee, and Jumping Juniper)

the teeth from three mandibles

three faces

four scrap pieces, presumably from four different pelts

Wolf (2)

one claw

one full pelt (arriving tomorrow, but I’m counting him)

Deer (ahahahaha.............)

five adult skulls at my current residence (Old Jane, Mulan, Creal, Little Buck, and Little Fang)

an unknown number of skulls at my parents’ house, that I need to go through, but probably about 10-15

partial skulls/skeletons of three fawns

seven shed antlers

miscellaneous bones from.... damned if I know how many individual skeletons; I collect astragali, calcaneus bones, and phalanges when I find them and leave the rest of the skeleton behind, because bones play an important role in the ecosystem and I want to minimize my impact there

anyway

I have no idea anymore how many individual deer I have remains from

Bear (2)

one full pelt

one claw

Fox (6)

five tails (one classic red, one burgundy, one unknown gray morph, two silver)

one skull

Raccoon (20)

eight skulls, two of which have partial skeletons associated

one partial skull (just the snout)

five miscellaneous jawbones

one lower right canine tooth I found in a drawer that doesn’t fit any of the jawbones

one tail

two scraps from partial pelts

paw bones from one individual

teeth from another

Opossum (6)

two skulls with partial skeletons

one salted pelt (associated with one of the skulls/skeletons)

two miscellaneous jawbones

one miscellaneous pelvic bone

one miscellaneous femur

Rabbit (at least 6)

one complete adult skull

two pelts (body skin with no heads or feet)

two partial adult skulls extracted from owl pellets, along with partial skeletons that belong to at least those two rabbits

one partial skull from a baby

Box Turtle (8)

six shells

miscellaneous bones from two individuals

Domestic Animals (a lot???)

one partial feral cat skeleton/skull

one partial feral/stray dog jawbone

one goat kid skull

nine mouse skulls

miscellaneous bones from who even knows how many mice

six rat skulls

miscellaneous bones from fewer than the mice but still who even knows how many rats

I used to work at an aviary and would pick up raptor pellets or sometimes just find tiny bones in the gravel of the mews

Miscellaneous Wild Animals (don’t even try, man)

two house mice (partial skeletons)

two naturally mummified frogs

one groundhog skull

one partial gray squirrel skeleton

partial tail fan from a turkey that I found in Minnesota

a couple porcupine quills (also from MN)

a ~mystery paw~ that I have no idea what animal it’s from?? (also found in MN)

one fossil cave bear toe bone

four fossil C. megalodon teeth

please don’t ask me to tally any more fossils than that, I will die

I’m not even going to try to tally that up, but I’m pretty sure my collection is somewhat Larger Than Average. 

I’ve never actually... sat down and thought about how many dead animals I have, and this was honestly kind of stunning and eye-opening. Believe it or not, this is actually what it looks like after some downsizing--I’ve rehomed a couple of deer and raccoon skulls over the past few months, and scattered some of my unwanted/unneeded bones back out in the woods to be reclaimed.

But seriously? Enjoy what you have! Having a larger collection is fun (especially if, like me, it has both spiritual and scientific significance), but it takes up a lot of space and sometimes you feel a little creepy for having it...

So I finally got around to watching The Shallows and....it’s not awful....but it’s not great either. 

As a horror fan, I found it kinda boring. Like, just because there are a lot of long shots of her sitting on this rock. There’s some decent action in between. But when that wasn’t happening, I found myself hitting the skip button a lot. I feel like they could’ve fixed that dullness by replacing some of those long shots with flashbacks to other points in her life or something. And those flashbacks could’ve been both relevant to her situation and also flesh out her character a bit more. Like, maybe she learned survival skills from her parents? That would be relevant and have some emotional weight. Maybe we could have flashbacks of her mother teaching her to surf? I don’t know- anything would have been more interesting than all these long shots of her staring at the water. You really only need, like, one or two long solemn moments like that to get the point across that things feel hopeless. All that said, Blake Lively’s acting was very good. She did a good job carrying this movie basically on her own.  

Anyway. As a shark fan, I just couldn’t turn off my brain. I kept thinking “whyyyy is this shark hanging around trying to get Blake Lively when there’s a dead whale RIGHT OVER THERE??”. Even without the whale, a shark wouldn’t hang around like that, he’d move on and eat something else. They can swim great distances every day. They don’t just hang around to eat boney humans. And why is there only one shark in the area when there’s a dead whale nearby? Maybe this movie would’ve made more sense if there was a feeding frensy going on. Like, maybe some of the sharks that were attracted by the scent of the whale can’t get passed the other sharks and so they’re swimming around looking for an opportunity and THOSE are the sharks Blake Lively (I don’t remember the character’s name lol) has to worry about. I don’t know. 

I couldn’t shut my brain off for this movie the way I can for The Meg. I like The Meg. It’s dumb, but it’s not insultingly dumb. It’s a movie that knows what it is and the point is the fun of the thrill. Because the megalodon is this huge extinct shark and the concept of the movie is so far-fetched, it’s easier for me to think of it as a monster. It’s like King Kong or Godzilla. A big-ass animal that can’t exist but boy is it fun to watch. 

But the shark in The Shallows is just a regular-looking shark. So we’re left to assume that we’re supposed to view this animal as realistic. But people who know anything about sharks know that it’s not. 

Anyway, like I said, it’s not great but it’s not awful either. I may even watch it again someday. 

That was a hell of an Adventure!

More Sea of Thieves adventures here! So last night, me and my friend decided to bite the bullet and try for the first Tall Tale mission series; Shores of Gold. It was pretty neat that every character we interacted with actually had dialogue and animation beyond the usual idles, and that even the skeletons talked, at least to each other (on islands where we had the mission stuff. Normal skeletons just babbled that grating rasp they usually do). It should have been an easy run but... as usual, the Seas were against us.

Right from the get-go, we ran into issue; upon leaving port, we discovered there were at least THREE active Player Galleons in the area, and most of them were... let’s just say they were either orbitting or at station-keeping near the islands we absolutely NEEDED to go onto. A few of them we waited out until they decided to do other stuff, but at least twice, a Galleon would suddenly turn around and start moving to get into a firing position, and we were forced to flee. One of the times, the other ship (while firing at us from long range) had caught some fantastic wind and had managed to cut across our course. I saw them coming, and had planned to swoop right by under their bow and kind of do a quick 90 turn and head on a new tack while they struggled to turn their pig of a ship (I’ve done this before with great success), but I misestimated just how good that wind of theirs was. So instead of cutting across their bow... I plowed our sloop almost perpendicular to them, catching them just off the starboard bow. Tremendous impact. My friend was already below decks filling holes, so before impact I was letting him know what was coming and to be FAST on those repairs. BLAM! Smashed into ship. My friend ran up to the deck, unloaded a surprising FIVE cannon shot directly into their starboard lower hull, before rushing back down to patch the holes my blunder had knocked in us. I turned us 90 to starboard to cut us away from the ship, and put us at full, perfect wind away from them. Our aft was exposed to them while we ran, but given the fact we’d just punched a LOT of holes in their hull, and galleons are bitch to fix even with full crew, we managed to gain a lot of ground. That must have been enough for that crew, because instead of chasing us, they turned and either headed back to port, or headed out on whatever their mission actually was. I’d like to think my kamikaze run on them scared the crap out of them. Or that they were so low on repair tools they needed to find landfall fast to keep the boat floating. LoL A few other galleons later, and a few Megalodon attacks later, we managed to get to a few of the islands we needed. Uneventful stuff, honestly. Well, except for that time another team had come swooping in, and we had to book it. As a matter of security, only one of us was ever off the ship at a time, so the other could escape getaway with our ship. This saved our hides no less than FIVE times. At one point, during a ‘Hunt the Skeleton Lord’ mission, my friend was left on shore while I had to run for open water. I didn’t go far though; a little ways away there was a cluster of jagged, giant rocks in rough water. I carefully moved directly between them, to a place no ship would want to chase me without CAREFUL moves, and killed my acceleration. Not anchored; I wanted a bit of drift. I sat there, relaying what I was doing while my friend relayed his encounters on the island. Apparently he ambushed a team of FOUR and beat the tar out of them, and then used the island’s guns to punch about ten holes in the hull of their parked ship. He told me later that they seemed really unskilled in combat, and we found out much later that they had left a bunch of chests either half-dug or undug all over the place. My friend felt bad because it’s very possible he’d encountered a squad of true new people, under the guidance of one medium player, and he’d absolutely destroyed their treasure hunting fun. I felt bad too..for a moment. Then I pointed out that this crew might have been the ones chasing and firing on us earlier. In which case, they’re not all THAT nice...just unskilled.  Once they get skilled, they’re a threat. Fastforward a while, and we finally get back to port to finish the Shroudbreaker mission (part 1 anyway), and I’m scouring the island for supplies. Then...this happens. Me: *turns a corner and finds a badly beaten Sloop parked off shore, completely opposite of where ours was supposed to be parked* “Oh shit! There’s a sloop here! Get the ship and get the hell out of here!” Friend: “Uh, yeah I know. There’s someone on OUR ship right now.” Me: “What?! What are they doing? Can you fight them off?!” Friend: “They’re.. They’re repairing our hull?” Me: “Repairing our... what? They’re actually fixing the ship??” At this point the other Sloop comes apart as the player scuttles her. Friend: “Yeah. They fixed one of the holes I missed I guess. And now they’re cooking food.” Me: “I’m totally confused now. You mean they’re not trying to raid us?” Friend: “Doesn’t look like it. I’m checking our stuff, but I don’t see anything missing. They’re just...cooking food below decks right now. You gotta come see this.” So I did. Sure enough, waiting for me on the upper deck with a freshly cooked splashtail was a female avvie player by the name of BlackByrd something. Had a bunch of numbers. They offered me the fish, which I took, gave my thanks, and then... they went to a part of the ship and started fishing. I didn’t know what to make of this. We had a mission to do that might take us into Red Water territory (with the mission making the area safe for us), but if this person hung onto our ship, they’d die when we hit red water. They hadn’t done anything hostile, and in fact, were just... they were just fishing. So we took a break. All three of us just fished for like, an hour, cooking food and stuff. It was surreal. Finally we decided to head out. Seems that BlackByrd didn’t have a mic, and was playing the PC version of the game, because they had access to the chat window. So we headed for a few of the closer island to get stuff we needed, while they kept fishing off the bow of the ship. Sadly, our surreal little experience with our hitchhiker finally came to an end. Not a bad end, but a sad one. As we started to head into the Wilds, Blackbyrd stopped fishing and came up to the wheeldeck and waved at me. So I waved back. They turned to my friend and waved to him, and he too, returned the wave. Then they jumped overboard. I guess it was time for them to go, or they didn’t want to go on OUR adventure, preferring to fish instead. I wish them the best. They reminded me that not ALL players want to massacre each other. There were a few other encounters, but the last one that stood out was a Skeleton ship that had somehow managed to not only jam its bow into the docks of Plunder Outpost, but had physically bottomed out her hull on the shoreline beneath, stopping her dead. We didn’t think Skeleton ships could even get NEAR outposts, but this one looked legitimately docked (which can’t happen. It was just jammed in so perfectly). Of course, we took a bunch of potshots at it, and cracked its hull with our only explosive barrel. We even got aboard and raided a few of its treasures before the crew realized we were there. (literally walked on from the dock. That’s how close they were) Btw, this was a tough ship; all the deck crew were gold-plated skeletons, while they had about 7 below decks crew of Crew Skeletons (as opposed to normal skeletons). Crew have slightly higher reflex rate and MUCH better aim. Long story short, that ship bellied out enough that game physics required it to roll off the sandbar and into deeper water. So we chased it around the island, before I managed to trick it into literally ramming the side of the island where it is rocky. She LIFTED out of the water. Only her rudder was still in the soup. By this point we were angry that such a simple shipkill had become an annoyance (seventeen Jigballs fired at us, as well as continuous Anchorballs gets you that way), so we used up the last of our cannonshot pounding her until she finally keeled. She keeled right at the secondary docks, so we just parked, waited, and claimed our glory. Missions accomplished, next step completed, and treasure turned in, we logged out for the night. It wasn’t the best run. But it was interesting. Hope BlackByrd caught a nice fish while we were gone.