His tattered ship-sail Cloak billowed in the wind as they wandered about the forest. Sumaita had only just ripped out the arrowhead from his shoulder after encountering a local woodsman. Apparently, he had been out here scouting for good lumber, but you could never really trust woodsmen these days could you. Following his tracks, however, had indeed led them to a sort of dockyard that did indeed come with a lumbermill. Perhaps he was just a good liar, as all woodsmen were. Why had he been carrying a bow? Why did his blood taste spicy? Mubashir wept, for he did not know.

    The clouds were heavy in the frost-laden area. Mubashir and his thrall crept quietly through the tree-line attempting to observe what the goings-on were. Kind of a weird place for a dockyard right? The burly men and women wandered too and fro carrying lumber to massive hulks of half-finished ships. Their work was paced by the shouting of a woman standing atop the crows nest of one of them, shouting into a cone. Man, Mubashir's desire for several things was immediately overwritten by the desire to be the one in that crows nest, shouting at all the ants below. 

Blue Raspberry hated it here. It was freezing! Well, it wasn't actually freezing. It was somewhat chilly here, on the western coast of Frostgale. But to the ooze, it might as well be freezing. They hated the cold. It made them slow and tired, their gelatinous body becoming more solid, flowing less freely. They should really get something to keep them warm. Maybe they could ask Astrid to help make something for them. Maybe next time.

Why were they here again? Oh, right. Something about some ships needing to be stopped. People were trying to go to Arid Mesa to "colonize" and that was a horrible thing according to all the people they'd spoken to. Why would people even want to live there? They'd only visited it once and they'd ended up fighting a god which wasn't nearly as fun as it sounded. There was also barely anything to eat other than sand and rocks! Nope, it was a place that was almost as bad as Frostgale!

Now they walked up to the scene of workers running around with all sorts of cargo and materials, putting ships together and loading others up to head over and start the colonizing. The way here had been fairly uneventful, walking through the forest in their thick wooly coat to keep warm. They did find an oddly dried out body that tasted weirdly spicy, but that was about it. Now, where should they start with messing things up? They eyed some of the crates of food and stacks of lumber.

Oh, duh! They should do what they do best! Eat!

SPOILER: Click to show

Quest Name: Progress Halted
Chapter: One
Description: This is not a request handed out by the government, but instead something that many of Charon's inhabitants believe is the right thing to do. These rich greedy men can not be allowed to just put peoples lives in danger in the hopes of settling an untamed land. Because of this many people are now acting as vigilantes, burning and destroying the supply boats bound for the Arid Mesa. We need you to head to Frost Gale and sabotage these boats or supply trains before they can make it across the sea.

Requirements:
- Requires at least two people (you and one other)
- You must make at least 6 post to complete the mission with each post being at least 200 words
- Must destroy a supply train or hinder their voyage across the sea. Be careful as these shipments are heavily guarded.
- Once you complete this mission you have completed this quest chain and may turn in the mission.

    Time to achieve life goal of crows nest. He waves his hands at the sky, swirling it around and sending the clouds into tumultuations. Stormclouds grew darker and darker as the ambient sunlight waned in its stead. Perfect...He did not wish to use his recently acquired sunscreen.

"Stay here Sumaita, I will give you the signal if I need you!"

    She rolled her eyes and sat down cross legged. He exploded into a cloud of mist and began floating out over the docks. His cloudy form rolled out through the various boxes and dock workers, Errant men eating stuff. That was weird, but moreso, he quickly reached the ship with the huge mast. The Mistashir climbed the mast towards the shouting woman, who was now shouting about covering boxes due to possible rain.

    Mistashir rose ten feet above the woman, recorporealizing himself above her to drop down, just like that time with the goat man! Wait, hadn't that not worked? His momentary distraction in this critical moment saw him land atop her instead of around her, sending the woman tumbling over the edge and crashing dead into the deck below.

"Aww... Sshe looked quite tassty..." Speaking of tasty, didn't he see someone chowing down on the way up here? There! In the heavy winter gear, a dude just shoving stuff into his face. He was slightly jealous to be honest. This crows nest was neat, but it was really just a place to look at things, and everyone seemed to busy to even notice his shouting without that cone thing...

Blue Raspberry got to work right away, sneaking into the work site and over to a crate. They did their best to avoid being seen by anyone. Luckily the snow in the area was all cleared away for the workers to be able to walk around more easily or packed down, so they didn't leave very obvious tracks. They didn't stand out in their heavy cloak at all, many of the others there wearing similar clothing. No one spared a glance for the man in the heavy coat walking around.

They peeked into the first crate they found to see the crate was filled with fruits packed carefully to prevent as much movement as possible to minimize bruising. The ooze went to town shoving whole apples and pears into their mouth, the fruit disappearing into their gullet without sound nor sight of anything going down their throat. As they quickly emptied the crate, a cloud of mist drifted past them. They didn't hear the sound of something falling to the ground some distance away, too busy with their meal.

As soon as the crate was empty, they moved to the next one. This time the crate was filled with what must have been supplies for the construction. A small crate filled entirely with iron nails sat next to piles of wooden beams and planks. Just the same, they began to devour it. The crate was emptied one handful of nails at a time. They quickly moved on to the pile of wooden planks, one plank vanishing up into the bottom of their coat at a time.

---

Space Pocket

    Wait, did that guy just eat some nails? That doesn't sound fun. But they seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit... He looked at the nails hammered into the banister of the nest he resided in. It looked just like a little chocolate bead.... So tempting. Mubashir began to work it out of the wood, withdrawing it with a pop. The chunk of banister it held immediately fell and landed directly atop the awakening harbourmasters forehead.

    He licked it, tasted like iron. He glanced at the very very hungry man who had moved on to planks. Shit. He was falling behind. Placing it in his mouth, he gagged slightly as it very roughly found it's way down his throat. Loud coughs found several sailors looking up from the body to him, all quite angry about something. A burp found the whole experience rather middling as far as food went, perhaps that heavily dressed man was from the swamp? Or anemic, and had needed the iron and fibre for their lackluster diet.

    Regardless, two sailors began to climb the rope ladders up to the crows nest, it was time to call in the small guns. A loud whistle signalled Sumaita to begin her advance. He could only hope she arrived before they grabbed him and dropped him just as far.

There was some kind of commotion going on over by the crows nest of one of the unfinished ships and more and more of the workers were gathering there. While most of the workers were suddenly distracted with something else, Blue was able to easily sneak over to the next crate to empty of all its contents, whether food or not. A crate full of construction tools was devoured. A pile of rolled up sail cloth vanished one sail at a time. This was going great!

The workers gathered, angrily shouting up at the intruder that had thrown one of them off the crows nest. Some crouched down around the fallen comrade, checking to see if she had survived the fall. One ran up with medical equipment and began tending to her, hoping to save her life and stop the bleeding from the back of her cracked skull.

Blue Raspberry found a small crate full of bandages, medicines, and other medical supplies that looked like it had recently been a bit tossed through. With a shrug, they began to shove rolls of gauze in their mouth, emptying it quickly before moving on to the next crate a bit farther away from the crowd.

The first attacker had finally reached the top of the ladder and was about to enter the crows nest with Mubashir, a hammer in one hand and ready to attack.

    Sumaita dashes through the compound, unable to reach her master before the attackers do. Her pace delays her reaction time, resulting in her bouncing off of a racing medical worker directly into a stack of boxes. With no other option, Mubashir looks at the guard with a hammer, and looks at the railing. A streetlamp goes off in his mind as the hammer cracks into his skull. 

    Mubashir careens off of the crows nest, directly landing atop the broken woman lying below. By some mystic force of luck, he lands face first in the pile of blood surrounding her skull. The crowd gasps as they hear a loud slurping noise coming from the second body to fall from the mast. The blood invigorates him, and fixes the dent in his skull he had just received. 

    Picking his bloodsoaked face from the puddle, he gives a big satisfied sigh.

"Aaah... Duke, you handle thiss eassy crowd. It wass not ass fun ass i thought it would be."

    Faces of confusion surrounded before a large portion of the gathered sailors and dockworkers were catapulted into the air as The Duke landed on the deck, splintering several feet of wood with his mass. Sumaita entered a frenzy attempting to get out of the pile of crates, launching into the heavily dressed hungry man to get him out of her way.



Undead hulk
Undying Frenzy

Blue Raspberry looked up in surprise, a bit of gauze still hanging from their mouth, as some crazy lady suddenly threw herself at them. They finished slurping up the gauze and stood up straight. Their hands clapped together in front of them, catching their sudden attacker's knife between them and holding it firmly in place with a thin layer of sticky blue slime on the palms of their hands that seeped through their gloves.

Looking around, it seemed this lady wasn't the only one going crazy all of a sudden. On the deck of the nearest ship, some giant man was wreaking havoc, throwing people into the air and wrecking crates of cargo. One man was covered in blood and looking oddly happy about it. What the heck was going on here?

Blue then remembered the woman who was trying with all her might to pull back the dagger they were still holding stuck between their hands. Even without the glue holding it in place, the ooze barely felt her tugging and pulling. They were just ridiculously strong after all of their training condensing their ooze. They practically forgot she'd just been trying to stab them.

"Oh, sorry." Blue's muffled voice muttered from within their hood before releasing the dagger and sending the lady stumbling backwards from the unexpectedly sudden freedom of her weapon and falling directly into a crate behind her.

---

Steel Catch
Slimy Hands
Bull's Strength

    Sumaita glowered at the man, oddly prepared for a potential stabbing. Also oddly strong, but her instructions were not to fight, just to get her master to safety. Angrily, she crouches down after stumbling into the crate and leaps to the side. Mubashir might like to know about this.

    And he did! after about a minute of miming and pointing at the man that had so interested him earlier, it was decided. We must drain this man of his essence and absorb his strength! Even Sumaita struggled against his oddly sticky strength. That would be it, he instructed the two to continue wreaking havoc here to distract any interlopers, as he leapt off the ship and made his approach.

"Hey you! Hungry man! Allow me a tasste, that we might both have sstrength in thiss weak world." He shouts over, increasingly jealous of how much variety this mans diet contained. He would need to get closer to taste him... But that would be easy! No society would hold malcontent against a stranger approaching you with secret intentions in the midst of a crisis at the dockyard.

"A taste?" A taste of what? What was this guy asking for? They didn't have any food in their hands for him to be asking for a bite of. Did he mean he wanted to fight? Get a taste of their strength? He wanted them to both be strong in this weak world, so that had to be it, right? "Sure!"

Blue Raspberry took a fighting stance, their gloved fists raised in front of them like a boxer. It was cold and that made their movements a little more sluggish than usual, but they still could fight decently enough thanks to their thick clothing and electrical heat they generated. They usually preferred to have their armor on when they fought, but the metal would have sapped the warmth right out of them and just made them worse in this situation, so it couldn't be helped. They'd just have to fight without it this time.

However, before Blue could make a move, several of the dock workers suddenly charged straight for their strange opponent, trying to tackle and dogpile on the man that had killed one of their own. They barely noticed Blue Raspberry, thinking they were just another worker about to help fight the intruder with them from their fighting stance.

"Ack! Just a minute, you jusst assured me that I could sspeak!" Mubashir said, as several members of the docket grabbed onto him at once.
"Sit down inside the cart! We're not assuring anything. You're under arrest" One particularly lithe individual said, an apparent dock guardsman. He had a cart in front of Mubashir that he was intent on wheeling out of here the second the squirely vampire set foot inside.
"Look! I'm under what? Gentlemen, thiss iss Monarchy Manifesst. Have a look at the headlock here." He continues, the chaos of several burly men attempting to wrangle him inside the cart overcoming his sentence structure. "Ssee that chap over there? He- GET YOUR HAND OFF MY PANTSS"

The guards stoic resolve shattered for a moment. The vampire looked so hurt, and yet the dock guard hadn't event ouched the man's fabulous pantaloons.

"Thiss iss the bloke who got me on the pantss before I ssay!"
"Hop in the cart"
"Why did you do thiss to me?"
"Hop in the cart"
"For what reasson? What iss the charge? Eating a meal? A ssucculent, burly meal? Oh thatss a nisce headlock ssir." 
The cajoling intensified as the dockworkers managed to get Mubashirs slippery hands behind his back and cuff them in manacles. The rush to get him into the cart also picked up as more dockworkers joined into the citizens arrest.

"Aaah yess. I ssee that you know your Unarmed well. Good one. And you ssir?" He said to the man attempting to act like he was uninvolved in all of this, had even assumed a fighters stance in an attempt to cajole him. 

"Are you waiting to resceive my limp hands? How dare- Get your handss off me!" The group manages to finally push him into the cart after much effort. The destruction of the boat had ceased, the giant man in the background dissapearing into thin air. Sumaita was also nowhere to be found. Mubashir hoped she was ok. She didn't know how to swim, but she could walk along the bottom until she found a beach or something.

"Madame Marrowvine told me to come here"

With their unexpected challenger being arrested and loaded into a cart, Blue Raspberry wasn't really sure what to do. They lowered their arms and looked around as the crazy guy was manhandled into the back of the cart by some of the burlier dock workers. Well, that was a little anticlimactic. They'd thought this guy was going to be tough judging from the blood all over the front of their clothes and face. Was that his blood? Maybe he was dying and these people were trying to bring him to a doctor. By force.

Now was probably a good time to leave before the bleeding out weirdo brought any more attention to the ooze in the big coat. He'd already tried to point Blue out to the crowd and they didn't want anyone forcing them into a cart too. They just gave a small wave to the man and started backing away, back toward the forest and away from the docks.

As they began making their retreat, someone suddenly called out to the other workers.

"Hey, where'd all the medical supplies go!? The crate's empty!"

"This crate's empty too! All the food!"

"Where did all the planks go!? The nails are gone too!"

"We've been robbed!"

Angry faces turned toward the only obvious intruder on the docks, the man in the cart covered in blood. While all eyes were on Mubashir, Blue Raspberry turned and ran full on toward the forest, not noticing that everyone was eyeing the wrong criminal.