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The Raising of the Ship - Chapter 13

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And so the time has come once again, and this time it's another long chapter. I was considering cutting in half, putting the first five pages separately, but those five pages weren't exactly exciting and there's a fair bit of dialogue in the second half, so I decided to keep it together for flow. I can't keep dragging it out anyway.

Although this is sort of part of the game, technically this is an original chapter, as how you find the harp isn't really important to the game as finding the harp. Personally I always went to Kalderasha (I always used the opportunity to level grind, and so I started from the beginning, and Kalderasha told me it was with a 'happy king' - which made it obvious), and I mention another option (speaking with Brains) but here the party find out another way (from Marcello, which is also possible in-game) due to escorting the monks from St Takashiro's (which isn't possible in-game - because I created St Takashiro's).
In the game, if you visit Maella Abbey at this point you can already see the spread of corruption - a monk mentions how donations have increased fivefold, the pilgrims talk of donating ever more money, another says the new abbot is 'money, money, money' and another monk wonders where all the money is going. One monk even says Marcello has ordered them to stop talking amongst themselves (less opportunity to complain I guess) while the Templars are all happy and complacent. Big Pete's gang being hired and demanding money from the pilgrims is my invention though, as is the fight at the end of the chapter. And of course, the writ and the argument over it was also my invention, and new introductions to this revision.

I would like to point out that Marcello isn't really being unreasonable here. Sure, he's being a jerk about it (mostly because he's dealing with the half-brother he hates) but the party have spent nine months without a single sighting of Dhoulmagus, and have been going off on all sorts of detours (Ascantha, Pickham, Trodain) which have been eating up time. During this time they've been drawing on the Church's coin, which could be used for better purposes (not that Marcello overly cares about that) and don't look likely to stop anytime soon. And then, when all they have to show after nine months and a considerable amount of gold is that Dhoulmagus is somewhere in the Western Continent, the largest of the continents, they say they're going to ask for a royal treasure so they can make a deal to get their own ship - it's not unreasonable to decide they're a lost cause. He's not to know that King Pavan owes the party a favour, and they don't tell him because  the argument escalates too quickly - he merely takes what he thinks his the best decision for the abbey under the circumstances, and uses the opportunity to twist the knife into his half-brother at the same time. In fact, were their roles reversed, Jay and Angelo would have probably done the same thing.
However the story's being told from Jay's perspective, so therefore we don't get to hear Marcello's side of the story and so he's a now a designated villain. Hooray for protagonist centered morality!

Actually that's one of the main changes to this chapter - before I made the Templars such obvious villains that when I came to re-read it, I realised that there was no way no-one would have objected to their behaviour before. In fact, it word would have spread fast enough that Marcello would have been summoned by the Church to be disciplined, and his reputation would be shot - there's a limit to how overt you can be about your corruption after all. So I've altered it to make them seem a little more reasonable. Yes, some of the Templars are extorting the pilgrims, but it's smaller scale and there are more complaints over their disregard for the Rites than the money. And yes, they do end up fighting the party, but now it's more because Jay loses his temper and picks a fight with them than anything else.

Anyway, that's enough from me - I hope you enjoy the chapter! Until next week! :D


Last update 03/06/16 - correcting spelling and grammar

Previous version - ernestredeer.deviantart.com/ar…
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