Immediate aftermath: include people giving up, Mona's reac to Xarces, harpies coming down, drowbanter...<br/><br/>In the silence that echoes after the clatter of crossbows and daggers falling to the wooden deck, Aron smiles widely. "See? I knew we could be good friends. Why, your former captain-" he burps- "-was just telling me before I left his office how cohesive a crew he had! I hope he was right about that, even though he was clearly wrong when he followed that by telling me 'and they'll kill you when they see you'. Alas. I say, that sun is quite too bright." Aron tries to keep position in the group of cowed sailors, shuffling sideways into the shadow of a sail before smiling again and patting his stomach. "And anyone who does feel the need to break this little informal parley is going to live to regret it, I'm sure I don't need to add, now that we're all friends here." The drow looks over at the others, moving his lips a little, and then says, "So... two of you, three of them? I assume more bodies are below," Aron says casually after counting bulges.<br/><br/>Chira nickers under her breath, having slumped when first the Imperial sailors laid down their arms with the effort of staying upright despite her massive wounds. "I will collect the weapons and lock them in my old cell," she says quietly. "They'll be safest there for now, since we have the keys." The big centaur limps forward, her stomach bulge mostly gone still as the soldiers succumbed to their own exhaustion as the horse's swinging belly kept squeezing and working them into a more absorbable form- she'd heal some when she began drawing nutrients from the soldiers' bodies, but that was something that would help some hours from now. The dwarf makes as if to instinctively grab at his crossbow when the horse approaches, but a not-so-subtle jab in the back with Aron's crossbow stands him up straight. Chira just looks at the dwarf, shakes her head, and then bends over and starts collecting weapons, tossing a few back towards the others when she can hold no more.<br/><br/>While the centaur attends to that, the two harpies far overhead look at each other and then sigh. One of them flutters down, while the other remains perched high up in the rigging, having split the differences between their desire to stay up and their desire to not give the crazy prisoners an excuse to try to roast them alive. The one who flutters down, using small wings as more a way to slow a fall than flying, is a handsome-looking white feathered harpy- shirtless and heavily tanned in the sun, he wears relatively brief undyed drab cotton shorts and a single sash as the extent of his 'uniform'. "We're sailors," he says- keeping his distance to one side of the ship from Xarius, balancing lightly on his feet. "Lookouts. After all, who could do it better than someone who can fly higher than any ship's mast, with the eyes to boot?" He has a singer's voice, a firm, high tenor that carries a musical lilt to it as he talks despite the slightly rough accent. Mona's eyes snap down to his waist, then slowly and deliberately travel up the harpy's abs and chest before the mage very deliberately licks her lips for at least two completely separate reasons. Noticing that, the harpy edges a few more inches away, his meticulously-cleaned feathers spreading a little. "My... cousin and I tend to work together. She'll stay up there for the time being," he decides. "It isn't that we don't<span style="font-style: italic">trust</span>a gang of escaped prisoners who have four of our fellow sailors in their stomachs, but-"<br/><br/>"-Two soldiers and one of their pet mages," Chira interrupts roughly. "One sailor, your ex-captain." The centaur doesn't aim to mention that there were sailors dead, though not eating, belowdecks just then since it seems to relax the harpy a little. Chira, when she hauls the weapons back towards the others in the party, whispers in a soft enough voice that the others can't hear, "The sailors we can work with. Any soldiers will be fanatics. We should kill or eat them all and leave the rest of the sailors alone, if they don't resist. I volunteer to do it myself," the wounded centaur says with quiet determination but more than a little anticipatory pleasure as her belly continues rocking a little side to side- probably just dampening-out from her walk, given how... undefined the soldier-filled bulge in her midsection is after so short a time.<br/><br/>Delia's own belly isn't nearly so rounded off just quite yet. The mage is still stirring, albeit fitfully and weakly, inside the temporarily inconvenienced demoness's body. As Delia explains the ever-increasing (and ever-more acid-filled) depths of her predicament, dinner groans. "It's not too late... for you to avoid the death penalty..." she forces out. At the same time, she stretches and tries to push her way back up into Delia's throat, but the embrace of the succubus's stomach is now far too secure for her probings to even be a nuisance. Defeated, she curls up again, helpless to keep Delia's belly from squeezing her into a little slightly more tight ball with a loud wet groan. She was fully coated in succubus juices, by now, and becoming aware that she wasn't going to get the mercy of a quick death or even a quick lapse into unconsciousness. She tingled all over, not unpleasantly in itself but only as a harbinger of the itching, then burning, and then horribly gentle numbness that would keep inexorably pushing deeper and deeper into her core until her remains were being added to Delia's frame. Delia could feel the energy leaching from her meal with every passing minute, but... the succubus can't seem to quite get a grip on that elusive, wriggling soul inside her. She could sense it- dimly, like she was trying to taste it through a thin cloth veil- but it kept eluding her. Her body wasn't likely to wait to digest its contents, either, which meant that in all likelihood she'd lose out on claiming this Imperial's essence for herself. Or, at least, her consciousness. The energy would have to do until she could figure out why she didn't already have her dinner's soul absorbed into herself, forcing it to feel its former body softening under her new body's hungry assault. It was hard, though, to be too upset with a full stomach.<br/><br/>Heading forward, the common reaction of crewmembers to the temporarily-oversized succubus's approach is stunned fear more than anything else, the effect of her belly seeming to be to worry people that they're next more than the odd kiss entices them. Not the worst thing, in the circumstances. Grunting, the dwarf stands as stiff as a statue when Delia leans on him, gritting his teeth while Delia makes her pitch and Aron snickers just behind them. Looking around and seeing that none of the other sailors are minded to bail him out, the dwarf grinds, "That... sounds fair," with a reddened face. Snickering again, Aron pats the exposed bulge in Delia's stomach. "I've always thought that you can achieve more with a kind word and an assassin's blade than... well, a small army. I was wondering if I'd have him digested before his crew gathered the courage to look in on him without an invitation... oh well. So. Now, we have a ship, dear one, and our freedom- or at least, freedom until our rations run out, and then we have the freedom to starve or start jumping into each other's bellies. I've been trying to puzzle out the captain's charts, but I believe I know a... free city we could sail to." A couple of the sailors trade nervous looks, and Aron smirks. "Ah. Good. Maybe I won't have to puzzle out the navigation myself..."<br/><br/>Back with the others, Mona is visibly holding herself back from trying to pounce on the male harpy for some reason or another. Swallowing, she looks over at Xarius with a distinct effort of will instead of focusing on the white feathered man perched on the siderail of the ship. "Anyway... yes. Love to have you visit my stomach, but I suppose burning the ship down is a bit extreme." She fingers the purloined mage symbol on her new necklace, unconsciously grinning when she touches it. "And here I am, retaking the ship, but without a meal of my own. ISn't that a shame?" Sighing melodramatically, she adds, "...if you've still got the juice, I say we heal up the horse and go browbeat the other sailors and soldiers-" she gives Chira a sidelong look, who remains stonily silent, "...into surrendering now that the captain's dead and half of 'em have already thrown in to us. "<br/><br/><br/>---<br/><br/><br/>Duly healed and fortified, three go down into the holds to negotiate a terse surrender. The sailors made a barricade of barrels and crates in front of the stairs down, but as Xarius began patiently explaining to them what had happened topside and the diminished circumstances of their prior captain, Chira opted to contribute to his diplomatic efforts by starting to pull fully laden barrels off and hurl them away from the barricade to provide the sailors with a graphic illustration of the centaur's lack of patience. Thusly encouraged, after what sounds like a spirited argument behind the barricades, the remaining sailors belowdeck surrender warily. They've got a half dozen or so soldiers in various states of undress who'd been in bed for the takeover- a few are a bit bruised and bloody, haven't lost the argument, but a few just look... worried, and less than interested in surrendering their swords. Those few worried souls aside, there seems to be an end to organized resistance to the prisoner takeover, though whether or not disobedience will still rear its head is very much up for debate; Mona seems to be in favor of eating one or two to awe the others, while Chira seems inclined to killing or eating every actual military-employed soldier and leaving the 'civilians' completely alone.<br/><br/>Back topside, Delia and Aron are left to watch over the disarmed, sullen sailors and perhaps persuade them to be a little more enthusiastic about their new temporary employers. With the disconcertingly hungry-looking Mona gone, the male harpy waddles a bit closer- also happy that the crazy prisoners are both a little more weighed down and less able to lunge at them. His 'cousin' also flaps down; white-feathered like the other ones, she's also in brief undyed cotton, though covering and supporting a bit more of her body for simple aerodynamic reasons. She stays quiet while the harpy asks, a little nervously, "And... none of us are going to get eaten?" In his musical half-sung accent. "And once you get to where you're going, you'll just... let us have the boat, right? Since you don't really know how to use it, and we do, so..." he trails off, trying not to look at either of the escapees' stomachs. The dwarf snorts, and mutters, "Believe it when you get there, lad, but I'm not expecting much in the way of that. Take my advice and fly to land first time y'see something solid on the hori-" he shuts up abruptly... probably because Aron jabbed him with his crossbow. "So very tiresome," he murmurs. "So. Delia, shall we look in the captain's cabin? I'd prefer to get out of the sun, and if the door stays open this lot won't do too much offensive without their weapons."<br/><br/>((Cutting off a bit before I thought because this has grown beyond what I wanted to do in one post. XD A bit of stuff to react to, and a kinda intermediate decision for both of you to make on just who you are going to kill, if anyone, who gets fed to someone, and who gets to stay alive! With that I can push forward and do some ~interaction~ scenes for the night, so if either of you are going to be *seeking out* any NPCs to interact with, say so, or some will decide for you and pay you two a visit. ))