Jing made it up to the crow's nest in record time well ahead of the competition.<strong>"Oh why do I even bother. We'll see if you fuck as well as you climb, you pussy,"</strong>Plugg remarked, to the crude laughter of the rest of the crew.<br/><br/>Without a race to watch the crew soon lost interest and drifted back to their duties. The remaining four recruits were corralled by Scourge, who immediately set them upon the back-breaking labor of swabbing the deck. But not before the boatswain noticed Myra's gaze and returned a lecherous stare of his own, complete with what was supposed to be a rakish wink but was quite ruined by the accompanying grotesque lick of the lips.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><span class="bbc_u">Myra</span><br/><br/>Ambrose "Fishguts" Kroop, the drunken ship's cook, was a fat man in his mid-forties, looking like he weighed well over 200 pounds and standing only 5 feet tall. He exuded an air of neglect, perhaps even despair, from the bushy tufts of black hair behind his ears, to his rotting teeth, to the stains on his filthy apron. His wallowing waddle of a walk was made only worse by the bottle of rum he seemed to have perpetually at hand. His hide was like tanned leather, crisscrossed with numerous scars left behind by the lash. Here was a man who clearly cared little for himself or what people thought of him.<br/><br/>The galley was Kroop's domain, and as poorly maintained as the man himself. Squeezed into the cramped and chaotic kitchen were two wooden worktables, several wooden cupboards, and two small stoves against the port wall, as well as virtually every cooking utensil imaginable and a frightening array of meat cleavers. A score of chickens and three goats wandered freely throughout the chamber; their cages left open and discarded. The stoves were perpetually lit, and large cauldrons bubbled away atop them at all times. A huge array of spices mingled with barrels of rainwater, rum and sauerkraut, and cupboards full of ship’s biscuit and salted beef. Despite the chaos of the galley and his own drunken state, Kroop navigated the mess with a professional if wobbly grace.<br/><br/>He spoke with a thick Shackles accent, which was sometimes hard to follow.<strong>"Welcome 'board the <em>Wormwood</em>, you're better off down here than up top swabbing the deck or baking in the sun. You'll be helping me prepare meals and fish when victuals run low. Now let's see what you can do."</strong><br/><br/><em>(The entire galley functions as a set of masterwork tools (+2) for Profession (cook) checks. Profession (Cook) check!</em><br/><br/>(http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/223/6/2/620a6fa20f4528e9423913701d0be2c4-d5aoevw.jpg)<br/><br/><hr/><br/><span class="bbc_u">Jing</span><br/><br/>While Scourge ruled over the swabs including the new recruits on the deck with an iron fist, the riggers carried out their tasks under the supervision of first mate Plugg. Today's work involved repairing the rigging, requiring both hands while thirty feet high in the air balancing on the very rigging they were fixing. At least their aerial isolation offered a modicum of privacy, which loosened the tongues Jing's fellow riggers, whose experience serving on board ship left them with quite a few grievances to air... if properly prodded.<br/><br/><em>(DC 10 Profession (sailor) or Dexterity check)<br/>(Optional Diplomacy check)</em>