Martel was not in a hurry, but having three ships in the harbor under his flag was likely drawing a lot of attention, and he needed to get rid of the trade consortium ship before they heard about her. So he haggled a bit for the ship, though he got the five points he wanted, and didn't have to worry about her any more.<br/><br/>That left him with seven points to deal with, and this was a nice, large metropolis, so he was going to get a good bit for them. He was busy that day, locating interested buyers for the various items he had in his hold, haggling in a way to make his ultimate grand-dam quite proud of him, and at the end of the day, he was back in his cabin with a letter of credit for more than ten thousand and a half gold pieces. That should easily cover the repairs for the Truewind that he hadn't been able to make during the trip back, or rather the repairs that weren't up to his rather exacting standards. The bad news was that the repairs would completely eat the money from the hostages, but not touch the plunder money. That left him sitting on a bit more than nine thousand gold for outfitting, upgrading, and hiring more specialists. He would be in port for about a week and a half, for repairs and to let the crew upwind, but he made damn sure they ALL knew that on the last day, he would sell with the morning tide, and would not wait. They all saw the gold they were carrying, many more than they had seen before in their entire lives, and he suspected most would be willing to put up with his rather unorthodox tactics and unusual demands to keep making it.<br/><br/>He would spend tomorrow getting two more cannons for the Dragon's Fury, and then have the two ballista they were replacing moved to the Truewind. The day after that, he would begin circulating stories about the dread pirate of the blue dragon flag, under a disguise so no one would realize the Dread Pirate was spreading his own stories. The fourth day in port would see him spreading stories of the latest misadventures for infamy and disrepute, before heading out again to do it again the fifth day. The sixth would be a rest day for him, spent relaxing in his cabin with Rosie. The seventh day would see him trying to find a few new officers for the Truewind, while on the eight he would hit up the merchants to see if he could get some items for himself. The ninth would be spent eavesdropping about to see if he could learn of any nearby targets or treasures, as he had lost his small leather bound notebook with his notes on the nearby treasures when the Whore's Nipples burned.<br/><br/>The tenth day would be the last in port, and he would hire on more crew men, at LEAST enough to have a double crew for each ship so they could alternate even in the worst situation. His thoughts on running with the bare minimum crew had been voiced to Rosie several times, and had started at a folly and gone extremely downhill from there. Routinely exhausted crewmen were dissatisfied, unhappy crewmen, and those kind of crewmen got away with the bare minimum they had to before vanishing from the ship into a port, often times leaving some sabotage behind.<br/><br/>(selling plunder for a bit more than a third again [34% = DC34]<br/>Diplomacy 40 = d20+21)