<div align="center">(https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0268/44/1377572566976.jpg)</div><br/>Everyone awakens to the sound of soft, rhythmic creaking.  The room around is dark and shadowy, the air hot and stale and rank with the smell of perspiration.  For some, it might take a minute or two, but for others only moments, to realise that they're on a ship out at sea – the wooden floorboards beneath pitch and roll gently like a boat on gentler waters.<br/><br/>As eyes adjust to the shadows, it becomes evident that wherever everyone is, they are in a ship's hold.  There are various other people around in the same room as they are.  The expressions on most faces indicate various stages of misery, be it a groggy return to consciousness or realisation of some sort of predicament.<br/><br/>Sealed crates lie all around and there are also some caged pigs as well that snuffle and snort in the wallow their captivity, adding to the smell of the room.  Except for the clothes everyone is wearing, it seems every other possession has been taken away.<br/><br/>Before anyone can really get their bearing to move around, there is the heavy sound of booted feet stomping on the floorboards above.  A faint light illuminates stairs leading to the upper decks and then the  lantern burst into full view as men descend those stairs, spearing into everyone's eyes with its bright light.<br/><br/>Once eyes adjust to this brighter volume of illumination, five men confront everyone in the hold.  Five armed men.  Though they may be smiling, there is very little that is pleasant about their faces.  The lantern-bearer – a black-bearded sea rogue (http://static2.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderACG/PZOACGS0002E-MasterScourge.jpg) – presents himself with a cruel sneer and a crack of his whip.<br/><br/><strong>"Still abed with the sun over the yardarm?  On your feet you filthy swabs!"</strong>he roars.<strong>"Get up on the deck and report for duty before Cap'n Harrigan flays your flesh into sausage skins and has Fishguts fry ye up for breakfast."</strong><br/><br/>His four cronies immediately begin to round everyone up, jutting at the hilts of their cutlasses suggestively, as though looking for excuses to draw them.  At this point, it takes no effort for anyone to realise they've been press-ganged into service aboard this ship, and, given the less than sterling personalities involved, it's likely that this is a pirate ship.