Given Dra Sirdu's reputation, the voyage across had gone surprisingly well. Captain Welterforge, an irrepressibly cheerful, one-eyed dwarf, had assured anyone who asked that getting<em>to</em>the island was fairly easy. "After all," he said, "thousands of idiots have gotten to Dra Sirdu. The tricky part's staying alive long enough to get back off again!"<br/><br/>Welterforge claimed that he had captained his ship,<em>The Narrow Escape</em>, back and forth from the island four times, and that it was for this reason that he had been included in the fleet: Queen Enra had wanted to get at least some of her ships back. A few dozen adventurers, explorers, and mercenaries had been crammed into the corners of the merchant ship, but it primarily carried supplies that couldn't easily be acquired on Dra Sirdu: metal armaments and tools and stone blocks.<br/><br/>On the last day of the trip, the mists of the Graveyard cut off vision of the rest of the fleet. Despite sailing effectively blind, the dwarf remained upbeat, even when a few panicking passengers had to be locked in the hold to avoid endangering the ship. However, as nightfall approached and the obscuring mists threatened to turn the visibility from poor into nonexistent, a sharp, white light came into view off the port side. Within minutes, Welterforge and his crew had brought the ship into harbor without a hitch.<br/><br/>As lantern-bearing laborers began preparing to unload, a thin, angry-looking man hustled the assorted fortune-seekers off of the boat and toward a trio of long, wooden barracks. In the low light of a few streetlamps, he yelled something about an early morning before leaving them to their own devices.<br/><br/>---<br/><br/>The morning began, unsurprisingly, with a bugle blast. The thin man hadn't been joking about the early morning, unfortunately. The stragglers who didn't get the message on the first time through were subjected to a second blast, this time indoors, as well as a pair of burly soldiers moving between the bunks. Resistance might be possible, but given how<strong>Great</strong>of an effort it'd take, and the people it'd offend, just falling in line might be the best option, for now.<br/><br/>Once outside, the thin man began yelling at the groggy, ill-matching crowd. This time, his uniform was clearly visible, the decorations marking him as some sort of mid-to-high ranking officer. “Listen up!” he roared, glaring around as though each person there had personally offended him. “My name is Tirig Graft, but you will refer to me as Lieutenant Graft if you want to keep your teeth. I've dealt with you so-called hero types before, so I'm only going to do this once. No fighting in town! No stealing in town! No gods-damned schemes or tricks or funny fucking surprises! Break any of these rules and you end up with the penal laborers until we, by the Queen's miraculous fucking grace, have a safe route back to Nuln. You should have known what you were signing up for, so if you have any problems, you can walk out into the wilderness and let the frogemeths eat you. Is that clear?!”<br/><br/>Without waiting for a reply, he immediately continued. “Pay is room and board, plus half of anything you find. The group who came across with us the first time has found somewhere in the area of sixteen thousand crowns worth of salvage and artifacts, so far, and they were even more pathetic than you ugly lot! For anyone who can't count that high, imagine an entire room of gold. Or just a big bag, if you have a hard time with the first one.<br/><br/>"If you need to purchase things, go to the center of town and talk to Quartermaster Nils. He's fairly easy to find. Just look for a huge man who looks like he's automatically trying to figure out what you're most likely to steal. Or just find the sign that says quartermaster's office, because anyone with any sense would look at you and start thinking that way.<br/><br/>“Now, I'm in a pretty fantastic mood, this morning, seeing as how we just got a bunch of new workers and might actually have a functional well in the immediate future, so I'll take whatever questions you lot have, if you hurry up about it. If not, do whatever the hell you want until this afternoon. We're still doing paperwork, so you won't be getting any orders until then.”<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body">The two Burly Guards are attempting to move people out of the barracks where you were all placed last night, with a Great (+4) level of resistance needed to oppose them. Effective opposition skills might include Might, Intimidation, Rapport, or Fighting, though some of those may have different repercussions from others.</div></div>