This is just a small snippet of what my writing is like and the kind of character-driven stories I want to tell. It’s not a whole story, but it should be enough to introduce and characterize all four characters to a certain extent. As a fun game, try guessing what builds they all run.
It’s noon. Roy sits up and rubs his head. Not ten seconds of consciousness and the blasted sun is already giving him a hard time.
“You’re sure up late. The storm wasn’t that bad.” A woman’s voice. It’s Sherry, and she’s at the wheel of the Green Lion. “You know, I don’t see why steering the boat is your thing. This is pretty easy!” She spins the wheel to the right and the boat begins to turn starboard. Hard.
“Wait, you really shouldn’t–”
“Relax, Roy,” says Godrick, a tall man with many weapons on his hip and back. “You need to rest. Sherry can handle the boat ride to Whitesummit–we’re pretty much already halfway there.”
“Yeah,” Ban chimes in, a similarly tall guy with a larger, more musclebound frame. “You know how she is. She’s smart. She can handle a boa–”
The brief conversation is cut off by a loud crash and the sound of wood splitting against rock.
“Oh, what now!?” Roy looks over and sees that the Green Lion has been beached and wrecked. Nearly the entire bow has been split apart against a mighty stone jutting out from a sandy shore. “Oh, this looks bad… that’s gonna take like a day and a few hundred gals to fix… Ban, can you get that?”
Right on cue, Ban jumps off the starboard side of the ship, turns around, and puts his hands under it. Not long after, Sherry and Godrick leap off the port side, and Ban begins to heave the ship up with both hands and, slowly but surely, hoist it over his body. “A-alright… where’m I puttin’ it!?”
“We wanna get it on the other side of the island.”
Ban backpedals a half dozen steps before reeling forward and chucking the boat with all his might. It’s a pretty clean throw given that he’s throwing a sailboat, but he throws too low and the ship just beans a small cliff, crushing the entire front of it. “Oops…”
Roy pinches the bridge of his nose. “I meant you could just walk with it along the side of the island. We’re gonna need a ton more gals at this rate…” He walks over to a large rock on the beach and sits on it. “Looks like we’re on some kind of city island. I can sense hundreds of people around my strength, and a handful around y’all’s.”
Sherry joins in the conversation while looking at the damaged wood and the chipped green paint, observing it like a work of art. “So Palo Town? That puts us about halfway, and the population size matches up with your Sensing.”
Ban sighs. “Guess I gotta stay back here, then.”
“You could just put on a disguise,” Sherry suggests. “Navy folks won’t recognize your face that way.”
Godrick lights up at the suggestion. “If I may…”
A few minutes later, Ban is fitted with a cloak made out of the torn sails of the Green Lion. Godrick presents his work of art. “So? What do you guys think?”
“I look like a ninja!” Ban exclaims.
“Yeah, disguise works,” Sherry says flatly.
“Let’s just go…” Roy says dejectedly.
With Ban disguised, the party of four head into Palo town’s main plaza. Sherry and Roy head to the docks, while Ban and Godrick decide to look for potential bounties.
“Why do you wanna fix that thing anyway? It’s just a sailboat. You’ve got more than enough money after the cargo haul to just get a caravel,” Sherry asks.
“That ‘thing’ is a gift from my father. I’m not gonna scrap it just because the caravel’s more efficient,” Roy responds frustratedly, checking his belt pouch for funds before handing a large sum of galleons over to the shipwright. “It’s on the other side of the island. I can go get it if you want.”
“That’s fine. For the money you’re paying, we can afford to do a little extra legwork anyway,” says the shipwright.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa. You can’t just drop a bombshell like that! You have a father?”
“I had a father.”
“Oh…”
The rest of the walk to shore is silent.
