Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

ok! well we did good for tonight! this was rad.

 

two late night thoughts:

-what if trolls expect officers that work together closely to form a romantic bond or at least a significant friendship. the new first mate settling into the captain's long-unfilled pitch quadrant probably seems to everyone to be a tidy bit of serendipity, and assures them that things are more stable and secure now. more communication, less backstabbing, less dangerous maneuvering for status, way fewer bystander casualties. and it seems to me that bachelors of any quadrant would be seen as a little damaged at best, and worrisomely defective at worst... unable to connect with people fully, or repulsive in some secret but significant way. not qualities you want to observe in a commanding officer!

-does bel know what strain of brainrot he and his team are even exposing themselves to? it could be heartbreaking if he stumbles off the ship wondering how many hours he has left.

 

Lets say lainey included him bc combat experience!

 

Okay, feel free to have Bel be grumps about Erskin looking to Murfey for a solution rather than him. But so, maybe Murfey can give a maybe/no/aw fuck definitely no, then Bel can come up with hauling Pancho over, Erskin can throw his weight and authority behind it. Does that sound good?

Erskin would probably be thinking 'we were set to get pancho when we made planetfal after this trip, or the next planet after that', plus 'no ships will approach us now' so he wouldn't have made the next logical step of 'have her grab the meds and come to meet us'.

 

ha! whitey. that's great, it's even six letters.

damn, now i want a situation where whitey can shove erskin around all he likes due to the dynamic of 'hi i'm a lusus of your bloodcolor and you're an off-balanced, overstressed, lamed orphan, you want to court my favor'. that would be pretty interesting for everyone to watch. maybe bel could kind of bristlingly stick up for erskin and prod him into having a spine and staying focused? that would be a good kismesis thing to do. but that wouldn't happen if reggie was there... perhaps pancho could have left itsy and the babies with her regular squad, to be picked up when the cleared ship cruises into port?

 

ha! does he have an aversion to other lusii, or just a dozen lusii scampering around his ship? or other tyrian lusii, i guess, having another tyrian in your territory can't be much fun for trolls or lusii or lusus-trolls. they wouldn't be at all accustomed to sharing space with peers, and i'm sure reggie wouldn't hesitate to take a stab at a troll-size asshole if s/he felt disrespected.

 

i think everyone will want to pack him off ASAP— especially lainey, if he bullies erskin. she's already used to breathing fire at people who'd take advantage of arguus. that being said, they wouldn't mind some amount of recreationals being traded around. something like crack or meth, no way, stuff like good weed, no problem.

 

okay what if when whitey gets on the line erskin just freezes up and lainey's gotta do the fast talking (and cleavage displaying)

i would think whitey would disconcert/irritate/creep out a lot of other violets, but i think the rate of genuinely fucked-up parentless kids is pretty low among royalty?

ETA: would this be too obnoxious/dramatic, also, should erskin manage to fake his way through it?

 

aw, lame, a headache. but yeah i'll probably gloss over the exact wheeling and dealing too. tricky negotiations are too hard to write!

 

you can stick with bel's perspective of what's going on, maybe have him be too distracted by erskin's cowering freakout to pay attention to the actual back-and-forth, which lainey and murfey would handle. i'd definitely expect whitey to be enjoying the devastating effect he's having on erskin, that erskin is almost entirely incapable of treating him like a troll or a peer. if anyone manages to get any words out of erskin it's going to be 'give him whatever he wants' so they should probably do their best to cut him out of any actual haggling.

i would imagine that since lusii and little trolls are supposed to find one another just after the trials, courting the guardianship of a lusus isn't a process above-ground trolls would be witness to very often. ditto, i suppose, a stray lusus trying to adopt a new troll, though that at least would be more likely to be videotaped and put on crueltube. so, watching erskin doing his level best not to, like, supplicate? puppy-whimper? bap himself against the screen? would be pretty shocking, i guess. embarrassing, maybe, and alarming.

also like bel would have even found out about erskin's lack of a custodian second-hand, except for the bit where erskin was pissed at the thought bel was trying to bribe him he wouldn't have ever come anywhere near the subject. i guess that's why bel didn't even think to give erskin any kind of heads up? and unless bel was like 'oh hey murfey turns out the captain's an orphan is that wild or what' then i wouldn't suppose murfey would have any idea about any of it.

awkward!