Beyond the corpse of Captain Shark-face, a bounty of treasure awaits. Chest upon chest of it. Like a gang of starving street-urchins set upon a rich man’s table, we fall upon it. . .
. . .BOOOOM! goes the first chest in a ball of fire as Wizard Daftboy smashes it open . . .
. . .HISSSS goes the next as the Halfgit forces the lock. . .
. . .SMASH goes another as Crazy Dwarf throws it down the stairs. . .
. . .TING goes some poison-dart-like-thing as it narrowly misses Shifty’s face

Eventually, someone bothers to look through Captain Shark-Face’s personal stuff and finds the chest keys under his bed. After we’ve smashed them all and set off their traps. After we’ve been charred, poisoned, mangled and, in the case of the Halfgit, tripped so far out on hallucinogenic gas that there’s probably no coming back. All but one chest is smashed. We have no means to carry most of this treasure. The tide is coming in. The only ways out are either underwater and full of sharks or up through a tiny hole in the ceiling that’s almost impossible to reach.

Still, eventually we do. (Am I the only one who can Spider Climb?) So now we’re down to trying to pitch the one tent that we’ve got with us on a windy cliff-top in a storm. That’s about when it occurs to most of us that we never found the thing we were supposed to be looking for in the first place.

To recap:

Most of my stuff is covered in salt-water and is probably going to rot. There’s a big pile of treasure underneath me that we can’t reach and couldn’t carry even if we could. We’re out on an exposed cliff in the middle of the night in freezing rain and a howling wind with no shelter to speak of. At least I’m not too bashed up.

Unlike everyone else, who are either battered, smashed, bruised and burned or raving mad.

Our lift back to civilisation is waiting for us out at sea. Waiting for us to bring them a ship that we can’t sail and happens to be stuck in a tidal cave filled with sharks. We are at the wrong end of a cliff and the only way down involves being able to breath underwater and body-wrestle said sharks.

Oh, and we smashed up our only boat.

And this black pearl, the whole reason we came here in the first place, is distinctly not in our possession. Presumably its somewhere back in the submerged caves covered in salt water and yet more sharks.

And the only reason we were looking for the damn thing in the first place was to give it to some dodgy bloke who would then, MAYBE, tell us something about some shit about which I DON’T CARE AT ALL.

I’ve had enough. The rest of them can do what they want. Wolfgirl’s already pissed off somewhere doing her own thing and I reckon she had the right of it. Shifty, he’s got twenty-four hours to sort his shit out or he can stay behind. The rest. . . I don’t even know the rest of them. Wizard Daftboy, Mad Monk, Crazy Dwarf, Caleb Knight of Something, I don’t even know who these people are. What happened to my friends? There was a point to all this once, wasn’t there?

Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe I just wanted gold. Wine, women and song and a few friends to share it with. What am I doing here, out on this godforsaken cliff? Gods, Ebra, what am I doing?

As soon as we get back, I’m out of here.

And that’s when a band of orcs and ogres stumble into our camp.

NEXT WEEK: YOU PICKED THE WRONG BARD, OGRE-BOY