Gypsie Princess Effie's Diary: Entry Eight -- Bringing One-Eyed Joe Home

At this point, Effie switched to a diary format. The entries became even more entertaining, though much is lost when one doesn’t have the real version to compare to Effie’s effie-centric version.

If you wish to start at the beginning, it is here.

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Tigress

Dear Diary,

I decided to stop writing about my travels in the third person. It was a bit too weird and it seems like something Black Hawk would do.

Speaking of which, that man makes me so mad sometimes. Today, he had the nerve to scold me for not carrying around over 1000 Berries that is currently in the Black Hawk Enterprise treasury. I know he knows what I wear; after all, I have caught him looking, of that I am sure— so where does he think I would keep such a thing?

Surely, keeping the treasure hidden under a floorboard in my room is much safer than me carrying a giant sack of berries everywhere I go. There is no reasoning with that man though. I would have quit on the spot if he hadn’t given such an impressive speech when I threatened to quit that convinced me that I was needed.

Speaking of my room, I am sure Trilby and Ichigo are sneaking in there, or maybe it's the rats and ghosts. First, they often make comments on, so-called mistakes, in my secret journal. Second, Trilby, today, started to question me about Tigress, claiming she was not a tiger at all, saying she spoke with her. Since Tigress has been in my room all this time, what other explanation could there be? I doubt the Atlantia* could have communicated with my familiar any other way. I am not sure what a girl who lives underwater and plays with rats knows about tigers, but her line of questioning had Black Hawk send us to the point position on our trek to return One Eyed Joe.

[*-In this background, people from Atlantis are psychic. Trilby’s mental powers have grown beyond rodents.]

The trek itself was not really that eventful. Ichigo killed some more things, as usual, with his sword that is the size of an ironing board. In fact, he killed this cute little snow sprite that seemed to be friendly towards me. The cute snowy sprite was telling me some King is looking for me; most likely, he is smitten by me like the Pumpkin, but Ichigo killed him by splitting him in half before I could find out more. It was most gruesome and terrible to behold. Yet the thing that pushed it to 11 was Ichigo being freaked out that the cute little snow imp that he split in half allegedly had no soul. I was a bit freaked out by the splitting of the cute little harmless snow imp in half, and, of course, freaked out by Ichigo being freaked out that there was no ghost for him to talk to afterwards. You think if he wanted to talk, he would do it when they were living, but I never understood men anyhow.

Turns out mean old Black Hawk can make a silver road come out of his toe when he speaks in rhymes, and this silver road leads between the worlds. So after bugging me about berries for supplies, not that we needed any because I kept everybody warm and had 100 pounds of [swamp dragon] jerky with me, he just says a rhyme, that was not even good, to call up the road. We rode on the back of a giant hairy elephant that Trilby summoned. Man, that thing stunk. I might ask Ankle if I can always smell nice or something to counter all the livestock we travel and live with.

Oh and to make Ichigo more terrifying and hard to understand, he had some sort of living, imaginary, pet, robot-jet dragon that we could all see when we were on the road. Yet Ichigo was still freaked out about not being able to talk to the dead sprite, go figure.

The road went over some darkness, which we had to be as quiet as possible because demons would come and eat us if we made noises, we were told. With our group, that was likely the greatest challenge we will ever face; but we persevered, and, eventually, we arrived in a world with stupidly gigantic trees and animals. I don’t know what Black Hawk did, but whatever it was, a pretty horse of silver that was 100 feet tall showed up, and he could talk. Turns out, he was some sort of horse angel, and he wanted to know why we were there. Ichigo, who decided to not to use his sword, told the pretty pony that we were taking One-Eye Joe home.

Mean old Black Hawk told the nice pretty pony that he needed to be polite or else, how ironic, and the pony bowed to Black Hawk. If Black Hawk wasn’t so mean and old, he would be almost handsome in his impressive sort of way.

The pony said we could pass but, in return, should we get the loadstone, he wanted us to come back and move his world to a better spot. Not sure what that means, but Black Hawk agreed, and we were on our way again. It was not too much later that we ran into Trilby’s mom, who was riding on the back of a deer and, well, looked nothing like Trilby.

Somebody along the way had mentioned Trilby’s dad was Pestilence, which at least explains the rats I guess, but not sure how Trilby got the gills. Trilby gets my vote for party member with the strangest set of parents award.

Talk about awkward, Black Hawk was so hitting on Trilby's mom, not that I cared, but I bet Trilby was weirded out.

Trilby’s mom accompanied us for a bit, and she talked about stuff with Trilby but eventually parted ways when our road took a turn off the world.

After braving another no talking zone, we arrived in the homeworld of One-Eyed Joe, appearing in Madagascar. We were still far from Joe’s house in England, and Black Hawk wanted to get Joe at least to a place he could take care of himself.

Trilby summoned giant bats, and we all road on the back of bats to get to Africa proper. What a long flight it was on a bat. The erratic flight of a bat made the trip, interesting, in a you might puke up your jerky sort of way. Once we landed in Africa, we found a British outpost with an airship. Black Hawk was too poor to buy Joe a ticket and started to complain again about the berries.

Mean old Black Hawk decided to check the bounty board to see if he could make some berries to buy the ticket and saw that he was a wanted criminal here.

Eventually, somebody else, who can actually hold onto their money, paid for Joe’s ticket. Joe paid us with the map as promised, and before parting ways, Black Hawk asked how Joe got the map.

Joe told a story how he found a man washed on the shore who was near death that he nursed back to health. The man he described as being a tall, black, bald man wearing golden armor, and he rewarded Joe with the map.

We parted ways with Joe, who was thankful to be home at last and be rid of the map that was so desired that everybody was trying to kill him.

My keen eye for a business opportunity led me to suggest to Black Hawk that we should collect the bounty on him before we leave, so we can at least make some berries on the trip.

I told Black Hawk to trust me, and I could get the bounty with no danger if he could get me a corpse. There was a missed opportunity to be had there, but I don’t sacrifice people for profit like some people I know.

Black Hawk agreed to my brilliant plan, and a bit later, I was scared half to death when a corpse fell out of the sky at my feet. I didn’t ask where the corpse came, from but knowing Black Hawk I didn’t want to know, but likely, it involved lying to a priest and some grave robbery.

Once I had the corpse, I used my powers to create a mirage, so the corpse looked like Black Hawk ,and I a scary old gypsy woman.

Once the mirage was cast, I dragged the corpse to the constable, and, not only got the 160 berry reward, but got 6 extra, because I was so scary.

As I left, I covered my tracks by having the body burn to ashes, and a mirage of a thick fog roll in to obscure my exit.

I found Black Hawk drinking with no money, and as soon as I returned, he wanted money to pay for his drinks, so I needed to divide out the loot now. I said if you want me to keep the books, we have to wait till we get home, so I can balance the books properly. Reluctantl,y Black Hawk agreed, and Trilby paid for his drinks anyway, so the need for money was mitigated.

Trilby told us that the man Joe got the map from was her father, Pestilence.

Black Hawk wanted to hide the real map so he had Trilby forge some fake maps that looked like the real map but pointed to the wrong locations. We each got a fake map, and Black Hawk had his map made so it showed the loadstone was at the house of the Devil, our neighbor. That map started to catch on fire for some unknown reason, but after it was blessed by a priest, the fire went out. Black Hawk took the real map and placed it in a safety deposit box in a bank. Likely, he will never remember where it is, but since Trilby memorized the map, we should never need it.

We returned to Madagascar to get back on the road, and while there, danced with the lemurs. Tigress wanted to dance with lemurs, too, but instead of letting her out, I tossed a few lemurs into my room for her to play with, after protecting them from fire so they didn’t cook, at least for now, while she plays with them. I will serve them up as meat on a stick for dinner I think.

Effie

XP awarded: 3 xp each

Bonus xp for my journal: 1

Next Week: Gypsie Princess Effie's Diary: Entry Nine — The Lodestone