The Ghost of Pedro Delgado is in a fix and one can say that Pedro Delgado, even if he was a villain and even a nasty one, has now had a thousand opportunities to kick himself in the shinbones. However, he can't handle properly with other people and it is not his current social circle – There is, one would have guessed, absolutely nobody to meet on the Suzon… – which will help him now overcoming that « socialisation » issue!

Pedro Delgado is thus rather a desperate one but that will take our Young Pirate a lot of courage, patience, perseverance, cleverness and even maybe some fawning to break in the successive walls of his now become quick-tempered and violent personality…

Or else a lot of Rooroot Beer or Grog but we then prefer to put a shy veil on the reactive sequences following the choice of those options…

Neverending preliminary narratives… for a precious medallion!

It may be the destiny of any Ghost, Pedro Delgado could well finish dissolved in a cacophony of whistles and farts – but our friends Young Pirates will not have been brought much further then - or, made step by step more confident, he would come to understand how his suffering* can come to an end and he'll deliver, he'll deliver then all that which he can about his spectral life, becoming then even unstoppable, complaining about the length of the days, the coldness « of death, which relentlessly bites in the draughts of the Limbos »… He'll then talk without taking a breath anymore between words (he actually doesn't need breathing at all as a Ghost) of the true torture to be dead, yet still there, unable to drink or eat, permanently feeling like insatiable thirst and hunger.

Parental advisory: there could well be a third option at hand and the Great Z… Lwa cannot ignore how wily Pedro Delgado can still be: actually, the most hardened (and connoisseur) of Ghosts would be able to want to deceive to obtain the ingredients, formulations and come back « to life » – Unbelievable! – to finally in the best of cases be there for a few hours up to a few days as a Zombie… to taste anew, even if now almost tasteless, the pleasures of life, flesh and alcohol! But we deactivated the option for the present Scenario…

This is up to you, Friend Game Master, to decide how long you maintain the situation blocked, to test the patience of our Young Pirates, eventually until they really come into a conflict with Pedro Delgado, who will after that be very difficult to bring back to discussion… If they're impervious to wrath or impatience and manage to bring Pedro Delgado to talking about his life before, his memories of it - a quite difficult task - he may come to speak about his true suffering, by far worse than hunger or thirst or the ability to « touch » things: the loss of « [his] precious medallion ».

An oath in wax

From there on, to learn more about the whole story, one will have to be more persuasive and the Ghost will solemnlyrequest that everybody present swears to help him if they want to hear the rest of the story; an oath in blood and wax, by which each would give a few drops of blood, add some wax from the kitchen and mix everything together. It goes without saying that the Ghost of Pedro Delgado can in no way participate himself, threrefore the wax…

In the middle of the night on an abandonned Ship, in the hold in the society of a cyclothymic Ghost, to have the courage to swear an oath will quite require a successful Roll versus Got A Nerve! + Rituals & Maledictions. However, for those who would have a Skill Level of Rituals & Maledictions more than zéro, a successful Roll versus Perception or Cleverness + Rituals & Maledictions will clearly show that that oath has nothing to do with Voodoo.

It is likely that Pedro Delgado wants to impress the group of teenagers and ensure that they help then. It is up to those who know to use or not the latter piece of information against the Ghost, that's for sure the best way to bring him out of his comfort zone and probably even out of the room! He could then hide in any part of the Ship and to find him again and calm him down could prove an impossible task, at least for the remaining of the night! So let us hope that our young friends would, at that point, already have understood it.

First story of remote memories

If everything happens as he hopes, Pedro Delgado will tell torn apart broken events from that night when he failed to leave the Island of the Yellow Lizard; he won't tell a word about the attempt to rapt Poerava, not that he would have - yet! - recognised her but, as constantly since the beginning, in order to maintain his image of the persecuted good guy. Note that, if he would recognise Poerava, he could well go into a panic, as already described in previous paragraph. But it seems he still hasn't… As we saw before, the next events may well depend on Poerava on that point… Let us hope she won't reveal herself at the most inopportune moment!

As much as the rapt of Poerava, his adventure at the place of the Swamp's Witch will remain in silence, a fortiori, even more his stealing some objects and ingredients there.

Pedro Delgado thus explains that he finally was unjustly expelled from Chedham by the inhabitants and that he had to escape to Convict's Creek to get his stuff back and take possession of his Ship, acquired from the Governor as given in the terms of an honest trade agreement (the traded goods themselves remain, however, undisclosed) – At that point, Poerave need to test her temper to not litterally explode! (With a Roll versus Got A Nerve! + Make All Sort of Faces as already warned for before.)

That night long ago, a one without a moon or, at least, very cloudy, the Furnace of the Octopus was very active and the ground shook several times. Despite all difficulties, he made it to Convict's Creek but couldn't find out where he could have left the rescue boat he used until then. It actually got loose and was taken by a stream to a beach further in the creek, and there it stayed until the arrival of our Friends Young Pirates. Decidedly totally unlucky but still pursued by the inhabitants of Yellow Lizard's Island, he jumped into the water and swam to the Suzon, where, dead exhausted, he got asleep on the Deck where he landed. Le lendemain, The day after, a sad rainy day, he would have felt a fever taking him and, not able to set sail nor to go back to the island, he would have died two days after, in a terrible suffering.

(Pedro Delgado here exagerates, however, since he died during his sleep, of a hard-striking fever, though maybe not of natural origin…)

Will Pedro Delgado spit it out?

If our Friends want to know more, it won't be simple and they'll have to ask precise questions and insist, make full use of the details of his story and endless narratives of the beginning. A key element which, however, can easily be overseen is the famous medallion, of which he spoke only once until now. If you see that the Young Pirates do not intend to question Delgado about « his » precious medallion, you can easily disseminate the following type of sequence throughout his long and repetitive speech; the Ghost seems then to feel a pain or an instant of mindlessness just before he tries to grasp something around his neck, which is not there, muttering: « My precious! Where are you?! » (Any seeming likeness or parody of whatever which you would believe to know, Friend Game Master, is for sure purely fortuitous, that goes without saying…)

In short, as you would have understood, if the Players' Characters want to help Pedro Delgado, which would be an elegant way to get rid of him, they have to deal with the issue of the Zebra Head Medallion™. By insisting a bit, it is still quite easy to learn from Delgado that he doesn't really know where he lost it but that he thinks it is somewhere close like at the bottom of Convict's Creek… (If you remember, said to be deep and populated by many a stucked in sea monster!)

He pretends to have seen it several times while dreaming, like hooked by a part of its broken chain to a coral rock surrounded by small clown fishes and inhabited by a murray. (That's quite a detailed description!) By the way, this medallion is a figure of a horse-like torso, actually a zebra but the word is not known by Delgado, and it is made of brass – So, it is anything but really precious, though it would have a mysterious shine.

That would not be of great help to know that, given the size of Convict's Creek, butPedro Delgado will come to add that he would also have seen an anchor, presumably of the Suzon, stucked in the very same isolated madrepore – that's the exact term. Yet again a bad news, there is, the rope of the anchor is unrolled on at least eighty feet, if one has the idea to check (The rope is marked at regular intervals with red thread, that comes in handy but one must have seen it on the rope and understood it…), which gives an idea of the depth here. It remains only then to believe in the dreams of Pedro Delgado… And be able to dive so deep down to recover the Medallion!

One soothing note for the Game Master: it is maybe time to remember about one of the strangest prizes of the lottery of the Pork Fair that year: a magnificient Kapootchin Gipsy Diver™ (XXS size)! With a bit of chance it was won by one of the Players' Characters, otherwise by an inhabitant of Chedham who wouldn't be difficult to find. Another possibility, if you did not mention that prize or if none of the Young Pirates took part in the lottery (Quite too bad at any rate!), the Deep-sea Diver is located in the dusty show-window of the Antique Dealer of Chedham… But hang on please, we're only almost there yet…

Indeed, the most important remains to be guessed: Delgado has cautiously avoided to mention, until now, that the Medallion is not his but the rotten fruit of a theft he committed on that very same night, at the hut of the Witch. Thus, to free the Ghost from the Limbo, one needs to bring the Medallion back to the Witch and that is something which no one aboard the Suzon knows or simply can guess so far, including Delgado… En tout étAt any rate, Delgado hopes he can get the Medallion back and he explains that it would relieve him so much from his suffering. So it's easy to believe that it would be the solution… And then, getting back the Medallion from him may prove to be a complicated task!!

Pedro Delgado cracks up

From there on, the only way to learn more - but one first has to guess that there is more to know - the only way to learn more, said we, is to break the varnish of the Ghost's speeches, by continuously press him with questions and show him the contradictions or incoherences in his stories. (put some!) For sure Delgado will start getting angry and defend himself but, as we already explained, he must be pushed hard, taking the risk either that he attacks and / or that he flies away. At last, if necessary, Friend Game Master, let Poerava come in play. It is clear that, at that moment, he may directly crack up or at least much more easily.

One, in the end, maybe discovers that he actually went to the Witch's Hut to find a safe place while he was pursued by the inhabitants of Chedham. (It is actually again half a lie!) He wouldn't have known that it was a Voodoo Sorceress. She would have welcomed him warmly then, as soon as the door was shut, she would have tried to neutralise him, maybe to implement Voodoo experiments on him! He would have tried to defend himself, have pushed her and could then escape, not without taking here and there some of her possessions, including the Medallion, as a revenge. That point is expressly said, whatever the way, sidestepping and sidestepped.

If our Young Pirates have already found the Voodoo recipe in Delgado's stuff (in the Bilge), they will maybe think he lies, that he, very purposedly and knowing what he wanted, went to the Witch of the Swamp and ask some more inquisitive questions correspondingly. Delgado will very likely finds himself somewhere between ultimate furor and total helplessness at that moment: he'll start yelling like none would have ever heard, wanting to kill everybody and probably hurting some of the presents, before he collapses and fall on the floor - half through it actually - « crying » like a Ghost can do (difficult to imagine, except maybe the noise of it). He'll ultimately maybe recognise that he needed a Voodoo recipe which would have allowed him to pilot alone the Suzon. The Witch would have categorically refused to give him anything at all and he would have shaked her a little. That's when he would have snatched the medallion from her neck and run away, not forgetting to take every ingredient he could in such a short time, hoping that it would be enough for it. Even there, he tries to bring his audience on his side, complaining on his bad luck but, at that point whatsoever, our friends Young Pirates know almost as much as be do about the story of Pedro Delgado on that evening.

That has not been a piece of cake!

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