Completely disregarding everything I said above, I am in favor of at times morally grey situations, and having Alex getting carried away at some point because of his youth, or Felicity as a result of tendencies developed while working for Nicodemus, and then corrected for it by the other members of the group. The final lesson for young readers would still be that such actions are wrong, though even heroes make such errors at times.

And both have reason for taking the ship, whether or not the pirates agree.

Secondly, having no ship, they would have to travel by land, once they reach it. Supposing for a moment that they still had their swords, they may try to do some form of attacks on the people on the way, but the main purpose of pillaging being that of taking booty (whether material, or people), not having a ship would make that much more difficult.

Should they even consider doing such, the fact that they would then retreat on foot would greatly hamper their speed of egress, heightening the chances that messages reach someone, anyone, who can come along and stop them in their tracks.

IMHO, their best option is to try to travel as low-key as possible, so as to avoid contact with anyone, thereby heightening their chances of making it back to the Nightmare Realm alive.

When our vehicles are used in an illegal manner today they often get impounded (smuggling, drunk driving, illegal parking, etc). This is nothing more than the pirate’s ship being impounded.

Dreamland is a fantasy world, but it is being written by someone who has a dose of reality to him! Kudos, Scott.

Most of the best stories have characters that are not truly evil or truly good. Take Princess Mononoke for example (wonderful anime). It was acclaimed as anime’s Star Wars, it was so great, and the biggest part of it was that none of the characters were totally good or evil. They all had a side to them that was both in some form or fashion. Another great example of this (in mainstream media) is Harry Potter, Iron Man, Star Trek, and even Star Wars. Most of the characters in those movies were NOT totally good or totally evil (Harry being a prime example, using unforgivable curses to rid the world of Voldemort), and they made for great stories, because that’s how it is in real life. We relate to that.

I think that Scott has done the same with his characters, and it’s amazing storytelling because of it. You still want to root for the good guys, even though they do something that’s a little lower on the good/evil totem pole (or so it seems, at least). Keep it up, Scott. Yes, we are your readers/editors, but you need to keep your own ideas in there too.

I’ve actually had this dream twice. First time, he used a spear. The second time, he used a trident, and leaned into my face and grinned really big before he pushed his weight behind the spear. He was a BIG dude.

So, yeah, if some Nightmare Realm guys with big swords get tossed over the railing, they won’t find much sympathy from me. I don’t think they had any intent of defecting or being peaceable. If they were willing, I think they would have taken the news about Nicodemus a little differently.