INTERLUDE ADVENTURE #2!!! - The Battle of Dead Man's Cove... but NOT the battle you expected!

 

GM Note: Ti having unexpected out-of-state business, we again returned to Pirate Borg, returning some of the characters from our last session.

In the months after the survivors of the Granzko-Island-Debacle (Unmoored) sailed away in the lich-king's sloop, many things happened in the Dark Caribbean. Birds began to mysteriously migrate away from the southern islands. The population of Havana, Jamaica, and Guadeloupe had population spikes as migrants fled the Scourge, and our intrepid adventurers gained two more ships for their fleet!

The cast of characters:

Ny: Call Me Judas, a reprobate Zealot, and incidentally the character from the previous game whose name I couldn't remember when I wrote the blog!

No: Sad, the Buccaneer, who never did get a good tri-corn hat, and desperately wants one.

Er: Bonita Hector, the cannibal cook.

De: Moka, a haunted sawbones, a doctor with a penchant for treachery.

At the beginning of the session, Ny, No, and Er all leveled up their PCs, since they were survivors from the last game. De, unfortunately, hadn't kept the old character sheet, and so started with a level 1 character.

Their fleet has since expanded to include the frigate Lost Echo, the brigantine Riptide, and the sloop (from Granzko), Banshee's Wail.

Following the divinations of a witch they'd aligned with back in Tortuga, the infamous Witch of Wellfleet, the fleet was led to a lonely, muggy island with rocky coasts, where---after sacrificing all the fleet's cattle---a magical mist was lifted at the back of a narrow cove, revealing a dark seacave entrance.

The wind blew nor'west, diagonally into the mouth of the cove. Skirting the winds, and avoiding the strange tentacles they saw breaking the surface in the eastern end of the cove, the three ships split up and entered the cove, just as a ghostly bone ship---Hades' Flame---emerged from behind a promontory, and opened fire upon Moka's frigate, Lost Echo.

Banshee's Wail and Riptide both avoided the combat, passing the commotion to sail towards the shingly beaches by the cave entrance. While this happened, Lost Echo's crew rammed the ghost ship, and boarded wildly, throwing half their men onto the hellish decks.

Now, a brief GM note: I have never, until this point, needed to run Mass Combat for a borg game. Considering we were going to be operating within a tight 4-hour time frame, there was no way I was zooming into individual combat for this, nor was I pulling out Rules Cyclopedia War Engine rules, although I suspect the brief rules actually may have worked.

What I came up with was this. Both sides rolled opposed d20 rolls, with a neutral-advantage-disadvantage on dice numbers effected by the relative force sizes. Moka threw half her fighting force onto Hades' Flame's decks, and was immediately affronted by 40ish men.

Hades' Flame rolled 2d20, with advantage, Lost Echo rolled 1d20.

Then, each side took the amount of damage the other rolled, assuming each rolled successes.

Moka had to eventually call over the rest of her crew, leaving Lost Echo wholly unattended. Surrounded by skeletal sailors, they miraculously rolled double damage, and, with these rules, wiped out up to 40 of the hordes, which decimated the ghost crew.

Definitely a Mass Combat system that worked, but was unremittingly brutal.

Now, back to the game...

From inside the cove, Bonita was preparing to fire towards Hades' Flame, but it never happened before the boarding party battle concluded. This is important for later...

After the boarding was concluded, the ghost ship sailed down into the waters of the bay. Moka's crew were left at only 5 men, out of an original 48!

Once on shore, the Witch tempted everyone with the promise of gold inside the caves.

The crews, terrified by the ghost ship, refused to enter the cave, and so the four PCs went in on their own in a longboat.

The board before we wrecked it!

A long, abyssally black sea cave twisted into the island. They followed it to a low-ceilinged cavern, with a few shafts of light angling down from above. Mountains of gold formed beaches along the cavern, their piles reaching up above the water. Gold glittered below in the depths. Piles of skeletons lay scattered here and there among the bones, and upon a golden throne a large skeleton, wearing a wolf-skin cape and red-leather coat with a red beard, sat in eternal slumber.

Sad immediately zeroed in on the fancy bicorn hat the body of (presumably) Captain Red Wolf wore, jumped from the boat, and began to wade across the water towards the throne. Call Me Judas held a lantern, trepidatiously, and cast Silence over the entire cavern for 70 minutes, while Bonita threw a line out and lassoed Sad, just in case.

Moka, however, taking little heed of her companions' actions, took a scoop of gold in her hat from the mound next to the longboat.

Instantly, Captain Red Wolf animated, red fire leaping from his eyes to the skeletons around the room, and as one they all lurched up, lunging for the pirates, the captain stepping slowly down from his throne.

Call Me Judas took the oars, and rowed back out of the cavern, dragging Sad along with them, but not before Sad was able to decapitate a skeleton with a single weak rapier slap (1 point of damage did it!).

The game after we wrecked it, with the wind-die
(a gift from THE Judge Spencer) on the windrose

They retreated out into the sea cave tunnel. Silence still active, they couldn't hear anything, but it appeared nothing was following them, so they rowed forward again. The cavern appeare
d empty, save for a single skeleton standing in the opening, the dark waters flecked with a red algae glow from below (I'd already described this as black).

Call Me Judas picked up on the red glow, wondering if that could be Red Wolfe, but they pressed on anyway, rowing forward so Moka and Bonita could take a swing at the lone skeleton. Sad, alone, lurched forward, trying to sprint into the cavern and find the captain to steal his hat.

As Bonita swung, she was able to see that the entire rest of the skeletons were pressed against the cavern walls, waiting for the moment to strike. Sad, likewise, saw that the cavern was empty, save the eight skeletons, two of whom turned to chase her.

At the same moment, the red 'algae' from below surged upward, as Captain Red Wolfe lunged into the longboat and swung his cutlass at Call Me Judas.

Multiple things then happened at once. Trading blows between Call Me Judas and Bonita, Captain Red Wolfe, firing pistol after pistol and swinging his cutlass over and over, was eventually cut down. Sad slashed a steady stream of skeletons from the cavern center, while Moka took a second hat-scoop of gold, refused to help in the fighting, and jumped to swim back out.

While the fight was ensuing, Moka managed to entreat 11 members of Bonita's crew to follow her back with belaying pins and help the fight. They arrived just as Red Wolfe was killed, his ghost joining the rest in their strange journey out the sea caves to who-knew-where.

It took the rest of the day to load the treasures. All told, they amassed 580,000 silver-worth of loot!

Deciding it made most sense to load it onto Lost Echo, since it had the strongest hull, they put two shares on Lost Echo and split the others evenly between Banshee's Wail and Riptide.

Before they could sail away, however, a blood-red thunder spread across the sky, tentacles rose across the distant horizon, and they watched in horror as the ghostly crew of Captain Red Wolfe rowed out in the mouth of the cove to two ships, a ghostly galleon and a hellish sloop.

They decided to make a mad dash for it, all three ships running as close to the wind as was safe, which required strafing dangerously close beside the enemy broadsides. A number of brutal broadsides were hammered into the galleon and the sloop, before Lost Echo was able to maneuver directly behind the galleon to 'cross its T', firing a broadside straight down the deck from stern to bow. (It took a whopping 22 points of damage!).

Just as the two ghost ships turned against the wind, as though they sailed with the wind of a spectral breeze, huge furry tentacles broke the water, where the fleet had seen them before, grabbing the nearest two ships---the ghost ships!

The last the fleet saw was the great, toothy maw of the furry sea serpent dragging them closer as it shredded rigging and bone-hulls alike.

And now, just outside the mouth of the cove, a desperate and strange thing happened. With close sail wind blowing nor'west, into the rocky shoreline, Lost Echo fell back, before swinging into the wind, gun ports slamming open.

Moka had entreated her crew---including some 20-ish of the men from Banshee's Wail as well as Riptide that had been sent across in order for Lost Echo to regain her minimum compliment of sailors---to turn against their recent captains, in order to cripple both ships in one turn (using Lost Echo's double broadside ability), leaving them behind so that Moka and the crew could take away an extra share of the 580,000s. Moka had already noted the speeds of the other ships, and knew she couldn't outrun them with her lumbering frigate.

So, she fell behind, trying to 'cross the T' of the Banshee's Wail.

The crew weren't completely behind her, however, and the movement was spotted by Call Me Judas, who skirted the wind around Riptide, putting that ship between her and Lost Echo.

Lost Echo fired two broadsides of ONLY chain shot, straight from the stern position, crossing Riptide's T. The broadside was devastating, shredding the rigging, sails, lines, shrouds, and toppling tops and yardarms. So close to shore, Riptide began to list completely helplessly into the rocks.

The second broadside of ONLY chain shot critically fumbled, missing Banshee's Wail. Moka used her final Devil's Luck to nullify the fumble.

Her options now were to sail away or to fire again for Banshee's Wail's rigging (risking similar fire back). Banshee's Wail won initiative, however, and, sailing with the wind now, began to speed away along the shore.

Now Moka made a choice. Even though the sounds of the sea serpent battle had only just died down inside the cove, Lost Echo reefed sails and prepared to hammer Riptide with broadsides, intending to take that share of the treasure as well!

But... Riptide fired chain, shredding Lost Echo's riggin in turn.

Lost Echo, driven by the nor'westerly wind, drifted dangerously close into Riptide, which had dropped anchor to avoid being thrown upon the rocks of the unnamed island.

Banshee's Wail was far away at this point, but Call Me Judas and Sad were watching from the sterncastle as the furry tentacles slapped around the promontory of the cove, lunging towards both ships, and hammered into the crippled rigging. They watched as talons beneath the fur sawed through hulls, the great creature's teeth crunched decks and snapped masts like toothpicks. They watched as tiny, ant-like figures leapt from the ships, and scrambled up the island rocks, one small group rushing one way, a much larger group the other. They watched as a splinter group---the unsure sailors Moka had tried to seduce away from loyalty to the cannibal cook, Bonita---split from Moka's group.

As the creature dragged both gold-laden vessels into the sea, and turned towards the men on shore, the distant sailors---all three groups---rushed up into the tree-line and were lost to sight.

The blood-rain eventually bled away. The tentacled horizon grew hazy in nightfall.

Banshee's Wail sailed, with their 4 remaining crew, uneventfully to Tortuga, where they learned no word had been had of Riptide or Lost Echo...

Both ships lay beneath the sea, their bellies fat with gold. Three groups of bitter sailors prepare to fight the long-game on a desert island, Moka's group and Bonita's group both needing the loyalty of their old sailors...

What will happen?, Call Me Judas and Sad both wonder, over their umpteenth glass of grog at The Scarlet Raven in Tortuga. A passing thought before they order another... Somewhere, sailors are struggling for a marooned existence on a cursed island.

But not here. Here, we order another round of drinks.

Doodles from the game's real villain, Moka, played by De!