The Chronicle of the Fannie May (Pb play report)

 Dramatis Personae

Essim Rosalind(?) the Noble Thief, played by FifthDragon. Claiming to be a scion from a fallen noble house, he has fallen to piracy, captaining the Fannie May and taking odd jobs to sustain himself. His skill in manipulating the noble gasses has gotten him out of many pinches hence.

Hexatimus Szylagyi the Arcane Harbinger, played by the ever-odious Reneford. A heretical arcanist captured by the Inquisition before being broken out by a rogue Inquisition defector, bearer of magics even he doesn’t fully understand.

Taz d’Alvor the Ex-Inquisitor, played by yours truly. As the Inquisition pushed him and his partner to ever greater misdeeds, he finally came to his conscience when asked to torture Hexatimus. Leaving his old life behind for that of an outlaw, Taz broke them both out and joined Essim for some “honest” work.

The Chained Thief, played by our wonderful DM CyberChronomancer. Our mysterious and secretive client who hired us to take some powerful, unstable dirigible fuel across the border into the Bursingr Confederation. Technically an NPC, but he accompanied and assisted us through the entire duration of the adventure, so he counts.

ACT 1: Some Lame Sword

We meet the crew of the Fannie May in the alleyway of a warehouse district near the edge of the Iodine Empire. After a bit of a wait (how unprofessional), the Chained Thief comes down the alleyway with a bulky crate loaded with crystal-topped cylinders- our intended cargo. As we finish loading it, Hexatimus spots a ripple in the fabric of space forming on-deck. Reacting quickly, he uses his Arcana Thief ability to hurl the ripple 200 feet into the air. An Inquisitor bearing a magic blade plummets out and goes splat (“Rudolpho! I knew him from work.” -Taz). More masked Inquisitors file out, blocking our escape. We grab Rudolpho’s blade and Essim sets sail, but not before our hull is punctured by coin-fire from ecclesiastical pepperboxes.

As we sail away to our destination, the Bursingr city of Iunathar, we look over the blade. A slender, curved blade with a basket handle adorned with a wax ideogram by the name of HALF MOON SETTING, capable of ripping holes in space with an incautious swipe. Though desperately coveted by Taz, it ultimately went to Hexatimus, the one among us least martially capable. Still pissed about that.

ACT 2: Close Calls and Fireworks

A few miles out from Iunathar and the Confederation border, the Fannie May runs into an Imperial guard ship. They signal flag for our identification. Us being pirates, this kind of fucks our shit up. Thinking fast, Taz dons a Saccharinian masquerade mask and dresses Hexatimus in his golden manacles. As the Fannie May pulls up, Taz whispers that he’s transporting a very dangerous heretic for questioning, and that he needs the utmost haste. With a clutch CHRM roll, the officer lets him slide, and the ship sails on unhindered to Iunathar.

Before we get there, we smell it on the stale winds. Smoke. On the horizon, crimson and black betray the gauntlet we are yet to face. As we get closer and closer, we see it. A massive zeppelin, the biggest we’ve ever seen, dominates the burning city’s skyline. The label on the side, painted in Imperial crimson, reads dreadnought. It dwarfs the pirate and mercantile ships surrounding it, engaged in a one-sided Lightning Cannon firefight with the Bursingrian ships, one of which is the flagship of our supposed contact, Captain Jig Beef. Seeing the massacre, we decide instead to wait it out in the clouds hovering above the Æther. After some nail-biting maneuvering and some brief glimpses of eyes and elbows in the churning deep within the back of our minds, the explosions die down above us, we narrowly dodge one of the Dreadnought’s Lightning Mortars to make our way back out into the wine-dark sky. The Chained Thief explains that if we can escort the cargo to Zenith Mons instead, he can pay us double.

ACT 3: Surprise Guests and a Course in Spontaneous Balloon Repair

We decide to take back roads to get to Zenith Mons, as to lessen the chance of an altercation with Imperial ships- though they are few and fall between in the Confederacy, we didn’t want to take our chances. After a stretch of sailing, we looked behind us and to our great surprise saw two Inquisition cutters. They couldn’t have followed us, this far, how did they get there? As we combed through our possessions, Hexatimus found a vial of quicksilver containing a red thread, and Taz recognized it as an Inquisition tracker. In a fit of impulse, he chucked it overboard- bad plan, now we couldn’t throw them off the trail any way except running faster than them.

This was when our dice started running real cold. We tried gunning it by skimming the top off of our superfuel shipment, but that didn’t get us out of eyeshot. We maneuvered to dive into a mess of winds known as St. Nitrogen’s Labyrinth, but the cutters managed to follow us. Our last gambit was to enter range of a mote that was shattered by a Conduit accident long ago called the Shattered Fist. Essim’s steering is true, and we manage to outpace one of the cutters, tangling it in some of the dangling chains. The other one is hot on our tail, but Hexatimus has a spell called Brain Rebellion, and using it on the captain of the second cutter sent the whole aerodyne plummeting into the Æther. However, we still had the problem of momentum. As we were hurtling through the sharp, broken rocks of the Fist, one ripped into our balloon. Hexatimus climbed up to try and repair and ended up head-over heels tangled in the rigging. When Essim tried to fly up and save him, he ended up dislodging Hexatimus, sending him tumbling into the void. At the last second, Hexatimus whipped out HALF MOON FALLING and clove a rend in space, depositing him on the deck with nothing more than a hearty bruise and a healthy nosebleed.

Taz saw it fit to make a hasty landing, but didn’t manage to make it quite right, and the hull was broken inward by a mote-shard. Temporarily grounded, we turned our gaze to the cutter wrapped up in the chains. If we could get aboard, they’d probably have supplies we could use to repair our hull, and we could put a definitive end to the Inquisition tracking us. We used the blade to carve a path onto their hull. A lot of muder and a bit of light bondage (thanks to Taz’s golden manacles) later, we had cleared the ship and made our way back to the Fanny May to rest, resupply, and repair. After all, we had to get the ship back to the Widow Marleene before her death intact, so she could give herself a proper viking burial.

EPILOGUE: Of Coins and Crusades

We crept our way back to the main spaceways. The Chained Thief revealed to us that he was not only transporting the fuel- he had two pieces of valuable documentation with him as well. One was an Imperial schematic for an experimental floating weapon, and the other was an edict signed by all three Red Hierophants that sanctioned a Crusade against the Confederacy. He was delivering them to the Pirate Queen Nine, leader of the Council of Free Captains, who would be giving us our coin.

As we received the ludicrous quantities of coin and began to squander it in one of the many crusty taverns at the base of Zenith Mons, we heard a rumble like thunder outside. We went out and saw the massive bulk of the Dreadnought dwarfing the port…

REFLECTION

This was truly a gem of a game. Cy did a delightful job in expanding the setting in a very appropriate manner, and many of their embellishments have been added into the living canon of the Iodine Empire. The system seemed easy enough for everyone to understand, use and abuse. The group (both players and characters) really clicked and resonated. It excites me for the prospect of running a Pb campaign sometime soon, there’s something really powerful about this game and I want to dip back into that well as often as I can.

As a parting gift, here is all the art I drew during the session, and here's a link to Pb. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.