"On the Account": Bring me that Horizon (Session 1.2)

Tortuga, January 1651:The Fortune's Folly has taken on new hands, and the sails are set to depart on the first tide. The day begins...

Twenty pirates have crowded into the aft hold of the Folly. There, in his tiny captain's cabin, Brimstone Jack is gasping out a secret. Among the pirates, six stand out:

• Eve, the Quartermistress of the Folly (played by Melanie)
• "Red Knife" Abrameu, a youthful Spanish noble laboring under a mysterious curse (Gerald)
• Guillaume, ship's doctor and political idealist (Elin)
• Joe Malone, a mutineer and would-be boatswain (Padraic)
• Oman, a young runaway dressed in boy's clothes (Amanda), and
• Carmen, a disguised spy fleeing enemy agents (Jacquie)

Other crew members of note include:

• Jerome, sailor, lately of the French navy
• Jean, the gigantic cook
• Old Jemmy, English master carpenter, recently hired
• Zandoz de la Rosa, leader of a Spanish faction among the crew, recently crew of the Dagger

His speech made less painful by some of Guillaume's anesthetic preparations, Brimstone Jack reveals what he knows: the island of St Martin will soon be sold by the French Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique. It's new owner is Giovanni Paolo Lascaris, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta:

Brimstone Jack has found out - he does not say how - that a substantial amount of ceremonial silver is being sent from the knights' stronghold across the Atlantic to St Martin. The silver is being carried by a fast but lightly-armed Genoese ship, L'Estrella, which will be arriving in the Caribbean at the end of the month. If L'Estrella can be taken before she reaches St Martin, it will be enough to change the lives of the entire crew of the Folly, perhaps up to the point of buying and fitting a much bigger ship for more ambitious adventures.

The crew retire to discuss Brimstone Jack's revelations, pausing momentarily to elect Joe as the new boatswain. Zandoz de la Rosa runs against him, but Joe's cool intimidation and his past as a mutineer carry the vote.

As the rest of the hands return to their tasks aboard the ship, Joe and the others continue to discuss the hunt for L'Estrella. Of primary concern is the Folly's shortage of firepower, even relative to a smaller ship. After considering raiding fortresses in Puerto Rico and San Domingo for weapons, the crew instead decide to beach the ship along the northern coast of the Spanish section of Hispaniola, and raid a sugar plantation instead.

The plan hits an initial hump when Oman and Red Knife find themselves unable to bring the Folly in close to the shore, and instead get stuck on a sandbar. Most of the crew stay behind to work on getting the ship loose, while Red Knife, Joe, Guillaume, Carmen, Eve and Oman travel inland towards a nearby plantation.

At the plantation, some reconnaissance reveals several points of interest:

1. A fortified great house, presumably the location of any lootable goods
2. A dormitory building, occupied by the farmhands and free laborers
3. Two slave lodges, each guarded by a pair of armed sentries
4. A large warehouse partially filled with cane bundles and processed sugar

The pirates' initial, stealthy approach is ruined by a surprised rat. Joe fires a pistol and mortally wounds a sentry; a brief firefight follows. Oman shoots a second sentry, Joe kills a third and is wounded in the ribs for his trouble, and Eve leaps from the darkness to skewer the fourth and last sentry.

In the lodges, Oman and Carmen try with little success to free the slaves. In the mens' lodge, a heavy chain running through hoops set in the stone floor serves as the anchoring point for each group of four men, and is held in place by a monstrous padlock; in the womens' lodge, the occupants are unchained but the door itself is sturdy and hard to unlock.

As the pirates continue to struggle with these locks, the gunfire outside has raised the alarm, and return fire is beginning to rattle out from the dormitory as the farmhands respond to the raid. It is only a matter if time until the outnumbered raiders are surrounded or driven back with nothing. Three acts of reckless daring, and one of cynical self-preservation, resolve the situation:

1. Red Knife scoops up several muskets and keeps up a one-man assault on the farmhands, using stealth and speed to make himself seem like several attackers
2. Carmen, improvising the dress of a plantation laborer running for safety, and utilizing a cloud of smoke created by Guillaume with a stinkpot, infiltrates the dormitory and returns with a heavy blacksmith's hammer capable of smashing the slaves' chains
3. Oman rallies the slaves with the aid of their leader, sending a party of ten men to brave the gunfire and assist Joe in tearing the great house's armored shutters open enough to permit him to throw in a firebomb
4. Eve, faced with a choice between drawing gunfire away from the freed slaves, or keeping herself safe, selects the latter

As the great house begins to burn freely, a flag of surrender is extended by its occupants and the shooting dies down, but dozens of freed slaves lie dead as collateral damage and the disarmed plantation staff are soon the focus of a general desire for revenge. Their fate is now in the hands of the crew of the Fortune's Folly...

On to Session 3!