"On the Account": El Humo hace Fuego (Session 0.1 - Prequel 1)

Santiago de Cuba, New Years' Eve 1650: as festivities and fireworks light up Cuba's second city on this night of revelry, all seems to be merriment and laughter. But through the revelers moves a single figure with more serious matters on her mind...

Carmen, a red-haired freelance spy who has been operating out of Santiago de Cuba for several months, is heading to the docks to receive a new assignment. She makes her way to a three-story tobacco warehouse with a makeshift tavern in the back. This is El Curatores de Humo, a well known site for those seeking to have meetings where privacy is of primary concern. There, she makes contact with Mercedes Delgado, her employer. Mercedes has a mission for Carmen, but she has also hired some outlaws from Havana to serve as her backup. We meet:

• Oman, a fugitive whose slight figure allows her to pass as a boy
• "Red Knife" Abrameu, a youthful Spanish adventurer loaded down with weapons
• Ilva, a resourceful castaway whose heavy cape conceals a trained monkey, and
• Scotch Pete, a burly mercenary with a taste for sweet wine and games of dexterity

Mercedes sketches the mission out to Carmen in the following terms: a visiting priest is staying at the enormous Castillo de San Pedro della Roca just outside town.

At midnight, he will be rowed out to a troopship at anchor in the bay to perform a mass for the soldiers on board. During the hour that he is away, Carmen and her team must enter his lodgings - a tent pitched on one of the castle terraces - and steal any correspondence bearing the seal of a local noble: Guzman Mendoza Diaz, the Conde de Fideo. To expedite matters, a servant is standing by to open a side gate of the fortress for them at exactly midnight. The correspondence is to be returned to Mercedes at the tobacco warehouse, at which time all will be paid for their efforts.

As it is still early in the evening, the adventurers split up to learn more about the mission while they still have time.

• Carmen flirts with Carlos, an off-duty soldier at the bar, learning that the priest is no simple friar but an official of the Holy Inquisition based in Cartagena; furthermore, that his tent is heavily guarded both by musketeers from the fort, and soldiers of the Inquisition. The soldier offers to tell more if Carmen will accompany him to his rented room, but with the aid of Scotch Pete and Oman she is able to extricate herself.
• Red Knife hooks an expensive handkerchief to his belt to serve as bait for a pickpocket. When he catches one - a fruit-seller's son called Alvaro - he interrogates him regarding the Conde de Fideo. He learns that the Conde is a hidalgo - a nobleman in title only, with no lands or wealth to speak of - but an ambitious and crafty one, nicknamed "the Snake" (ofidio) on account of his inquisitive and deadly reputation. The Conde has apparently been paying good money to all who will sell him information on heretics - Jews, Protestants, and witches - for several months.
• Ilva finds a religious procession waiting to bear a holy relic through the festive streets, and plays marbles with a cheeky altar boy called Filipo to find out more about the inquisitor, including his name - Fray Porfirio Cruz del Campo - and the fact that he recently drained the Mass supplies from Filipo's church and had them rowed out to his troopship. She also learns that the Conde added religious supplies from his own home to this shipment, such as an old family communion chalice. Perhaps he is attempting to win favor with the Inquisitor?

With midnight drawing near, the adventurers hire a coach to take them up to the fortress. They consider bypassing the possibly-dangerous interior of the fortress by coming in at the sea entrance, but the presence of sentries and many light sources seems to suggest that this would be even more risky. Accordingly, they stick to Mercedes' plan, meeting her assistant at a side door and slipping in unnoticed.

The interior of the fortress proves to be nearly deserted, with almost everyone having been granted leave to go into the town for the New Years Eve festivities. Proceeding cautiously and using Ilva's monkey as a scout, they surprise two porters carrying wine and a tray of roast chicken; Scotch Pete uses a barrel that he is carrying as a part of his disguise as a deliveryman to knock one of them unconscious, while Red Knife is able to subdue the other one by beating him senseless with a heavy wooden serving tray. The porters are stripped of their uniforms and locked in a storeroom, and the adventurers proceed with Carmen and Red Knife wearing the uniforms as disguises.

The next complication involves crossing the fortress' inner courtyard, where a clerk is conducting an inventory of one of the enormous supply vaults. The clerk is blocking their progress, but Red Knife and Carmen are able to successfully distract him with questions about who to deliver the roast chicken to, while Ilva, Pete and Oman slip by behind him.

The adventurers are almost to the long stairs leading down to the terrace on which the priest's tent is pitched, but a locked door with two guards behind it now blocks their path. A plan is hatched; Carmen and Red Knife will gain entrance by telling the guards that they have brought food and wine for them, the guards will be given drugged chicken to lull them into a doze, and then the rest of the group will rush the door to overpower the guards.

However, two things go wrong: first, the guards pointedly close the door once Red Knife and Carmen have been let in, making a rush from the corridor outside somewhat more risky; and second, it seems that either these men have a strange tolerance to intoxicants, or Carmen's opium supplier has been letting quality slip of late. Either way, things move to Plan B: on a prearranged signal ("¡Feliz año nuevo!", shouted by Red Knife) the door is kicked open and Oman fires a crossbow while the guards suddenly fight themselves under attack with concealed knives. In a few heartbeats both guards lie dead - stabbed and shot through the gaps in their heavy armor. Once again, the adventurers loot their fallen foes for disguises, hide the bodies (down a pit toilet this time), and proceed towards their final goal.

On the terrace below, the inquisitor's tent stands revealed, as do ten armed guards standing in stiff parade-ground attention in two parallel rows in front of it: five musketeers from the castle garrison, and five soldiers of the Inquisition. A frontal attack seems unthinkably risky, the area is too well-lit to consider stealth, and although Ilva's monkey could probably get in and out undetected, how would it know which papers to steal? Suddenly, Scotch Pete has a flash of insight: what if the small and limber Oman, with Ilva's monkey clasped to her chest, was hidden in an empty wine barrel which was then "delivered" to the inside of the tent?

In a few minutes, the plan is in motion. Ilva overcomes some initial skepticism from the captain of the musketeers by insisting that the wine, although not scheduled, is a personal gift from the Conde to the inquisitor, and although they are closely watched while they manhandle the barrel into the tent they are allowed to do so without further objections. A few minutes later, Oman emerges, silently locates two leather folios bearing the Conde's seal on the writing desk nearby, and then relocates their contents to a watertight bottle held by the monkey. The monkey sneaks back to Ilva, and once it has arrived safely Oman steels herself, slips out under the front of the tent, and dives into the inky waters of the bay without being noticed.

Reuniting on the coast some way away, the adventurers examine their haul. The papers from the first folio, which was labeled “El enemigo interno” (The Enemy Within), contain a list of 300 names and locations. Possibly these are the heretics that the hidalgo Conde has been investigating? The contents of the other folio, labeled "El Gallo contra el León" (The Rooster against the Lion), are more inscrutable: maps of a faraway coastline, lists of English and French names, and a roster of ships. Deciding that knowing more about the materials they have stolen for Mercedes would be a useful thing, Red Knife and Carmen memorize as many of the listed names from the first folio as they can, while Oman memorizes the maps and Scotch Pete copies the various lists and names from the second. Ilva, in the meantime, takes specific note of one name on the first folio lists and carefully memorizes its associated details before sitting alone with her thoughts...

Back at El Curatores de Humo, Mercedes exchanges the stolen papers for payment. Hearing that two soldiers were killed in the course of the mission, she suggests that the adventurers may wish to leave town for a while. People say that Tortuga is nice at this time of year...

On to Session 1.1!

"On the Account": The End of the Chase (Session 1.6 - Season Finale)

Philipsburg, Saint Marten, January 1651: Joe, Guillaume and Red Knife prepare to depart the city with their new arsenal. In exchange for a promise of indebtedness from Guillaume, Captain van Breda has loaned them the Teringlijer, a swift vessel from her own squadron, to serve as a temporary escort.

An unremarkable day's sailing brings the three pirates and their cannons to a long, shallow beach on the western side of Saint-Barthelemy. There, as the sun begins to set, they find the Folly and a French merchant ship called L'Apostre (out of Marseilles) at anchor, and the encamped crew of Swedish privateer called the Wandervalke (out of Bremerhaven) lounging under their tents within a heavily fortified beachfront compound. This is Le Carenage.

The compound itself is run by Hisene, a Barbary corsair, and about twenty Spanish and North African mercenaries. Once sailors in their own right, the corsair crew now grows rich charging passing ships for careening and resupply services on their way into or out of the Caribbean. However, a cruel side to the operation soon reveals itself: the actual work is all done by Carib slaves, who work under the lash and the gun and who are chained in the upside-down carcass of a beached ship at night.

Some cautious inquiries reveal that the corsairs at Le Carenage exist in a permanent state of war with the island's inhabitants, and that both sides take pains to kill any stragglers they find in contested territory, but that some degree of trade also takes place - tools and supplies for slaves and fresh food from the interior. While gambling with the Swedish officers, Eve also discovers that the mountainous interior of the island is rumored to hold lost riches, but that dozens of parties of treasure-seekers have died searching for it. Their names now adorn a giant map of the island which is pinned above the bar in Hisene's stronghold.

As if the piles of skulls surrounding the map were not eerie enough, the pirates are also caught up in concerns of their own. Hearing that Brimstone Jack has been indisposed, Guillaume is paddled out to his sickbed on board the Folly. There he finds a shrunken, unconscious invalid bearing no signs of the apparent recuperation that had apparently characterized the captain on their trip from Hispaniola.

Nzuzi, the herbalist who had been treating Brimstone Jack, is nowhere to be found; according to the crew, she fled into the interior of the island soon after their arrival, shouting about sorcery and curses. Examining the captain and questioning Lolo, the cabin boy, Guillaume soon finds a snakebite on Jack's neck; he also find strange scribbles on the back of a map and rough sculptures of a woman's face made in candlewax. The scribbles refer to Oman; the sculpture is of Carmen. Mysteries upon mysteries...

The fog of strangeness surrounding Brimstone Jack is dispelled in the morning along with Zanzdoz's return to Le Carenage. He and the bulk of the new recruits have been out practicing boarding actions, and everyone now shows a keen enthusiasm for the hunt for the Estrella. The coconut wine comes out, a section of beach is cleared so it can be used as a rough blackboard, and the planning commences. The pirates make the following decisions:

• The company's arsenal of fifteen light cannon and the two heavy demi-cannon need to be split between the Folly and the Aquila. Each ship can only handle, at most, ten light and one heavy cannon. Given that Jaap, the new master gunner, is the most skilled artillerist in the crew, he is placed on the Aquila with ten guns and a demi-cannon. The Folly will take the remaining five light and one heavy cannon.
• The sixty available crew are similarly split - 35 to the Aquila, 25 to the Folly.
• Eve and Carmen will captain the Aquila; Joe, Guillaume and Red Knife will stay on the Folly along with Zandoz.
• The Folly and Aquila will operate in a dispersed formation, to maximize their chances of spotting their prey at the possible cost of not being able to attack at the same time.

After weighing the possibility of a quick assassination of Hissene, to end the tyranny at Le Carenage, the pirates elect to save that for another day and set out into the rising sun to lay in wait for the Estrella.

1. The First Engagement

After three days of false alarms and high excitement, the Estrella is sighted - speeding West towards Saint-Martin under full sail. The two pirate crews are caught unprepared, badly positioned to swing around and give chase, and the Estrella punches through the gap between them. Red Knife conceives a desperate plan, spinning the Folly's demi-cannon on its axis to fire a powerful and unbalancing blast: this shove to the ships center of gravity proves to be just enough to allow the Folly to catch the wind and fill its sails. On board the Aquila, Eve and Carmen replicate Red Knife's trick, and as the sun begins to set ahead of them the two pirate vessels begin - albeit slowly and sloppily - their pursuit.

2. The Second Engagement

By sunrise on the next day, the Estrella's zigzag course has successfully thrown the Folly off its trail, but on board the Aquila, Carmen's sharp eyes have kept them close on the Estrella's stern. Then, when their quarry begins to tack around an island while throwing ballast overboard, it is Eve whose maritime experience leads her and Carmen to perceive a trap: concealed within the flotsam are five Maltese sailors clutching waterproof satchels containing firebombs. The Aquila successfully avoids the trap and signals to the Folly, and the two ships finally begin to bear down on the Estrella.

Hours pass, and the pirates use every trick they can think of to close the gap. On Joe's order, the Folly's gunports are flashed open to cause the Estrella to tack away from an anticipated broadside and thereby lose some speed; soon afterwards, Guillaume and Red Knife are able to use the Folly's navigational charts to find a channel with a faster current than the one their quarry is using. On the Aquila, Eve and Carmen order Jaap to keep up a steady long-range fire with the demi-cannon, boxing the Estrella in and limiting its maneuverability. Inch by inch, yard by yard, the gap closes - and then, with a mighty roar, the Folly rams the Estrella at her stern and Joe leads a roaring charge of pirates over the gunwales onto the Genoan's ship's deck.

Little, Benerson. The Sea Rover's Practice:
Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730
(USA: Potomac Books, 2007)

The pirates' initial sally goes well. Red Knife's sharp eyes have allowed them to steer clear of the heavily-trapped bow of the ship, as well as to not be caught up by the Knights' wily ruse: they have dressed the lightly armed sailors in their own black cloaks, and are counting on the booby traps and this misdirection to lead the boarding party into a death trap of gunpowder and steel. Instead, it is the pirates who dominate the fight, pushing the sailors to surrender almost immediately and engaging the heavily armed and armored Knights on much more even terms.

But even at this moment of triumph, the hand of despair is never far away. From the Aquila, a terrible concussive explosion rings out: the demi-cannon, with which Eve and Carmen had intended to provide covering fire, has exploded - killing and injuring more than a dozen of the crew. And on the deck of the Estrella, a hulking Knight-Sergeant meets Joe in sword-to-axe combat and, with one terrible blow, severs the Irishman's right arm at the bicep. The Estrella strikes its colors, but it has been a bloody day for the jolly pirate company that left Le Carenage less than a week ago.

Taking stock of their winnings, the pirates find the stash of ceremonial Crusader silver they had been expecting, as well as multiple crates and chests full of assorted fineries: the new governor's personal effects. Up on deck, Carmen has managed to stop the last Knight standing from throwing a stash of strange old swords and blacksmithing tools overboard, and these are duly added to the haul of plunder. Lastly, and in the furthest corner of the captain's cabin, the looters find - carefully wrapped in wool and oilcloth - a fine oil painting in the Dutch style. This may be the most valuable item on board the Estrella, if only a buyer of means can be found for it:

On to Session 2.1!