"On the Account": Kingmaker, Kingbreaker Part 1 (Session 2.2)

Saint-Barthlemy, February 1651: In a jungle clearing on the south side of the island, a haze of gunpowder smoke finally clears...

Taking stock of their enemies, the pirates find that Shaytan and twelve of his highland clansmen lie dead, ten are badly wounded, and five are unwounded. This last group includes Shaytan's lieutenant, Pen, who wears blue feathers in a pair of pieced cheeks.

As the warriors begin to retreat, Samedi calls out an offer to negotiate further regarding Shaytan's plan to expel Hisene's men from Le Carenage, and sets up a midnight meeting with the lieutenant. At the same time, Guillaume and Joe plan to return to the beach, gain support from the other pirates, and hopefully attack Hisene from both sides at once. The next day is spent in frantic diplomacy and clandestine meetings as the two sets of negotiators make imperfect progress:

• Guillaume and Joe are able to convince around half of the pirates that storming Le Carenage would gain them a decent treasure, but fail to gain an outright majority of the crew. They are forced to sweeten the deal by promising some of the as-yet-unspent plunder taken from the Estrella to key crewmembers as bribes. But one dilemma remains: take the risky but profitable course of storming the beach and fighting hand-to-hand for whatever riches are hidden inside the mercenaries' stronghold, or stay in the bay, forget the treasure, and just let the Folly and Estrella's cannons do the talking?
• Meanwhile, Guillaume notices five new faces among Hisene's men, and becomes convinced that Japheti, the surgeon and second-in-command at Le Carenage, is concealing some secret about these men.
• Samedi is able to convince Shaytan's lieutenant that they are not enemies, but the negotiations for a joint attack on Hisene founder on Pen's demand that the pirates help the highlanders continue to use the lowlanders as slaves even after the island is liberated. This is necessary, claims Pen, to realize Shaytan's dream of a stone fort to keep future invaders at bay.
• Amongst all this Red Knife bids farewell to his fellow pirates, buys a simple sea canoe from one of Teiha's brothers, and sails off to the West in search of his sister.

A great many proposals and counter-proposals later, with it almost seeming that the pirates will have to just leave Saint-Barthelemy for the time being and return later when they have more options available to them, a cunning compromise is reached: Pen and his inner circle of warriors will be offered places in the crew of the Fortune's Folly, thereby giving them a chance to continue stockpiling heavy weapons and trade goods without having to sell the lowlanders as slaves to do it. The pirates will still attack Hisene - albeit from only one direction instead of two - but the highlanders will fight with them, and even if the attack fails, Hisene will no longer be able to count on the highlanders to capture slaves for him.

As events slowly move towards an epic confrontation on the beach, Samedi learns that Nzuzi considers the Folly and her dead captain to have been the subject of a demonic curse, physically manifested in the form of a small green snake. She claims to have captured the demon in a coconut shell and bound it by inking a Bible verse (Acts 19:13 - Te ato por el Jesús que Pablo proclama) into the container; claiming to want nothing more to do with such an unclean thing, she entrusts it to Samedi and asks him to see to its destruction, or at least its removal from the island. Samedi now wears the strange vessel on his person while considering where to find a priest of sufficient power to proceed with such a task.

On to Session 2.3!

"On the Account": Shaytan's Plan (Session 2.1)

The Atlantic Ocean, February 1651: Three battle-worn ships rock in the current, lashed together with ropes and grapnels. As blood drips from their decks, predators begin to gather in the waters around them...

With the final cutlass blow dealt and the last Genoese sailor herded into a group on the deck of the Estrella, the pirates plan their next move. Of specific concern to all are three things: how to deal with the wounded on both sides, how to divide the spoils of battle, and how to deal with Zandoz's continued politicking and clear ambitions to be captain. The matter is made pressing by Joe's discovery of Brimstone Jack, dead in his cabin. There is no time to waste! Holding a quick council of war in the hold of the Folly, the pirates act boldly, but with mixed results:

• Guillaume summons incredible reserves of endurance and medical skill to tend to the wounded among the pirates, and is able to save all but one of the casualties. The sole fatality is Jaap, the cannon master, whose wounds were too grievous to treat.
• Red Knife does what he can to tend to the wounded Genoese, but with no training as a surgeon he is not able to save any of the wounded. By the time Guillaume can move from treating the pirates to their captives, all fifteen of the worst injured Genoese have died or deteriorated beyond the point of no return.
• Using Old Jemmy as a cat's-paw, Joe preempts Zandoz's incipient call for an election by proposing an election of his own, speaking in favor of Zandoz for captain, and then subtly allowing Guillaume, Carmen and Red Knife to advance Eve as an even more attractive candidate. Through a mixture of fair means and shady ones (including bribing key members of the crew), Eve wins in a landslide and Zandoz is soon separated from the crew and sent away on board the Aquila with the remaining wounded pirates. 

Only thirty crew now remain on board the Fortune's Folly and the Estrella, which turn their bows westwards and away from the open ocean. Their destination is Le Carenage, about which Red Knife has been having a series of mysterious and disquieting dreams involving a ritual mask studded with emeralds. Along the way they happen across two castaways bobbing helplessly in a row boat, and Red Knife and Carmen are surprised to recognize one of them: it is none other than their old comrade-at-arms, Scotch Pete! He is accompanied by Samedi, an escaped slave from San Domingue. The two men gratefully accept rescue, telling a tall tale of a mutiny aboard their previous vessel which had been on a mission to the northern shore of Angilla to search for a missing mail packet.

Putting in at Le Carenage a few days later, the pirates find it much quieter: they are the only vessel anchored there. As Eve gets down to negotiating with Hisene to sell off the plunder from the Estrella, and the crew amuse themselves on the beach by telling tall tales of what they will do with their riches, the officers - along with Scotch Pete and Samedi - begin to do some research about the interior of St-Barthelemy and the possible whereabouts of the emerald mask. In service of this goal, they buy the freedom of Teiha, one of Hisene's Carib slaves, who is willing to serve as their guide. 

With Samedi acting as an interpreter, Teiha is also able to explain some aspects of the island's power structures to them. In addition to Hisene's mercenaries, there are two factions among the Carib inhabitants of St-Barthelemy.

• One faction is led by a warlord who the mercenaries call "Shaytan"; it is he who provides fresh slaves to the mercenaries in exchange for trade goods and the occasional firearm. Shaytan's base of operations is a half-built Spanish outpost at the top of a mountain gorge in the interior, where Teiha has indeed seen a mask like the one in Red Knife's dream. Shaytan's stated plan is to accumulate enough armament to drive Hisene and his men from the island, but from what they can gather he is still years from achieving this.
• The second faction is more numerous than the first, but leaderless and unskilled in violence. They are split between a dozen or so small (and hidden) coastal fishing lodges. According to Teiha, the runaway herbalist from the Fortune's Folly - Nzuzi - now lives among the Carib in one of these lodges.

With Scotch Pete, Carmen and Joe in favor of a frontal assault on Shaytan's fortress, and Red Knife, Guillaume and Samedi in favor of drawing the coast dwellers into some kind of alliance, Teiha is given a tie-breaking vote - and so, thanks to some linguistic finesse from Samedi in explaining the vote to her, the pirates are soon stomping and cutting through the jungly mountainside towards Teiha's family's lodge some few hours march away. There they are greeted by Nzuzi and a few villagers, and set about discussing their options.

Hours pass as the discussion seesaws back and forth between discretion and daring. Without drawing any attention to themselves, Scotch Pete and Joe decide to break the deadlock and bring matters to a head. The first the others learn of this is when the two men stride back into the lodge and toss down a bloodied sack containing nothing other than Red Knife's emerald mask! But by the sound of the war cries and gunshots in the jungle beyond the village, they seem to have brought every one of Shaytan's warriors with them...

Hastily, the pirates scatter around the clearing and prepare to meet the assault of over two dozen Carib warriors. Scotch Pete, Joe, and Red Knife decide to put their backs to the small river and face the first wave of attackers out in the open, while Guillaume uses his stinkpots to wreath the clearing in dense smoke, Carmen hides in the jungle planning to ambush the stragglers in the approaching force, and Samedi takes up a sniper's position on the roof of the lodge.

Battle is soon joined, and although grievous wounds are inflicted on both sides, the pirates' superior armament and solid defensive positions begin to push the battle in their favor. Red Knife throws a brace of grenadoes at his own feet and then dives into the river to escape the blast, cutting three attackers to pieces in a few heartbeats; Scotch Pete, similarly, is soon surrounded by a half-moon of downed warriors as his two blades form an impenetrable palisade of death. Carmen spots Shaytan himself floating down the river using a log as cover, and is able to ambush the ambusher; the great warlord is soon sinking out of sight as the green river water clouds to black with his blood. 

Things are going less well for Joe, Guillaume and Samedi , who are all are being pressed back by the attackers. Guillaume has been badly wounded in the face; Joe in the leg. However, the death of Shaytan and a plea for a momentary truce by Samedi bears unexpected fruit, and the two sides draw back from one another. 

Grasping the mask as the surviving warriors retreat, Red Knife experiences the unshakeable conviction that this artifact can be used to lift his family's curse; as to the fate of the island, and the pirates' vague notion that Hisene and his men should face some reckoning for the evil that they have brought to St-Barthelemy, these matters will have to be addressed another day.

On to Session 2.2!