"On the Account": Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, Part 2 (Session 2.3)

Saint-Barthlemy, February 1651: On board their ships, three dozen pirates prepare to storm the Le Carenage in a daring night raid...

Programming note: As an experiment, we ran this game using the simplified World of Blades ruleset by Duamn Figueroa, which is itself based on the fantastic Blades in the Dark RPG by John Harper. Resources for both games can be found at and around https://bladesinthedark.com/fan-creations.

After some private discussion among the officers, Eve, Joe, and Guillaume identify three goals in the fight to come. First and most importantly: Hisene must fall. Without this, freeing the slaves (the second goal) will just be a temporary fix; furthermore, it is almost without doubt that the corsairs' main treasure (the third goal) is being stored in Hisene's quarters. But the capsized brigantine (the Rose) that serves as Hisene's headquarters is surrounded by a hundred meters of brightly lit beach, and six guard towers with cannons, and these two layers of security will have to be attended to before it is safe to approach Hisene in force.

The Rose (cutaway view)

Accordingly, the following decision is reached:

• First, Joe will take a small party of pirates out to the island watchtower in the bay. This tower gives the best view of the beach and has the quickest means of sounding the alarm (a zipline directly to the beach next to the Rose). After the guards in this watchtower are neutralized, three groups will stealthily strike the five smaller watchtowers along the fence.
• Second, Guillaume and Eve will enter the Rose by pretending that they are there to gamble with the corsair officers. While inside the vessel, they will set a firebomb as a distraction, and make contact with the Carib slaves so that they know to flee the vessel when the attack starts.
• Third, a large group of pirates will row ashore with weapons concealed in their boat, mingling with the Spanish mercenaries on the beach while waiting for a signal to strike.

The plan gets off to a rocky start when the island strike team is surprised by a guard and a shot is fired; Joe is wounded in the fight. Luckily, this provokes only a limited response on the beach as one corsair is sent out on a rowboat to investigate. Following Joe's instructions, the redoubtable Jerome is on hand to snipe the new arrival with a crossbow just as he discovers the bodies of his colleagues.

In the ship, Eve fascinates the guards on duty by her command of an obscure card game played in the pirate havens of the Barbary Coast. This leaves Guillaume free to plant his firebomb, make contact with the slaves, and - after multiple appeals and a display of his "miraculous" healing powers - get them ready to flee when the assault begins.

At the same time as the card-playing guards notice the flames down below, Joe's strike teams have seized the last of the watchtowers and, turning the tower cannons around to face the mercenaries, unleash a devastating barrage of grapeshot over their bonfires and tents. At the same moment, the crew members on the beach whip out their concealed weapons and attack the survivors.

The plan goes flawlessly, and the pirates soon have control of the beach, but Hisene's corsairs have bunkered up and refuse to surrender along with the surviving Spaniards. Joe and Eve lead a storming party into the hold of the ship, sustaining heavy casualties but finally gaining control of all but one area: the captain's cabin, into which Hisene has barricaded himself.

Attempts at diplomacy and intimidation fail despite Joe executing two captives outside of Hisene's door. However, the three remaining hostages reveal an important piece of information: just before dawn, they are expecting a corsair warship to arrive, captained by Japheti (Hisene's second in command). The ship has been in the area for two days, staying just below the horizon; Hisene's plan had been to betray his Spanish partners and establish an all-corsair stronghold at Le Carenage.

This new information lends urgency to the pirates' attempts to deal with Hisene before dawn. They finally settle on blasting the door in with an improvised black powder charges. Miraculously, Joe is able to set the charge with just enough power to breech the reinforced bulkhead, but not so much powder that it destroys the plunder-rich room beyond. Within the room waits Hisene, with a sword in one hand and an ornate golden incense burner dangling from a chain in the other - this, the pirates have been told, contains a djinn that makes Hisene immune to bullets.

Joe, Eve, and Hisene fight amidst the dense clouds of incense, with Eve sustaining a deep wound to her sword-arm before Joe is able to plant his cutlass deep in back of the tyrant of Le Carenage. As Hisene falls and the pirates rush in to seize his hoard, Guillaume carefully picks up the cooling incense burner. What mysteries might it hold?