so… the fact that I’m figuring out how much a horse, a camel and a cart can carry, and nobody else seems to have bothered with this…

…does that mean I’m writing good and useful trade rules or ones nobody has ever needed?

Last week the Wednesday CCH group got into a gale just off Flores, and I got to test out my severe weather rules. They are unforgiving:

– the korakora was lost at sea. Apart from 1 crocodile and 2 PCs, no survivors are expected;

– the prahu is badly damaged but still seaworthy, anchored just upwind of a reef (it’s the pinkish dot right in the middle of the map), hoping it can pass over the shoals in the event of its anchor cable getting cut by coral.

– the junk (orange dot to the right of the prahu) was badly damaged in the storm and then again when it lost an anchor. It has several broached compartments. It is currently resting on the reef, being buffeted by strong winds. As long as those winds die down rather than increasing again, it should be possible to ketch or winch it off the reef eventually without further losses. If the gale blows up again they may have to abandon it.

– the jacht is undamaged and anchored between reefs (the middle brown dot).

Once the weather calms down, the plan is to seek help from the Catholic mission on the east end of Flores or failing that, on Solor, the next island over.

The crocs say they’ve reached the “first place,” where they initially came into the world. Either here or just a bit farther south. Padre Antonio believes they must mean Eden. Spirit vision shows the PCs spirits of volcanoes and dragons on the big island off to the left. And they’ve discovered a curious island up in the top right there, which seems to be a giant shellfish of some kind, the mouth of its shell forming a flat sandy enclosure around a lagoon, shaded by palm trees. The crocs say it’s the Father of Sea Snails or maybe of The Sea. Tianzi is tempted to try to eat it, since that’s what he does with powerful entities. The crocs don’t think it would make a good body for their own Father, whose skull they have aboard the prahu. What they really want for that is either (a) a croc or (b) a fish or similar in the 60-80′ range.

…Padre Antonio wonders how the people at the mission could not realize that they’re living in Eden. But then, maybe they don’t have any helpful croc guides. Or maybe they’ve been eating rice and therefore haven’t been able to hear the spirit chatter all around them.

So obviously the Bajau (or “sea gypsies” as they’re sometimes known) are pretty central to CCH as an ethnicity that resists national pigeonholing. This article might have something to it – they’ve reportedly been a group apart for a long time. I would be super cautious about making any claims that a particular ethnic group is especially suited to any particular job, though (eg. Maori harpooners, Mohawk ironworkers) – that’s been a popular colonial trope ever since one group of people decided it was unusually well-suited to being the rulers of another.

In game, though, people believe all this stuff. Did you know Bajau interbred with mermaids and that’s why they can’t live a whole year on land? Balinese, on the other hand, will die if they spend a full month at sea. Some of this is just fold wisdom, some is printed in Chinese encyclopedias. In 1610 the farangs are still trying to figure out if Vitruvius was right, when he said that Africans have high voices because the sky is shorter down south.

Originally shared by Wil Hutton

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

First shot fired for the Monday gang. Swivel gun against the attack platform of a pirate canoe. Harpooneer removed, rowers discouraged.

Second shot: a battery of 20 rockets, at close range against a charging canoe full of desperadoes. All rockets hit. No survivors.

There… may be some truth in Paolo Greco’s observation that all my campaigns are essentially the same campaign.

Is anyone up for a “session zero” campaign planning session of Counter-colonial Heistcrawl Group 2, either tomorrow 11am EST / 4pm GMT?

This is the group that would meet during daytime hours US time – weekly on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday, optimally around the time proposed or an hour later.

The plan I have in mind for this group involves less spirit magic and more trad piracy type shipboard action that the current, evening group. Beyond that, I’d like to meet with the players and plan out together a few parameters for the game.

So for the meeting… tomorrow/Friday? Monday? Wednesday?

it occurred to me that I hadn’t really described the relative sizes of ships that the players have run across yet. Left column: the PCs’ flotilla. Right column: the Portuguese carrack and Dutch jachts that they’re currently tussling with. Placed against a 10′ grid.

Not pictured: the relative heights above the water. The gunwale of the PCs’ tallest craft – the junk – projects 5′ above the water. The Korakora’s central platform is just 2.5′ over the water. The “pit” of the Dutch jacht (the lowest, central section between fore- and stern-castles) is 7.5′ above the water and the castles are about 5′ taller than that. The pit of the carrack is 9′ above the water and the castles are 2 stories high, so 11′ taller, reached by steep ladder.

Once again, the session goes to places I did not anticipate.

Confronted by a big Portuguese carrack being pursued by two big Dutch jachts, the players contrive to drive all 3 ships onto shoals, the better to have them blast each other with cannon fire. They lift some muskets, food and water off the carrack and shoot up the Dutch ships sufficiently that their croc allies can do damage to the crew of one, while the other offers a white flag. As we end the session, the PCs are contemplating rowing out to the unharmed Dutch ship to accept its surrender, with the further plan of turning the surrendered ship’s guns on its already damaged companion. The complicating factor is that all this would have to be effected before the rising tide lifts all affected ships off their predicaments.

Loot so far:

18 musket-carbines

a ship’s boat (capable of carrying 24 people or being rowed by 16)

a half tun of water, 2 ankers of wine, olives, paiu (salted sausage), dry biscuit, a tun of beans and a tun of salted cod, cheese, and some blue square blocks stamped with the Ming Imperial seal.

Potentially a repaired Portuguese carrack.

Resoures expended: 3 penis pearls.

after-action report

Action was thin on the ground this week. In efforts to prevent all the NPCs from starving to death, they were packed off on a fishing expedition, while the PCs mounted a raid on a Chinese pirate junk.

…turns out the junk had moved, but a trip up a tree trunk revealed (a) where it had moved to, (b) a mountainous massing of sails on the horizon, as of some great big galleon heading this way.

When night falls:

(a) the big sailing ship should be nearby

(b) the junk can be raided

(c) there should be at least 6 big breadfruit type things on the Barby: enough to feed the crew for one more day.

Meaningless complications:

1. somebody drowned aboard the prahu. Like, yes, drowned on the boat. Player are puzzled, threaten the sorcerer worms. Sorcerer worms are like “how much do you trust your henchmen?”

2. the junk they liberated from Chinese pirates has no cannon but it does have 1 ton of cannon ammo in the form of stout wooden harpoons with barbs top and bottom.

After-action report: full o worms

Our heroes are approached by a helpful bunch of sailors on an outrigger prahu. “Come aboard,” they say, “if you want to live. That hillside behind you is burning, come quickly we will take you to your friends.”

Several PCs struggle aboard, together with the 6 foot skull of King Croc and two brass cucurbits possibly containing djinn.

But it is a trap! Some are paralysed, some stabbed, some pushed into the water, some left on the mangrove shore.

It’s not a very good trap.

Tenzi kills the new burly and beturbanned body of Jun, the fire sorcerer, and declares himself the rightful emperor of all China, which is good enough for 2 of the sailors: they prostrate themselves and cease fighting. Tenzi hides the body away for eating later. Juen the paralyzer is in the body of a cabin boy – when that body is cut open it turns out to be full of black worms with red eyes. The sailors either surrender or are killed and eaten by crocs.

Night-black figures arrive from the sky – the recently-freed spirit-wrangler Pakpao learns from them that there is some scary presence approaching from the north.

The PCs decide to assemble their fleet of ships and rendez-vous at the south cliffs of the island.

The prahu is searched. Below decks they find a kris knife and a sooty bone spirit boat. Inside the spirit boat is a clove boat. The clove boat has little clove oarsmen. Lu Bu buries/plants the clove boat in a rough earthenware jar of dirt from the island. He then brings the jar back aboard the prahu.

The worms are talkative and insinuating. They are put in the poorly-stitched up skin of an arm, where they chitter and snicker and wriggle disturbingly.

One character is sure they saw a skinny black figure flit across to the hull of the prahu from the far outrigger, but searching in the dark of night reveals nothing.

Campaign Report

The PCs braved the ring of burning frankincense trees and pulled out the Skull of King Croc! It’s 6 feet long, covered in warty bone spurs and has all its teeth intact. Now it wants a body. Something in the 60-80 foot range. Just as soon as it’s cooled down to the extent that it can go in the water without shattering.

They also hauled out 6 more normally-sized croc skulls and 2 of the many lead-sealed, brass containers that had been thrown into the crater, covered with cursed rocks, and surrounded with salt and copper and incense. The final one, that Prince Tenzi went back for, blew up as he got to it. He would have been killed right then if he hadn’t been incorporating a demon. His nice new golden hands are a souvenir of his brief divinity – when he wakes up he suffers severe nausea brought on by the fact that he can now see through eyes in his palms.