Events · Ship stories

A battered, tallow-stained river freighter wallows up the lane, patched at every seam. Her captain, Odile Marsh, leans over the rail. "The Collector holds my debt paper too!" she calls out. "Care to swap patrol news between fellow debtors?"

An old Excise patrol cutter pulls alongside with her blue Navy pennant hauled down and laundry drying on her signal lines. "Bought her cheap at the Crown surplus auction!" her captain shouts, still wearing his old customs coat. "I kept her official inspection manuals aboard, if you want to learn how boarding parties search a hold."

A heavily loaded crystal hauler hangs stalled in the sky lane with her Drive casing open. Her crew are miners rather than mechanics, and their soot-streaked Ursine captain hails you to ask if you have an engineer aboard.

A gnomish workshop barge chugs alongside, festooned with lanterns and waving mechanical brass arms. Two gnomes in leather aprons hold up a sign: CONSTRUCTS REPAIRED & SOLD — NO HAGGLING BEFORE NOON.

A clan warbird swoops down from the mountain spires and matches your speed wing-to-wing. Avian and Lupine warriors line her rail with harpoons ready as their war-leader shouts across: "Lowlanders pay tribute in meat to cross our sky—or prove their right in a fair fight!"

A gilded noble yacht floats becalmed across the sky lane, her decorative wards shimmering in the sun. A bored young lord in a silk coat lounges in a deck chair and hails you: his chef just quit, his house mages are restless, and he'll pay good coin for anything to liven up the afternoon.

An unmarked black smuggler cutter glides out of a cloudbank and matches your speed. A Vulpine captain flashes a hooded signal lamp twice. "My hold is overflowing with contraband crates, and I have a buyer waiting who asks no questions. Carry two crates for me and we'll split the profit."

An overcrowded old freighter creeps along beneath the clouds, her decks packed with families, laundry lines, and livestock. Half the passengers are fugitive wild casters barred from every Charter port. Her captain hails you, pleading for spare food and warning of bounty hunters ahead.

You smell coal smoke and hot iron before you spot her: a heavy Emberkin forge-ship cruising with her furnace doors open and sparks streaming astern. Bare-armed smiths hammer red-hot hull plating at a deck anvil, offering ship repairs and fresh-forged cannon.

A sleek grey survey ship charges straight toward a brewing squall under full sail, pausing alongside you just long enough to hail. Her captain charts every storm front along this coast and sells copies of her weather logs.

A specialized expedition ship emerges from the grey Hush fog with every lamp blazing brightly—protected by a hull sheathed in dull lead-glass. Her captain, veteran explorer Ansel Dray, has been charting the deep Hush for a year and offers supplies or guidance.

A black Collector debt-cutter limps up the lane with a splintered mainmast and a smashed gunport. She's the *Arrears*—and it looks like her last debtor put up a fierce fight. Her remaining bailiffs are frantically working the bilge pumps instead of manning the guns.

A jury-rigged refinery barge crawls along beneath a foul brown smoke cloud. Illegal dust-runners bought the old hull cheap, and two of her processing vats are cracked and leaking silver fumes while her masked crew waves you away.

A grand white-and-gold noble galleon sails down the lane flying a pirate's black flag above her house colors. A small Free Captains prize crew just captured her off the Marchholds, and barely a dozen pirates are struggling to sail a warship built for sixty.

A juvenile storm-ray—nearly the length of your ship—is tangled in the cable rigging of a drifting wreck. Every panicked beat of its wings sends violent electrical gusts across the sky.

Above the Academy terraces, a massive brass clockwork sphere rotates on a mooring tether—an antique Cogholds training orrery. Its exhausted gnomish caretaker hails you in panic: the machine has gone haywire and started aiming its defensive cannons at passing ships!

A gaunt white corsair frigate drifts broadside to the wind with pale lanterns flickering along her rail. She's a straggler left behind by the Pale Regatta fleet; the few sailors left on deck are starving and too weak to man their guns.

A gleaming white-and-blue frigate flying the Highwell kestrel cuts across your bow. She's last season's Exhibition warship, and the arrogant young nobleman at her helm wants live gunnery practice before the tournament judges see him. "Your freighter will do nicely!" he calls down. "Try to last three bells!"

A former Crown blockade frigate hangs silent in the grey Hush fog, her wards dead and her blue naval paint bleached the color of ash. Hollowed sailors stand motionless along her rail like statues.

Suspended inside a hollow cloudbank hangs a bizarre contraption resembling an inverted iron tree, its spreading pipe-roots leaking wild light. It's an early prototype Cistern built by the Undertow to siphon mana from the sky, tended by a lone engineer.

Down on a river mudbank below the old docks, the Brindle gang has beached their iron-plated pirate cutter at low tide to scrape barnacles off her hull, with half her cannons unloaded on the sand. A lookout aims a musket your way while the gang boss offers to sell local patrol reports.

A mine-lord's armored tax barge is moored against a rich crystal cliff, collecting forced tithes from a line of independent miners' skiffs. Her defensive wards are powered down while her cargo hatches stand open.

A noble lord's household frigate is conducting live spell-gunnery drills over the hills, firing at target kites towed behind a hired sloop. The rattled sloop captain quits on the spot, and the frigate's officer hails you: "Tow our target kite for one more pass and we'll pay you thirty-five silver!"

A venerable clan warbird hangs moored to a rocky spire with her wing-sails spread in the sun. Half her crew is down inside the sacred ancestor-cave below singing memorial chants, while a grey-furred elder keeps watch from the prow.

A heavy Compact clockwork warship drifts across the lane with her gyro-rings stalled and the giant mainspring key in her stern clicking through its very last turn.

The late Pirate King's flagship rides at anchor in the lee of a rock spire with her boats ashore. His heirs are on the island loudly arguing over who gets to command her, while the bored anchor watch offers you a mug of rum to come cast a deciding vote.

The Royal Academy's warden-ship is stopping every vessel below the summit terraces to search for banned pre-Charter books, charts, and relics. However, most of her battle-mages are ashore supervising exams today, leaving her chief examiner short-handed and irritable.

The Free Muster's chief paymaster has anchored his frigate to distribute prize shares from a deck table to a long line of pirate skiffs. He's sitting on a mountain of silver with too few guards today, and looking to hire temporary muscle.

A Hollow sentinel warship hangs motionless in the grey fog ahead. Her crew stands frozen at their posts like statues, guarding a supply cache moored just astern—and she hasn't detected your ship yet.

A Crown revenue frigate—the *Appraiser*, sister ship to the Collector's flagship—lies grounded and listing on a shallow river gravel bar as the tide drops. Her lifeboats are straining at kedge anchors while her captain frets over his report.

A Hollow siphon-ship lies wedged tightly in a narrow rock cleft, her iron intake pipes splayed like a dead spider's legs. Having drained the local sky dry of mana, she is trapped—though something inside her hull is still moving slowly between the pipes.

At dusk, your lookout calls you to the rail in alarm. Far to the east along the Hushfront, a colossal ship-shaped silhouette the color of ash is gliding silently across the horizon—dimming every lantern on your deck as it passes.

A solid mass of Hush fog has detached from the front and coalesced into the shape of an unmanned warship blocking your lane—a living splinter of the entity the Hollow call their Sovereign. Its mere presence frays your ship's wards.

A small brass clockwork sentry-ship has broken loose from its mooring high in the Cogholds and drifted down into the river lanes. It ticks alongside every vessel it meets, mechanically demanding an obsolete toll token.

A clan trading sloop adorned with hawk feathers is working its way down the lowland river, far from the mountain aeries. Her Lupine and Avian crew came down to trade storm-cured meat for lowland iron, but the prejudiced dockside merchants refuse to deal with them.

Your carpenters have barely hammered the last repair plank into place when an Excise cutter pulls alongside. Her lieutenant eyes your fresh timber with suspicion. "Heaved to in open sky, Captain? Explain who damaged your hull and hand over your ship's papers."

Two iron grappling hooks clatter over your rail! A scavenger sloop has risen from the clouds below, assuming your stationary ship is an abandoned derelict. Their boarding party freezes, pry-bars in hand, staring at your very much alive crew.

A flying supply skiff reeking of hot pitch pulls alongside while you make repairs. "Seasoned oak timber, tar, and iron nails, Captain!" the merchant calls out. "And by the look of your hull, you need all three."

A wooden cargo crate drifts past at deck height, suspended by a half-deflated lift bladder. There is no other ship in sight to claim it.

A small mail packet sinks slowly toward your level, her keel crystal flickering on its last dregs of power. Her captain hails you hat in hand: "Two fuel crystal will get us safely to port, Captain! I can pay you now, or put in a good word with the Guild!"

While your crew rested after finishing repairs, a pair of juvenile stormrays landed atop the warm hull planks directly over your Hearth, folding their wings to roost.

The barometer plummets before your fresh hull tar has even set. A fast-moving storm front slams into your position, its first violent gusts straining your newly patched planks.

A red distress flare arcs out of the clouds a mile to leeward. Now that your own hull repairs are finished, you could divert to investigate.

At dusk, a rowboat with muffled oars glides beneath your stern. A woman in a tarred coat holds up a flat, lead-wrapped parcel. "Since you're stopped anyway, Captain—deliver this package to the next port and ask no questions. Half the silver now, half on delivery."

A sleek black pirate sloop has been circling above you for an hour, watching your crew make repairs. Now she dives down with her gun ports open. "A crippled ship pays twenty silver to stay afloat," her captain calls across.