The Chain Sloop

Barter Rock is a barren stone spire ringed with iron mooring staples where no honest ship ever docks. A heavy gray sloop—the Patience—lies moored to the rock with her cargo hatches barred from the outside, while an armed gunboat patrols nearby. Whenever the wind drops, you can hear dozens of captives murmuring inside her hold.

Your crew pry the iron bars off the cargo hatches, releasing forty kidnapped workers—cutlers, weavers, and a young apprentice with an unhealed factory brand. While Sturn stands shackled to his own mast, an old weaver steps up to you. "The Free Captains' court will give this slaver a polite trial and a warm meal first. We have a rope and a yardarm right here."

In his well-appointed cabin, Halvard Sturn pours two cups of wine before you even sit down. "You're no buyer, Captain—buyers look at the cargo hatches, and you looked at my gun emplacements. Listen closely: I can pay you more silver tonight than the Articles court offers if you sail away and forget you saw me. Or stay until dawn and help me rob the noble House yacht coming to buy these captives—she's carrying a full strongbox of silver."

Three senior captains sit behind a trestle table in a sail loft with the Free Captains' Articles nailed to the wall behind them. Forty freed captives line the room as the presiding captain reads out the slaving charges against Sturn, then looks to you. "Delivered alive as posted. The court pays your full bounty—does the captain who took him have anything to add to the record?"

With Sturn dead and the sloop's hatches finally open to the sky, the forty freed workers prepare to depart. The old weaver holds out the sloop's nameboard. "The Free Captains' court will pay you half the bounty for proof of his death. Or you can strip the cannons and bolts from his sloop right now and let the bounty poster rot."

Your skiff is halfway back to your ship when a twelve-year-old boy slides down the sloop's mooring chain and drops ten feet into your boat, his wrist bleeding from a pried-open iron staple. At the sloop's rail behind you, Sturn's paymaster freezes with the second bag of bribe silver in his hand, staring at the boy.

At dawn, a gilded yacht flying the banner of House Lorimer sails up to Barter Rock to buy illegal forced labor for the family's crystal mines. Sturn hails you quietly across the water: "Her silver strongbox is right under the stern cabin. Attack her from windward while my gunboat pins her bow, and we split the loot fifty-fifty."

On the captured yacht's deck, Sturn pries open the House Lorimer strongbox and divides the silver into two equal piles. "A profitable morning, Captain—and I still have forty captives in my hold to sell to the next noble house." Half his gunboat crew are busy looting the yacht, leaving his slaver sloop lightly guarded.