The Timber Road Raider

Three logging barges lie smoldering along a ridge, burned down to their frames. Strangely, the draft oxen were unhitched and spared before the fire was set. A lone teamster sits on a stump with his injured arm resting in a sling made from a clan scarf. High on the next ridge, three winged clan warbirds circle on the wind, watching your ship land.

The merchants' proposal is straightforward: they are sending one more timber caravan up the high road at dawn and need it to get through. You can fly alongside it as a Q-ship—with your gun ports hidden behind stacked bark—and ambush the pack when they strike. Or you can hunt Asta directly at her pack's roost on Ravenhame Crag, a short flight north, and take her nameboard from her hall.

Just as the teamster described, three clan warbirds dive out of the glare in a silent line. The lead ship banks wide of your disguised broadside—already knowing your guns are there—and a woman's voice rings out across the wind: "Captain! I am Asta Ravenhame. Before you die defending that cargo, lift a tarpaulin and see what you're carrying!" Beside you, the caravan master frantically shouts for you to open fire.

The roost occupies a high stone shelf near the peak of the crag, holding three warbird perches and a slate-roofed longhall. Two warbirds rest on their perches while the third is away on patrol. Below the hall, an entire mountainside that should be forested has been clear-cut into hundreds of fresh stumps, each marked with a small memorial cairn. Above the longhall doorway hangs Asta's carved war-captain nameboard.

The heavy black-oak nameboard lies on your deck, carved deep with the Ravenhame crest and older than the ship that carried it. Asta Ravenhame sits against your rail with one wing bound to her side and her arm in splints. "The timber merchants only pay for the board," she says quietly. "They didn't put a price on my head—merchants prefer paying for a quiet road rather than a corpse."

Beneath the canvas lie massive heartwood trunks as thick as ship masts. Carved by hand into the bark of every trunk is a person's name, a birth and death year, and a row of memorial notches. They are sacred clan grave-trees, felled from a three-hundred-year-old burial grove. The caravan master draws a pistol with a shaking hand, unsure who to aim at, while Asta's warbirds circle overhead waiting for your decision.

"Our clan plants a heartwood tree over the grave of every soul we bury," Asta tells you, pointing down at the hillside of stumps. "Three hundred years of Ravenhame ancestors rested on that slope. Then the Long Cut merchants bought a lowland court permit declaring our sacred grove ordinary timber, set up a heavy artillery battery we couldn't breach, and clear-cut the entire hill in a single summer. Burning those trunks on the road is the only funeral we can give our dead." She looks up at your gun deck. "A light warbird can't crack their artillery battery—but a warship like yours can."

The elders of Ravenhame welcome you inside a great hall hung with the carved nameboards of every ship the crag has ever flown. Word of your deeds has already outrun your ship. The eldest speaks, her hands gnarled like tree roots: "The timber merchants offered silver. We have little coin, but Ravenhame pays its debts with everything we have."