What Follows the Corrigan

With her topmasts lowered, the Guild cargo hauler Corrigan huddles at the inner pier while a towering black thunderhead hovers motionless directly above the harbor entrance—holding its position against the wind for three straight days.

Before your mooring lines are even tied off, the hauler's master, Hobart Pryce, hurries up to your gangway. "Thank the skies you took my bounty poster, Captain! That beast will dive at my ship the instant I clear the harbor breakwater. All you have to do is sail alongside me and shoot it down!" High inside the thunderhead, something lets out a long, mournful call.

Inside his cabin, Pryce outlines a simple plan: the Corrigan will sail out as bait, the giant storm-ray will dive onto her as it has for forty days running, and your warship will blast the beast out of the sky while it's distracted. Beneath your boots, a heavy bilge pump chugs steadily and water sloshes inside a massive tank in the hold.

"Just a saltwater tank carrying live pond-fish for a lowland lord," Pryce claims quickly. Outside on the rain-swept pier, an Avian woman wearing a sky-herder's oilskin coat stares fixedly at the hauler's main cargo hatch.

The instant the Corrigan clears the harbor breakwater, the towering thunderhead surges forward to match her speed like a hound on a scent. Two lanes out to sea, the black clouds split open and the giant storm-ray dives: vast, slate-gray, and scarred across one wing by forty days of ballista fire.

Ignoring your warship completely, the giant creature lands directly atop the Corrigan's main cargo hatch and begins prying desperately at the wooden battens with her tail as lightning crackles down the sky.

Folding her gray wings beneath her oilskin coat, the Avian introduces herself as Zora Aldaine of the high clan aeries. "My clan herds the sky-rays across the upper peaks. Forty days ago, that poacher Pryce netted a nursing calf out of our sanctuary cloud. Its mother hasn't eaten a bite since—she will follow that hull until either she or Pryce is dead."

"I can't board an armed Guild hauler alone, Captain, but your warship can. Or you can fulfill your bounty contract and kill a grieving mother. The choice is yours."

As long as a rowboat oar and still warm to the touch, the severed tail-spine is all the proof any Guild agent requires. Hanging over the Corrigan's rail, a jubilant Master Pryce shouts his thanks and promises to double your retainer.

Yet the thin, heartbreaking cry from inside his cargo hold continues to ring out every four minutes, silencing your crew—just as the Avian herder from the docks lands uninvited on your foredeck and stares down at the bloody spine.

Filling the entire center of the Corrigan's hold sits a riveted iron water tank topped with iron gratings. Inside, a young storm-ray calf the size of a mainsail swims in endless circles, its wingtips scraped raw against the iron walls as it cries out every four minutes.

Standing atop the grating with a leveled boarding pike is Master Pryce. "Lord Kasimir's menagerie yacht is waiting up the coast with four hundred silver for this calf! That money pays off my ship's mortgage and my crew's wages—nobody takes that beast out of my hold!"

Hoisted out through the open cargo hatch, the young storm-ray calf hovers uncertainly in the open air for a heartbeat before remembering its wings.

Up on your main yardarm, Zora Aldaine watches the sky with a coil of line over her shoulder and a long, oilskin-wrapped bundle strapped across her back.

Built like a floating glass conservatory lined with cages and aquariums, Lord Kasimir's pleasure yacht swings a gilded crane out over the Corrigan's cargo hatch. As the nobleman's agent counts four hundred silver coins onto a silver tray, the netted calf is hoisted into the air, crying out frantically.

Suddenly, your lookout shouts a warning: something massive is diving out of the windward clouds at breakneck speed!