The Widow's Bounty

Dressed in heavy gray mourning veils, the widow who posted the bounty sits at a dark corner table in a dockside tavern, a notary's deposit receipt for the reward money pinned beneath her wineglass.

"Six bounty hunters have taken up my poster so far, Captain, and I pray for every one of them," she murmurs, holding out a small pouch of silver 'for prayer candles.' "Tell me your ship's name, how many cannons you mount, and the size of your crew—so that I may pray for your safe return by name."

Six stripped hulls hang impaled along the jagged reef—the wrecks of all six bounty hunters who previously took the widow's contract. The newest wreck is still smoking, her cannons carefully unmounted in the exact order a master gunner would choose rather than a common scavenger.

Moving along the reef to recover the dead is a warship from the Hunters' Lodge. Her master hails you: "Captain Caspian Draycott of the Hunters' Lodge! Those twins somehow know every ship's exact gun layout before it arrives. Sail with me, Captain, and let's give them a fight they haven't rehearsed!"

Pouring two glasses of wine, Captain Draycott outlines his plan: since the widow already has a description of your ship, you will sail into the pass alone as bait while his Lodge brig and her escort vessel wait up-sun to dive in once the twins attack.

"Why are the twins hunting Lodge captains?" Draycott swirls his glass. "Years ago, their mother captained a Free sloop that the Lodge seized and hanged on a bounty warrant. Six of us signed that claim—before discovering two days later that a clerk had written the wrong ship's name on the warrant. By then we'd already split the payout, so we buried the mistake." He glances up at the brass nameplates on his beam. "The twins have killed five of the six captains who signed that warrant. I am the sixth."

Alone beside the reef, your crew stare at the six stripped bounty ships. The Quennell twins win every ambush because the veiled 'widow' in the tavern writes down each hunter's exact gun count and silhouette in advance—meaning the surest way to beat them is to sail in with a ship that doesn't match her notebook.

You have paint and spare canvas in your lockers, six wrecks full of salvageable rigging, or the option to send a message straight back to the widow's tavern table.

The Needle's Eye is a narrow canyon slot between two towering rock stacks, barely a cable's length wide. Hovering at the far end just outside your cannon range is a sleek cutter with black sails—while her twin sister ship is undoubtedly hidden in ambush right behind you.

From the black cutter's deck, a signal lamp blinks politely: "HUNTER. WE KNOW YOUR EXACT GUNS AND RANGE. SURRENDER YOUR FLAG AND KEEP YOUR HULL."

While Ivar Quennell stands under guard on your deck, Captain Draycott's rowboat brings over his sister Anka, her arm badly burned from her sinking cutter. Before Draycott even finishes shaking your hand, his sailors are already slinging two hangman's nooses over his main yardarm.

"We aren't taking them to a magistrate who'll ask awkward questions about old warrants," Draycott says briskly. "We hang both twins right here, I collect the notary's deposit, and I give you a one-third share for acting as bait."

"Years ago, our mother captained an honest Free sloop," Ivar explains quietly. "The Hunters' Lodge seized her ship and hanged her on a bounty warrant meant for a completely different vessel. By the second day they realized the clerk's mistake—but because they had already split the bounty money, the six captains who signed the claim covered it up. So Anka and I learned all six names, posted a bounty on ourselves to lure them out, and took down five of them one by one."

Anka raises a single finger. "Caspian Draycott is the sixth and final signature on our mother's warrant. Once he falls, the widow takes off her veils forever."

Dropping the gray mourning veils into an iron bucket on deck, the twins burn them to ash and watch the smoke drift away into the sky.

"We owe you everything, Captain," Anka tells you earnestly. "We can't touch the deposit at the notary's office without being arrested, but our two cutters are packed with the finest weapons and equipment stripped from six elite bounty ships. Take your pick."

Twenty-five years old and glaring through clenched teeth, Anka Quennell sits on your deck with a wooden splinter through her shoulder while her twin brother Ivar presses a cloth to the wound. Folded neatly inside her cutter's cabin locker lie the gray mourning veils from the tavern.

"I am the veiled widow," Anka snaps defiantly. "And the bounty money is completely real—deposited with a licensed notary to be paid upon proof of our capture. We had to post a real cash bounty on ourselves, or greedy Lodge hunters would never have sailed into our pass."