The Gunner's Family

A Free Captains intelligence agent helps the two children onto the pier first, while their mother, Kessa Arden, pauses at your rail. "My husband Renn is the chief gunnery mage aboard the Crown hunter warship Tempest. He designed her Stormcaller Battery—a triple-barreled air cannon that almost never misses. The Crown held us hostage to force him to serve. Now that we're free, he'll defect—and bring his Stormcaller Battery with him—if a ship meets him at his patrol station."

While the agent takes the children up the dock, Kessa lingers at your rail. "I lived aboard the Tempest for eleven years—I know her gun deck better than her own officers do. And Renn won't trust a strange ship on a lantern signal alone. Before I go, I can either sketch the Tempest's blind spots for you, or give you a personal token so Renn knows I'm safe."

As the agent leads Kessa and her children up the stone steps, the youngest child turns and waves back at your ship. No one on the pier is watching you: you can record the haven's coordinates to sell to the Crown, or tear out the page and go rescue her father as promised.

The massive Crown hunter warship Tempest rides out a howling gale under storm canvas. Two green signal lanterns flash briefly from her gun deck, then go dark. No small boat can survive this wind: you must either cripple the warship in battle, or pull Renn Arden and his cannon barrels straight off her gun deck.

The Crown envoy listens with polite detachment. "An artificer who builds weapons like the Stormcaller Battery cannot be allowed to defect to rebels—holding his family was a simple necessity of state. Tell me which haven is hiding them, and the Crown will reward you handsomely."

On your deck stands the complete Stormcaller Battery: three air-driven barrels on a single mount, firing devastating three-shot volleys. Renn Arden looks up at you. "The Free Captains' agent expects this weapon delivered—but I made no promises to them. I only wanted my family back. Where do we mount the gun, Captain?"

An hour after the extraction, the Tempest spots the theft and swings around in the gale with all battle lanterns blazing! Renn Arden watches from your stern rail beside his dismantled Stormcaller Battery. "She's faster than us in a gale—I designed her trim myself. Without my battery she only has her bow chasers, but she carries forty royal marines and a captain who'll hang if he loses me!"

The envoy dries her freshly signed warrant. "With his family back in custody, Renn Arden will remain loyally at his post on the Tempest. You can take your remaining reward as eighty silver or a full Battery Deck upgrade at the royal dockyard—and if you also give me the name of the Free Captains' agent who met you, I'll double the silver to a hundred and seventy."

A Crown clerk in a gray coat is marching straight toward your gangway with the harbor guard in whistling range, determined to seize your ship's logbook and read the three lines where you recorded the haven's location.

By dawn the gale subsides. Renn Arden sits on your hatch cover holding his brass firing table—the brain of a battery whose barrels now lie at the bottom of the sky. "It'll take a foundry and a year to cast three new barrels, and the Free Captains won't be happy with an empty mount," he says quietly. "I only wanted to get back to my children."