The Lightning Farmers

The storm mast lies stretched along the dock planking, sheathed in heavy copper from heel to truck with thick braided leads coiled at its base. Two sisters stand arguing at either end of it. The elder sister wants it stepped onto a sturdy hull and flown straight into the towering anvil cloud to the east to charge her rack of crystal jars. The younger sister has lined up a Compact buyer in the next region and is sick of burying electrocuted deckhands.

Once the copper mast is upright on your deck, the sisters clash over how to rig the collectors. The elder wants every crystal jar she owns racked along the bulwarks with bare copper leads: more exposed metal in the air means more jars filled per strike. The younger sister insists on wrapping the leads in tarred canvas and leaving half the jars on the pier. "I've buried four deckhands rigging it her way," she warns. Neither sister will touch the other's work.

At thirty feet long, the copper mast will never fit below decks. "It rides on your main deck out in the weather, and copper draws lightning whether you want it to or not," the younger sister explains. "If we lash it flat under tarred canvas, it rides as safe cargo. If you step it upright and bare, it'll charge a few crystal jars on the voyage before we even reach the buyer—assuming a strike doesn't fry your deck." She holds out the shipping manifest and a quill.

The storm cloud towers ahead, flat-topped and ink-black. The first bolt hammers your copper mast before your bow is even fully inside the squall, setting every glass jar along the rail ringing like a bell. Seconds later, a second hull looms through the murk—another copper-masted storm-chaser whose crew regard this cloud as their private claim and are already clearing their gun ports.

The buyer is a gnome foundry foreman who walks the entire length of the copper mast, tapping the metal with a heavy signet ring. "Sound work," he pronounces. "We'll melt down half and study the rest." After paying the younger sister's price, he glances up at your own mainmast. "We have a heavy leadglass bottle that needs filling, and a standing lightning storm nearby that never moves. Catch a bolt in it for us, and my artificer will wire your mast just like hers—or step inside and pick something off my workbench."

Racked along your bulwarks, the crystal jars glow like a row of captured moons. The elder sister counts them twice and laughs aloud in triumph. The younger sister studies the scorched copper mast, then glances at your gun deck. "This spar is wasted on glass jars," she tells you. "Wire its copper leads straight into your gun battery, and every lightning strike will supercharge your cannons."

The rival storm-chasers lash alongside in the calm eye to divide the charged jars. Their captain, a jovial ursine, eyes your copper mast with open envy. "Our own mast is cracked at the heel. Sell me yours right now and these two sisters can stop their bickering. I'll pay them fair value, and pay you a bonus to help step it onto my deck." The elder sister snaps a refusal before he even finishes speaking; the younger sister looks at you.

A permanent electrical storm crackles over a bare rock spire—hovering in the exact same spot, the artificer claims, since before the Compact foundry was built. The leadglass bottle requires one direct lightning strike down its neck. Someone has to hoist it on an insulated pole at the masthead with the wired cork ready, and time the strike to the second.

The foreman's oak workbench stretches forty feet beneath a high skylight, and nearly every device resting on it hums with stored charge. "I appreciate a captain who delivers fragile freight without a scratch," he says. "Pick your bonus."