My Friend Mark is running a monthly Golden Age of Piracy game using the Swashbuckling adventures D20 variant. The next session is this Saturday and this is a recap of what has happened so far:
Session 1 (We played this on holiday in Scotland)
Everyone is taking ship from Portsmouth sailing for the new world.
The Ship is the HMS Redoutable heading for Virginia.
The other notable passengers are Brinna O’Leary an Irish Herbalist, Flo and Six a pair of Highwaymen, Miss Eleanor Greyburn an educated lady, Sir Anthony “Girl” Duboir, a youngest Noble son sent overseas by his family and Bella a hard looking sailing woman.
Several weeks of sailing later Six heard a scream and we found a dead body in one of the 2nd Class cabins they had been stabbed in the neck.
The Murder is investigated by Lft Thorgil a Marine officer seemingly separate from the authority of the Naval Captain of the ship.
Something odd is going on with the marines, they are guarding something in the hold.
More murders, someone gets thrown overboard in a storm.
Miss Eleanor Greyburn is killed by terrible Poison gives us a letter to take to the Explorers Society in Port Royal. Tells us “The Order” are trying to stop her.
She asks us to take a letter to a map maker named Samuel in Port Royal.
Then the cry went up that the Spanish are attacking!
Session 2
Fight the spanish! Boarding action goes well thanks to us. However the Cannon exchanges do not favor us and despite a strong showing Captain Havelock Surrenders.
We all get locked in the brig.
One of the other prisoners was magically disguised. Her disguise runs out and she is taken to the Spanish Captain. It turns out she is Milady De Winter the world famous spy and operative of the Order.
Luckily Pirates attack, a stray cannon shot allows us to escape the vrig and we sneak back aboard our ship and turn its guns against the Spanish.
The Pirates are led by Henry Morgan and he offers us a place among his crew.
The Pirates take possession of both ships the HMS Redoutable is renamed The Valkyrie and given to Agneth Olafsdottir to captain.
We get to Port Royal and find Samuel the cartographer. He invites us to join the Explorers Society and gives us cool magnetic coins so we might know other members.
Turns out Captain Morgan is already a member so we join his crew as a cover.
The note that Eleanor gave us turns out to lead to a lost island that we must get to ahead of the Order.
Session 3
We need to get to this island before The Order
Turns out the island isn't on any charts, “I guess that is why its lost?”
There is a fisherman that knows how to get through the reefs around it is but he is in prison on Tortuga.
Samuel wants us to rescue him.
His name is Stefan Lefluer, we can recognise him by his shaven head.
Tortuga has been held by the French for the last 5 years. The governor is named Betrond D’ogern and he has been in charge for 4 years.
We carefully planned the break out.
Sir Ant and Bella went to visit the Governor and got drunk either with him or with his staff.
Six and I got into a fight and got arrested.
Brinna and Anna used a Bell that Flo got made in port royal before we left as a shaped charge on a weak section of the fort’s wall.
There is explosions and fighting guards!
We get the guy and escape using a firework to signal to Captain Morgan.
Session 4
Stefan can guide us through the reefs to this island.
Captain Morgan is in a terrible mood because he lost his hat in a game of cards.
We board a passing merchant ship and Captain Morgan steals the merchant’s nicest hat.
The Island we are looking for is really just a sand bar and is only visible at low tide but it is surrounded by reefs so you can only get there at high tide.
On the island we found a tar sealed stone entrance to some smugglers caves
the tide is coming in so we have to explore fast! (Mark ran it as a real time Dungeon Crawl, it added an awesome sense of urgency to the session)
We explore! Quickly!
There are traps, a water filled passage, a room with a floor covered in bones with rats, a talking spider and then dead guys!
We fight the dead guys.
We find all the treasure including a part of a map made of gold
“we make our maps out of paper, they make their maps out of precious metals, imagine what they make their precious metals out of!”
Then there were bad guys waiting for us outside the dungeon, they killed Stefan.
The bad guy is an empty suit of plate mail from the black forest in germany, Samuel later tells us that the order uses them as shock troops.
We go back to Port Royal and show Samuel the bit of the map, it leads to the city of Eldorado!
