Autumn + winter 261
It seems it has been a long time since we last heard word of our brave lionfish, and yet as the waves part we can see her still fearlessly swimming through the Waters of Tempting.
Some may remember that a child was recently born to Immortal-D and Fatcat. Absent any other suggestions he has been named "ImmortalCat".
Along with Seaborn and Farvin Junior we are raising a generation of dwarves who have lived their entire lives on the lionfish. Who knows how they will turn out?
Ultimately we decided not to raid Faircradles again, and steer north to work our way along to the other human towns that direction.
Our first stop, the pathetic human hamlet of Dipbegan.
As we first sighted the smoke from their chimneys, suddenly a cry rang down from the crow's nest.
"SAIL HO!"
Turns out Spriggans looks at more than just stars. We see a single sail crest the horizon and close the distance.
An ugly and poorly made human ship. You can see this ill conceived wooden tub is possessed of an absurd list to one side, only a small crew visible above deck makes this seem like an easy target.
At last the Lionfish can do what it was truly made for: Attack another ship at sea!
As we swoop down on the target the crew mans the ballistas and bombards the enemy before our boarding.
Since we embarked we have been able to use much of our looted metal to upgrade our wooden ballista arrows, and it paid off here!
As we grew nearer, their feeble ship unable to flee with it's single sail, our boarding party assembled on the main deck.
You'll note the ballista operators are not brave enough to stay at their posts as we get into bow range...
Soon we were pulled up alongside, but what happened next... was a bit of a mess.
The boarding bridges, specifically designed to hook onto the enemy ship and prevent it's escape failed to lower!
Most of the boarders rushed below deck to see what the problem was from beneath, and when the bridges suddenly lowered the only dwarf ready to go was Reg, the Axedwarf.
In true dwarven spirit though he didn't hesitate to charge across alone!
Metruption, who had been harassing the enemy with his crossbow had driven them away from our side of the ship, but it was clear Reg was running into a deathtrap alone as Metruption looked on.
Reg quickly ran up the ramp to the top of the higher deck, Dikbutdagrate and another couple of dwarves arrived and tried to run to his aid, ominously a disembodied hand falling back down to the deck in their vision.
Alas they were too late, and Reg's lifeless body fell back down to the main deck.
Enraged, Metruption charged in and set upon the human swordsman who jumped down with nothing but his crossbow and shield!
A tense fight was engaged with the few dwarves that had made it across by this time, against the few humans brave enough to risk crossbow fire on this side of the ship.
It turns out Metruption had considered Reg a Kindred spirit and his rage made the improvised weapon in his hands deadly indeed.
By this time the other dwarves had finally come back up on deck and King Zultan and Smoot, with Delphonso, AvolitionBrit and others close behind were boarding.
The first few defenders were quickly overcome at this point, and the boarders prepared to head inside to mop up the rest.
A nasty surprise awaited us in there. To our great surprise these humans had DWARVES helpign them! That's right, dwarves, most likely by gold, in the service of this human ship,
While the main force was engaged inside the structure, Dikbutdagrate found himself fighting several humans and a dwarf alone above the main deck.
The dwarves on the main deck seemed ill suited to the rigors of life at sea, and posed little threat. No doubt they only take short voyages on such a ship, and were no match for our seasoned raiders.
With that the enemy crew was all dead. Reg had sadly fallen, but his bravery was an example for the whole crew. We engraved a slab and placed it in one of the training rooms to remind the crew of his sacrifice. This is both a necessity and an honor, as we have no way of disposing of the body other than throwing it overboard, and it's well known that no dwarf rests well unless buried properly underground, so this is the only way to ward off ghosts.
We set about looting the captured ship.
It seems that their cargo was mostly raw cloth, and some coal as well. Typical trading goods for such a small merchant ship. The weapons and armor of the crew also provide a lot of metal for our furnaces, and a meager amount of rations intended for her crew.
Once we had taken all goods of value we scuttled her and moved on. We undertook our raid of Dipbegan, having witnessed our combat just offshore they had no spirit to put up any resistance and gave up what little they had without a fight.
We took this opportunity to stock up on wood as well, as time goes on it seems the main resource we can't get at sea is fuel for our furnaces to melt down all our spoils into more bolts and ballista arrows!
Maloy gave a disturbing report about this particular part of the waters of tempting.
Very odd, but perhaps the local humans have been overfishing here. We have food stocks to last us for a long time at present but if we take a long voyage on the open sea fish will be an important food source...
Here's the main deck of the lionfish as she continues north on our intended route. Hopefully as we leave the bay of the fondled fields we might find more sea traffic to loot.
Ok so I screwed up in the boarding there...
There was a fairly obvious problem that the levers to control the bridges were right next to the bridges themselves, so any dwarf tasked with hitting them sees the enemies hanging around and cancels job.
So I moved the squads away to end the staring contest with the enemy, and it worked, the bridges went down, but reg and metruption, for whatever reason, were outside of their stations and got aggroed immediately.
I'm also amazed dikbutdagrate didn't die! He was fighting 4v1 and had overexerted status, in my experience it almost always follows that an overexerted dwarf falls unconscious and gets whaled on, but dikbut managed to hold it together!
Also it's been REALLY hard to get anything done because the sieges are INTENSIFYING somehow. A 100+ enemy siege which was quicky bridge smashed was followed by another (albeit smaller) siege within a month!!! I guess that's what happens when you raid so many sites
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Topic: SeaMenace, A community Ship - Back to raiding (Read 25300 times)