Our Mother, the Sea: Solo Session 01

DAY 01

Weather: Thick Fog / Visibility: 12 yds / Temperature: 1-5°C

Yesterday, the sea swallowed Abbott Cove. Out of the silence rode the Grey Heron, with four souls onboard:

• Samuel Moody, the keeper of the local lighthouse. 58 years old.
• Emerson Moody, a zoologist recently-returned from a failed northbound voyage. 59 years old.
• Father Albie, the sole surviving member of the local monastery. 10 years old.
• Abraham Browne, a hermetic antiquarian from an island offshore. 94 years old.

The Grey Heron is a fishing trawler of good size and speed, equipped with a long ram, from which it gets its name. Ghosts of its former crew fill the halls – photographs, curses scrawled on napkins, crusty old socks. Its new crew has not yet had time to add their own. 

At the break of dawn, Abraham affixes a blood-brown figurehead to the ship’s prow, claiming it will prevent them from getting lost. The crew promptly shoots the net, and heads northeast.

By 0900, they are lost. [Believe it or not, the figurehead does truly help. Apparently not enough, though.]

The ship turns around and around again in the thick fog that allows no sight beyond a dozen yards. At 1400, they spot an incoming beach too late. The Grey Heron runs aground on the sand, lodging deep.

Try as they might to get the ship free, the sun abandons the day with the crew no closer to freedom than they'd been since they began.

Instead, they turn the attention to the net still in the water. The night is spent hauling in, cleaning, and sorting their catch: 

• 18 hlbs of Skate
• 4 hlbs of Cunner
• 2 hlbs of Cuttle
• 8 hlbs of Eel
• 11 hlbs of Bycatch (worth 5 sp)
• A Crate of 240 Matches

With no ice to keep their haul fresh, it will not last long, so they light a fire to roast their dinner in the dark.

The meat is tough, but it fills their bellies, even if their smiles are empty. 

The crew ends the day with 6 days of food, 10 days of water, and 13 gallons of fuel.

DAY 02

Weather: Thick Fog / Visibility: 53 yds / Temperature: 1-5°C

At dawn, Samuel Moody suggests going overland, towards a radio signal they caught to the southeast, seemingly from a port town.

His brother, Emerson, disagrees, suggesting instead they continue their efforts to get the ship free while the tide is high.

They are unable to reach an agreement, and so Samuel and Abraham take off overland, while Emerson and Father Albie stay behind with the ship.

It takes young Albie only an hour to dislodge the trawler with a well-placed log and a bit of force. With that, the Grey Heron is free from its sandy prison, and heads for the source of the signal, over sea instead of land.

In order to keep the coastline in sight, they sail dangerously close, trawling a little along the way, hauling up their catch just after midday:

• 8 hlbs of Cuttle
• 10 hlbs of Eel
• 7 hlbs of Skate
• 14 hlbs of Bycatch (worth 2 sp)

[I could’ve been harsher here. A 1-in-6 per hex of encountering shoals/wrecks is the base chance for under a mile, but since they were ~50 yds from shore, I could've increased that chance to something like a 3-in-6 chance per hex fairly, I think.]

At the same time, in the brackish waste to the south, Samuel and Abraham are stopped short by sounds of fighting up ahead. Through the fog, they see fourteen wolves descend upon a group of figures. Three of the figures wear loops of chains around their shoulders like shawls, the ends of which are bound to four prisoners. 

A single shot rings out. The wolves tear the group to pieces. 

[I recently changed the encounter table to allow more than two parties in conflict. In this case, 3d6 Wolves, d6 Debtors (from a nearby lair), and 2d6 Traders were rolled. I enjoyed the results from this one quite a bit.]

One captor and their prisoner manage to escape while the wolves feast. Samuel and Abraham follow them, leaving the screaming and carnage behind.

After an hour of sloshing through the miserable landscape, the two figures stop to rest, drinking at a pool of nearly-fresh water under a long-rusted reservoir. 

Abraham approaches, asking where they are going. The captor responds, “To drown.”

“You, or the boy?” asks Abraham.

“All.”

Abraham has heard of their type before. He pulls out his revolver, cocks it, aims, and fires thrice. Each shot misses. Before the figures can flee into the fog once more, Samuel Moody appears like a wraith, sabre slicing nearly through the captor’s skull. 

The prisoner, a young lad named Francis Harding, weeps with relief. He tells them how they were harried to the shoreline by these men in chains, and that the wreckage of their freighter still lies there, carrying a shipment of firearms bound for The City. 

Samuel, Abraham, and young Francis spend their remaining daylight hours reaching the wreck of a small freighter, the Mary-anne. They camp in its shadow, celebrating their good turn of fortune, as elsewhere, another ship, the Grey Heron, spots the lights of town through the fog, and makes for the harbor.

The crew ends the day with 5 days of food, 9 days of water, and 9 gallons of fuel.

DAY 03

Weather: Thick Fog / Visibility: 21 yds / Temperature: 1-5°C

The docks of Port Elmer are clogged with ships that refuse to leave the safety of harbor. The Grey Heron struggles to find a place among them. The only words on anyone’s lips are complaints about the damn walruses.

Come morning, Emerson Moody and young Father Albie sell their haul, making themselves 110 steel pennies. They could’ve made more, but the price of Cuttle was driven down due to a migratory influx in these parts.

Emerson does his best to arm Father Albie, whose only weapon until now has been his little tithe box. Ammunition can't be found for a decent price. Much of it has been wasted by the local garrison fighting the walruses who occupy a seafort to the north.

After scrounging what supplies they can, Emerson and Father Albie search for signs of their crewmates in the little port. Their search is fruitless, until, at nightfall, they catch sight of two friendly faces wandering into the dockside bar.

The reunion is a glad one. All past quarrels are forgiven when Samuel tells his brother of the loaded freighter they found in hushed tones. They make plans to set sail the following day, along with their new crewmate.

Not one of them is aware of the Port Elmer’s Glue Company informant sitting at the next booth over, listening carefully to every word.

They will not set sail alone on the morrow.

The crew ends the day with roughly 5 days of food, 6 days of water, and 17 gallons of fuel.