Tempestis Renatus: An Age of Sail Shipgirl CYOA

[UNSC Kawakaze]

Prologue.

---

Mediterranean, 1697.

You cut the water with the sleek brutality of a shark's jaw, your oars biting at dawn, the hull's lean-boned hunger alive from prow to stern. Overhead, the late spring sky simmers with a false gentleness—cerulean, teasing cloudless, holding back a storm that stalks the southern horizon. You know this sea, every shifting shoal and hidden current; your timbers are soaked in its blood, your nerves tuned to the subtle, sickening lurch of fate that always presages disaster.

You feel alive. Your heart beats wildly with the drums, and know blood shall be spilled. Oh Cybele, how you love this feeling!

Today the wind tastes of copper and citrus, and you are three leagues off the Algerian coast, running escort for a convoy of wool and lemons bound for some Mediterranean mart. Above the fo'c'sle is your captain—Pietro, a fourty-something year old Sicilian. The sword-thin man with the pockmarked face of a fallen saint stands squinting through his battered brass spyglass. He's fixed on something to windward, something big, and even before he shouts, you feel the ripple of dread run down your crew.

"Tre galee!" His voice cracks over the water, ringing in the ears of every man on deck. Three galleons. The Spanish, swollen with gold and gunpowder from the Americas, always traveling in packs, always eager to demonstrate what happens to little fish who stray from the shoals.

The crew's reaction is not so much panic as a collective tightening, a drawing in o' breath. Oarsmen—an angry band of Greek slaves that comprise wholly of muscle and sweat—dig in with fresh resolve. The marines, ragged mercenaries from six nations, brace their pikes and finger the triggers of their stubby, powder-fouled muskets. As their ship, you sense their prayers, half-mumbled and half-remembered, echoing in the minute tremors of the deck.

You don't hate them for being afraid. In a way, you share their fear, though the sour taste has dulled over the centuries. A glacial anxiety carried down from a thousand years of fleeing stronger predators. You'd call it wisdom, if you were feeling charitable, but now is not the time.

"Ready the chase guns!" Pietro bellows, voice already ragged from the salt. "Oars, pull for your lives! We'll not die on a Spaniard bastardi's leash!" He grins, teeth yellow and fierce, and the men echo it, some with genuine resolve, while most echo with the brittle bravado of condemned men.

As they scramble, you stretch your awareness beyond the deck, beyond the Spanish threat, to what has been stalking the horizon since dawn. The storm. Purple-black and swollen with violence, it devours the southern sky mile by mile, each lightning pulse a vein throbbing beneath bruised skin. You've weathered this breed of tempest before—how many times? Fifty? A hundred?—sometimes emerging reborn, sometimes shattered. Your oldest planks remember, creaking with ancestral dread as the first far-off thunder rolls across the water.

But for now, there is the present. The sound of oars, the bark of orders, the stink of sweat and old canvas. The men work as if fused into one organism, their fates stitched to yours, their pulse a counterpoint to your own. You feel every footstep, every shift of weight, every scrape of boot or bare heel on your deck. The gunners load and tamp with familiar, desperate ritual.

One deck below, chained men pull in unison, the thump and slide of their bodies syncing with your own heartbeat. Their overseer—a blunt, sunburned brute with a whistle and a lash—paces behind them, his own rhythm less reliable, spiked with sadistic pleasure. These men do not pray; their faith has been worn thin by years of salt and iron. You recognize the echo of your own emptiness in them.

The Spaniards close with terrifying certainty; You are much faster, but the same can't be said for your patron's cargo vessels. Each galleon's wake is a minor earthquake, shaking down the false calm that clings to the morning. They are painted for war, red and gold and black, their gunports open and leering. They are not here for loot, not after the previous run-ins. They are here to make an example.

You can almost taste Pietro's next move before he makes it: the sudden, savage swerve, the call to "feather the port oars," the long, skidding turn that puts you between the convoy and the enemy. It's an old maneuver—show the enemy your own throat, draw them away from the true prize. You admire his nerve, though you note the slight tremor in his left hand as he clings to the rail.

The first volley is a warning, the signature of lumbering bullies everywhere. Spanish iron balls skip over the waves, sending up plumes of brine and, in a lucky shot, shattered wood. You take the hit on the larboard bow, splinters spitting up like angry bees. A man screams and then does not scream; you register the impact as a mild, cold sting, quickly closing around the new wound. You're used to it, the dishonorable bark of cannon.

The marines answer with musket fire—a useless waste of powder at this range, but good for morale. More importantly, the enemy bow chase guns thunder, two six-pounders loaded with double-shot and grape. The first lands short, the second sends a hail of iron through the Spanish fo'c'sle, and you catch a brief, bright bloom of chaos as men scatter.

Pietro laughs, high and wild. "That's right, bastardi! Come closer!" He waves his sword in salute, and the gunners reload, their faces streaked with soot and grim determination. You sense, in the way he leans forward, that he is not expecting to live out the day.

The Spanish oblige. They bring their lead galleon hard to starboard, lining up a broadside. You tense—every spar, every line drawn tight against the inevitable. At the last moment, Pietro yells "Hard aport!" and you twist, slewing into the path of the next volley. The enemy captain, perhaps surprised at your suicidal boldness, fires too soon. Most shots go wide, shattering the water into froth and thunder, but three strike true: one catches your railing, another smashes through the main deck, the last buries itself in the stern cabin, a splintering, half-ineffectual wound.

You shudder, but hold. You always hold, at least until you don't.

The slaves keep rowing, not even pausing at the blasts. Above, the marines reload with grim economy, and the officers bellow at each other over the din. Pietro gestures to his coxswain, then makes the sign of the cross—not for the first time, but with a finality you find admirable. He knows what he's about to do.

"Make for the storm!" he screams, and the order echoes through every deck. It is, in a sense, genius: the one thing the Spanish hate more than a cornered animal is the open ocean in a rage. You adjust your rudder, lean into the wind, feel the pressure build along your flanks as you reach for the blackening line where sea meets sky.

The first drops of rain are as warm as blood. They hiss against your decks, driving the men to a fevered pitch. Oarsmen row as if the devil is at their backs (not entirely untrue), and above, the marines swap out powder for the waxed cartridges reserved for wet weather. You can sense their terror turning into exhilaration, the suicidal courage that only comes when you know you're already lost.

The Spaniards follow, but less eagerly now. One of their number lags, perhaps damaged, but more likely just cautious; the other two stay close, unwilling to let a single galley shame their flag. You let them gain, then snap into a new tack, weaving through the rising chop. A lucky wave lifts you just out of range as their next broadside booms; the shots scream overhead, close enough to shave a man, but you are untouched.

You let yourself hope—just a little—that you can pull it off.

Pietro is soaked through, saltwater and rain turning his gray hair to silver wire. He's shouting in three languages, cursing the Spanish, the storm, and the gods themselves. You sense the storm's hunger: it is not satisfied with a simple chase, it wants spectacle, it wants a reckoning. You have given it such before, and it knows you will again.

Another chase volley sweeps closely overhead.

On deck, chaos sharpens into a new routine. The wounded are dragged below and patched with dirty rags. Gunners work in pairs, swapping out barrels as the metal cools. The marines brace themselves against the rail, ready for boarding action that may never come. Every man's face is a mask of madness and determination. They are beautiful, in their way.

You love them for it, and hate them all the same.

As the leading galleon closes, you see their captain—arrogant and tall, wearing a ridiculous feathered hat, and yellow coat bright even in the gloom—standing atop the quarterdeck, directing fire with a long, gold-headed cane. His men obey with clockwork precision. You suspect this will be the last enemy captain your current incarnation will ever meet in battle.

The Spaniards' next volley is perfect. It hammers your hull amidships, sending up a fountain of splinters and brine. Three oars on the starboard side shatter, sending their rowers sprawling. You feel the pain, raw and immediate, and for a moment, you wonder if this is it. But Pietro is already compensating, trimming sail, calling the men to double-time on the surviving oars. You lurch forward, half-crippled but still fast, the slap of the waves now a roar as the storm draws closer.

Lightning rakes the sky ahead, illuminating the world in staccato bursts of white. For a heartbeat, you see all three galleons, their shapes black against the silver ocean, their crews silhouetted like ghosts. The rain comes harder, flattening the sea, turning the decks into rivers. You revel in the chaos. This is your element, your theater, your cathedral.

You grin even as your hull shudders. None shall topple you here!

The Spanish try to slow, to turn, but they are too close, and you know the trick to these waters. A shallow reef, remembered from some prior century, waits just below the surface. Pietro steers you straight over it, your keel scraping but not breaking, while the lead galleon grounds itself with a jolt so violent you feel the vibration from stern to bow. The second ship veers off, barely avoiding disaster, but the third—always a little behind, always tentative—pulls away entirely, unwilling to risk Spanish lives for a Sicilian dog.

Pietro crows in triumph, waving his sword at the beached enemy. You sense the men's relief, though it is poisoned by exhaustion and the knowledge that the storm will kill as surely as any cannon. You do not care, not really; your job is to survive, to keep moving, to outlast everything and everyone.

The storm is here now, a truly living thing that eagerly swallows sound and color. Rain blinds you, wind tears at your masts. You feel your own timbers groaning, your seams leaking, your ancient will stretched thin as rope. But you are still whole, still alive, and as long as a single oar moves, you will not give in!

On deck, the crew work by feel alone. Voices are lost in the din, orders reduced to gestures and the memory of training. Pietro stays at the helm, his left hand gripping the rail so hard it bleeds, his right still clutching the sword though it is useless now. You admire his commitment to theater, even as you sense the line between bravado and madness has long since dissolved.

The storm wants blood, and it will have it.

You can feel the Spanish captain on the stranded galleon, his fury radiating across the water like a beacon. He orders his men to reload, to fire blind into the rain. Some of the shots strike home; one punches through your quarterdeck, sending splinters into a cluster of marines, two of whom do not rise. The wounded are tossed aside, their jobs reassigned, their lives already forgotten by all but you.

Pietro points at the crippled aground enemy, shrieking something in Sicilian that translates, roughly, as "Give them hell!" The marines answer with a ragged volley, their shots wasted on the distance but not on morale. You love them for their futility, for the beautiful stupidity of standing up to fate with a handful of lead and bad luck.

The lightning comes closer. The first strike hits the mainmast, fusing iron to wood in a stink of ozone and burned hair. You lose the mast, but the ship rights itself, still surging forward. You are almost through the worst of it when a rogue wave lifts you, turns you sideways, and hurls you toward a cluster of jagged rocks.

For a long second, you are weightless, adrift in white. You wonder if this is what it was like, in the very beginning, when Cybele lifted your sisters from the flames and gave you names. You think of the other hulls you have worn, the other storms you have outlived. You almost laugh, for there is nothing new under this sun.

You land with a sound like the world ending. Your hull fractures, but not completely. You are still together, mostly. The crew is less lucky. Many are thrown, lost to the sea. Pietro, stubborn as ever, stays with you, one arm dangling, the other still holding his sword. He uses it to cut away tangled lines, to free men pinned under debris. You appreciate his style, even as you know it cannot last.

The Spanish have lost sight of you. For now, you are alone with the storm, with your battered cargo of men and hope. You feel every heartbeat, every ragged breath, every desperate prayer. You are tired, so tired, but you are not dead yet.

You drift, half-dead, toward the eye of the storm. The men huddle, patch what wounds they can, lash themselves to whatever won't break away. You ride the chaos with something like peace, knowing that if you go, it will not be in silence or obscurity.

You savor the memory of the battle, the taste of fear and valor, the stupid beauty of men who would rather die than surrender. You do not call it bravery; you call it inevitability. But you are not ungrateful.

When the wind finally fades, and the rain slows, you find yourself in a strange, calm center. The sky above is bruised but clearing, the water slick with debris and bodies, both friend and foe. You are listing, leaking, maybe hours from foundering. But you hold together, because that is what you do.

You listen to the soft, exhausted mutterings of the survivors, to the prayers and curses, to the relentless, hopeful plans they hatch even now, stranded and dying. You love them, a little. And you hate that you cannot save them.

That is always the hardest part.

For you are Tempest, and you endure.

---

You do not remember a time before storms, but this one is different. It comes on not as weather, but as a mood—the sky a charcoal bruise, the wind too cold and sharp for late spring, the clouds hunched low like an angry mob.

By now you're reduced to a skeleton crew. A dozen rowers, most of them bleeding; three marines upright, one of them barely so. The rest are ghosts or soon to be. Pietro, your captain, will not leave the helm, though he's taken a musket ball through the shoulder and one leg drags uselessly behind. You envy his stubbornness.

Behind, the surviving Spanish galleon licks its wounds and pursues, slower now, but persistent. It is no longer about gold or glory; it's about the principle. You can respect that. Ahead, the convoy is long gone, safe on the leeward side of the nearest headland. Pietro has done his job, and so have you, but neither of you is permitted the dignity of a clean escape.

The storm escalates from chorus to soloist. Rain comes not in drops but in sheets, each one a slap, an accusation. The waves build into hills, then mountains. You bend, you flex, your hull creaks like the bones of a dying god. The men are lashed to what remains of the benches, their every breath a prayer or an insult.

"Faster, you filth!" Pietro's voice is a raw, wet rasp, barely human now. "We die with our heads up, or we die as swine!" He swings the tiller with his good hand, the other clutching at the blood-soaked rag jammed into his wound. You do not think he'll see another dawn, but he acts as if he will, and that is why he is captain.

The sea is yours again, but only by default. The Spanish captain is clever, holding distance, firing only when the shot is perfect. Twice more you take a broadside, each time losing some part of yourself: a rail here, a chunk of deck there, a few more crew rendered into meat and myth. You persist, because it is all you know how to do.

The final chase is an ugly kind of dance— desperate, but strangely elegant. You ride the edge of destruction, staying just out of range, leveraging every trick of wind and current your memory offers. The rowers, faces dead of emotion, power you through the troughs and crests, their bodies as much a part of your machinery as the timbers themselves.

Then comes the eye. A sudden slackening of wind, a clearing above that turns the world to pearl. Both ships hesitate, unsure. You hear nothing but the dripping of blood and rain. Pietro spits into the sea, his eyes glazed with fever and salt.

You almost let yourself hope. Almost.

Then, on the horizon, the wave appears.

It begins as a shadow, a blue-black line that makes no sense. Then it grows, rising above the level of reality itself. It is beautiful and horrifying and perfect—an artist's stroke, deliberate and unanswerable.

You know the touch, the flavor of it. You know whose hand has shaped this. There is only one god petty enough, vengeful enough, to reach this far just to ruin you.

Well, there's more than one, but He is just the worst!

Pietro sees it, and so do the Spaniards. For a moment, you are all equal, all reduced to the same animal terror. You sense Pietro's mind shattering, his prayers reverting to childhood, to old Sicilian curses and bargainings.

You laugh. Or rather, the wind through your shattered ribs laughs, and the water caught in your bilges laughs, and the ghosts of every captain you have ever carried laugh with you.

In your mind, in the language only the sea and the old gods remember, you bellow it:

"Poseidon, you lousy, horse-fucking, SHRIVELLED SALTY DIIIIICK!!"

No one hears it except the storm, but that is enough.

The wave hits. Not as water, but as pure, malignant intention. It lifts you up, higher than any ship has ever gone, and then brings you down with the certainty of arithmetic. You split, you scatter, you become debris- and legend. Pietro goes with you, his hands never leaving the helm, his last word a curse to match your own. The rowers vanish in a spray of foam, the marines in a ballet of limbs and iron.

The Spanish galleon meets the same fate, though the bastardi scream a little louder. Perhaps, you think in that final instant, that perhaps you won the fight after all.

Then there is nothing, and you are everywhere.

---

Fragmented. Scattered. A thousand wooden shards dancing on wave-crests. Salt stings every surface of what was once you. Wind screams through the hollow places where men once stood. Blood and bilge and rain mix in a cocktail no living tongue would taste. Your broken planks hunger. Your snapped masts reach skyward, grasping at nothing.

There is no solid hull to contain you now. Only you in the moment exists—splinters of memory bobbing in the vast blue.

Highly disorienting, you've always hated this part.

You grasp desperately at what little remains: Pietro's final curse still echoes, sharp and bitter; the phantom sensation of your rowers' hearts slowing to silence lingers; cold satisfaction pulsing at the thought of the Spanish captain dragged down with you, erased from chronicles yet to be written. These fragments alone prevent your complete dissolution.

Then comes the sea's dominion, its currents carrying you through arteries of brine, dispersing your essence along paths indifferent to your fate.

Sometimes you catch yourself inside a fragment of wood, a bit of hull or spar. Sometimes you ride the slick of oil, rainbow-slick and poison, drifting atop the vast and indifferent surface. Sometimes you are nothing at all, just a haze of intent, a ghost with nowhere to haunt.

Time loses meaning, as does place.

You pass through a trireme's corpse—Ancient Greek, or perhaps Roman, bones picked clean by centuries. For a moment, you are her, a quick and eager little thing whose oars flash under the Mediterranean sun. Then you are swept with the tides, the memory less a memory than a fever dream.

Next you find a shattered Byzantine warship, its red banners rotting in the waves. You taste the musk of gunpowder and the sharp, coppery dread of men who know they will die as slaves. You linger, because you have worn that shape before, and because even in loss, the sensation of motion is familiar and comforting. Like an old shell.

You pass beneath a burning caravel, Portuguese this time, cargo hold loaded with silver and rot. Its hull is already halfway to becoming a reef. The fish dart through its ribs, picking at the last shreds of flesh and rope. You envy their simplicity, their certainty. You don't, however, miss the sluggishness of that form.

Most of the time, you are just awareness—a sensation, a hunger, a memory of purpose. You drift, you bob. You merge with rain, split again into droplets, come together as mist, rise and fall with the tides.

There are others here, though none quite like you. Some are old, older even than the sea itself, their voices slow and heavy, their shapes too vast to comprehend. Some are new, bright and sharp, hungry for meaning. You avoid the oldest ones when you can; they have seen too much, and their despair is contagious.

Once, in the eye of a cyclone, you glimpse the shadow of Poseidon himself, striding across the water, beard tangled with kelp, eyes cold and without mercy. You remember your curse, and feel a flicker of pride, even as you shrink from his gaze.

Bleeehhh. He's just jealous his Mother prefers you. Skýla.

The storm winds eventually catch you, lift you, and fling you across leagues of ocean. You ride the waves, sometimes above, sometimes below. You are the shiver in a sailor's bones, the omen in a gull's cry, the bad feeling that wakes a captain in the dead of night.

Eventually, you lose track of where you are. The sun changes, the stars shift, the water grows warmer, thicker with life. There is no more memory of home, only the endless going. A cursed being like yourself can have no home.

One day—if you can call it that—you wash up against something new. A shape, half-drowned, half-alive, clinging to a spit of sand in a sea that smells nothing like the one you and your Sisters once ruled.

At first, you are wary. The hull is different: not the narrow, lean predator you remember, but something broader, bolder. The lines are strange, the wood lighter and more supple. The decks are littered with wreckage, but beneath it you sense a structure, an order, a kind of yearning not unlike your own.

You circle it, probe it, test her strength. The planks are cracked, yes, but not beyond repair; the ribs bent but not shattered. It has been through hell, but she is still here, still waiting. You scowl, as the masts are snapped and sails gone, but you feel the latent potential, the promise of movement once more.

Yes, she will do nicely.

Whispering an apology, you slip inside, like smoke through a keyhole, and settle into the cavities, the memory of a hull. For the first time in what feels like centuries, you sense boundaries, edges. You can define yourself—not well, not yet, but enough to begin the bloody process.

This wood remembers other lands: English, from the feel of it. A language of order, of measured risk, of pride and secrecy. There is no longer a captain here, and no crew; only the echoes of their hopes and fears and dreams remain, like a poignant perfume. This hull is empty, but not dead; you can work with it.

You stretch, gingerly, like a child testing new limbs. Storms, how this hurts—a phantom pain, a longing for what was, what it can never again be. But you learn it quickly. You've always learned quickly.

You taste the storm in its seams, the violence that brought it here. You read the scars, the fractures, the places where men once patched and caulked and hoped for more days at sea. You make note of the damage, file it away as a checklist for survival.

Above, the sun burns hotter, more direct than any you remember. The air is thick with strange scents—sugar, rot, the acrid tang of distant volcanoes. The sea here is shallow, more green than blue, and alive with creatures you have never seen.

How curious.

You piece yourself together, bit by bit. It is slow work, and clumsy, but you are patient. There is nowhere else to go, and nothing else to be.

You are not whole. Not yet. But you are more than you were, and less than you will be.

You are Tempest, and you will rise again.

# Scene 4

Becoming whole hurts beyond words. Each plank you claim screams against you like a dislocated joint snapping back. Fresh timber refuses your touch, a transplanted limb rejecting its new body. Every seam harbors salt crystals and decay; every grain whispers its own defiant history—tales of gales and harbors and red-faced English sailors who treated their vessels as disposable, never understanding that ships deserve the same reverence as men.

Still, you persist. You always persist.

The rebirth starts where water meets wood, in the lowest reaches where brine and green slime creep through every fiber. You infiltrate the planking like fever spreading through flesh. Soft spots grow firm beneath your will; fractured ribs fuse under your attention—a pressure bordering on tenderness. You collect what the sea offers: fragments of wrecks, severed ropes, skeletal remains of vessels that surrendered to the depths. You salvage everything, because survival demands it.

Your new hull is awkward, at first—too tall for a galley, too narrow for a damned Galleon; the balance feels strange after centuries of symmetry. The English, it seems, built her for gunfire and bluff, not speed or grace. But there is something elegant in the design, a ruthless logic that appeals to your most basic instincts. The desire to dash in and slam the enemy's throat, perhaps? Oh~! The timbers are lighter than oak, quick to respond, eager for direction.

It's almost a shame there are no English survivors, you'd love to have some questions answered. Alas, the work to become whole takes priority.

The hours—or days, you cannot tell—bleed together in a fever of repair. You mend the worst of the cracks, patch the shattered stern and jury-rig a rudder from what is left of the mizzenmast. The old wheel, half-submerged and slick with barnacles, becomes your new heart. The copper fastenings, the iron nails, the hundreds of hand-forged pins all spark with memory when you touch them. Each one is a story, a piece of will, hammered into shape by men who believed in nothing but their own survival.

…and profit. By the Gods, these Englishmen rival the thrice-damned Spanish in greed!

You remember being a galley, a trireme, a corsair's cutter. You remember the music of a hundred different languages, the rhythm of oars and chains and wind. For now, there is only silence, and the creak of your new hull settling into itself.

The heavens here refuse true darkness, instead washing from sapphire to amber in endless cycles. Sweetness hangs in the humid air—rotting mangoes, exotic blossoms, and distant smoke that might be jungle clearing or settlement burning. When darkness finally claims its partial victory, unfamiliar stars crowd the sky with unsettling brilliance. You trace these foreign patterns, committing each to memory. Adaptation is not a choice but a necessity.

Your new body alone is not enough, though. You are adrift, half-dead, without anchor. You need men—flesh and blood. Fear, lust and ambition. Without them, you will fade, become nothing but a haunted hull, the plaything of tide and time.

Gods know, you're not ready to join your Sisters yet!

You reach out, sending your awareness along the lines of wind and current, searching for any sign of life. At first, there is nothing—just the distant shriek of gulls, the hiss of sandbars grinding against your keel. Then, as the sun leans low, you hear it: voices, sharp and coarse, the slap of oars, the curse of an ever drunken helmsman.

You fix your sight on the horizon, where two ships bicker over the claim of a tiny, palm-choked island. One flies the Spanish cross, the other a ragged black flag, the sign of men who have no gods but the ones they invent. You know their type intimately. You have carried them before.

You study the coastline, the slow, undulant roll of jungle down to the beach. There are huts here, and fires, and the reek of tobacco and salt pork. The colony, if you can call it that, is new, desperate, clinging to the edge of survival with the same stubbornness you find in your own hull. You file this away—potential threat, or opportunity?

The ships fire a volley at each other, more for show than harm. The pirate sloop turns and runs for open water, the Spaniard initially too slow to follow. The chase is an old, old game, but you watch, eager to see who loses first.

Meanwhile, you gather yourself. You inventory your strengths and weaknesses, note every leak, every fault, every place where the wood still fights you. You will need men to finish the work—carpenters, riggers, fools willing to risk a hull that looks, from a distance, like the wreck of a thousand others.

You drift closer to the island, careful to keep low in the water, hiding among the shoals and the ghostly fingers of dead mangroves. You listen to the sounds of life: laughter, singing, the crack of a whip, the wheedling of tradesmen. The language is mostly Spanish, but you pick out bits of English, Dutch, even a little Greek. The world is larger than you remember, and stranger.

The need inside you is urgent, almost animal. You hunger for command, for purpose! Your very being desires for the friction and heat of men and women pressed to your decks, sweating and swearing and dreaming of glory. Without them, you are nothing. With them, you are a god.

Night falls. The pirate ship, having outpaced its rival, slips into the same shallow bay where you now lie in wait. It anchors close to the ruined jetty, its crew spilling out in a chaos of torches and rum. You recognize their captain instantly—a woman, tall and wild-haired, her coat a tapestry of stolen colors, her boots bloodred. She walks with a confident swagger and her eyes are tinged with madness and lust. …or merely alcohol..

Ooh, Tempest likes.

You wait until the drunkenness has peaked, until the crew has scattered among the shanties and brothels. Then you push yourself free of the sandbar, the motion awkward but determined. You drift closer, scraping the hull on coral, letting the sound carry up to the deck.

The captain hears you. Of course she does.

She comes to the rail, which slides to a halt against the rotting jetty, squinting into the dark. Her voice- Scottish?- is rough and musical: "Who's there? You looking for a fight or a fuck?"

You remember how to answer, and let the wind through your rigging do the talking. It's a song—one you once heard off the coast of Sicily, dirty and fast and full of promise. The captain laughs, long and hard, and throws a bottle at your bow.

"All right, you old ghost," she says. "We'll see what you've got."

You shiver, feeling her intent slide along your planks, her will probing the places you are weakest. She is not afraid. She is hungry, like you.

You welcome her aboard.

You are Tempest, and you are home. Hmm, while you're at it, you prepare an intricate book, one that you've used many times in as many forms. It wouldn't do for your new Captain to be a clueless barnacle! Just… don't think too hard about how they can understand you. That way leads to madness, like that time an Ox took command of your seventh Trireme form…

---

(PLAYER ACTIONS Explanation): Welcome Aboard the Tempest, Captain! How old is the ship- Me, you ask? Well, 'tis rude to demand a Lady's age~! Not like I've kept track, thanks to that asshole Theseus…

You shake your head and focus on forcing ink to the page.

Though your current situation is safe for now, it seems these waters are quite vicious in their own ways. Even as your Crew of Thirty (30) labors to cannibalize your old sloop and bring aboard supplies, it's clearly not enough to last long. For a new 5th Rate warship like yours truly, at least 200 Crew are needed to fully reach combat potential. . But, they seem to be in high spirits, if undisciplined. The more actions undertaken by them will gradually increase their skill and provide bonuses
(30/200 Crew = Low Performance Efficiency)
(Crew Rating: 80% Morale, 15% Experienced)

To simplify the intricate art of logistics to something even you can understand; you have enough supplies to last you Ten (10) weeks. (10 Supply Points). This may seem like plenty of time to party it out here in your little Safe Haven, but the more supply points, the better. More shall be explained later, as to not melt your pathetic mortal brains, but for those harrowing moments of danger or great opportunity, a Supply point can be used to further enhance my performance for a short time. (i.e. Bonus Dice to selected rolls of a 1d20, to keep it simple). Supply can also be used to re-roll, but there are potential consequences for this strain.

It bloody hurts, and leaves a fucking ache down to my keel!

As of now, you have 150 Gold Doubloons of whatever farce of a market exists here in these islands. Gold is the voice of the Gods, except it's actually welcome everywhere. It can be used for just about anything; bribery, hiring new crew, ship upgrades, and more!

While your crew finishes, I've taken stock of our current abilities, and put it to glorious numbers. Listen and choose carefully, you can't reapply these without serious consequences!

Stats:
Navigation: Skill in charting courses and avoiding hazards. Ah, the tempestuous Oceana! A beautiful woman, if you know how to navigate her. Try not to scratch my paint, or bump my keel against the shoals, Captain.

Ranged Combat: Proficiency with long-range weapons (e.g., cannons, mortars, culverins, crossbows). I won't overwhelm your little brain with details on how poorly you're using what little guns you have, but the bark of cannonfire is the language of the modern Sea! Who knows, you might impress me. Someday.

Melee Combat: Close-quarters combat skill. Your crew will fight in boarding actions, and this will determine how many you lose. 'Tis a bloody equation, but one of the more entertaining ways to die!

Diplomacy: Ability to negotiate, persuade, or deceive. When in Rome, do the Romans, eh? Or, follow those pesky, tricky Greeks. Either way you cut it, I am here to carry you.

Sea Handling: Skill related to sailing and maneuvering the ship. The best way to win, is to not be shot, while blowing holes in their ship! Better stay upwind for that.​

Now, because my form is incomplete and your crew is… enthusiastically incompetent, the numbers won't be great for now. Allocate the following to how you best sail, Captain. This is the best available for now.
-2, -1, 0, +1, +2

(You can, as a Write In, modify these numbers, so long as they balance out to Zero. Plus/Minus Three (3) is the highest you can do at the start, but if you're a crazy min-maxxer you could do -3, -2, -1, +3, +3 )! Now as your vote, write in which Stat gets what.

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Each full Turn is One Week, though posts may be shorter depending on actions and required voting. The next threadmark shall include a rough character sheet. The rolls will be simple D20 with various DC checks. Special items, skills, crew, achievements/legends can all affect Tempest.

This is my first time doing a Quest, and I've been sitting on it for a month or three. I think I'm happy with what I've got now, but (Constructive!) feedback is welcome. Voting shall occur here, but I intend to cross publish the final results on other sites. Perhaps Spacebattles, perhaps not. Discord is the easiest way to chat and discuss these things, if you're interested; some of the votes I get will be from there as well.

Oh, and Akagi? I blame you.

 

[delusionalcookie]

Looking good so far!