The Questions of Command

The Banshee returns to Aragosta, seriously damaged -- but with the medicine Doctor Orlando needs to heal Queen Bonaventura and begin his grand project to repair Jack's broken spine. The crew, too, receives its bounty -- Cannonanso Gatto's men have retrieved the silver from the hold of the Dead Man's Ship, and Jenny, as the new Quartermaster of the Banshee, has rich shares paid out to the men.

Still, repairs must be made, and in order to avoid spending all that remains of the Banshee's treasury on refitting the ship the Heroes decide to sail for the logging camp set up by the freedmen they rescued from the De Ruyter during The Seventy-Six.

Camp Deliverance

File:Deliverance Island.png

Map of Deliverance Island

Arriving at Camp Deliverance, the Heroes meet again Charles Adeyemi, the leader of the freedmen. He has recruited some other former slaves and begun to set up a logging camp on the island, though it is is still just tents. Only the mill has any walls, and it has a canvas roof. Still, the new colony is being carved out of the jungle; Adeyemi has about 50 freedmen, mostly men, with the womenfolk in the community still on Aragosta to remit money to help the new colony.

Adeyemi has a problem, however: about a week ago, a hunting party of five freedmen disappeared, and now the two scouts he sent out after them are overdue returning. The Heroes volunteer to set off into the jungle to find them.

Day 1: Into The Jungle

It is hard going through the dense jungle, averaging three or four hours to make it even a single mile. Jenny leads the party, cutting through dense growth with a machete, while Alondra navigates and Orlando and Axel keep watch. They have the relentless sense of being watched as they make for the volcanic caldera in the center of the island, breaking out of the jungle up onto the slopes to see a magnificent starry sky spread out between them.

Lighting a fire to camp, they awake to find paw prints pacing around their camp -- a large hunting jaguar, it seems, that has caught their scent.

Day 2: Cat and Mouse

Thinking that the jaguar is perhaps a clue to what happened to the hunters, the Heroes head back down the mountain into the jungle. They spend a day chasing the giant cat but cannot catch it -- but they do have other game, as Orlando is able to bring down a wild peccary by pistol shot. The Heroes slaughter the pig and when they climb back up to the caldera slopes to camp that night Axel sets to making a trap, baited by the peccary, at the edge of the jungle. He hopes to catch the jaguar. There is some debate as to how to take him -- should they wound him, kill him, or capture him -- but eventually they decide to try to capture the beast.

They are successful to a point. In the night, the jaguar is entangled in their nets, but he cuts himself free, leaving the Heroes empty-handed.

Day 3: The Volcano and the Lake

Instead of returning down into the jungle, the Heroes decide to climb to the top of the caldera, reaching it by noon. It is a strikingly beautiful -- if alien -- place, and they can see all around the island, noting their ship in harbor as well as several other features unnoticed save from such a high perch. Particularly, they find a lake, and Doctor Orlando spies the remnants of some camp on the northern shore. The Heroes decide to make for the lake.

Descending the volcano, Jenny is nearly bit by a venomous snake before Axel spears it with a thrown knife. Venom is extracted from it as Axel takes the whole animal, perhaps for meat, and then the party continues onto the lake.

It is at the lake that they find the first signs of the hunters: a clearing with signs of a struggle, including a musket ball lodged in a tree, and some movement through the jungle in the direction of the abandoned camp Orlando saw to the north.

The heroes set up camp a little north of the lake. Midway through the night, they hear the sound of a second jaguar; they all wake up, trying to set a midnight trap for it, but instead they merely kill a troupe of monkeys.

Day 4: The Hunters' Fate

Exhausted, the Heroes set out for the beach. They get a little lost along the way, but by noon are able to make their way to the camp. It appears to have been abandoned several days before the Banshee's arrival, and it is here the Heroes find what happened to at least some of the hunters -- five of the missing seven are buried in a shallow grave.

Jenny additionally finds a discarded piece of scrimshaw. She knows the carver -- it is D'Amato Strong, the former bosun of the White Rook and the man recruiting for the mysterious "Captain White". Axel discovers a path leading into the jungle, but they decide to return to Camp Deliverance via the beach to get reinforcements. They arrive back around midnight and brief Captain Malcolm and Charles Adeyemi.

Day 5: The Ruin

Returning to the abandoned camp by sail, the Heroes start inland, leaving sailors behind to collect the bodies. They follow the trail blazed by D'Amato's men back to the foot of the volcano, where they discover an ancient Syrneth ruined temple just as the sun begins to set. They enter it, observing the eerie snake motif in the walls, lit by torchlight.

Axel is nearly taken whole by a giant constrictor, but he slays the beast and -- as snakes stare at them eerily -- the Heroes decide to seek shelter by climbing to the top of the temple. Along the way they discover strange carved vistas of some islands they have seen before ,but nothing compares to the top floor.

There they find something even more scary -- one of the missing hunters, executed ritually. The floor of the top chamber is a map of the Atabean, though the islands on it do not exactly match the sea as it looks today, and the hunter's blood has been used to paint a word on the floor: 'CAROLINE'. Jenny and Axel know this to be the true named of the Devil Jonah's cursed Black Freighter, and the blood from the word has pooled into a sort of bulls-eye, highlighting the island of New Carleon in the western part of the sea.

Persons of Note

• Queen Morgan Bonaventura -- Captain Bonny is the Pirate Queen of Aragosta and chief captain of the Republic of Pirates. She has been prosecuting a war against the ATC to preserve the pirate way of life.
• Cannonanso Gatto -- The main fence of Aragosta, he also operates a sort of de facto first minister for the Pirate Republic.
• Charles Adeyemi -- Educated and charismatic leader of the freedmen, he has become instrumental in leading the new colony of Deliverance Island.
• D'Amato Strong -- Quartermaster for the mysterious Captain White, he has been recruiting unsavory sorts. He was the former bosun of the White Rook, Jenny's old ship.