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Cloud Whaler

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Lord Dick Tim:
Lord_Dick_Tim November 2012 FlagReply Member
Tinpot, a once tiny town buried under the shadow of a tall rock formation, now a bustling dry dock and free port. It had been two days since the battle and two more crewmen had died. A hat had been sent around the crew for pennies and change, a small offering that could be gathered as a gift for the widows. Richard had added the men's full pay for the month to the severance, it would be little consolation for their families, but it was better then nothing at all.
Banja stood at his side up on the weather deck, face towards the sun, his skin bandaged yet his healed eyes twinkling with the orange glow that came up from the horizon. Richard followed his gaze down to the city that was sprawled out before them, a beast of red rock and grey steel with a thousand quils thrust up into the sky belching the black smoke of industry and progress. Ten years ago, before the advent of the sky ship, and the discovery of a coal mine under the town, Tinpot had just been another dust farmers settlement, populated by a few hardy people with sun backed skin and calloused hands. They had been simple, yet efficient, ecking s life out here in the wastes that had claimed so many before them. But when the air ships came, everything changed. Coal was shortly discovered there after, and industrialists where quick to notice the favorable wind that passed near the settlement, how the large rocky cliffs that rose up like a curtain around it would shelter any fleet ashore from even the harshest of the Burrens deadly storms.
There was just one problem, water, the life source of every living thing great or small. Tinpot had been successful supporting only a few habitants, the people capturing the annual rains and painstakingly applying it to a hardy tuber crop, radishes, to support their need for vitamins and starch that just meat couldn't provide. As the settlement grew so did its thirst, the rains no longer enough to quench the dry throats of the multitudes, the sophisticated gentry, or simple labourers both to lazy to store and keep their own water supply.
That was the Cload Whalers precious cargo, water, taken from the ice fields of the north, chiseled from the very glacier. Clean water was always of value in these times, yet water of any kind was worth it's weight in gold when sold at the markets of Tinpot.
Using a complex system of signaling flags the Cloud Whaler was guided down to a docking harness by ferry, a practice that annoyed the captain no small degree, disliking the idea that he could not be trusted to bring his own ship into harbor safely.
When properly docked the crew got to the business of sealing up the craft before departing

Lord Dick Tim:
...with part of their shore pay. Richard always cautioned against paying s crew their months pay all at once when first in port. It did them no good to piss it all away in some whores crib or loose it all gambling in the many taverns and inns.
After all the accounts where settled with the men Richard waited on deck for the harbor master to arrive for the routine inspection, enduring this newest insult with quiet dignity. He had been there at Jionco harbor when an airship full of illegal firearms had accidentally cooked off while at dock. The devastation had been ruinous, taking many men to an early grave and blundering countless other good people's private ventures when entire ships and holds crashed to the stony floor and burned.
It wasn't a moment after the harbor master left that a short, portly man well dressed in a grey coat and bowler cap walked up to the gang plank and smiled beneath a carefully trimmed brown mustache that curled at the edges while waving up to the deck, "Captain, may I come aboard?". Richard returned the grin and waved him up, "come on up here you damn dirt dog!"
The portly man strode up the gang plank without the customary wobble of one unuse to the tack and sway of an airship, he had a sailors balance and poise and ascended the steep climb with only the slightest hint of red in his cheeks. "Its good to be aboard again..." he cast his glance about and noticed the scaring on the weather deck from the recent engagement before turning a troubled look back at the captain, "what did you do to my ship?"
Richard laughed, a ruff thing that didn't sound so much like a laugh as it did two rocks grinding together, "the day that the Cloud Whaler is your vessel, is the day I populate a cloud grave and she lies splintered on the floor of the wastes!"
This jesting and mock posturing carried on for a few minutes, all the while Banja looked on, sitting on a coil of rope on forecastle, seemingly lost in his own private thoughts.
"Ok Sam, lests get this over with, the cargos below deck, I know your a busy man."
"Right you are Richard. And besides, I've got another venture you might be interested in".

Lord Dick Tim:
Another night aboard the Cloud Whaler, another night in skies racing against time and fate to carry some small bit of cargo from one end of this blasted land to another.

The cargo lay below decks, safely stashed away under heavy tarps of cotton cloth with a red line freshly painted about the deck and bulkheads as a proximity limit for the crew.  Casks of a new type of gun powder, manufactured in some place Richard couldn’t pronounce in a land he had never heard of.  The shipment was due for the ports of Anvala, where he was to turn it over to port authorities for a sum that made the trip to city of starch asses worth the bother of having to deal with the increased harbor taxes and inspection regiments.

The wind was stiff and cold, coming out of the north, yet at their backs which increased the relatively slow Junker to speeds that could match smaller and nimbler ships.  She creaked while gently rocking back and forth, the timbers stressing under sudden changes of torque from wind and temperature affecting the beams.  The hum of the engines was a constant murmur behind and above, on the command deck where he watched the glowing lantern of a deck hand on his night rounds, inspecting the ropes for icing, applying oil where needed or tying a yellow ribbon around anchors that needed to be replaced in the morning.

Richard approved of the young man’s attention to detail, the care he seemed to take with each station, putting his hands on each twist of the ropes down to the metal cores to ensure their good durability.  He’d been a replacement for some of the dead and wounded, young, but not green.  He’d either served on ships as a cabin boy or grown up running about the deck of one as a rattling of some crew or captain.  Jacob he believed his name was, Jacob Bard.

Seeing the boy had his duties under control Richard retired to the cramped space of the solitary cabin on board, where his first mate Banja was already sound asleep on one of the two bedrolls stretched out on the floor.

Moving to a small fold out table with clasping anchors on the foot to keep it steady Richard looked over the land charts for the coming day.  They would be coming up to Gabriel’s pass in the morning, a red canyon of thick clouds and ruined structures.  Most airmen just called it the Canyon Ambush, since that’s most assuredly what it turned into.  The Anvala fleet had tried to wipe out the pirates camped out inside its many twisting turns and deep hidden valleys with no success, the rats just kept coming back no matter how many of them they dragged away in irons, or sent down to the desert floor.

By dawn the ship would have to be ready, “I hope that boys ready”, he said, before folding away the table and lying down for the few short hours left of the night.

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