Explore our Warhammer campaign: Enemy Within: Death on the Reik
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay · From The Old World to 5th Edition · Mythveil Chronicles
Spooky October · Pulp Finale · The Coast and the Crimson Tide · Vampire Coast · Sean & Eljara
SEAN:
There’s a pirate ship coming through the mist.
ELJARA:
I can see it.
SEAN:
Black sails. Green lanterns. Half the hull looks rotten.
ELJARA:
And the crew are dead.
SEAN:
That’s becoming a distressingly common problem around here.
ELJARA:
The ship is called the Widow’s Share. Its captain is Maud Veyne.
SEAN:
A vampire?
ELJARA:
Yes. And apparently a very successful businesswoman.
SEAN:
That’s an interesting way to describe someone firing cannonballs into a fishing village.
ELJARA:
Because Greywake has been doing business with her for thirty-four years.
SEAN:
Business?
ELJARA:
An agreement. The undead pirates leave the settlement alone. In return, the harbourmaster gives them everything recovered from shipwrecks.
SEAN:
Cargo?
ELJARA:
And bodies.
SEAN:
Bloody hell.
ELJARA:
At first, the arrangement concerned sailors who had already drowned.
SEAN:
And then?
ELJARA:
The captain demanded more.
SEAN:
So the harbourmaster started wrecking ships.
ELJARA:
He had the navigation lantern altered. Ships approaching Greywake followed its light straight onto the reef.
SEAN:
Widow’s Teeth.
ELJARA:
Exactly. The town kept the cargo. The vampire got the dead.
SEAN:
And the people called it the price of living by the sea.
ELJARA:
They even had a bell. Three rings for a sailor lost at sea, five for a fisherman, seven for a child.
SEAN:
Sounds like a decent way to remember the dead.
ELJARA:
Except the bell became part of the agreement. Once a name was entered into the register of the lost, Captain Veyne claimed that person.
SEAN:
Even if the poor bastard was still alive?
ELJARA:
Yes.
SEAN:
Which explains the Saint Adelina.
ELJARA:
She struck the reef, but we helped rescue nineteen sailors. Four died.
SEAN:
And the harbourmaster had already written down twenty-three deaths.
ELJARA:
So the vampire came to collect twenty-three people.
SEAN:
Nineteen of whom were sitting in the chapel drinking hot soup.
ELJARA:
She wasn’t interested in that distinction.
SEAN:
I rather gathered that when she threatened to replace them with townspeople.
ELJARA:
That’s why Greywake finally had to confront the bargain.
SEAN:
And half the villagers wanted to hand over the survivors.
ELJARA:
They were frightened. Their parents and grandparents had been taught that the agreement kept them safe.
SEAN:
Which it did, for a while.
ELJARA:
Yes. The danger was real. The protection was real. But that doesn’t make everything done to preserve it right.
SEAN:
Especially when the price keeps increasing.
ELJARA:
Exactly. First the bodies already lost. Then ships deliberately wrecked. Then living sailors declared dead.
SEAN:
A protection racket with better stationery.
ELJARA:
And a captain who could quote every clause.
SEAN:
Then she came ashore.
ELJARA:
Pale face. Fine coat. Perfect manners. A black ledger full of names.
SEAN:
She told me the nineteen survivors belonged to her company.
ELJARA:
And you told her they belonged to themselves.
SEAN:
She didn’t appreciate that.
ELJARA:
She gave Greywake until low tide.
SEAN:
So we prepared.
ELJARA:
We corrected the register. The survivors stood before the town while their names were read aloud.
SEAN:
Alive. Every one of them.
ELJARA:
And then we read the names of the people whose deaths the harbourmaster had concealed for decades.
SEAN:
That was when the cannon started.
ELJARA:
The Widow’s Share opened fire. The fish market burned. The chapel bell shattered.
SEAN:
And the dead walked out of the sea.
ELJARA:
Sailors carrying rusted muskets and cutlasses. A giant armoured crab broke through the harbour wall.
SEAN:
I’d almost forgotten that bloody crab.
ELJARA:
You couldn’t stop complaining about it.
SEAN:
It was bigger than a cart!
ELJARA:
And Rosie saw her father among the undead.
SEAN:
He’d drowned eleven years earlier.
ELJARA:
Or at least that’s what she’d been told.
SEAN:
He recognised her. For a moment, I think he even tried to warn her.
ELJARA:
Then the captain ordered him to attack.
SEAN:
I had to stop him.
ELJARA:
I know.
SEAN:
Rosie rang the damaged bell herself afterward.
ELJARA:
Not to declare another death.
SEAN:
To remind everyone that those nineteen sailors were alive.
ELJARA:
Meanwhile, we turned the old false navigation light against the pirate ship.
SEAN:
A fitting bit of justice.
ELJARA:
The Widow’s Share followed the light into the southern channel at low tide and struck the reef.
SEAN:
Broke her hull beautifully.
ELJARA:
But Captain Veyne survived.
SEAN:
Of course she did. She’s a vampire.
ELJARA:
She escaped with some of her crew. Greywake survived, but six villagers died, and much of the harbour was destroyed.
SEAN:
So no clean victory.
ELJARA:
No. The settlement has lost its old protection, and the captain still holds her ledger.
SEAN:
Then they’ll need honest charts, stronger defences and friends who don’t eat the passengers.
ELJARA:
There’s something worse.
SEAN:
I’m going to regret asking.
ELJARA:
We found another document. Greywake wasn’t the only settlement involved.
SEAN:
Other harbours?
ELJARA:
Other false lights. Other agreements. Other communities offering strangers to the dead.
SEAN:
And calling it necessary?
ELJARA:
Yes.
SEAN:
Then the sea wasn’t taking its due at all.
ELJARA:
No. Someone was collecting it.
SEAN:
And someone else was getting rich.
ELJARA:
Exactly.
SEAN:
Well, then. We’d better warn the next harbour.
ELJARA:
And the one after that.
SEAN:
Long coastline.
ELJARA:
Very long.
SEAN:
Any chance we can find a place where the dead stay dead?
ELJARA:
On the Vampire Coast?
SEAN:
Fair point.
THE QUESTION
If a community survives by sacrificing strangers, is that protection or organised predation? When does a necessary bargain become a profitable crime? And if the danger is real, does fear excuse what people choose to do to one another?
The vampire pirates were real. The attacks were real. The protection was real. But the sea never demanded those lives. People made that bargain — and people kept expanding it.
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