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The Hurricane Court

A scenario by Murder Maker

16 players
~4h
Language: English
Murder Party

Debts
Murder
Memory
Heritage
Conspiracy
Menace

The premise

Gallowsreach, 1721 — the last free port in the Windwards, neutral ground under the Quiet Water Pact: no blood drawn ashore, all quarrels settled at the yearly Reckoning, where the Shore Ledger is read and every crew's shares are weighed. Tonight is the Reckoning — and a hurricane has the whole Brethren fleet bottled in the lagoon while a King's squadron waits somewhere beyond the bar. At dusk, Widow Grace Ossory — the Quiet Water herself, who wrote the Pact thirty years ago and has kept its ledger, its pardon chest and its leading-light ever since — was found at the tideline, drowned. But the tide-wife who laid her out swears the water in her lungs is sweet, not salt. The sea did not take her. Someone ashore did — without spilling a drop of blood. By the Pact's own article, no shares divide while a death ashore stands untried. Three crews, the shorefolk, and a pardon embassy are locked in one Long Room until the storm's eye passes: a court of thieves, trying the murder of the woman who kept them honest.

The cast

Grace Ossory

Victim NPC

Widow Grace Ossory, called the Quiet Water — she wrote the Pact thirty years ago and has kept its ledger, its pardon chest and its leading-light ever since. Every crew in the Windwards owes her a debt or a grudge, and…

Absalom Reeve

Suspect

Captain Absalom Reeve of the Vainglory, called the Peacock — the richest season in the fleet, the loudest coat in the room, and a man who checks his reflection in his sword. Tonight his crew's shares top the Reckoning,…

Nerissa Vane

Suspect

Quartermaster of the Vainglory, called Sixstring for the old fiddle string she works between her fingers when she thinks. The fairest hand with shares in the fleet — crews petition to sail under her tally. She never…

Meshach Crow

Suspect

Gunner of the Vainglory, called the Bible — not for scripture but for the Pact, which he can recite article and clause, and does. He has buried more shipmates than any man afloat and grieves the Quiet Water loudest of…

Pip Fairweather

Witness

The Vainglory's topman — seventeen, fearless aloft, tongue-tied on deck. He spent the dusk squall lashed to the careened mainmast clearing fouled rigging, the only pair of eyes in Gallowsreach above roof-height. Since…

Temperance Quill

Suspect

Captain Temperance Quill of the Sorrow's Profit — iron-spined, thin-lipped, and coming off the worst season of her life: two prizes lost to weather, one to the Navy. This morning the whole port heard her beg the Quiet…

Ezra Bellamy

Suspect

Quartermaster of the Sorrow's Profit, called the Lark — all charm, all songs, all sympathy, the man who makes a ruinous season feel like a run of luck about to turn. He has been very loudly helpful tonight, and very…

Tom Gannet

Witness

'Powder' Tom Gannet, master gunner of the Sorrow's Profit — forty years of broadsides have left him mostly deaf and entirely unbothered about it. He spent dusk rolling powder kegs up the careening beach above the tide,…

Ruth Okoro

Suspect

Navigator of the Sorrow's Profit, called Deadlight for the little smoked-glass lens she reads the sun through — and, some say, for how much she sees with it. Charts, ciphers, signals, secrets: Ruth Okoro trades in…

Solomon Finch

Detective

Solomon Finch, called the Weigher — once a proctor of the Admiralty courts, struck off and fled to the free port years ago, now keeper of the Reckoning scales and arbiter of everything from prize disputes to tavern…

Mercy Ossory

Suspect

Grace's ward and clerk — pulled off a wreck as a baby and raised in the ledger room, she knows the Shore Ledger's thirty years better than anyone living. Heir, everyone assumes, to the ledger, the leading-light and the…

Cornelius Dutch

Suspect

The chandler of Gallowsreach: cordage, powder, credit, and discretion, each at its price. Half the fleet owes Cornelius Dutch money and the other half owes him silence. He was in his shop through the whole squall —…

Annie Trewin

Suspect

Salt Annie, keeper of the Drowned Lamp — widow of the Windwards' songs, mother-confessor to three crews, and lately something harder: for a day now she has been dropping hints, poison-quiet, that the sainted Quiet…

Lucas Sharpe

Suspect

Governor Lucas Sharpe — once commodore of the Brethren, pardoned a decade ago, now sugar-rich, King's-patented and immaculately respectable. He arrived two days ahead of the storm with a Navy lieutenant, a truce flag,…

James Harrow

Suspect

Lieutenant James Harrow of His Majesty's Navy, ashore under flag of truce as the pardon embassy's escort — young, correct, and visibly the least comfortable man in Gallowsreach. He called on the Quiet Water at the edge…

Quassia

Witness

Quassia the Tide-Wife — wrecker, healer, and layer-out of the drowned, who keeps the boneyard and the old rites the sea demands. Gallowsreach brings her its dead and its fevers and does not ask where she learned either…

Fitch

Witness

Fitch the mudlark — fourteen or fifteen or 'old enough,' depending who's asking — who combs the wrackline at every tide and knows the port's underside like the inside of his own pockets, which are always full of other…

Intrigues

Shares and ShortfallsDebts

Everyone's shares are on the table tonight. Not everyone's numbers are.
Sweet Water in Her LungsMurder

The sea returned her laid out neat as church. The tide-wife says the sea never learned those manners.
The Halcyon's WidowsMemory

Nineteen men, one gallows-morning, five years gone. Somebody in this port still pays their debts — and somebody else just collected one.
The Keeper's Empty ChairHeritage

The chair at the head of the Long Room is empty. Watch how many people are careful not to look at it.
The Price of Quiet WaterConspiracy

Thirty years of peace in a port of thieves. Nobody ever asked what the peace cost, or who was paying.
The Squadron Beyond the BarMenace

Before the storm shut the door, the lookouts counted topsails beyond the bar. They are still out there, waiting for something.

Factions & circles

Crew of the Sorrow's ProfitTeam
Crew of the VaingloryTeam
The Pardon EmbassyFaction
The Shorefolk of GallowsreachFaction