This is a continuation of my Skyworthy Playthrough. Skyworthy is a solo journaling game where you tell the story of a Skyship. You use a deck of playing cards to determine what prompts you get, then write about what comes to mind from them. If you haven’t read my review and first era playthrough, do so now.
I am the Aspire. For years I floated on the winds, sailing through, around, under, and over, clouds the landborn could only imagine. I am a finely crafted work of art and love, commissioned by Captain Dean Martell for his wife Jane. But all good things must come to an end, and with Jane’s passing, the crew faded away and Captain Martell couldn’t bring himself to stay with me. It was too painful for him.
I spent many months in landlocked, the sky beneath my hull a fond memory. But eventually, Captain Martell was convinced to part with me. He sold me to a Vengeful Hunter. One Captain Smyth. I was unsure of this, but no one asked me.
Captain Smyth is a hunter of the exotic. Where with Captain Martell memories and new sights were our quarry, Smyth wanted magnificent beasts. He has many buyers, depending on what he can kill on each trip. Whether its giant birds, monstrous sea serpents, or dragons, Smyth has hunted them all. Some were sold as game meat, others for medicinal uses. Smyth didn’t care. The thrill of the hunt, and getting paid, were all he cared about.
Smyth walked with a limp and a thud. He didn’t like to talk about it, but with enough drink in him, he would tell you the story of how his leg was smashed between the tentacle of a kraken and the hull of his last ship. The bones as shattered as his ship, Smyth was lucky to make it out alive. He lost his ship, and some of his crew that day, and is forced to live the rest of his life with an iron cage around his leg.
Smyth cared nothing for beauty or grace. He bought me because I was fast, but speed wasn’t everything, he needed power. So he had the ship yard install a Dual Sweep Drive Modification. If I could have seen myself, I would have wept. Now on either side of my hull was a gangly web of metal crossmembers and supports holding on giant screws that could be angled however the captain needed and would churn the air, giving me tremendous pulling power.
Beyond your limits.
In my service to Smyth, I got banged up more than any ship should. But the worst was at the end of a three month hunt. We had been tracking a drake. This was a high value quarry. People would pay top dollar, not just for its meat, but its bones, its scales, any part of it Smyth could bring back. This thing was smart, smarter than any prey Smyth had gone after before.
After the first week, it was obvious it knew we were tracking it. It started making huge loops, trying to throw us off its trail, even going as so far as to walk in its own foot prints for miles. Every time we thought we found where it was sleeping, we discovered that it had left in the night.
We were tracking the drake through this canyon, following a days old trail, as the winds had been too heavy to risk going through it so we anchored outside of it until they died down. Suddenly, my bow dipped down hard as something heavy landed on it. The drake had leaped down on me from a high butte. Talons pierced my deck as the drake scrambled to climb onto me.
Smyth knew this was it. There was no way the harpoon guns could be repositioned to aim for something on my deck. He shoved his helmsman out of the way and took control. He spun my wheel hard to port and before could do more than shout, I smashed bow first into the rock wall. The drake still trying to get purchase, swung to the side as I turned, and it lost its grip when I hit. It landed on the canyon floor twenty fathoms below me.
My bow was shattered, my deck in shambles, one of the drive screws was ripped away and fell not far from the dazed drake. By the time everyone recovered, and they pushed off the wall, the drake was no where to be seen.
This was, thankfully, my last hunt with Smyth. He took the first offer he received once he got me back to the ship yard.
Old habits die hard, and Skyships die harder. Mikal, the yards foreman bought me himself. For much less than I was worth before Smyth got his hands on me. My bow was in splinters. The intricate carvings, vines and flowers, were destroyed. Mikal did what he could to put me back together. He took off the broken mounts for the lost screw, as well as the one that remained.
He was a skillful carpenter, but he was no artisan. When he got done, my bow was whole again, but it wasn’t pretty. He patched up as many holes as he could, but from then on, in heavy winds, there was always a draft. The first time anyone experienced it, they thought there was a ghost on board.
One night, under the cover of a thunderstorm, miscreants broke into the yard and stole me. They flew out on me before anyone could stop them. They took me to their base in the middle of the badlands where they retrofitted me to their needs. They painted me the most boring shade of grey blue, probably so I would blend in to the sky easier, and installed a Pneumatic Boarding Grapple on me,
As far as pirates go, they weren’t the brightest, nor the bravest. They mostly went after ships with small crews, sailing alone. They avoided merchant ships, as their crews would be armed.
But it was enough to keep them going. They mostly would let the people they robbed go, though they weren’t gentle about the robbing.
They soon bit off more than they could chew. It’s been said that there is no honor among thieves, and that holds true for pirates too. During one attack, the second in command turned on the pirate leader. While the leader was on the ground, looting the caravan, the second shot him in the back and flew off with me. Turns out the second was a plant, sent by the crew the now dead leader had betrayed before they stole me.
I was still in the hands of pirates and murderers, and every day, I deteriorated more and more. The worst thing about pirates is they didn’t do proper maintenance or overhauls.
Navi and Shawn are A Couple Of Drakes. Tabletop game designers, they have made some awesome games such as Skyworthy, Dead Belt, and HEDGE.
Check them out at https://acoupleofdrakes.com/ or on their itch.io store https://acoupleofdrakes.itch.io
