Punting and Front #4: Piracy on the Darkling Sea

Let’s finish up my punting project. I’m actually ready to stop punting, but it seems odd to stop it before I finish it. Front #4 is the orcling pirates of the Darkling Sea. This will have some swashbuckling naval action, reconnaissance and possibly “black ops” on the Chersky Island, some tense negotiations as the innocent orcling settlers in the peaceful communities on the island are at risk of being the baby thrown out with the bathwater as the combined coastal cities are fed up with piracy and are about at the point where they want to sweep the orclings off the island get rid of them altogether, including the peaceful and friendly fishers and farmers. Exactly how the PCs will handle this is hard to say. But we’ve got a few things here to look at. First, here’s Captain Borus, a friendly NPC that they’ll likely interact with, since I can’t imagine a scenario in which the PCs take the time to get their own ship, they’ll have to book passage to cross the sea with Borus’ ship. Captain Taurak on the other hand is the most notorious pirate captain, and the one who will be a stand in for all of them, really.

I’ve also included an image of some of the crew below. Not that he’s a PC anymore, but I did create the idea that Shule was looking for his missing brother Kemish, who was press-ganged by a pirate gang, but has thrived in the environment, now serving as first mate to Charakaz Rees, a junior captain of a sloop that sails as part of Taurak’s fleet.

Guarg Dreghu is the cult leader of Dagon, and is Taurak’s partner. He’s also pictured. When the PCs (presumably) blunt the piracy threat and take out their ability to continue to wage piracy as effectively as they had been, Guarg will summon the Ketos. If you’re familiar with the legend of Perseus, you know what the Ketos is, but if you’re only familiar with him from one of the Clash of the Titans movies you probably think that it’s a kraken instead (which is actually a Scandinavian mythological/folkloric creature, not a Greek one.) So, that’ll be pretty exciting as the PCs try to deal with that, as you can imagine, without the benefit of a medusa head.

Anyway, this ended up being a little bit bigger than I expected, by which I mean I have more images than I thought. Let me do the final North Marches front as part of a separate post just to keep this from becoming too bulky of a post and having too many images.