[OPEN] Project Stormrider: Peaceful Acquisitions

[heirring]

WHO: Anyone/Everyone
WHAT: Riftwatch locates and captures a ship to renovate for the airship project.
WHEN: 9:50, Drakonis
WHERE: Various locales around and in the Waking Sea
NOTES: High seas adventure typical violence is possible. Please include content warnings in your subject lines if necessary. OOC INFO/PLOTTING.

In addition to whatever official orders members of Riftwatch might receive from their respective division heads for this work, a copy of the following will also be made available—

To Whom It May Concern,

As you must certainly be aware, you have been ordered and directed to assist in the effort to acquire a ship for use by the Research department in its efforts to craft a flying machine. While a considerable amount of refitting is to be anticipated, we have drawn up a list of features we would find most preferable in a likely vessel. Please consider them as you pursue this acquisition.

• Must fall within a range of 60-100 lengths from bow to stern, 20-34 lengths across, and no more than 12 lengths below the waterline
  
• Three masted preferable, for the purposes of rendering the masts into raw materials; two are acceptable
  
• Designs well suited to speed are preferred versus those with remarkable hold capacity or defensive equipment (heavy warships, formidable mercantile vessels, etc are unlikely to be ideal)
  
• It is highly preferable to acquire the vessel in such a fashion as to minimize damage to the structure of the boat itself
  
• Ideal targets include particularly fleet Tevene ships, or Tevinter-allied pirate vessels
  
• Please refrain from undue loss of life etc etc

Formally and with Gratitude,
Wysteria A.P. de Foncé & Co.

The efforts to acquire such a ship include the following over the month of Drakonis:

EARS TO THE GROUND
The Waking Sea may look modestly sized on a chart, but finding any old ship floating around on it is no small task—one that becomes even more complicated when Research has made their request so darn specific. In order to avoid wasting untold hours blindly trawling along the coastline, members of Riftwatch's Diplomacy and Scouting divisions have been charged with writing letters, gathering gossip, and acquiring leads on likely enemy ships in the region.

This can be accomplished by writing to recently victimized merchant traders, trading correspondence with Orlesian naval officials, doing sneaky favors for regional smugglers who might be happy to narc for a hefty reward, gossiping in port city sailors' taverns, consulting with anti-Tevene pirate crews in the region, and so on. The world is your oyster! As long as that oyster has a ship-shaped pearl forming inside of it.

Ultimately, Riftwatch will find leads on a crafty Antivan two-masted brigantine, the Best Laid Plan, which once operated as a short-distance mercantile ship but has since turned traitor and now plays as a privateer for the Tevinter Imperium.

EYES ON THE PRIZE
Once a likely ship has been identified, the needle-in-a-seastack hunt begins. Going off the gossip gathered by members of Diplomacy and Scouting, members of Scouting, Research, and Forces will be charged with locating the ship and devising a way to capture it while minimizing damage to the structure of the vessel.

Where typically members of Research might find themselves thinking about devising devices to wreck an enemy ship, today they will instead be developing ways to neutralize both the effects of their own attacks and those of an enemy ship's. How might Antivan fire be quickly neutralized? What materials and methods do they need to have ready to repair damage done at sea? What defensive capabilities can they lend Riftwatch's own forces to make sure they can stand against a crew rather less committed to the idea of avoiding bloodshed?

Meanwhile, Scouting and Forces (and anyone capable of riding a griffon) will be sent to put eyes on the ship Riftwatch is targeting and do their best to either guess at their course, or follow them to whatever secret anchorages the ship seek out. Try not to get spotted.

DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS
Once the targeted ship's location is confirmed and forces rallied, Riftwatch will give chase both in the air and sea. The effort will primarily be led by members of Forces division, either by griffon back or from the deck of one of Riftwatch's own ships, but technically all members of Riftwatch can tag along. Good luck, don't get killed, and try not to poke too many holes in anything (to avoid disappointing Wysteria) or anyone (to avoid disappointing Viktor).

Luckily, the crew of the Best Laid Plan are broadly highly practical and unwilling to foolishly sacrifice themselves for no reason. Unfortunately…they're highly practical, and if they sense any weakness or hesitation on Riftwatch's part, they will absolutely take full advantage of that either to flee or—even more dangerously—attempt their own counter-assault to capture Riftwatch's ship.

Comments

eyes on the prize.

[biggame]

ooc | for a griffon rider or a passenger!

The time of year, the altitude, the wind—it's cold up here. Xio has a scarf wrapped tight around her hair and most of her face, pinned to keep the wind from whipping it away, so only her eyes are visible. And, yes, the ship they just spent an hour chasing until it was less on-the-horizon and more directly-beneath-them was not the right ship. Arguably it's been a waste of time. Cold to be followed by more cold after the griffons rest and another ship is spotted.

But the sailors on the wrong ship gathered to gawk and wave, which was nice. And the open sea and absence of immediate urgency means there's time to test her invention.

Her invention is, more or less, a rope ladder. A rope ladder affixed to Flea's saddle on either side, gathered and hooked in place to keep it close against her belly underneath. When Xio releases it, it unfurls into a V beneath the griffon, kept from fluttering too obnoxiously by a light weight in the center.

"BEST WAY TO DIE," Xio shouts—over her shoulder or across the air, depending on the location of her audience.

She has every intention of climbing down mid-flight.

[brennvin]

Astrid had meant to get to know her Scouting comrade in slightly more familiar territory, somewhere on the ground and schmoozing the bear and maybe with a bow and and making a very good and strong and capable first impression,

instead, her stomach has been doing queasy somersaults and she’s been letting loose the occasional undignified shriek whenever Flea makes a too-sharp swooping plunge, Astrid’s arms as passenger tightening around Xio in the saddle. The cold doesn’t bother her, but she’s still relatively new to griffon-riding, and is still getting her— air-legs? Is that a thing?

And did she hear Xio right?

“Wait, are you, where the fuck are you going,” she demands, voice loud but raw from having to shout over the wind, peering over the other woman’s shoulder and trying to get a better view of the dangling rope ladder without falling off to her death.

[biggame]

"Down!"

In case that doesn't carry, she points as well, jerking her pointed finger up and down toward the sea below.

Step one of this plan is giving Astrid the reins. If she's seemed unsure of herself so far, well—this is the best way for her to learn, probably, in addition to the best way for Xio to die.

She twists to hold them back behind her. "Don't drop them," she says, instead of take them, because she's been playing this sort of game with her friends for years, and don't drop it leaves much less room for argument or refusal.

[brennvin]

Don’t drop them is a simple enough command, similar enough to what you might give a dog which only knows a few very specific commands: here, sink your teeth into this, don’t let go.

“Why?!“ she shrieks, but she does take the reins. She’s realising she hasn’t tied her braid tight enough — okay, so that’s step one for what to do better next time — so her hair occasionally whips loose across her face, stinging her cheeks and eyes. She’s squinting into the wind. She’s clutching those reins with a death-like vise-grip. There’s the palpable shift of weight in the saddle, as she feels Xio readying herself to move.

Astrid balances her own boots in the stirrups, ready to slide forward to fill the space: operating on a kind of automatic bone-deep instinct, this is sort of like trading spots with someone on a horse innit, and waiting to see what’s about to happen with that rope ladder.

hi sorry but i needed to at least establish that this didn't go well

[biggame]

Why is a good question that Xiomara has, certainly, a fantastic answer for. One that would make this make sense. One that would make everyone understand and agree with her entirely that this is a sensible course of action. It's just that the wind would carry that answer away. That's the only reason she answers with, "BECAUSE," and no other words at all, already tucking her leg up and twisting side-saddle so she can slip off.

She's not suicidal. She is cocky, enough so that gravity has removed any possibility of changing her mind before she reaches out to snag a rung on the rope ladder.

She hangs there a moment, gripping with both hands and letting her legs dangle. Deciding if the rope is going to hold. But also looking up at Astrid, getting an angle on the sight of cool woman riding a griffon with her hair whipping around that no one has seen in at least a few hundred years. She grins. She's going to remember this—the minimal resistance, the quick competence. They're going to be friends.

Her feet find the rope next. It's twisting in the wind, wrapping around itself. She didn't account for that. It takes some finagling to work her way between the two sides of the loop, facing forward, and work her way down until she's reached the bottom.

It's a bit like a swing. A swing that's being pushed crooked, this way and that, and twisting into circles rather than staying steady and front-facing. She didn't account for that, either. Below them the sea is endless and blue, except for a speck on the horizon that may be the ship they're looking for.

Not that Xio, personally, can see it. Her yell–AHHHHH, sounding exactly like it's spelled—isn't life-or-death panicked. More like a child, half-excited and half-surprised and on her way to being dizzy.

amazing

[brennvin]

Does it help Xio get a better look at the water, is she going to divebomb their target, or what—? There’s a part of Astrid wondering these things, what the trick is for, it’s the side of her which sometimes plays at being responsible big sister or picking up lessons from her stoic uncle,

but the good old gung-ho recklessness rears its head instead. What other reason do they need, except that it gets the adrenaline pumping? Why else do you strap on some skis and go tearing down a mountain— sure, it’s a faster way to get to your destination but, also, more importantly: it’s fun. Because.

Astrid tries to keep the griffon steady to offset Xio’s wild spinning, but it’s frankly impossible: wings beating in a rise-and-fall, unsteady heaving through the air, the ladder spiraling.

“Hope you’re okay down there!” she shouts. She can’t spare the attention to watch, needing to keep her eyes trained on that horizon, squinting and trying to identify that speck as it slowly grows larger, eventually resolving into the Best Laid Plan.

An ironic name, really.