[Savage Worlds] Winter War Campaign, Session 7: Come Take A Trip In My Airship

After taking the Necromancer's ship in the last session, the PCs worked to gain full control. With their ship damaged and enemy nearby (but stuck on a sandbar) flying Malarky's colors, they quickly checked out their new ship - Joe and Sir Aerik, along with their crew, started transferring their cargo to the new ship. Mort looked at the two ballista on the deck and McFee worked on the rigging while Nostro found a strange device in the captain's cabin and started fiddling with it.

Nostro's actions caused the new ship to rise up out of the water, dragging their old ship with them, and started moving around. It didn't take long to figure out how to use the device to allow their ship to fly through the air.

Leaving their old ship anchored, they manned battle stations and flew to the grounded vessel. Bandits with Malarky's Crew fired at them but failed to gain any sort of success. A few ballista bolts through the deck and the majority of the bandits took to the jolly boat to escape. Five, however, stayed behind and, shouting defiance ("Get bent, McFee!"), they went below deck.

Sir Aerik, McFee, Joe and Nostro boarded the vessel, with Rick manning one of the ballista, while Mort ran the machine to keep the ship up in the air. McFee detected two of the bandits below deck and stabbed them to death through the deck with skill. The others came up in "surrender" but Rick skewered them with a ballista bolt before they could attack.

Searching the ship, they found no-one on board, so they went after the jolly boat with their flying ship. Hovering over it, they dropped their sea anchor through it, killing and drowning the rest of the evil crew.

Taking their old damage ship and the other pirate vessel in tow, they headed back to the smugglers' cave. Searching the Malarky vessel, they found a strange metal coffin. Opening it, they found an old friend from Gath, one who all the PCs knew. She was Sir Aerik's childhood friend and was being converted into one of the necromancers by the coffin.

Nostro figured that it was impossible to remove her from the device without killing her and also that it looked impossible to reverse the process. A necromancer's helmet in the coffin, if placed upon her head, would make the conversion complete (which no one wanted to do).

The crew all agreed that it would be most humane to kill her while Sir Aerik dissented, loudly stating that he'd fight any who sought to harm her. The other PCs took the initiative to shoot the coffin with the ballistas, destroying it and her while Sir Aerik attacked McPhee to stop him firing. The fight was interrupted by the coffin making "Hi, I'm a 30 second time-bomb" type noises and the crew, still fighting Sir Aerik, pushed the coffin overboard.

But was it in time? Not quite. An explosion produced a skull-shaped mushroom cloud, bathing the ship in eldritch radiation. Sir Aerik, Nostro, Rick and Joe fell to the deck, knocked into comas by the evil cloud. Thankfully, McFee and the rest of the crew avoided any bad effects (for now).

The rest of the session was spent awaking the comatose PCs and checking them for any changes that may have occurred, either in their psyche or physically. Sir Aerik awoke last, after having a particularly different experience - his friend's spirit visited him in the last momemts and thanked him for his loyalty but agreed with the rest of the PCs that death was the only solution. She also passed on the fact that Sir Aerik's dead brother, the one he killed in a duel, was the cause of her situation out of revenge. Obviously, in a world of walking dead, this comes as no real surprise.

Next session: Fight on the home ground.