Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

Captain of the Shadow

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As the last harpoon snapped free, the ropes severed and writhing like dying serpents before sinking into the waves against the hull. For a brief moment a silence fell over the sea as the Stardrinker trembled, her wood groaning from the strain of battle, yet she remained afloat. The crew staggered, exhausted with their bodies aching, but somehow alive.

For a moment, it seemed as though they had won. And then the ship itself, The Shadow screamed. It was not the cry of a living thing, but of wood and rigging, of agony bound in cursed planks and of rage. The sea around it churned, dark waves pulling in unnatural waves, as if the ocean itself was trying to consume the monstrous vessel.

Then, it rose. The sound of chains and wood banging against the deck of The Shadow. Despite the ship being splintered and broken from its attempted consumption of the Stardrinker it tore itself open towards the smaller ship creating a gaping maw of wood, metal and frayed rope. A gaping wound, revealing a pulsing core of blackened wood, rotting fabric and rusted metal writhing tendrils of decay, a force that had long since lost any semblance of purity. This was surely its heart, the source of its hunger, the cursed soul of the ship itself.
From the abyss within, a figure emerged, pulling itself out of the seething mass of corrupted energy.

A human figure, a captain, or perhaps what had once been a captain, its form barely holding together, flesh replaced by ropes, bones replaced by decaying wood and armed with rusted blades of bent and torn metal. It dragged a leg that had was missing the rope – burnt and severed by damage already inflicted on the ship, but the rest of its body wrapped in the same cursed rigging that had once ensnared the crew and the fabric of any of the crew that were unable to be saved. Its eyes or where its eyes should have been glowed a deep, unsettling blue, the spectral remnants of the souls it had consumed.

And as it pulled itself out of the core the light faded and the ship stilled completely. The true battle had began.

• The Captain of The Shadow fights with unnatural speed, its blade’s moving faster than any mortal sailor.
• When the captain takes damage the Ship seems to sink further into the waves, bits of wood falling off.
• The rest of the Crew, except that party, stand as if hypnotised as the cries of other lost sailors resonate from where the core was – some even appear to take steps towards the core itself.
• Echoes of the lost crew emerge – spectral hands grabbing at the living, crying out for salvation but hungering for their freedom in ways more terrifying than any pirate they’ve faced on the waves.
• Some of the spectres may look like the pirates they faced when they first started their journey.

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