INTRO SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I'm your host, Satah, and I'm showcasing multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. You can support the show financially at patreon.com/foliopod to vote on games and get access to the bonus podcast feed, or– [Laughing] join there as a free member to get somewhat delayed access to the bonus podcast feed. [Repeating the slightly-too perky way they said "or"] "Or!" This is episode two of our games of Skyworthy, "a journaling game of iconic skyships" and "the captains who fly them" by A Couple of Drakes. With me again are Caleb Zane Huett and Connor C. You can follow Caleb's work on Bluesky at hauntedtable and pick up Triangle Agency, an award-winning game of paranormal investigation and corporate horror, at shop.hauntedtable.games and hauntedtable.itch.io. You cannot follow Connor. He's already right behind you. Last episode, we established what we were made for, who our first captains are, and any changes they made to us as they came aboard. Today, we're going to see the rest of their time with us and meet our second captains. GAME: FIRST ERA (CONT'D) SECOND REFIT SATAH: Okay. CONNOR: Okay, now I'm going to… CALEB: And now I… CONNOR: Draw a card for a second chance of a refit. CALEB: Draw a card for a second chance of refit. SATAH: Next step is to draw a card for a second chance of a refit. CONNOR: No. I drew a heart, so that means no refit for me. CALEB: Diamonds. Nope. No refit the second time. SATAH: I drew a club, which does not match one of my captain's card… s. So, no refit! We're good to go. We're all set. FIRST FLIGHT CALEB: After that, I draw an event card. CONNOR: Okay. So now I'm going to go to my first flights. CALEB: "Draw a card and turn to the CALEB & SATAH: first flights prompt table." CONNOR: Spades. So this is a harrowing flight. Uh-oh. More harrowing flights. Who gave this guy a boat?! SATAH: I drew a diamond. CALEB: My next card is hearts. SATAH: "If you draw a diamond or a heart, choose a prompt from notable firsts." CALEB: "Answer the prompt that speaks to my heart and then cross it out." Okay. CONNOR: Um… uh oh. I have to decide? Actually, I know when Satah did this, they just rolled a d6. SATAH: I hate choosing. Luckily, this table is beautifully numbered one to six. So, rollin' my little d6. [Die rolling] Six: "Memento Mori. Your voyage brings you across the remains of a creatur too big to be believed. How does your crew react?" That's fascinating. I do think… that first, this is an indication that Laura took– the crew members who retired back to her hometown? She took their criticism seriously and has started going places a little more adventurously. Maybe not immediately, because first they need to play that game hard for six months so that she can make sure everybody's getting paid what they're worth. [Laughing] Sorry to the hometown people who clearly weren't. Whatever. It is what it is. But then, yeah, they start exploring more again. We're in the sky. Hmm. This, I think, is a creature that is legendary amongst sailors for destroying ships. This is one of the reasons that a skyship is safer than a ship in the water, because this is just this giant… god, I… I was like– I don't- I don't know that I want to do, you know, kraken. And then I was like, what are other big fucked up creatures? And then I was like, the sea already has… they've already done all the fucked up stuff. Just, like, nature. I can't be more creative than the actual ocean. But I think it's– pulling, of course, on one of my favourite fucked up sea creatures, which is the anglerfish. The idea of this giant anglerfish that, like, has a light that is big enough to look like a lighthouse. And I think that it– I don't think– I think the tales that are told of this creature are that it attacks ships on purpose. I don't think that's true. I think that what it is, is that it just has like… it's not a deep sea creature. It is like a– like a water skimmer, you know? Like those like bugs that will just hop along the water. It's like that, but enormous. And it like– it breathes in and out. And when it breathes out– I think it's somewhat on the surface and somewhat under the surface. And because it's so huge, it being under the surface, like you could technically just sail over it. But because it's breathing out, it's causing these whirlpools and this like wave– these waves and just chaos. I think it breathes very slowly and unpredictably and so you never know when the water is going to be clear and when it's suddenly going to be this horrible storm. And it does look like– it– it's the– it's– the false sense of safety makes it even worse, right? It looks like a lighthouse. It looks like this is going to be clear water. Though– lighthouses are are saying, "Don't come here." Right? They're they're marking like, "Hey, there's an outcropping here. Don't fuckin' run into it." That's interesting to me. Yeah. So it's told– it's talked about as a threat, right? Where it's like, "Ooh, it's drawing you in. It's saying, 'Hey, there's a- there's– this is safety,'" when actually it's- it's- it's doing what a lighthouse is supposed to do in a lot of ways, which is say like, "Hey, careful." Like, "You wouldn't be able to see– you can't see the danger. Let me illuminate it for you." This– it isn't the only one of its kind, you know, there are a lot of them. And I think that probably, like, they can go underwater for long periods of time? You know, they have air reserves or something, but they do have to come up. And we see one… we're flying over it. This is the privilege of a skyship. We realise like, okay, we've got our full crew back. We can go where a lot of people can't. Let's do it. And I think it's like… is it floating? Is it beached? I think we're flying and we know that we're looking for an island and someone points it out and says, "Is that it? It's a little too soon, right?" And everyone sort of, you know, hops on the telescopes and whatever. We're looking and realise like, oh… it's one of those creatures. And I think what it is is that when they die they naturally float up to the surface until all of the air that they had was expelled and then they sink back down. And so we're seeing this, like, moment, almost. I think it's- it's not– they're huge, right? So it's a– it's a couple hours but it's still relatively, like, a moment that they are dead and visible. And we're watching the ripples. The water is churning. I wish you could see my silly little witch hands like wiggling my fingers as I'm describing the water churning. The water is churning as all of the air is expelling out of their body. And then it sinks when it's empty. I imagine a lot of the crew knows people who have died… and I wonder if one of the things here is that there's been no study done on it, because how could there be, yet? And so it's the– the running theory is that these things cause the tumultuous water on purpose. They're like, flapping or flailing, or doing something on purpose to attack these ships, right? To make the water unbearable. But this creature is so clearly dead and the water is still churning. And this is the first thing of like, "Oh, is this just like a physiological thing that they can't control?" And I think for some people on the crew, that's comforting. And for some, it's deeply disturbing. Because like, oh, what? It's just random? It's like any storm? [Laughing] Yeah. And I think one of the things that's really interesting to me as playing the ship, basically, is that like… every single person on the crew at some point privately expresses gratitude for me. It starts, like, when they get a view of this creature, of the remains of this creature, a couple of them like… squeeze their hands on the- the walls on the– on the deck of the ship. They're, like– on the railings, squeeze, because they're thinking, "Oh, god, if we were in a regular ship, we'd be down there. I'm so glad we're not." And that kind of that idea sort of occurs to everybody over the course of the next ten hours. I get a lot of hands pressed against my- my- my bulkheads and someone starts a song that they haven't sung in a while that's about… you know, just a big crew work song about the superiority of flight. It's boastful on purpose. It's like a work song that's meant to often be sung in docks to make fun of everyone around you who has to travel by land or water rather than by sky and to flex and show off how cool you are. [Laughs] And they haven't sung it in a while because, whatever, they're busy. They don't– they- and- and- and they don't want to– their focus isn't on jostling other crews. But in this- in this moment, after all of that, as they're all realising how lucky they are, they sing it while they're working. It's nice. CALEB: Heart: "notable firsts: discoveries, marvels, and wonders. Word spreads and fame grows. Tales of your voyages circulate. Your name and your captain's grow famous. What spurs your sudden popularity?" And we're going to name this captain real quick. Her name is Admiral… Admiral Glavik. I– can you tell that when I'm making names, I just start writing letters in my journal until a sound pops out? That's how we got Colma. And that is how we got Glavik. So Admiral Glavik and I, the Greenblade, who wield the long nines. uh, become famous as tales of our voyages circulate. I think we're famous for a bunch of reasons. One of those reasons is if you see us, you can guess that the emperor's on it. And it's like… maybe he's almost never on it. Maybe he's never actually been on the ship, but if he's going to be on any ship, it's going to be our ship. So every time anyone sees it, there's that threat of– and that exciting tension, like the emperor could be right there. The emperor could be coming to our town. And if it's not the emperor, it might be one of his closest confidants. And if it's not one of his closest confidants, it might be a bunch of really interesting crystals. [Laughs] So no matter what, if you see us, something interesting is happening, at least from the perspective of the citizens. And what spurs our sudden popularity, I think, is what I described. We participated in… a fight where nobody survived but us. Not even just our ships– which I think is the original prompt, that it was the others in our fleet– but I think of anyone. I think every other ship crashed. And I think as a result, we are– we made the point. Like we confirmed the Greenblade works. The Greenblade is scary. And the Long Nines are not to be trifled with. CONNOR: All right, I have returned with a die. I've got a nice plain white D6 with some black numbers on it, just so, you know, you at home can follow along with the very die that I'm rolling. [Die rolling] Six. "Desperation, the mother of invention. Something vital breaks while you're under sail. What is it? What makes it vital? And how does your crew manage to keep you sky worthy?" Hmm. Boy, why did I have such an exciting party beforehand? Um! Yeah, no, let's– I mean, we've established that, you know, there's a heart inside the ship. I don't know if I want to be like, you know, he broke the ship's heart… so maybe we can find something else to break. Hm. Okay, so let's walk you through my thought process a little bit and see if talking out loud doesn't actually get me to an answer here. So, I mean, again, I'm talking about this ship kind of like it's an organic thing. It is blue and it's glimmering and it's translucent. It catches the sun's fire… yeah! Yeah, yeah. So I think the way that this ship is powered is through solar energy. Even King Thundercloud knows to invest in his renewables. Um– [Laughing] But yeah, it's powered on solar energy. And so that glimmering and glinting of fire when you look at the wings from up above near the sun is like a solar panel reaction. That glimmering is not only just like the light of the sun dancing upon its jeweled surface, but it's also like little pulses of energy that fly down through the wings into the core of the ship, into the heart, into the stomach of the King Sapphire to be stored and used for night flights. And in this way, the ship itself is also… very quiet. There's no big combustion engine or anything inside of it that drives it. Oh, I love discovering more about this ship as I have to talk about it. I think this is a very cool aspect of it. I'm– I like being flexible with this, and it's quite cool. So yeah, it draws in electricity, and so the wings naturally have to have some kind of heat shielding. You know, I feel like a fire is too immediate a threat. I feel like this is an insidious threat, you know? Something that's a little bit more subtle. I think- I think it's a two-part break here. I think the wings stop collecting energy. And the gauge… ooh, yeah, the gauge that, like, you know, the fuel gauge, the gauge that tells, you know, the pilot how much… juice is left in the boat is broken 'cause the ship got hit by lightning a while ago. Because the, you know, the prince is not the greatest at planning for the future. So I think it is… they are high over the ocean, right? And I feel like this– I don't know why– when I think of like, you know, sky ship worlds, there's a lot of like archipelagos… is that how you pronounce that? [Shifting the emphasis of the word to be correct] Archipelagos? Anyway, you know, like, I imagine, like, a lot of, like, island continents and stuff, right? Like, small land masses, very seldom– you know, I see, like, them flying over big oceans or even oceans where, like, the- the sea itself seems to fall, like… you know, an oceanic waterfall as the water plunges into the core of the planet, right? Is it even a spherical planet? I don't know. I don't know! Maybe I'll get a prompt that forces me to answer that. But today is not that day. So yeah, so they're flying high over the ocean. They're far away from any port. So something vital breaks; the ship runs out of power. And "how does your crew manage to keep you sky worthy?" Hmm. So here's the thing. I've already established that the pilot knows how to kind of handle the ship when it's spinning out, right? When it's losing control. So I feel like the pilot is laid up right now. I think they're sick. And they're very- they're very- you know– not like, anything life-threatening, but, you know, when your tummy hurt. So much. You can't fly plane. You know? That can happen and not be life-threatening. And so it is the prince that is on the bridge when this happens. And I think this is where… yeah, yeah, I think this is where the prince can't just order his way out of this situation. Yeah, he was put on the bridge to be like, you know, it's going to be easy. He's taken some very basic flying things before, and it's very much, you know– there's like a lot of auto- autopilots and stuff so it's just, you know. Point it in the right direction, the ship will go there, and it'll take care of itself. Just, you know, keep an eye on the fuel gauge and stuff. [Conspiratorially:] Which is not working!! Um– yeah! And then what- what happens is that the ship starts to- to list very slightly, uh and the prince doesn't realise this, and, you know, people aren't really paying super super hard attention to any of the controls. And then it starts to tilt even more and it starts to accelerate as it starts to tip and fall out of the air. And I think the prince has to swallow his pride here. I think not being able to order people to save him from this situation, he's on his comms, which… I imagine right now are a bit of a fun little series of tubes, right? Like you're basic, like, I'm talking into a horn and there's a horn somewhere else on the other side of the ship that spits it out. So he's trying to talk to the pilot and the pilot's there, you know, lying in bed, tummy full of hurt right now, trying to tell the prince how to like steer the ship, you know, is like… "first, you've got to engage the central manifold." He's like, "I don't know where the central manifold is!" He's like, "You've got to look for the red lever." "What is red?!" He's like, "You really don't know what the colour red is?!" "Ahhh! I have a very limited education!" [Laughing] "I've gotten by very much on my family name up until now." [Lauging] So– "It's like, it's the colour of the wine you drink." "Oh, I know what red is!" So he pulls the lever and engages that central manifold. And it's like, "Okay, now you're going to need to disengage, um… the power, you know, the engine clutch." Or– not the engine clutch, like the mechanic– what is it? Like, the servos? The servos? Yeah, there's servos on this. Yeah, "You've got to disengage the servos on the– for the wings of the plane in order to enable manual control." And he's like, "What's a servo?" And he says, "I don't know, but we have them." And so it's a lot of the prince learning to listen to somebody that he's kind of seen as lesser for the first time. And it is a moment of panic, and… you know, it doesn't open his eyes immediately, because he is very slow to learn. But it does have him– you know, he is able to eventually keep the ship skyworthy, right? He is able to engage the glide and coast for a decent amount of time while the rest of the crew is able to do repairs to reconnect the disengaged power couplings and gather enough power to keep the ship aloft and floating. Um, and I don't think he, like, necessarily acknowledges that it is him having listened to somebody else, but rather… it's him starting to feel a sense of control, right? I don't think he's fully recognised that in having so much– monarchistic? Monarchistic?– control by virtue of being royalty, right, that he's never really experienced true control. And by true control– the same sense that we are able to step out the door and go to the store. We choose to go there. And so much of his life has been dictated for him. The expectations that have been laid out for him by virtue of him being royalty. That, yeah, for the first time, he is able to fight and overcome a hardship and feel in control in that way. And to wrest back this. And this is more exciting to him than any eclipse party that he has had thus far. And so… it gives him a newfound respect for the pilot, for the crew, for the people who have ferried him just kind of from port to port, from place to place. And he sees and starts to feel an enormous… maybe even envy for them. And he starts taking more active participation in his commission here. You know, what initially started off as a kind of, like, a hedonistic pleasure craft has slowly turned into… I mean, like still– he still parties! Oh yeah, he still parties. But it's not just a yacht, right, at this point. It is truly something that he starts to feel pride in. And he starts to get himself all covered in in grease and muck as he starts to want to learn kind of the ins and outs and he's like "Why does this- why does this room kind of just open up to a nice scenic view? and the shipwright's like "Uh, well, see the thing is, uh, Galoom made it that way, um, and that's just kind of the way it is." And he starts to kind of learn the natural order of of things a little bit more. And so this this moment is the is the catalyst that doesn't only keep the ship sky worthy, but starts to make Prince Thundercloud a little bit sky worthy as well. TIME PASSES CALEB: After an event card, I draw a Time Passes card. SATAH: "Draw a card as time passes and you find your way into the service of a new captain. Take a moment to reflect. Turn to the time prompt table. If you draw a diamond or a heart, answer a 'This Hull, Our Home' prompt…" CALEB: I got a diamonds. CONNOR: I've drawn a heart. SATAH: Okay, I drew a club. "If you draw a club or a spade, answer a 'The Way Of All Things' prompt of your choice." CALEB & CONNOR: "This Hull, Our Home." CONNOR: "The crews and captains leave their mark." Okay, you know what that means. Another choose one of six, which means it's time to roll a d6. Thank you for this idea, Satah. I did appreciate you having solved this problem for me. CALEB: Let me look at these. CONNOR: Okay, here we go. [Die clattering] A five. CALEB: Oh, I like this. Okay. CONNOR: [Laughing] "Mind yourself, she's particular." CALEB: "Mind yourself, she's particular. What tradition or superstition about you is passed on between crews and captains? What do you think of it?" I think as this group moves on, there's an interesting superstition that has to do with something that nobody even really knows about, which is what I mentioned with the metal of my design being off. As a result of using the incorrect metal, the ship itself is actually imbalanced. Not just heavier, but a little bit imbalanced. We'll tilt to one side or the other just a little bit in particular wind conditions. And there are two results of that. One is that the people who pilot me are more… they have to get used to that, and they often get used to it over time in kind of a gentle way. They understand that they need to shift just a little more to the left, to the right in given circumstances, which makes the people who pilot me seem even more impressive when they get good at it, because no one else can just pick it up. It takes practice. But also, that subtle shifting, that rocking back and forth, is occasionally interpreted as a commentary or a criticism on the behavior of the crew. They think that if they say something that bothers me or they behave in a way that I find annoying, you can sense it in the gentle tilt of the ship getting just a little harsher. And I think they pass on things that are annoying to me, like loud noises after a certain time, like negative comments about each other on the deck. I think the captain maybe knows and the other captains know that what they're doing is creating superstitions that help. Superstitions that boost camaraderie. But some of the crew believes it. And who knows? Maybe I am tilting because I'm annoyed. [Chuckles] CONNOR: Gosh, see, this is one of the things that really attracted me to this game was, like, the concept of time passing. And I love the idea of… you know, the ghosts that we leave behind. You know, you need not pass to leave a ghost, right? It's the energy of a place and, like, the way that a ship can be like a battery, and to be charged by your presence, and then when you leave, you know, given the right stimulation, the ship comes to life a little bit more. So yeah, "mind yourself, she's particular. What tradition or superstition about you is passed on between crews and captains? What do I think of it?" Makes me want to cry! I'm thinking a little bit about this and I think, you know, the tradition or superstition that is passed on between crews and captains is that under the light of the full moon, you can still hear the music from the parties that my captain used to throw. The groaning of deck boards as feet dance upon it… the hypnotic, rhythmic pulsing of moonlight in my wings fills all those who stray out onto my deck under the full moonlight. Fills them all with a song in their hearts and a desire to dance. And often, they give in, as they dance with the ghosts who have danced upon me before and leave their own two-step on the great dance chart that is plotted upon my floors. And what do I think of it? Well, I think it's just great. You know? I am filled with music. SATAH: "The way of all things." Rollin' my D6. Four. "Crew go on two feet. But these are not crew. You have uninvited guests in the form of invasive vermin. What are these critters? What do they want? And how do your crew try to control them?" Oh, they're… they're odd mammalian termites that are drawn to this wood, the purple wood, the special homegrown wood that probably the ship is made of as well. This is a new thing to them and they're very drawn to it. They want to eat it. That's what they want to do. Uh, and the true– how does the crew– true– [Exclamation of surprise over the repeating stumbling] "How does the crew try to control them?" I think that it's- it's about, uh, looking for something that they want to eat more. And so there's a lot of– like, they're- they're absolutely getting tossed over the sides of the ship as much as possible, but they keep appearing. And I think it's just kind of a thing where like, hey, if you– right now, this is an infestation that a lot of ships are dealing with, and unfortunately, they're very drawn to us particularly, so anytime we dock, it's likely that they'll get back in. And we experiment a lot with trying to find something that they're attracted to that they want to eat more. And then… I don't know. I don't- I don't want to… I… should have disavowed myself of this prompt or made them sapient in some way, because I… I am deeply uncomfortable talking about hurting animals, even goofy little invasive vermin. And so, yeah. The crew tries to find stuff that they want to eat more and get them off the boat. And that's it. [Laughing] That's the whole story. That's as much as we need to see on screen here. CALEB: And after time passes... we go into the next era. GAME: SECOND ERA CAPTAIN SATAH: Generally, in this game you do two captains per era, except for the final era, but for the pod we're doin' one. So. CALEB: So! Era two coming at you in just a moment. SATAH: The second era, which is subtitled– CONNOR: Uh, this one is subtitled ALL: "The fire and the flood. CONNOR: Uh, before I start drawing cards here, I've– I've just got a little blurb I've- I've put in at the start of this recording. So let's- let's kick it off! And you know, Satah, you can do with this whatever you want. The memory of your first friend is a strange one. Odds are you were a fledgling, just starting to learn what it means to fly, back when the world was unknown and the sky was limitless. Together, you laid the foundations of what you will become for the rest of your life, and then… time passes and you find yourselves grown apart. Not due to any fracturing or dramatic break, maybe, but due to the growth of time and how its current just erodes and changes your face. There's always a small part of me that hopes that one day it can be like old times and we can fall back into that same old routine and all of our childish worries in our games. Sometimes, suddenly, that door closes forever and you find yourself laid up in a dark hangar for years, waiting for the call to fly again. To chart your own path through the sky. And I'm about to be called again. CALEB: Hello, this is Greenblade, wielder of the Long Nines, coming to you in the second era. SATAH: First, gonna draw two cards to determine the first captain. CALEB: I'm drawing two cards. I'm gonna miss you, Admiral Glavik, and your crew of scoundrels, but maybe I can do better. SATAH: Pulled two clubs, so need to keep drawing 'til I get a different suit. CONNOR: It is a jack of hearts and a nine of spades. The rank doesn't matter, just the suit. CALEB: [Sing-song] Captain number two, spades and hearts. CONNOR: So spades are swift and hearts are dauntless. And here in the Captains of the Second Era, I have my second captain. CALEB: That is… CALEB & CONNOR: The Vengeful Hunter. CALEN: Swift and dauntless. Nice. CALEB: Ooh, I like that. There's some action in there, I think. There's definitely some drama. I love a good vengeance. SATAH: Got a spade. Is there a captain that is a club and a spade? Yes. The Vicious Corsair. Ooh! "You now play home to a cadre of desperate pirates, the corsair chief among them. They are fearsome and have an unlovely reputation. The pirates take care to show no weakness." Oh no, Laura, what happened?! [Laughing] CALEB & CONNOR: "The seas rise CONNOR: "and within them, the monsters which the hunter prizes. CALEB: "They are savvy." CONNOR: "They are savvy." CALEB: "Unrelenting." CONNOR: "Unrelenting." CALEB: "And driven to vengeance by an old wound." CONNOR: "And driven to vengeance by an old wound." CALEB: Ooh!! Okay. CONNOR: Ooh, some Captain Ahab vibes here. Okay. CALEB: Okay. SATAH: Ugh, okay. Draw a card for a chance of refit. FIRST REFIT CONNOR: Ooh, I drew a club, which I don't believe matches my captain's suit, and so as a result, no refits, um. Which is fine, you know? Hey, sometimes– sometimes we change, and sometimes the world changes around us, and that is okay, too. SATAH: Got a heart, so nope. Works for them just fine. CONNOR: Hearts! I got a refit again. I am lucky. What do we have? Electrified hull plating!! Yeah, babyyy. That's so cool. Okay. So I have electrified hull plating. We've already talked about having these, like, charged up sniper rifles at the front with the Long Nines. So we are going to do electrified hull plating. And we're going to consider that to be part of the same system. There was already a built-in system for power, and now the hull is also taking advantage of it. Just for fun, I'm going to say that one of the trade-offs, though, is that when you fire the Long Nines, during that three second charge-up of the long nines, there's a three second gap in the electrified hull. So the electrified hull does a great job repelling all sorts of weaponry and the newly developing energy weapons, and shocking people who are attempting to board or climb or hurt the ship. But while the sniper rifle is firing, there is a notable weak zone, a zone without protection. SATAH: I just want to check how explicitly the game wants me to talk about how this happened. Like why- why Laura Profunda is no longer the captain, why these pirates are. Like, I'm going to think about it regardless, but I just want to check if there is a specific, like, ruling about it. Nope, not particularly. Okay. How explicit do I want to be? CONNOR: I think the prince moved on and left me alone in a hangar for a bit, and then… I don't know how much time has passed. And I'm going to… try not to answer that. I think it's maybe better to let that– let the past be the past. And, you know, I am going to be the through line through time. SATAH: Well, let's do the next step and see what we learn in the prompts and then go from there. CAPTAIN'S PROMPTS CALEB: "Who pays for the hunter's catch? What do they use the Leviathans for?" So we've learned something here. By hunter, they mean that we are hunting actual creatures. For-real monsters. Which I was honestly interpreting the previous passage as monsters in a bit more of a metaphorical sense. But now we're getting Leviathans, capital L. CONNOR: I mean, it sounds like off the hop that I don't need to come up with a name for these creatures, is that they are Leviathans, capital-L Leviathans. "The seas rises, and within them, the monsters…" Oh, so am I like a– is it like a sky ship hunting sea monsters? That's kind of cool. SATAH: The first prompt is, "Describe the Corsair's favorite hunting grounds and the prizes they seek." Hunting grounds for pirates. Mmm… yeah, okay. Som still playing off of the image of that– like, flying above that big creature. The idea that these pirates are in the sky above those creatures and they… attack ships that get caught in those– the- the waves? Those- those, uh, those cloudless storms, as… as why not call them. I'm sure they're known. Which, I think, like– I think this has always been true. These pirates have always tried to target… but they usually sort of tried to be on either side of these creatures, so that ships that just barely manage to survive and are weak and tired from fighting their way through are much more vulnerable to attack. But now… I think what happened here is that they heard Laura's crew talking about seeing this corpse. And I think that what– how they heard it was somebody was talking excitedly about what they'd learned about the biology, right? Or their new theory about the biology. That this wasn't a thing that these creatures were doing on purpose; it was just part of how they breathed, their natural functions. And unfortunately… you got to be careful where you talk about stuff in a busy, hectic port town. Because the Corsair themself heard this and immediately realized how incredible it would be to be able to be above those ships and be able to just sweep down and take stuff while they're fighting. While they're trying to maintain control. CALEB: So we are monster hunting. This boat has been given to a set of monster hunters. And that is really interesting because we just established in the first era that we were, like, top of the line. Did this huge military maneuver. We were made to compete. And I think– I think the situation has got to be that designs have moved on. Not so much that they've made, like, ships that are way better than me, but more that something about what Colma discovered, something about the way she built ships… she's gone on to build more. And I, Greenblade, was amazing for the time. But she is young. She's continued to grow over the past few years. She's now in her twenties. Let's say there's been a ten year shift. And in that time, she's designed many ships, many of whom are more specialised, with more focused abilities. And the Greenblade has fallen out of favour, or at least our particular Greenblade has fallen out of favor with the Empire itself, as sturdier ships are developed for transportation, as faster, smaller ships are developed for the VIPs who need to be moved around. We… while we were at one point the most specialised we could be, are now kind of strangely specialised for targeted sniper rifle combat. And the Empire is still in charge. So eventually we were given as a gift to a captain who was the matriarch of a community who the Empire kind of feared. And I think this is because… they are a community that knows a lot about the Leviathans. The Leviathans are… amphibious beasts. In the real sea and in the sky. The ability to fly and to swim, but who do not have legs and are not able to function on land. So I don't know if amphibious still counts when that's the case? If there's no land involved, but it seems fine to me to say that. Doesn't amphibian just mean both? Two things? Could you be amphibious if you're just land and sky, though? Probably not. Here we– you know what we're going to do. We're going to Google it. Amphibian. CONNOR: I think one thing I want to try and do here is maybe just change the name of the ship a little bit, right? Again, I think it's really– it's that great kind of fun narrative that we're stumbling into here where, you know, this, again, recalling that the ship is equal parts like art and science, right? And this– a lot of its pieces were organically grown or, you know, they were organically designed and then artificially grown. The official name of the ship was the King Sapphire, but I think with each captain, I get a new name or at least an alternate or a slightly alteration of the name, right? So I think since this is a hunter ship, I'm going to adopt the name the Stalking Sapphire. CALEB: Okay. It says it means both kinds of life. "Animals in the air and water." Nothing. I'm getting nothing. Okay. All right. They're amphibious is what they are. And that's going to be the end of that. Leviathans are amphibious beasts that fly through the air and swim in the sea, and the Empire does not know what to do with them. But there are an entire community of people who hunts them and keeps them from getting too– too powerful in number so that they can't like swarm, you know, the land, eating all of our birds and destroying all of our skyships. But they also sometimes use them as skyships, this community. So this captain was given the Greenblade for a couple reasons. One, to hunt the scariest leviathans who need a delicate touch. And two, to protect the Empire from other people who might be using these Leviathans to attack the Empire at some point. The Greenblade is specifically good, because it's a sniper, at hitting and causing serious damage to Leviathans. Whereas… it was much harder for me to deal direct damage to other ships now that they've developed things like the electrified hull plating, which do resist the Long Nines. I love that. SATAH: Did the Corsair kill Laura or is she okay? I'm going to roll a die. Uh, evens, Laura was off the ship or something and is safe. Odds, they kill her. [Die rolling] Evens. So. I think what it is, is that most of the crew is off enjoying leave. And Laura is on the ship. It gets boarded by pirates as it's docked. And I think that they basically say like, "Hey. You can let us take the ship now or we can kill you, and then we will wait for your crew to come back and we'll kill them too." And she is not willing to put her crew in danger like that. And so she just leaves. She just gets off the ship. And the Corsair just takes it. Did any of the crew betray and come with? No. Whole new crew. CONNOR: Let's go with the captain's name, right? Not royalty, truly just a hunter. I'm going to say Captain Arteria. And… ooh, okay! So. I think shipwrights pay for the hunters– for Captain Arteria's catch. CALEB: The government pays when I kill a major Leviathan– when the hunter kills it. And the Leviathans are used for… in keeping with the idea that the Greenblade is often piloted by people who are working for themselves within a much bigger system, I think the Vengeful Hunter sometimes doesn't kill the Leviathans and instead captures them to sell them to the very people that she is supposed to be protecting against. CONNOR: I've referred to, um, these ships as having a heartbeat, as having an engine, right? As being kind of made up of strange, organic-looking structures. And so I think it would be… yeah, I think it's really cool if it is the hearts of these Leviathans that are used to power skyships. CALEB: Sometimes they're just captured to be sold, and sometimes they are killed and used for parts. [Gasp] Oh my gosh! Okay. Alright. The metal that Colma originally intended for me to be built with, that is holding me back, my limiters. Part of what makes it amazing it that it is a metal processed by a Leviathan eating sediment. And as it eats that sediment, it converts it into bones, kind of. It's unusual for a fish to have bones like this maybe, but… or like sharks usually have cartilage, right? But it converts it into bones. These thin bones that are a metal you can't find anywhere else, created from the Leviathan's kind of, like, um, acidic body and its diet of mineral. And so one of the things that comes from hunting Leviathans is every once in a while, you hit the motherlode jackpot of a Leviathan that has lived long enough and eaten enough of the land to have an entire skeleton made of this metal that was supposed to go into my construction. So that's what they're used for. But they're also sometimes food. CONNOR: I think as a ship, I feel conflicted about this, right? Because when I see another ship in the sky, I feel a sense of freedom. I feel a sense of kinship when another ship pings on my radar and I can see its sails billowing in the bright blue sky. But… to have to hunt these Leviathans to bring more of those into the world, I think it starts having… can a ship have an existential crisis? I think I am. I think as a boat, the Stalking Sapphire is starting to have- is going to have an existential crisis. You know, starting to wonder. I was brought into this world by an act of… eccentric, maybe misguided, but love, right? I was created by Galoom, and I was given my secret name. But I have not realised I have also been born of an act of violence. I think it's hard to try and reconcile these two things. Especially to continue to perpetuate that kind of violence, right? SATAH: The ships that are willing to cross dangerous territory are probably desperate or important. And both of those things are valuable. They can be– they're differently applicable, but they're valuable. If they're important, then whatever they have on board is certainly worth something. If they're desperate… I'm sure that that's how they've got– that's a lot of how they get crew. [Laughs] And just take them for all they're worth as much as possible. CONNOR: Maybe as, like, cities are like near- nearby, like, the coasts, Leviathans often, um, launch attacks on these cities. Maybe- maybe there's, like, some, uh, drive that they have to cause the sea to reclaim the land. Leviathans are an act of nature. Yes. Yeah, they are– you know, we– when a tsunami happens, it is a true force of nature. It is the sea swallowing up the land. And I love the idea that it's like– you know, it is futile to fight against the tides. It is futile to fight against the waves. Because you can never kill a wave. But what if you could? Captain Arteria, she is a… I see, like, a crimson-haired, almost sharp jawline. And just gray eyes or something. Just like, you know, eyes that have maybe seen too much. And she has been driven to vengeance because she grew up in a seaside village who, you know, marveled at the skyships and marveled at the sea, but they really sought to live in… you know, give respect and honour the sea for all it gives us, right, you won't awaken the ire of the Leviathans. And I think her home was destroyed by a Leviathan. CALEB: "Tell the story of the Hunter's wounding by a particular Leviathan and the day they have their opportunity for revenge." CONNOR: I think Arteria was training as a… rope maker. A ropesmith? Yes. And on the day she was to open her own shop– so, she apprenticed for many years, um– her- her village was destroyed by a Leviathan. CALEB: Imagine a giant narwhal. This whale-like Leviathan with a long, sharp horn on its head. Unlike a narwhal, though, it doesn't have a rounded, smooth body. It has the segmented body of a worm that sort of wriggles through the air. Maybe it's scaly. A scaly worm wriggling into the air with basically a sword on its face, a giant sword, as long as the Long Nines, if not bigger. And it made a nuisance of itself because its coiling segmented shape allowed it to, on the water, curl up at the bottom of the ocean in shallow water, below flying skyships in the air, and like a spring, launch itself upwards from underneath the waves when you couldn't even see it, directly into the ships above. CONNOR: I think each Leviathan is different and unique. I think they all have a similar internal physiology, but externally they are strange and bizarre and truly alien. CALEB: This thing seemed to know what it was doing. It knew how to kill these skyships. It learned how to be a predator against the people of this Empire specifically. And the Empire was sick of it. They sent us to spend months. It took literally months to find this thing because of the way it attacked. It would leap into the air, spear a ship, let the ship fall, and then escape for a while until it found its way back to pick through the drowned bodies, whatever it didn't eat immediately. CONNOR: So I think this many-eyed, many-limbed creature that looks like a football stadium rising up out of the sea, pulsing with light and making a sound like a tree trunk splitting and popping on its way down to the ground, caused a wave that swept her town out to sea. And it is unknown why this happened, and it's unfair that it happened. And she didn't know how to cope with it, right? And when she got over feeling sad about it, she… actually, I don't think she got over it. I think she turned her sadness into anger. I think it was a moment of, "I can't be stuck feeling sad all my life, so I am going to use anger to move myself forward." And I think she trained, amassed a small fortune, and purchased me from the hangar. Was– is the monarchy still around? I don't know. But I was purchased from the hangar, and I was there the day that she had her revenge. SATAH: "Tell the story of the day they got more than they bargained for when they swept down on a likely target." The first thought I had was that this was a honeypot of some kind. A ship that came out on purpose. A ship that… can fly, that camouflaged itself as one that couldn't, that came out to attack these pirates. Like, yeah, "Come and get me, and then we're going to take you down." Do I want it to be that purposeful, or do I really want it to be like, oh, you just– you really just coincidentally fucked with the wrong people? It's a coincidence. It's just a random ship. But a couple of the crew members of this ship used to work on The Catching Net years ago. CONNOR: I think she's spent… she's gone out with me a number of times hunting. And she's always listening for that sound of the exploding trees of a forest aflame… or like the biggest sheet of bubble wrap you've ever seen. Um… CALEB: One day, the hunter was wounded by the Leviathan, but it wasn't personally. It wasn't that the spear stabbed straight through the Hunter herself. We were docked along the coast of the continent, waiting for a ship that was bringing the Hunter's daughter. A teenager who I had never met– I, Greenblade, had never met– because she'd never come to the ship before. She was asked to come here. She was sent from home for the Hunter because it was time for her to be trained to become my captain one day. But the ship that brought her across the waves, down the coast, was speared by this great Leviathan, and by horrible horrible chance, when we heard of a ship being destroyed and we sped there immediately, there was no saving her. CONNOR: She hears it one day, right? I think she goes out in search of another Leviathan. Um, I think she's always chasing tails, right, uh, trying to find the one that destroyed her home. And finally, she comes across it. I think she maybe- maybe she refers to it as like The Tree Splitter or something. Let's call it The Tree Splitter, just to give it a name, right, instead of just the generic Leviathan. And I think when she finds it, she hesitates. I think she changes her her tact, right? She was– she was very uncompromising with all the other Leviathans. I think when she– whenever she would make a hunt and whenever she would make her kill, it would be a, you know, "You're not the one I want. This is just business. I'm just doing this." And she would make the kill and then leave or make the kill, harvest what she needs from the Leviathan, and then leave. But I think that inability to get answers from what happened to her is what makes her hesitate. CALEB: Many survived, but the spear of the Leviathan stabbed straight through her. SATAH: I think Laura got a new ship and hired a bunch of people and tried her best,but it was never quite the same, right? And- and a lot of them have dispersed. And we're not following her story, or their story, so I don't know. But a couple of the crew that worked on The Catching Net have ended up here, on this ship, crossing this ocean in the exact way they were so grateful to not have to do anymore. But what that means is they know the Net's vulnerabilities. And so the pirates board and pick– I picture them, like, hovering beside, like out of the reach of the waves, just able to hop on and get off easily. Not easily, but… [Laughs] they manage to make it work. And these former crew members board them. They also take the opportunity in the chaos to get on the ship. Do they try to take it down or do they just try to get away? I think that they're trying to reclaim it. Like they're trying to be like, "Hey, maybe we can just take the ship." CONNOR: She flies above Tree Splitter, which is currently breaching in the middle of the ocean, right? It is coming up, and she looks upon, like, a blue island of, like, limbs. You know what? Yeah, let's get weird with it. It's, like, instead of fur– it looks like it's covered in fur. But instead of like fur itself, it's actually like, you know, hands. Like, arms– like, just forearms and shoulders with hands at the end, and they're all just, like, grasping and flowing along. And I think that's how it propels itself. It is– it is a million, million swimming arms. Just a nexus of hands. And I think it is, like, all of them slapping against the water that makes this popping sound. CALEB: The captain was, of course, devastated. And we had already been commanded to kill this thing. We were about to start that mission But the Hunter became obsessed, made us all work around the clock searching for this creature. And finally, revenge only came because of the Hunter's schemes. She didn't warn them, but she baited a trap for the Leviathan. She set up a ship that the Leviathan couldn't resist, a ship full of people, raucous and noisy, like a cruise line. A skyship cruise line that was on a short journey. The captain found them in port and said, "I'm sorry, but by order of the Empire, you can't go along your normal route. You can't follow these safe channels. You have to take a shortcut. The Empire is using this area for something important. And besides, there's a storm!" So an entire cruise ship of people were sent into the territory of the Leviathan. CONNOR: I think her need for vengeance is superseded by her need for answers. I i think she's– she's very headstrong at this point, and I think she lowers– she gets the ship hovering like– again, it's a stealth ship so maybe totally unnoticed, hovering maybe about fifty feet above the Leviathan's form. And this thing is massive, right? It's nothing but hands as far as the eye can see across the horizon. And I think she takes her first… no, no. Her last. The last rope she ever made before she was going to open her own shop, and she uses that to lower herself down onto the ship– or, onto the Leviathan. And I think when she is there… I mean, she's- she's grasped at by these hands, right> They they do not– they're not terribly strong, right? They're they're almost like– they kind of look like jellyfish a little bit. But. She's able to break free from their grasps fairly easily But she stands there amongst this island of hands, just clasping up towards the sky. She pulls her saber from its scabbard and wants to so badly plunge this into this beast, knowing, you know, this is not but a splinter on this Leviathan. And I– she just lets out, like… she digs within herself, and she finds that… twisted iron of anger, of grief, right? Of grief manifested into rage. And she screams, her throat tearing from the force of the yell. Her crew up above in the ship stare down and kind of look at each other and it's like, you know, do we cut our losses? Like, has Captain just, like, you know, gone off the deep end? She screams long and hard, and she gets everything inside of her out. And the hands stop their clapping. And the sea is quiet. The Tree Splitter is quiet. She chokes a little bit from the force of screaming, I think it coarsened her throat. Hoarsened her throat? Hoarsened her throat. Um… and she… feels heard. I think in the silence of the Leviathan, the stopping of those hands clapping and slapping, she feels acknowledged, right? Like nature itself has heard her grief and given her a moment of silence that she so needs. And I think together, her and the Leviathan mourn for all the lives that have been lost. CALEB: I don't know how she knew. I don't know when the Leviathan was going to attack, but somehow she felt it. She sensed it. Her time obsessed and studying this creature gave her perfect timing for its attack. And as we watched the cruise ship at a distance, completely still waters, nothing anywhere, no sign of anything, she demanded the Long Nines be activated. Three… two… and in one single instant, as the Long Nines fired, the Leviathan's coil launched it out of the water, straight for the cruise ship, and it was pierced directly through the head in the exact moment it pierced the ship. And at least 200 people plunged to their death that day. CONNOR: She says no more and climbs back up the rope, but not before tying the other end around one of the arms of the Leviathan. Back up on the ship, I think she… grabs a tracking device and ties it to the other end of her last rope. She casts it off the side of the ship and she flies away. CALEB: From the horn on the Leviathan's head, the metal of my body was finally replaced. And for the first time ever, my construction matched Colma's designs exactly. CONNOR: And I think she hangs up her sword here. I think she continues to fly, but I don't think she continues to fly to hunt and kill. I think she starts to fly to monitor and document. Because she's been heard, and she's felt her pain be acknowledged, and while she may never have the answers as to why, she always knows where to go when she needs to look her past in the face. SATAH: They're trying to see if they can take the ship. They don't. Because… this is still my captain for the rest of this era. But I think they do manage to take control of it. And then the Corsair themself sweeps into the engine room or whatever. And they have a very– the classic, very threatening invitation to the crew. Like the Corsair doing like a, "You're clever. You're vicious. You're resourceful," while, like, flipping a knife in their fingers. And just saying a bunch of stuff about them that comes across as insulting, but then finally is like, "Do you want to ride with us? Is that– have I misunderstood? Are you doing this out of some sort of loyalty?" Gestures with their head to the ship that is still being attacked. Or probably not being attacked– everyone has had to retreat because they managed to take the ship. Or no, they're still fighting, but the ship is now far above in the sky. And the Corsair says, "Is this out of loyalty for transport of gunpowder? Or do you just really like my ship?" And the two crew members look at each other. And I think the Corsair sort of, like, eyes them and is– cards on the table, slightly more, goes like, "The two of you sure found this place quickly. You sure figured out how to maneuver it quickly." And that hangs in the air like a threat. Like a, you know too much, I should kill you. And then the Corsair continues, after a long silence, "That's useful. So I'm going to ask you again. Do you like my ship?" CONNOR: She does try to get that answer. She doesn't try and find that answer in fighting things, right? In trying to destroy her pain. I think she tries to understand it more, and in doing so, understanding the Leviathans better. SATAH: And the crew members nod slowly, and the Corsair goes, "Okay. If you can maneuver us back down and successfully pick up the rest of my crew, welcome aboard. If you can't… well. " And they don't finish the sentence. They leave. And the crew that worked on The Catching Net under Captain Laura Profunda joins this pirate crew. And it's terrible. And better. They are safer, and ultimately, you know… the pirates got to be loyal to themselves and each other, at least a little bit, so it's better than having to keep finding jobs and being on the water. CONNOR: Okay. So I've answered my captain's prompts. So now I'm going to draw a card for a second chance of a refit. SECOND REFIT SATAH: Alright. Now drawing a card for a second chance of refit. CALEB: And that's hearts again, which would be electrified hull plating again. So I'm not going to add anything to it, but I think I earned an upgrade. [Laughs] The second hearts is for me getting that metal from the horn of the narwhal beast. CONNOR: It is a spade! Ooh! I get a second refit. SATAH: Drew spades, which is one of the captain's tags. Swift: station-keeping jets. I think, quite simply, this is, like, something that makes it easier– because usually somebody has to be manually and with great difficulty controlling the ship to keep it hovering, as they're attacking, beside one of the other ships, beside the ship that is also fighting the cloudless storm. And these are just jets that make it, uh, hover above a certain amount above the water. I think somebody still probably has to be at the wheel, especially for if something goes wrong. But this takes a lot of the like manual work out of it. CONNOR: My refit as a vengeful Hunter, as a swift, is a dual sweep drive modification. So the fact that it's, hmm… I think it's adding a dual sweep drive. And we all know what dual sweep drives do, right? No? Oh, well then let me tell you. [Stage whispering: I don't know what a dual sweep drive does. Give me a second. SATAH: I like the idea that one of the crew members, the former Catching Net crew members that they recruited, was the one who was talking excitedly about the biology and is a little bit of a, like, science-y, you know, want– likes to learn, likes to know things. And they shyly go up to the Corsair at one point and show them a complicated diagram that shows, like, air pressure and the water's reaction. The Corsair looks at it and looks up at them completely deadpan, "The fuck is this?" And the crew member's like, "Um! It's an idea. I don't know how you do it, but, um…" and explains the idea of, like, being able to hover. And this, like, gets the Corsair's mind working. And they realise, like, they've seen this on ships… they use it as part of a docking procedure. It like– there are these jets of the air that are on the side of the ship that they sort of burst out to help keep the ship from crashing into the wall in very, like, narrow ports. Because everything is so, like, DIY and everything, it's really hard to always know– and there's like so many conflicting standards. Docking is hard. And this is something that has been added to a lot of ships to help– to make docking in weird ports a little bit safer and easier. And they basically realise, like, oh, if we– if took some of those and, like, you know, juiced them a little, we can probably use them to do that. And they absolutely just… [Laughs] there's– next time they see a ship that has those… probably few different ships, actually, they need a few of them, they attack the ship and surprise the crew on the ship they're attacking by not really taking anything from them, by just coming on, threatening them, and then seemingly disappearing. But what they've actually done is somebody has been sent to the sides of the ship to start ripping these jets off. And after they've attacked, like, three to five ships that have them, they have enough, and they tinker with them, and they now have these jets that will help them hover beside ships they're attacking. CONNOR: Okay. So I think this is what a dual sweep drive does. Okay. It's, um… I think it's like what– on ships they call them, like azi– azimuthal motors or something? The idea being, right, you know, a standard skyship can go forward, backwards, or stop and stay kind of… parked and hovering in the– oh, and also up and down, right? They kind of go in those two ax– in that kind of one plane of travel, forward, backwards, up, down. And of course it can turn, right? Like, by pivoting its body, but it does have like a certain axis of thrust. And so I think the dual sweep drive modification allows the ship to strafe, right? Allows it to move perpendicular to its main axis of movement. Yeah. What does that look like, though? Because, again, I think this ship kind of looks like a big bird, right? Um… up on the tail wings is where the bridge is, right, because it overlooks the flat of the bird's back, and that's where, like, the out deck– or the upper deck is, where parties used to be had. And you can see upon the wings. And, you know, there's– up in the beak where, like, the battle stations are, where you get to do your sensors and your surveys and your, um, you know, attack plans. And I think, like, under the wings is where the main sweep engine or the sweep drives exist. And so I think the dual sweep engines go at the bow and at the aft of the ship, right? At the back, they… I think they kind of look like bird's feet, but like bird's feet when they're like making little fists, you know? When they got something in their little hands? Or in their little feet? So it's like little fists at the front– or, at the back. And at the front, I think it looks like, um… eyes, right? I think getting those installed makes them look kind of like eyes at the very front. And so this thing starts to take a bit more of that mechano-organic appearance as it has, um, engines for legs and engines for eyes. CALEB: That wasn't even my event card! I love the captain's prompts too much. [Laughing] Okay. CONNOR: I maybe got a little wrapped up in that first one there. OUTRO SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo & otherwise self-paced TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.carrd.co. Sign up as a paid member at patreon.com/foliopod to vote on games and get early access to the bonus feed with edited audio-only versions of livestreams a while after they happen and occasional other stuff. You can follow Caleb Zane Huett's work on Bluesky at hauntedtable.bsky.social. Triangle Agency, an award-winning game of paranormal investigation and corporate horror, is available now at shop.hauntedtable.games & hauntedtable.itch.io. You cannot follow Connor anywhere, but he wants to recommend that you support your local library and take a little walk to appreciate something small and beautiful. You can follow Satah– that's me– on Bluesky at posatahchips.gaygothvibes.online and check out my work at gaygothvibes.online. I– I'm refusing to do retakes of my social media handle and website because it's my fault that they're so long and stupid, uh, affectionate tone. And i deserve to live in the reality of that. That's all. Next week, Caleb and Connor and I will continue our games of Skyworthy by A Couple of Drakes. Everything I mentioned here is linked in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there. [Soft laugh] POST-CREDITS SATAH: Very funny to have a helicopter dramatically loudly above me right now. That's a skyship, baby.