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 join as a free member to get somewhat delayed access to the bonus podcast feed.
This is episode three 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. You may think you see him from across the street, but a bus is going to go by and he will be gone.
Last episode, we said goodbye to our first captains and met our second captains. Today, we will be doing the same, but progressed one further… as is often the case with sequential numbers or a series of events.
GAME: SECOND ERA (CONT'D)
EVENT
CALEB: Now I have to do my event card for the second era.
SATAH: Now, draw a card and turn to the fire and flood prompt table.
CONNOR: This is an event card. So I've drawn a heart.
SATAH: Drew a diamond.
CALEB: Diamonds.
SATAH: "If you draw a diamond or a heart, choose a prompt from
ALL: fire."
CONNOR: "Struggle, strife, and treachery." Ooh, okay.
CALEB: Sorry for that long gap. I'm really thinking about these.
CONNOR: And once more, it's a table of six.
SATAH: Rolling my d6.
CONNOR: But you know what? I'm going to break from form and choose one.
CALEB: I just set up such a good story for this captain, I'm, like, having trouble even wanting to do another one.
CONNOR: And I'm choosing number four: "worth fighting for."
SATAH: Six: "No friends in high places."
CALEB: "No friends in high places. Someone your captain thought they could trust reveals a secret agenda.
SATAH: "Describe the confrontation.
CALEB & SATAH: "What does this mean for you?"
CALEB: I think the captain has defeated this beast. Someone from the Empire came to inspect it, approved the use of the metal in replacing my metal parts, and exactly when I was finished– the moment I was finished– announced that they would be taking the ship back. Because finally accumulating enough of this metal to fix my design means that my speed is exponentially increased.
My power has been proven by this, and the captain, while she completed the job, did so after receiving a series of complaints from her crew for keeping them stuck out on the ocean for a long time, keeping them out in the sky, worried for their families, worried about their health, constantly hunting this thing.
And of course, in the end, someone ratted her out for killing all of those people. The Empire had no choice but to take away her assignment, her position. At the end of this journey, she killed the beast, but she lost the ship. She lost her daughter. And she returned home in shame, as everyone know– knew what she had done to bait the trap.
This means I am returning, potentially, to the control of the empire, depending on what happens in era three, I suppose.
SATAH: I was like, who could this captain trust?! Like, in high places, especially, the implication that this is someone in power. And then I thought, like, maybe there is a Navy or something that really should be taking care of this pirate problem… but hasn't been. And they'll claim it's "not their jurisdiction," or "there's nothing they can do." But it is, and there is.
And it's like, the captain– The Vicious Corsair– is sleeping with the Admiral. You know? And is like, "This is better for both of us. The threat of me keeps the seas more clear. People who would take the risk of crossing this ocean if it were just the creatures and just the other threats… sometimes the added pressure of me and my crew is enough to keep them in shallower shores. That means less work for you to do. Less for you to keep track of."
And also… when I was thinking of, like– the ships they attack are often like desperate or important, one of the things I was thinking is that they probably are often, like, military ships and that kind of thing. And this means that the Corsair can sell weapons to the Navy, but also can make sure that if they attack Navy ships, they do so in a way that is, like… not as bad as if the Corsair weren't slightly under their thumb. Or if enemies of the Navy come in, foreign militaries, whatever, they can, like, keep track of it.
I'm not picturing this as Earth, but I don't have a solid image of what it is. I just know that it's a big ocean. Maybe it's even not quite an ocean, but like a great lake. That's part of it. It may as well be an ocean, but it is, like– there is a bigger world out there that is a little bit isolated, but can access it through, like, a big river or something. Not super important, but just thinking about like who has power in the sea. Like, what nation, who owns it, blah blah. You know. All that stuff. [Laughs]
And then it turns out that… the Admiral has a secret agenda. What is it? It's something like the Admiral has been waiting for the Corsair to step on the wrong toes or has been waiting for, like, a regulation bylaw to pass that allows them to basically impound me. It's the kind of thing where like technically at any point, they could arrest these pirates, but the ship would still belong to the Corsair. It's very hard to legally make a ship change hands or something like that. But a bill could pass or- or a line could be walked over that finally triggers like, "Hey, we can own this ship."
And they try to do it. They try to just impound me, basically. And there's like a vicious fight verbally between the Corsair and the Admiral. I think the Corsair kills the Admiral. And the main– the main sort of consequence of this for me is that we have to go somewhere very different. Like, we have to completely leave this area. This- this place that I've… the place that I've flown over for my entire existence so far, we have to leave it very far behind because now there's nobody to protect this pirate crew. And they're very, very, very much wanted. Not only can the ship– me– not only could they, the Navy, theoretically claim me, but also now they've killed– [Laughs] now they've killed a high ranking military official, so.
We leave, we go somewhere totally different. I think we're like– we, like, fly over land for a long time and everyone's trying to figure out what we're going to do next, what they're going to do next, and… it is not clear.
CONNOR: So this prompt reads, "My captain has a choice. Stand idly by and risk nothing or fight back and save something precious. What do they look like as they decide? And do I, the ship, agree with their choice?"
I think what has happened is Arteria's change from hunting and killing to tracking and documenting has given her insight and knowledge of the Leviathan's migration patterns and nests.
And I- I think Leviathan nests have been something that have been hypothesized as- as existing, right? Um, but nobody was has ever been able to find one or see one. But Arteria has found out information on where these nests could be. And seeing as the hearts of these creatures are a necessity to create these skyships, there is a big economic importance to figuring out where these things live.
And so it's not even stand idly by and risk nothing– I think it is– it's capitulate and be celebrated, but sell out. And I think, again, at first she doesn't know.
And I am a stealth ship, which means I am quiet and I am fast. So together, we chase the sun for weeks. We fly and we fly and we fly and there is never a moment where the wind isn't ripping underneath my wings. I– there is not a moment where you could even begin to think to step out onto the open upper deck, because this air would be ripped from your lungs.
We fly like the devil is chasing us. And he may well just be.
Arteria can't decide. And I wish she would because I'm getting tired. She has chased after her issues for a while, and now she is running from them, and… I am getting tired.
It is about halfway through the fourth week of running that we are finally caught. It's been five years since we landed on the tree splitter. Five years of collecting data, of researching, of starting to understand what these Leviathans do, why they attack. Where did this conflict start from? And she's so close.
But unfortunately, the clock has run out.
She has given me eyes so that I might see her… so that I might see her choice, and so that I might weep with her when she casts all her research overboard. When she destroys it.
Because I don't think you can understand grief. I think it just is. [Choked up] And as she watches it scatter… in the wind… sink beneath the waves, she is hardened, and I think she has saved a lot of lives by finally letting it go. So, yeah, I agree with her. While I am so happy to be alive, I don't think we need to kill. I don't want to be part of the killing just to make more of me.
So yeah. She's destroyed her research and announced it to every vehicle that has been pursuing her. And I think she has made a pariah to mainstream society, but I think there's a few who understand why she did it.
And in learning to, again, live with nature, to live with these creatures and to not try and rage against them, found that balance that her destroyed village was so about.
TIME PASSES
SATAH: With that, I'm going to draw a card as time passes.
CALEB: And now a time passes card.
CONNOR: "Draw a card and time passes and we find our way to the service of a new captain." [Hard exhale] Jeepers. Okay, I've drawn a heart, which means we are going to "This hull, our home."
SATAH: Drew a diamond. "This hull, our home."
CALEB: Spades. "The way of all things" prompt. Okay.
SATAH: I rolled a one…
CONNOR: So I don't have any D6s on me. So I'm going to use a D20 and I'll do… D20 mod 6 and then ignore 19s or 20s. And… [Die rolling]
CONNOR, OVERLAPPING IN A DREAMY STRESS MONTAGE: 13 mod 6 is 8. Mod 5. I'll just divide by 3. One… two… three… four… 13 divided by 3 is… I wasn't prepared to do math today.
CONNOR: That's a 5. "Mind you, she's particular." I'm so good at this math. We already had that one, so we can't do that one. We've got to do it differently. [Die rolling again]
CALEB: "Paint strips, boards groan, and rigging rots. Where is time taking the greatest toll on you?"
I think it's almost all in paint. The flowers within my gears no longer have their illustration on it. The green paint along the outside of the Greenblade has chipped and been removed.
I am unloved by the world. I have done my job so well as to become nearly villainous. I quelled an uprising by killing all the other ships involved. I defeated a beast at the expense of the loss of hundreds of citizens. I was used as a smuggling ship and then as a ship of vengeance.
People are frightened of me. Even my crew, I think, is frightened of me to an extent.
As a result, the Greenblade doesn't get painted. It doesn't get polished. The Greenblade is sharpened. The Long Nines are cleaned. The electrified hull plating will always work. They monitor that, but they don't touch anything they don't have to. They don't want it to curse them, maybe. So that is what is happening over time.
CALEB: A six is "songs against the tide." Okay! Whew. We got there.
"What motto or song…" Oh, gosh. Phew. "What motto or song always unites your crew when all looks lost, and who sings it to you for the last time?" [Lightly hysterical giggling]
I am going to… crib heavily here from a very favourite and dear show of mine. And I'm sorry that I'm that insufferable guy who loves Adventure Time, but gosh, I love Adventure Time.
I think this plays really well on the grief that Arteria has been dealing with. And I think the song or the motto is, um… "will happen. happening. happened." And there we are, again and again, because you and I will always be back then.
And I think it's about, you know, everyone we've met, everyone we love, everyone we've hated, we're all connected through time, right? And so those happiest moments are happening right now. Those highest of highs are happening.
And when things are at their darkest, this moment too will pass, and everything is temporary, and everything is permanent. If you know how to look, you can see it all.
It is a cool spring day when I hear that song for the last time.
I fly so infrequently now. Arteria has grown older and grown tired, but she has taken me out all on her own, and she sets me screaming into the sunset, and I fly like we did when we were running. And almost imperceptibly I race around the planet, so fast that the sun starts to rise.
She takes me down and we land on a beach and we watch the sunset as the waves crash into the shore and roll back out to sea. 
Will happen.
Happening.
Happened.
CONNOR: Era two is a tough one!
SATAH: "There were good times here once. To commemorate a celebration on board, the crew left a bit of art or an inscription. What is it?"
While we're on the run, the Corsair has just been locked in their quarters, steaming and stewing, trying to figure out what the fuck they're going to do next. There's a hesitant knock on the door and they open it furiously.
And the crew member is like, "We need you in the… we need you in the hold,  um, C-Captain, if that's okay."
And they're super grumpy and they come and everyone's nervous, but they– it's a little surprise party for the Corsair's birthday. They walk in and they see everyone there and like a single wrapped gift on a table and they freeze. And they're just staring at the gift and someone says like, "In all the hurry, did you forget what day it is?"
And there's silence for a long while, and then they go, "Oh my god. Oh my god, I did."
And someone lights a little candle on a cupcake or something and is like, "Happy birthday, Captain."
The Corsair is silent still, and everyone's getting increasingly nervous. And then they just burst out laughing and they command people to, like, open up the stores, the reserves. Let's make this a fuckin' party. What are we doing? We're pirates. We're gonna be worried?! We're gonna sit around and be scared?! No. How embarrassing that I forgot myself. [Laughs] Even for a moment. Even for a week. Let's show them what we're made of. Let's show ourselves what we're made of.
And they throw a huge party celebrating the Corsair's birthday, celebrating their freedom from their partnership with the Admiral, however tumultuous it was, however much it did benefit them it was ultimately still living by somebody else's rules in some way.
Never again.
And I think somewhere inside… it'-s it's in the parlor turned hold. My logo, The Catching Net– it's painted on the back of the ship, as is often true of names, or the side or something. It's also painted in here. A very, like, beautiful artistic version of it.
And somebody paints underneath it. I was thinking "The Catching Net is free," but I think what it actually is, is– "The Catching Net" and then someone paints– obviously a different hand, but a similar style, "Cannot be caught."
The Catching Net cannot be caught.
And that exists in this hold as part of this logo as they move forward and try to never compromise. Never again.
GAME: THIRD ERA
CALEB: Okay!
CALEB: Okay!
CONNOR: Boy. I went through a lot of big emotions last era.
CALEB: Getting into the third era.
CONNOR: I have got my cat on my lap and she's decided now is the perfect time to start sowing her little fur all over the pop filter.
SATAH: The third era is very comfortingly titled, "The World Moves On."
CONNOR: We're coming back into this totally brand new, fresh and… I mean, you know, we got our memories. We got our songs. Let's go to the captains of the third era.
CAPTAIN
SATAH: "Draw two cards to determine your captain."
CALEB: I'm drawing two different heart cards. So I have to draw one more with the hearts to figure out my captain… and it's clubs. So it's hearts and clubs.
SATAH: A diamond and a club.
CONNOR: We got ourselves a spade and a… diamond.
SATAH: Sleek and powerful.
CONNOR: Sleek from the spade and swift from the diamonds. Yes, I am looking at these suits correctly. That is exactly what these are.
CALEB: My captain of the third era, which is called The World Moves On, is The Rebllious FIrebrand.
SATAH: The Rising Star.
CONNOR: The Canny Smuggler.
SATAH: "You are the Rising Star's first command under the new regime. They are eager to excel, inexperienced, and have the eyes of their superiors upon them."
Oh– I missed– okay. I totally missed the thing of last era also said, "natural disaster prompts strife and turmoil among the world's nations." So this is sort of the overarching thing. What was the first one? "High adventure in a gilded era of exploration and discovery." Okay. So first era, "high adventure in a gilded era of exploration and discovery." What is the third era? "The coalition seizes control, expanding their power in the changed world." Okay.
This book is gorgeous and and organized in a way that I find a little difficult to- to parse for finding information when I need it. Um– I see that, like– I– it's good to have that information of, like, what's going on in the bigger picture as I sort of, like, get my captain and stuff, rather than having it just at the end– just so that I have, like, an idea of what's happening?
But in any case…
CONNOR: "You and the Smuggler flaunt the new regime, eking out a living on the edges. They are daring, roguish, and perhaps half as clever as they believe themselves." Oh, so me! No, I'm not daring and roguish. Um. [Laughs]
CALEB: "A unifying voice of dissent in the face of the new regime, you and the Firebrand are a symbol of a better world.  They are stalwart, uncompromising, and so very tired. That's interesting!! Okay, so.
The previous captain was stripped of their– y'know, their representative title as a member of their community under the Imperium's gaze. But I didn't end up back under Imperial control. Something happened during that exchange, after I was crafted, that led to me being taken.
"A unifying voice of dissent." I think it's Colma. I think it's now been another ten years. She's in her thirties, and she found, at last, as a result of the previous captain's actions, the opportunity to build me into her final specifications and then run away from the Empire, leave their service as an engineer by taking control of me for the first time– her first design– and becoming a rebellious leader for a new resistance that is perhaps going to be a little more careful than the one that I first doomed to defeat.
And I have to admit, I'm a little excited about that because I've been piloted by a bunch of criminals and angry people and I've been used for vengeance and slaughter, so… the opportunity to maybe participate in something nice, something that slows down imperial control, while piloted by my very creator makes me feel good, even though I'm just a ship.
CONNOR: I am thinking that the Smuggler's name is going to be Hush. I think that is a name that they have given themselves.
They've got, uh, short silver hair and a scar on their cheek. And they like to say that the scar is from a bar fight gone bad, but in reality, it's, uh– it comes from when they were younger and goofing around with their grandfather's knife collection and trying to do some butterfly knife tricks. Y'know, they'd seen some of their friends do these tricks and they're like, "Aww, I really want to do those too!" And the very first thing they did was cut their cheek. And- and immediately learned proper knife safety. You know, knife safety is very important. Cut towards your chum, not your tum.
And I think they also, like– they wear a vest, kind of like a fishing vest, with, like, a bunch of pockets. Like, way more pockets than is necessary on a vest, but only they know what's in each one. You know, there's– it's always something, like, kind of handy or some interesting bobble or something that they can use to make a quick escape. And some of them are trapped for pickpockets.
I think Hush has a certain distrust for people. I think they're very– they're very wary of anyone outside of their circle. But once you are in Hush's circle, there is an immense amount of trust placed with you.
FIRST REFIT
CALEB: So let's see if I get a refit. [Skipping like a record] R-r–r-refit. Hearts again! Ha ha ha ha! What do I get? What do I get? What do I get? "Reactive plating." So I have electrified hull plating and now I have reactive plating.
SATAH: And first draw a card for the chance of refit and I got a club, so ye,s absolutely! Let's see. Clubs are powerful and the refit is a munitions auto loader.
CALEB: Okay, here's something fun. Colma designed metal plates that resonate on the frequency of the radios– magical or not– the radios used by the Empire. Kind of like a– those, like, machines people have in their cars let them know if a cop is nearby? I have plates that, uh, vibrate and create a humming noise when we are being approached by an Empire ship.
And… I think that's enough. I think nobody else has the ability to track them like this or sense them like this as they move through the sky, and so she's able to stay out of trouble and stay out of sight by moving anytime she hears the hum.
Great job, Colma.
CONNOR: I drew a club. So no refit, no initial refit.
SATAH: I'm wondering if this is the bounty sort of coming to bear of like… we were in the crosshairs of the Navy. Um, to have the ship claimed by them. I think that's probably what happened.
And is this the new Admiral? I think it probably is. Yeah. It took some time for them to figure out who was going to take over. But this is… this is… the Admiral who the Corsair killed, their replacement. Somewhat symbolically on purpose. Like the Navy is like, "You're replacing the Admiral they killed. You need to get that ship back."
And part of what happens here I think is just that the coalition involves like… the Corsair was on the run, far away, trying to outrun the Navy by going into territories that the Navy had no jurisdiction in. And eventually, the jurisdiction was expanding faster than the Corsair could run. And this Rising Star, this new Admiral, takes the ship.
And because it's a Navy ship now, they need the weapons to be more effective. So she doesn't have to go out of her way to get this munitions autoloader that she's adding because it's provided to her by… the Navy.
CAPTAIN'S PROMPTS
CALEB: Captain's prompts. "What event pushed the Firebrand into open rebellion? Describe the freedoms the Fireband and their ragtag band of true believers fight for."
CONNOR: "What was the one place where you–" me, the ship– "and the Smuggler felt safest? And why could you never stay for long?"
SATAH: "How did the Rising Star's first tour of their new command proceed? How is it not what they expected?"
Immediately when I think of how it wasn't what they expected, I think it's that they were sent to get this ship symbolically, right? And I think the first tour goes incredibly. Without a hitch. It's perfect. Weirdly perfect.
And I think this admiral is starting to realise– it's dawning on her– a lot of her work is going to be symbolic. She thought she was going to be coming in and… doing military tactics and really taking command and doing that kind of thing.
And people above her– you have to imagine that the admiral who was making deals with pirates, even if it was ultimately to benefit the Navy, you have to imagine that they were doing a lot of stuff that wasn't strictly what they were told to do, right? And so I think their death was used as an opportunity to take a lot of power away from the role, make it a little bit more of a figurehead.
And it's slowly dawning on the new admiral that she was put in this position not because of her merits– which are impressive, to be clear– but because she makes it look good, and right now, they've decided that that is more important and that that is going to be her role.
And so… I think that she at least tries to take advantage of that by… it feels worse for her to pretend at military victory than it does to do things like bringing food to people, and so she tries to angle for a lot of work on her first tour that is, like, the navy comes in with supplies. And she gives a big speech in this town that is now under her protection, that wasn't under her protection two months ago– that wouldn't have been even if, you know, she had the job, um…
And I think this- this game really wants to play with the big time scales, right? So it's– it was years. The Corsair and the pirates actually managed to stay gone for… decades, actually.
And so she isn't the first new admiral. But I think the other admirals kept falling to the same flaw, right? They kept– they still had the power and so they were still making their own deals. And she is the first admiral in the new version of the role that is much more of a face.
And this makes her uneasy, but… also, like… she's flying. I imagine that skyships are much more common now than they were when I was first created and so– and she's young enough, this new admiral is young enough that she was– she actually grew up knowing skyships and knowing, like– wanting to fly one of those one day. And chased, like– went into the military, went to the Navy, because she thought that was the best way to achieve the goal.
And she tries to just get comfort in the idea that, like, it worked! She is… doing the thing that she set out to do, basically. The core of it… is there. Maybe it's not everything. Maybe it's not super fulfilling, because she isn't getting to do some of the other stuff. But she's trying to– she's trying to be positive. She's trying to– she's trying to believe that it can be good. It can work.
CONNOR: I'm going to first commit to the thing I started at the at the beginning of this recording session, which was, I'm giving my ship a slightly different name with every era. Um, and I think Hush– given that they- they flaunt the new regime, right? They're, uh– they're very anti-rules. I think the lineage of the name from King Sapphire to the Stalking Sapphire is a little too hoity-toity for them. And so they have taken to calling me just Saffy. I have gone from the King Sapphire to the Stalking Sapphire to just Saffy.
And I think this is symbolic of Hush's approach. You know, they run a very, um… you know, it's risky being a smuggler, right? Like, if you get caught, things go poorly. But there is a certain admirable lightheartedness that they take to this smuggling, right? There is– it's a thrill. Like, it's almost like a game to them
And so, yeah, as a result, I think there's a… "uh-oh, we're never going to make it through the blockade! The… the government has put up far too many interceptor ships!"
And I think there's always, like, a moment of glibness where Hush will, like, rub and kind of like pat the controls of– pat my controls and– you know, just kind of with a wry smile– and say, "They have no idea how fast old Saffy is here," and then they would hit it, and I would go screaming, yeah.
Ever since Hush found me on that beach, I think it's, uh– we've become very fast friends.
CALEB: Well, I think the event that pushed the Firebrand into open rebellion was building for a long time. She was kept under lock and key, a genius found at an empirical– empirical.– imperial school when she was younger and over time, forced to watch her creations go on to only further the control of the Empire.
I think the seeds for this were planted all the way back in my first battle, when I was the only survivor. She saw how strong her designs were, and over the time since then, she made specialised ships, but she never made any that were all around as good as me again. She made a point not to. She didn't want to improve.
And when the time came that it just so happened that I was sent to be repaired at the shop she was being placed at at the time, and that the Leviathan had been killed, and she saw the opportunity to turn me into the perfect ship… she fled. And decided that was the sign she needed.
She has now found some surviving members of her village. I think her parents are gone. A lot of her family is gone, but some people from her original village, some other kids have joined her in this. She occasionally accrues more people who are fighting back against the empire.
And I think the main thing they're pushing for is that this empire… it benefits the emperor. It benefits the centralised power structure to have, basically, a police state. The people are monitored more than they're protected, and the Firebrand, Colma, really wishes for her ships to stop being used to police her own country and her own people and to make sure that the empire remains, no matter what, and wishes they could be used for… exploration, for assisting those in need more often.
And maybe she's worried that they're developing something much more serious. A ship that can carry something really bad, like a bomb.
CONNOR: Where did we feel the safest? I think that's where we should start first.
I'm envisioning right now like a flat-topped mesa that is just perfect for parking a skyship on. And I'm imagining it surrounded by rolling dunes of sand. Maybe not like… total desert? Like, I think it's still populated– populous. But I- I think the idea that having a high vantage point where Hush could see all around them really made them feel safe, you know? It's like, you're– you know, you're never cornered if you have a skyship, right? You're- you can always go up.
Um, and I think there's a bit of community here too, right? I- I think in the shadow of the mesa is a small town. I don't think it's where Hush is from, but I think it is where Hush feels most at home.
I think there's maybe a, um… ooh, I think there's maybe a Robin Hood angle here, right? Where a good portion of whatever profits that Hush earns, they give back to this town. They have– they have really got a found family here. They love to bring back rare and exotic books for the town's local library. You know, strange and flavorful ingredients that they have taken an opportunity to sample from all corners of the world and they- they bring it back to this- this town, and in this town, like– and in this way, it kind of becomes a, um– a mosaic of cultures, right? Like it's- it's like a- a nexus of all these various pieces of the world coming together in one spot.
And I- I think it is because Hush loves this town so much that it starts to flourish.
It starts to become a bit of a trade hub of sorts, which attracts outsiders to the town. And while Hush knows that nobody in the town would ever sell them out, they're less certain about the outsiders, so I think it is for that reason that Hush and I can never stay long in this town and I– you know, I'm going to give the town a name. I'm going to be bold and give the town a name.
It is a town, I said, in the shadow of a mesa in the desert… Shadowside. Yeah, Shadowside is the name of the town. Ten out of ten world building right there. Tolkien ain't got nothing on me. Um, yes, that's right; the town on the shadow side of the mesa is called Shadowside. Get in the c– [Laughing] get in the comments.
Hush and I, we don't stay there long because Hush is worried about being recognised. Right? They've brokered not a lot of super legal deals. And the worst case scenario for them would be to have someone recognise them and then hurt this town that they have come to love and has come to love them.
CALEB: "Tell the story of the most desperate mission you and the Firebrand ever undertook." Hooo.
I'm thinking, honestly, that last thing I just said sounds awesome. That the Empire developed a bomb. And Colma realised that the bomb was being carried on a ship to be used against a city that had been attempting to separate itself from the Empire and was speaking out against the Emperor and his control, and as a result, we had a mission to attempt to take down the ship before it could reach the people of that town.
But if you destroyed the ship and you sent it hurling toward the ground, it was going to blow up this big bomb it was carrying and was going to cause significant damage to someone. And so we had a very, very tiny window of where we could intercept the ship, take it down, hopefully, with the Long Nines and minimise the damage to the world.
But it required us to be pretty close, required us to time it exactly right, and… they were evacuated, but the best place to drop the bomb was on Colma's hometown. The original hometown that she was taken from and that was kind of already scattered to the winds because of the Empire's retaliation against her parents' attacks. And so Colma's only choice was to destroy her hometown to protect a much larger city.
It was desperate. It was difficult. And it required perfect timing of the Long Nines, which… I actually think that there's a gunner who persisted here. Someone who was rebelling, who joined from previous practice, who's getting old now.
SATAH: "What difficult mission did you and the Rising Star undertake together that made both of your reputations?" Ooh… open- open question.
I think- I think I'll build off of, like, what I said of, uh… she starts trying to do a lot of bringing supplies to people and that kind of thing. And I think that, like, slowly she realises how much she loves that. She likes helping people. She's- she's nice. [Laughs] She's a good person.
And… she does want to be able to exercise her tactical abilities and so I th– that- that is something that she's missing. And I think that's a conflict for her where she's like, "Wait, I really love helping people, but, like I've studied tactics, and how do you… how do you help people tactically?"
[Laughs] There are a lot of ways, but she doesn't know them yet.
She's starting to learn them, though, because I think that– what this is is like, there's, like, a big military action and there's a town in the very middle of it that isn't involved. Two sides fighting surrounding them and they're right in the middle. Some weird just quirk of borders and landmarks.
And this big mission that really skyrockets our reputation is that she figures out how to get supplies to them. She goes into the middle of this war between two sides– neither of whom are hers, I think is the thing. This is, like, three factions. The Coalition's people are the ones in the middle and these other two, not sure who they are, but she can't rely on either of them to just let her through.
And she manages to get through the fighting and… find– like, if we go this far up then we're, you know, in a no man's land and then we can come down here. Um, and then we have to like go around this mountain. And it is this big difficult, like– people have to be maneuvered and arranged and she does it. And manages to get supplies to these people without, I think– like, one of the reasons that she's allowed to do this by her superiors is that, like… if it came down to it they'd have to try and intervene probably? And like this makes it so they don't have to and they can just let these other two warring factions battle each other out.
I think that's probably what it is. They're like, "We want them to keep fighting and then we'll come in when they're vulnerable." Mm! Sounds like the pirates. Interesting. [Laughs]
And they're willing– ooh, yeah. She is allowed to do it, but, like, they're willing to just let that town in the middle be sacrificed. And she isn't. And they let her do it because it does look good. It looks really good for the Navy to not… Air Navy. Uh. Yeah, weird combination between the Air Force and the Navy now, but I'm going to keep with the Navy, whatever.
It looks great for them to not let these people die. They were willing to, and it would have been… they would have had a great case to say they had no choice. But she's decided that they did.
And it's a big deal, the idea that someone would… put all of that thought and that effort into saving this one little town, this small group of people, relatively small group of people, is a really big deal.
And the image of The Catching Net carefully appearing around this mountain range is painted, is described in song, is… just becomes this historical epic of this image. And people think of that when they see me. They think of the care, of going out of the way to protect the most vulnerable.
And the Admiral has a little bit of conflict with this because she's really aware that the people in power would have just let them die. And so it's a little– feels a little odd to her that they get to look better when they didn't even want her to do it, when she had to kind of fight to do it. Yeah.
CONNOR: So now we get to "what memorable cargo was more trouble than it was worth?" I think this answers the question as to why would anyone want to hurt Hush?
So here's the thing. I hear new regime, and I think… hard, iron fist, cruel and uncaring, and I think something that needs to be resisted.
I think we maybe saw the sprouting of that weed in the previous era, especially at the end with trying to turn what is a… you know, it's like the difference from, like, fishing with a fishing rod versus fishing with, like, a gigantic net, right? Like, turning it into an industry. I think we started to see that grab for power at the end of the last era. And I think, you know, again, I'm not going to be specific on timelines here, but I think this third era has come quite quickly on the heels of the second. I think these weeds have taken root. And they are a lot more in control.
And so, I th… you know– "is it hack to have a throughline in your stories?" I wonder aloud as I start to believe that it's not hack to have a throughline in your stories.
And I think that Captain Arteria, while she did destroy her research and while she did destroy her transponder that would read these tracking signals on these, um– of the Leviations, I think that the most memorable cargo that was more trouble than it was worth was some prototype being used by underground naturalists. Some– sorry, some prototype of a radio or transponder that lays the groundwork for collecting the signals from Arteria's tracking devices.
I think it– yeah. It was being smuggled out of a government lab because one of the developers knows what this will be used for, right? They know this device will be used to kind of perpetuate a war on a species that maybe doesn't know what war is. And so… I think they burn the research and smuggle out the one prototype to their contacts.
Oh, I've got to come up with a good underground eco-group name. I think maybe the name of this preservation group is called the Lotus Dancers. Yeah, they're the ones receiving this tracking device. And they're so-called, right, because they dance b– the idea is that they dance delicately upon the leaves of the lotus as it floats in the water. Do lotuses float in water? [Typing] Yes, they do. Yeah, so they dance delicately upon the leaves of the lotus, not disturbing the plant, not causing it to sink, while still allowing themselves to thrive and live upon the surface of the flower.
So yes, yeah, Hush was smuggling, um, this- this prototype signal collecting device, um, that is able to be tuned in… it's- it's almost like a cryptography thing, right? I think it's, like– they're trying to figure out what the key is to deciphering all of these encrypted trackers, uh, that Arteria had, uh, had sown amongst the, uh, amongst the Leviathans. And so they're- they're using this– they're going to want to use this then, um, to track, uh, these Leviathans and kind of correlate that to where government ships are so that if there is a need to run a smoke screen operation, uh, to prevent them from finding a potential nest, um… they're- they're using this to kind of stay one step ahead.
Um, and so this was- this is the memorable cargo, right? Like the- the fate of a, um- of a- of a species made it, while it was small, one of the heaviest cargoes I have ever carried.
And what made it more trouble than it was worth, I think this brings us right back around to the start here. I think this ship was IDed. Or maybe not identified, but maybe captured on photograph or on camera somehow, right? Someone got a good look at this ship and has an idea of who the connection is– to where this power source, this domination of the skies, can be found.
And so it has turned myself and Hush from a relatively small-time smuggling operation where we have been keeping ourselves on the edges and out of sight. We put a toe into the spotlight, and now are being hunted. Not quite a– not a super active hunt, mind you. I am incredibly fast and incredibly stealthy. But, you know, it has really built that distrust of anyone outside of Hush's inner circle.
SECOND REFIT
CALEB: And then I roll for another potential refit.
SATAH: Draw a card for a second chance of refit.
CONNOR: Um, heart, which is not one of my… symbols, so I don't get a potential refit.
SATAH: A diamond! So it does match one of the captain's tags. It is sleek. "Sky brass lightning sinks." Ooh! 
CALEB: Clubs… oh, that is another refit again! The "stolen coalition repeater." That's a really appropriate sound– like, sounding name.
I mean, repeater… coalition repeater… I think it's cool machine guns on either side of the boat. Like, pellet firing guns that– I think the word coalition is because they require multiple people to be operating them somehow? Like, maybe they're having to load these pellets live while they're fired. We don't have, like, magazines, and so it's like one person is aiming, one person is firing, and one person is pouring pellets into a funnel at the end of this machine gun. And so having both of them active requires like six people functioning at once. Very much a group activity. If any of those people are not doing their jobs well, also, the- the repeater can be knocking us off balance pretty dramatically. So even the pilot needs to be understanding of what's happening and be on board.
A total, shredding, incredible firearm that requires everybody on board to be on the same page about what they're doing to use it.
SATAH: I think what makes this refit special is that it doesn't come from the Navy. It comes from one of the towns that she sort of patrols and provides supplies to.
There's like a– there's a little group of traders that come to her and they're looking at her sails. She's getting the sails repaired. They're charred. And these traders come to her and they're like, "Hey… do you want to know how we maintain our sails for longer?"
And her eyebrows go up and she's like, "Sure. I was under the impression that wasn't possible."
And they all kind of, like, smirk at each other. And they're like, "Yeah. Up front, it's cheaper to keep repairing the sails. But over the course of a ship's life, it really doesn't make any sense. And it's not good for the wood either.
"You can install lightning sinks and it catches more of the electricity from the storms and it means that your sails will last longer, the wood doesn't suffer as much heat damage,"
whatever, whatever. "And we even think that at some point there might be a way to store it, but we don't know. Imagine. Imagine if you could use lightning to power your ship." [Laughs]
Ooh! That's another thing that the Navy is scared of. Um– because they say that, and then I think there's almost, like– they're getting excited, the traders. They're like, "Imagine– we think that in the future you might be able to use the power of lightning, to store it and power these engines," and then they stop talking like they've said too much.
And the Admiral's eyebrows sort of, like– her eyebrows already went up in this conversation. Let's leave the eyebrows alone.
She looks between all of them, and she's like, "Well, then we wouldn't… I suppose that our trading partners who provide us fuel would, uh… be a little frustrated with that."
And the traders, like, nod a little bit, like noncommittally.
And she's like, "Hmm, well, we wouldn't want that. But we're not there yet, are we? So, seems like a sound investment to me." And with this is signaling to the people like, oh, I get it. The Navy doesn't want these– this technology, these lightning sinks, like doesn't want to support them because they could lead to electricity and then we'd stop buying coal. And the Navy has agreements with the coal miners' guild. You know? Um, and she's saying, like, fuck them, that sounds great. We know that coal mining is bad and sucks for the people who did it– who do it. So yes, I will support this technology. And if it leads to the destruction of coal mines, then good.
But this is all unsaid. This is- this is just your- your classic Ancillary Justice conversation through implication over tea.
And she pays the traders a hefty sum to install these skybrass lightning sinks on The Catching Net.
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.
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. Take care out there.
POST-CREDITS
CONNOR: "The Coalition establishes a stranglehold on the world" and– you know. Strangeholds never sound like a good thing? Um, maybe it's because they've got the word "strangle" in the title? I'm not sure. I'm not a- a word doctor. Um, but strangehold sounds… sounds tricky. Uh, let's see. "The world moves on…"