Kwatchi

<Unseen Hand Part 1> The annals of the heretic Millar date back to 356. The set of tomes long thought lost described his pilgrimage across the eastern seas, as he searched for an unknown treasure believed to be coveted by Hades himself. His discoveries on what is now believed to be the island of Inferno Pordejon have long since been discredited by the church as delusions of a madman. Still, over time some of the true faith have tried to retrace his footsteps in order to take up the hunt and grasp the gift foretold. Most died in the attempt. Most, but not all. Memoirs of Captain Silas Pike, Jan '617 ===/===/=== Somewhere, mid way down the cliffs to the south of Charlatan Bay: Wait here sailor. I'll holler if I'll be needing you. Yes your eminence. Ahhhh! The Red Bishop. I have watched you from afar these many months. The earth murmurs of your triumphs. The fire hisses at your failures. The stars scream of your future. Why do you cross my threshold now I wonder? Could it be you finally have begun to fear the dark? Crone, your legendary powers as a seeress must be nothing but lies if you cannot see what drives me. You wound me Prophet of Hades! My oracle sight is not all encompassing, and for my words to be true my hand must be crossed in gold. Have you the will to proceed? Here are your coins hag. Prove your worth to me. Why do you insult me by throwing your coins at my feet? An old woman should not be treated with by one so cruel. You take me for a fool, one blind enough to your threat to get that close? I know how cruel you really are wychkin. And I name thee! A'VA'PREN'TICET'HGI'NKOX'EN REVEAL THYSELF CREATURE OR KNOW TRUE SUFFERING AT MY HAND!!!! YOU... INSSSSECT! How did mana... Oh, but I know everything about you creature. Millar's diary goes into great detail about how he bound you here in this cave and drew on your foresight. His knowledge is now mine, and I am not one to be trifled with. Now, tell me why I am here. You inssssolent cur. I'll have my vengeanccccce on you. I'll rip out your soul... DON'T try my patience wychkin! Your worth to me is limited to the enlightenment you provide, and should you fail to be useful I can destroy you utterly at my whim. Service will be rewarded; resistance will result in your eternal doom. Very well curse one. You are here becaussse assss you reach forward to the light, you ssensssee a ssshadow behind. You feel itsssss fingerssss at your throat. You feel itssssss breath on your neck. You are the prey and you ssssseeek the hunter in the dark. Yes! Who is it? Who is my hunter? The faccccceee of that one isssss obssscured from even my eyessss. He hidessss in plain sight, but placccessss othersss before him. And hwe will ssssend three to destroy you. The captain. The priessst. The traitor. Two are alike but not the sssame, one is different but sssimilar. One you ssshould fear, one you should pity, and one you ssshould notice but will not sssee. You speak in riddles hell spawn. What good is this to me? Good or not good is not my gift. I sssspeak the truth and only wisdom will help you hear it. Baaahh! I should destroy you now. WAIT! I give one more vissssion to ssstay the hand of my gaoler. A traveler is coming to your sssshoressss. Ssssseek her out, for sssshe can provide you with a princcccely gift: the path to the ssssummoning of Hade'ssss favoured vessel. But beware, sssshe is more dangeroussss than sssshe sssseemssss, and more besssssidessss. Hmmmmm. Creature, should this be true, your existence may prove of use. Should you lie, my return will herald your demise. But let it not be said I am callous soul. After all these years, you must be famished. I'll have food brought in to you as a token of my limited trust. Assss you will, Red Bishop. Sailor, my business with the oracle is concluded. Bring her the provisions she requires. Yes your eminence. YEAAAARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! ===/===/=== This will be licensed as a small Educational Property. Frankly, I had a heck of time coming up with an idea for the sort of educational building would be found in a scummy freeport run by a sorcerous Pirate Lord. After 3 months of false starts, I finally settled on this in December and I have just got around to finishing it now. So a bit 'off the wall', but it is certainly a place of learning. I'll have to check with Phred, but I am fairly sure this pushes Charlatan Bay up to Large Town tier. Hopefully I can come with a few more EDU property ideas in time for another jump at this time next year. Some extra photos:

You can truly see the effort put into this Bregir (build and storywise). That water texture is very striking (seems I need to make a bricks order to emulate it) and I like the way you built the angled stone pier. Well done.

That was not the impression I had at the beginning. I seem to recall the factions had different levels "supernatural", with COR and ESL grounded in science/commerce while OL and SR tended towards PotC metaphysical. It weighed heavily in my faction choice.

As per recent "secret" discussions, here are my ship entries: The Peregrine - a class 5LA/War Schooner out of Charlatan Bay The Donatus - a class 2A/Armed Sloop captured by Pontillan brig out of King's Port (Mardier) December '616 ===/===/=== And since Gulagurag rarely posts anything on here but MOCs... Night's Whisper - a Class 2A Armed Sloop out of Charlatan Bay Athena's Grace - a Class 2A Armed Sloop sunk December '616 Poseidon's Wrath - a Class 2WR/Sloop sunk March '616

Probably not the right thread to post this, but anyhew... I spent some time last night playing around with colour schemes. Here are some examples unofficial soldier patterns for a few NPC nations I thought I'd share. I do have a bunch of different variations for most of these on my photobucket account (browse if you want), but they'd take up too much space to post here. Note these should be set to the following dimensions if you decide to print them out on a sticker sheet: Height = 0.51 inches, Length 0.61 inches DUCHY OF PRIO: MARDIER (FUSILIER): GARVEY (FUSILIER): CARNO (?): NAMERE (?):

Thanks KB but Ugh! Yellow will be tough for non-fleshie soldiers to portray without looking like they ripped their jacket arms off. I'm going to try to play with MS Paint tonight and come up with something viable as a uniform print.

The following open letter has been sent to the offices of the King's Port Advisor ===/===/=== As has been reported, a naval squadron from Charlatan Bay (assisted by a vessel of the Eslandolan navy) recently came into conflict with a Mardieran convoy in open waters. This ended in taking of one vessel of war, as well as three trade ships. There are some ham-fisted legal attempts underway at present to negotiate the return of said vessels. Allow me please clearly state our position on the matter. While it is a fact that the squadron's flagship and one escort were sailing under a valid Letter of Marque issued by the Eslandolan Empire, the action against the trade ships was unilaterally taken by the Charlatan Bay fleet command. The Eslandolan Department of the Navy are blameless in this decision, and by consequence of inaction have no legal bearing in the matter of possession of said trade vessels in this case. As for Charlatan Bay, we dismiss the legal claim on the ships by Mardier and declare them spoils of war, as a declaration of conflict between that nation and our colony was made after the recent base treachery by the Mardieran Navy against our fleet. We have decided these ships will amount to restitution for the sinking of the Athena's Grace and theft of the Donatus. While we welcome a Mardier embassy to plea for peace if King Alphonse so chooses, be forewarned: we will not meekly tolerate aggression of the Mardieran military as some others have, as seen in recent events. As our beloved Lord Bishop Meloche has stated: "We may be a small dog, but our bite is stronger than our bark and it will be felt." Sincerely, Mstr. Willem J. Morris, esq. Mayor of Charlatan Bay & Majordomo to his eminence, Bishop-Captain Emil Meloche

So this is what success feels like. Groovy! @SkaForHire Great idea to add an universal antagonist Ska. We were certainly lacking something to act as the big, bad boogeyman for storylines. As one really interested in MRCA result MOCs for this one, has the physical details of Mardier troops & marines ever been fleshed out? Is there a flag out there I can print? Do their troops have a jacket colour chosen for them yet? Not that there are a lot of free colours remaining tbh. Corrington = red Oleon = blue Eslandola = green Garvey = orange Duchy of Prio = purple Sea Rats... erm... Charlatan Bay = Black (with light blue) Mardier = what's left? White, Pink, Brown, Yellow

First off my apologies to Elostirion. Ruffling the feathers of our resident mineral magnate was not my intention. I was trying to bring up the fact that here we have a property type that is/may be ungoverned by the present licensing rule but still counts as property when calculating a colony's size, and is relatively simple to build. The fact that there is a 25 db cost associated as a deterrent is somewhat lessened when you look at some of the high player balances in January. The potential for abuse is there and I expressed my opposition to it. This will be my last word on it. As to the 3/2 rule, I'm of two minds. I presently sit on the third largest colony in size (yes, I am as shocked as you are) and I did so by personally taking advantage of that 3 license rule some months, so my talking against would make me hypocritical. My defense is that I misinterpreted it and consider it all encompassing: I counted any license action against the limit, including ships, soldiers, and prospecting. It worked perfectly fine that way, and when I had more MOCs that legal slots I simply waited a month. Patience is a virtue and all that. I'm honesty not sure why anyone feels the 3/2 needs to be changed. I worked within a more strict system due to poor reading skills and it didn't hinder me at all. However if some are that concerned, a 3 anyplace-you-like rule is fine by me at this point, as no one is then penalized for their style of play.

I think you may have missed my point. My brother got a salt/stone mine result for his exploration back in June. He has no interest in following through on it and that is his prerogative. Building does take some inspiration after all. My raised concern was that someone would simply build a dozen or so small exploration MOCs one month (as there is now a question on how many one can submit per month) in an effort to get a yield result they wanted through a brute force effort. If that is the case, we are going to be inundated with 10 x 10 MOCs of rock work, most of which head off to slag heap afterwards (pun intended). If I wanted to see that much grey brick, I'd be in GoH. As for the rest, I am participating at a level I feel comfortable with and enjoy. I don't expect others to feel exactly as me and I do my out most to respect their play style to the extent I can. As a completely fictitious example, if you want to license a white 2x4 block as a Royal Factory I am not going to tell you 'no' or tattle-tale to the council; but at the same time I am going to associate/collaborate with player's with my point of you more than yours.

I honestly thought the license rule applied to ships as well properties and I have played by the rule of 3/2 with ship incl. since the start. It hasn't impeded my enjoyment at all. In those first few months of my colony when I had a "backlog", I simply left properties unlicensed until I had a slow month free free slots. The present rule system works just fine in my eyes. And tbh, what started this conversation worries me a bit. If you are building a prospecting MOC, I expect you to build a mine afterwards regardless of the result. It isn't a lottery ticket that you throw away if you don't get a winning result; it's the first part of a story line. I realize persons participate in BoBs for different reasons, and if you are one of the ones that measures the enjoyment by their Db count by all means build/scheme to that effect to your hearts content. But keep in mind the more rule-bending that happens, the more other people who are in this for various reasons can get turned off. Frankly, at this point there are two specific players I wouldn't agree to do a joint project with based on some previous EGS actions I felt broke the spirit of BoBS' systems. It doesn't hurt me in the least, but I feel they are examples of poor sportsmanship and my limited free time is worth too much to deal with persons like that. My 2 coins.

Nice eerie story and simple jail MOC Kaiju . I think you have easily overtaken Meloche on the supernatural front, between this and the Lost Soul's Tide. Yahrnam's transformed minifig is brilliant!

Just realized that I forgot to post here as requested above that both Gulagurag and myself are sailing under a Letter of Marque from ESL. And now everyone is going to think this was updated with a result posting. Sorry in advance.

Finally, a true-hearted Eslandolan Royalist stands tall amongst you greenie capitalist usurping pig-dogs! I knew there had to be one hiding somewhere.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this. Well done Kolonialbeamter!

Thanks for the comments all. I probably should state for the record here that Bregir, Capt Genero, and I talked about the result after the fact and I give them all credit in the world for owning up to some mistakes that were made. But we should not lose sight of the fact that they stepped in to volunteer to get that MRCA completed and should be commended for it, and what occurred was mostly because it was their first experience with what can be a complicated system of multiple forms, etc.. I was offered to have the result overturned (in a "Bobby Ewing dream" kind of way if you get the reference) but after some thought I declined because of not wanting to set a precedent and it gave me & my brother material to continue our story-lines. It also got me out of my rut and inspired to build a new ship finally (the Donatus was pretty poor by the standards of this forum tbh) . So in the end what occurred ended up inspiring a couple of funny anecdotes and got two builders back at the table, and I take that as a positive.

Don't worry about the pictures. They came out fine. While I like the roof design, the built up base, and the minifig posing, my first reaction was that it was missing something. It took me a moment to realize what it was: it is a very limited earth-tone palette. My personal opinion is that it could have used some foliage (e.g. a palm tree at one corner), vibrant coloured crates, or some water along one edge to act as a visual contrast, but I am by no means an expert ofc. I do like your MOC overall though. It is a nice representation of a nascent colony.

I would agree here. The fact that the printing on the lower main sail matches the symbol on the Black Pearl's flag (skull over cutlasses), and judging by the built up stern castle it would have around the right amount of bricks for that price point using the $0.10 rule of thumb, I'd say persons are rushing to discount it a bit prematurely. The fact they may have had it sitting around waiting for PTC 5 to finally happen could also explain why we are only getting a direct set; they already had it ready to go for some time so they might as well release it. I'm not saying this is a definitive thing, only that it is a plausible.

She's very pretty dr_spock. Hopefully she is lucky as well.

Dear Sir Edward Thomas Wilkinson de Chauncourtois While our respective leadership have not had the warmest relationship in the past, recent discussions with your esteemed envoy Senor Jerome Monezterrell (Mayor of Fuerte Unido, Board Member of Maestro, etc. etc. ) have led us to reach an understanding regarding the vile actions of the Mardieran crown. It seems both your great nation and our humble city-state have run afoul of their machinations, and at present a state-of-war exists between these contemptible miscreants and both our peoples respectively. Rather than work at cross purposes, your envoy and I have come to the happy conclusion that a mutual show of force is warranted. As such, I hereby formally request that the war schooner Peregrine (Kwatchi) under command of Captain Clarence Moore and the armed sloop Night’s Whisper (Gulagurag) under command of Captain Amara, both of the Charlatan Bay fleet, be granted Letters of Marque by the Eslandolan Empire for the purposes of mounting an immediate punitive naval expedition against Mardier. As a show of good faith in this matter, I have been permitted by our leader to open our port to Eslandolan traders of all political stripes while this agreement holds, and may Hades’ favour ensure this venture to be profitable for us all. Your humble servant, Mstr. Willem J. Morris, esq. Lord Mayor of Charlatan Bay & Majordomo to his eminence, Bishop-Captain Emil Meloche

BTW, GulagUrag and I are looking for a third to do a predatory run versus Mardier this coming MRCA. PM me if interested.

Peregrine - Class 4 war schooner - first licensed January '617 The Peregrine was the first of the schooners to be entered into service with the Charlatan Bay fleet. She would act as the colony's defacto flagship for a time, though the Bishop never sailed upon her. The original captain, Clarence Moore, and most of his crew during the Battle of Five Fleets. The Peregrine is presently captained by Silas Pike, who was granted command during the Mardierian Purge of October '17. Captain Silas Pike and crew Former Crew of the Peregrine along with Captain Clarence Moore Toucan - War schooner - unlicensed sister ship Ganett - War schooner - unlicensed sister ship ---- I'll add more sister ships if my losses require it.

With the navies of the great powers growing larger by the day, Bishop Meloche, pirate lord of Charlatan Bay, quickly came to the realization that the time of reaving in single masted sloops had come to an abrupt end. Amassing his fortune, he hired the shipwrights of Bastion to design a sleek raider; one fast enough to run down the treasure fleets but rating higher than all but the dreadnoughts of the era. After months of design and building, the first Sea Serpent class schooner of war made her way out of the blocks and set sail for Charlatan Bay. While narrow of beam and sharply raked at the bow, the schooner mounted eighteen (18) cannons including two (2) bow chasers of considerable weight and two stern chasers out of the captain's suite (not pictured). She'd prove to be a menace to many a fast trader, as she was designed to be as quick and maneuverable as they were. ------ So this started out as a direct replacement for my lost "free" class 2A and some how morphed into 5LA when all was said and done. It was another of many firsts this past year for me: 1) using Captain Greenhair's tutorial for a sloped shape hull, though I went with a scratch built one narrower than pre-built sections by a few lugs, 2) first time doing significant rigging work (what a pain in the proverbial), and 3) first time I had an actual sail plan to model against. It is by no means trying for historically accurate though. It is more a happy medium between those and playable sets in my eyes. And in light of my ongoing "luck", I did build in one little personal innovation as you'll see in the post below.

January 2017 The Unseen Hand Part 1 | Kwatchi | Sea Rats Sea Serpent Class War Schooner | Kwatchi | Sea Rats The Unseen Had Part 2 (Ava the Oracle) | Kwatchi | Sea Rats

Somewhere southeast of Terraversa Island: Captain Bishop yer Holiness Sir? Hrmmm. Yes, what is it now Cookie? I have another question about what happened. Well, what is it? Do ya think all the bad stuff dat happened to us... could it be because you lost dat lucky hat of yers? For the last time Cookie, my hat was not lucky. Was losing yer hat why you got older den? No Cookie. Hades is a wrathful deity who does not take the failure of his faithful lightly. My sudden (re) aging reflects what occurred, and I now must make amends to him. Captain, I'm thirsty. We have no water left Cookie. Captain, do you know where we are going? Yes Cookie. ... Captain, are we there yet? DAMN YER INSOLENT PRATTLE! Your Holiness, there is a ship bearing down on us from the east. It looks to be flying the colours of Charlatan Bay. Thank you Robin. It's about bloody time! Ahoy there! Who goes? His Holiness Captain-Bishop Meloche, Pirate Lord of Charlatan Bay, coming aboard! Welcome aboard the Peregrine your Holiness, sir. Thank you Mr. Moore. I see you had no problem taking possession of her from the Bastion shipyards. No problem at all sir. When you missed the rendez-vous, I circled around while Captain Nitoni took the Toucan on to home. It is sheer good fortune we found you out here. I do have a thousand questions though, if you'll permit. What of the fleet? All lost Mr. Moore to a single Mardierian brig. Mardierian?! But you were sailing under a Letter of Marque from Mardier! What in the blazes... That Letter of Marque was nothing more than a noose they gave us to slip over our own necks. We met them south of King's Port as agreed, and they acted as sweet as you would like, accepting our apologies for the Tarlo incident and what not. And no sooner than we set our sails, the brig turned on us and cut us to pieces like they were born to it. Captain's Amara's ship was reduced to kindling and we remaining few abandoned the Donatus after she was holed beyond reckoning. By Zeus' silver balls! What of the brig escort you had hired? Tucked tail and ran at the first sign of trouble. It was as if they forgot how to fight, though I suspect a hefty bribe to her captain may have had a hand in it. (And don't blashemy!) And those mercenary marines you had planned to take aboard? Did they not help in the defense of the Donatus? It seems there was an error in the wording of their contract forms and they never came aboard. It defies belief sir! That is does Mr. Moore. Some may call it fate or bad luck, but I perceive a thread running through these events and I intend to follow it to find who is holding the other end. I need to get back to Charlatan Bay with all haste; I will consult the Oracle in order to un-muddy these waters. You Captain Moore, will lead our punishment raid on Mardieran interests for me with whichever ships we can put to sea. For make no mistake, Mardier has declared war on us, and our response will be swift, harsh, and long remembered. Very good sir! We will make both you and Hades proud! I do have one further question however sir. Yes? What happened to your lucky hat?