Bruce resolves that this attendance section will not be nearly so non-lucid as most. Chris (Dmitri Baranov) has no idea that Bruce has made this remarkable resolution as he reads through the background information on French Venus. And then he starts telling stories about how the French Colonial administration in Vietnam took to exporting rice so aggressively that they actually created local famines. Paul (Smith) crawls in a few moments later. He groans, "If only I looked terrible because I'd had a rousing time last night. But alas, it's only allergies." He barely has time to allow the rest of us to commiserate (Chris manages to mention, "Texas is the traditional home of four out of seven Biblical plagues!") before Tim (Joseph Christophe Pépin) arrives and asks for a hole punch. A moment later he is found complaining, "This hole punch is too sophisticated for me!" Ernest (Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez) asks, "So, can you be both a dinosaur hunter and a dinosaur wrangler?"
Chuck (Lieutenant Percy Winston-Smythe) shows up to proclaim, "Guns and rum! Guns and rum!" Chris understands that this means that Bruce has given up the "lucidity" plan.
The characters start off with arrangements for their departed comrade Quent Lawrence. Dmitri Baranov announces that he will take Quent's money and give it to the families of the dead footman and coachman of the Count du Metelac. The others indicate that this is a fine and honorable thing to do, in light of Dmitri's previous actions.
Carlos Juan Victor Sanchez comments, "Gotta assuage your guilt, huh?"
Baranov shoots back, "I notice you took those opals..."
Sanchez momentarily forgets the English language. He replies, "¿Que?"
Baranov grouses, "I gotta learn Spanish someday."
The characters search the bars for an Anglican priest to perform a funeral service for Quent. They finally manage to find one who agrees to perform the service in exchange for wine money. To complete the experience, Baranov lays out 100 Lv for mourners. He tells them, "I want to see hair being pulled out, and I want to hear wailing."
The fifty ssaug make a good adjunct to the professionals: what they lack in polish they more than make up for in enthusiasm. Baranov mentions, "You'd think that those ssaug really actually liked Quent. It's hard to believe that showing human interest in savages like that could get you that kind of results."
Sanchez tells Baranov, "The mourners are a really good idea. I think Quent would really appreciate them. And we should find that bargirl, Inga Vänderjälder, show up and give a funeral oration in Xea-Osk."
Christophe Joseph Pépin shows up to report, "I just got back from Vienna, and I speak Xea-Osk! I can give the oration."
Sanchez forgets funerary arrangements to quickly interrogate the fop, "Welcome back! Did you get injured? Did you catch anything?"
Baranov joins in, "Are you going to need to spread powdered mercury on your private parts?"
Pépin ignores them. He does not understand that they were wagering upon whether or not he would return from Vienna uninjured. And that the smart money was on "injured."
The funeral is beautiful. The Anglican priest reports that he has never seen anything like it. And Pépin doesn't remember enough about his trip to describe if he was injured or now, but he explains that he wrote it all down. Baranov reads his notes: "Day One. The bats descend. I do not understand how the Austrians can live in this godforsaken country. Day Two. The bats are talking to me. I now understand how the Austrians can live here. Day Four. I think they can hear my thoughts. Porter refuses to clean massive quantities of bat guano from my quarters."
After the funeral, Sanchez nudges Pépin and tells him, "Catherine Iphegenia just hired us a new captain!"
Pépin instantly responds, "I fire him!" He looks around at the nearby crowds, pointing to one unassuming fellow in an English jacket. "Him! We hire that guy!"
Smith comments, "I hope he has some Captaining skills."
Enter Lieutenant Percy Winston-Smythe. It turns out that he wasn't actually hired at random off the street. He actually responded to one of the notices the characters had circulated in Plymouth for officers and crew for a merchant venture. Baranov listens to Winston-Smythe speak in nautical jargon for a bit then claps him on the back heartily. The staggered Englishman is glad to hear the huge Russian tell him, "Welcome aboard! You're hired."
Winston-Smythe asks the other characters, "Do you have any cannons? If you do, now you've got someone who can shoot one."
The characters admit that the Musaraigne d'egrappage is armed with a paltry single gun in a forward mount. But Pépin is more than willing to improve the situation. He buys two swivel-guns and has four gun mounts installed up on the deck so the guns can be moved around to cover a variety of approaches. The guns cost 300 Lv each. The gun mounts are free because the characters have a ship's carpenter.
Sanchez reports that guns and rum are good things to import to Venus: the French buy rum, and the Dutch buy guns. Pépin proposes to invest 8000 Lv. Sanchez wonders if some types of guns are useless on Venus due to the rain and the humidity. Lieutenant Winston-Smythe reports that he has some experience with the problem: he was stationed in the Fever Isles. The secret is to keep the guns clean, and to use fat-impregnated cartridges.
Sanchez has Catherine Iphegenia talk to her friends at the Ministry of Colonization about things needed on Venus. He learns about the Ministry of Settlement, and learns that they need vellum because standard foolscap doesn't survive the weather, but they need to buy it through the back door.
Sanchez, "Well, our good friend Christophe is an expert at delivering things to Ministry officials through the back door." He goes looking for high-grade vellum. Pépin, to Dmitri, "Do you ever get this sense that someone is mocking you and you don't even know?" "Yes, but the vodka helps." "That's why I sniff ether."
Sanchez heads out into the depths of the city to see if he can get some vellum. He ends up striking out: half his sources don't understand why he wants vellum, the other half seem to think that he had something to do with the recent death of Basile Giroux. He mournfully reports to the others, "We're going to need to find some vellum through regular channels."
The characters buy shares in various cargo for the ship. The Musaraigne has a 400-ton cargo hold, into which the characters load:
This leaves 296 tons of free cargo space. The characters decide to fill out as much of it as they can with steerage-rate passengers. Smith estimates the journey to Venus at forty days, so the characters charge 60 Lv each for passage and manage to find 50 passengers. The 3000 Lv they collect goes to cover the ship's payroll for a while.
Pépin's 8000 Lv goes to buy 100 rifle-muskets, 200 muskets and 100 blunderbusses and 4000 Lv of rum. Sanchez invests 4000 Lv, of which 1000 Lv goes into vellum. Smith invests 2000 Lv. Pépin reasons that machetes will be needed, then pushes additional money into several crates of the things (base price is that of a "cheap" cutlass, discounted 50% for wholesale rates).
Baranov takes 1000 Lv and buys fine liquor, nice things to drink it from, and some wood for the ship's carpenter to make a bar and storage area. Baranov resolves that he will spend his remaining time on Earth living very well, and that he shall continue this plan as best as he can on his way to Venus.
Sanchez notes that he has 17 carats of low-grade opals (750 Lv), 3 of mid-grade (1500 Lv) and 1 of high-grade (3000 Lv). "I'm going to make a necklace for my beloved!"
Dmitri Baranov takes Christophe Joseph Pépin aside and tells him about his crazy Aunt Amable Medea Pépin and the arrangements made to keep her cared for and suitably suppied with drugs. Pépin's initial reaction is, "I have an Aunt? I have an Aunt! I must tell everybody! Absolutely everybody!"
Baranov grinds his teeth as he suddenly understands some of the reasons why Uncle Basile Nicolas Pépin has chosen to treat so many aspects of his family as dark secrets. Baranov urges Pépin to calm down, then points out that the reason he's telling him is because the other characters had Catherine Iphegenia Pépin forge his name upon a prescription for large amounts of opium and laudanum. He reassures Pépin that Catherine Iphegenia has no idea why she was forging his name, but still had no problem with the deed.
Pépin writes a letter to Basile Nicolas approving of the forging of his name. He and Sanchez both keep this information from Catherine Iphegenia, which is possibly the most sensible aspect of their handling of the whole situation.
Catherine Iphegenia spends 200 Lv on books and literature. She has ambitions of becoming some kind of literary figure and maybe doing some kind of Madame Bovary version of the characters' adventures.
Pépin thinks about hiring a single French-speaking crewman, but picking a sailor with suspiciously good looks. He decides against this on the grounds that Winston-Smythe speaks French and is quite good looking.
Winston-Smythe reviews the ship. He is upset to see that some large quantity of the interior has been redecorated by Catherine Iphegenia. He is slightly more reassured to note that the characters did actually repair the unreliable air web. He notes that the crew is composed of good solid British sailors. He tells the others, "Put two locks on the rum!"
The Musaraigne d'egrappage departs from Earth. Smith announces that a reasonable expectation for the journey is forty days, then proceeds to fail his navigation roll by one point. Captain Winston-Smythe looks over Smith's shoulder, offers a couple of suggestions, and promptly makes his own roll by seven. He shows Smith that he was looking at the chart upside down, and that turning the chart around cuts the journey to thirty-three days.
Four days into the journey Pépin persuades one of the ssaug to cook dinner for the group. Five days into the journey, nobody speaks of this again. Baranov speaks for everyone when he says, "It was an interesting meal, but I still think the rat should be de-furred before it goes into the pot."
Winston-Smythe adds, "I didn't think we had that many roaches on board!"
After dinner, Winston-Smythe offers, "Whist anyone?"
Baranov brings out the cards, "Stakes of 20 Lv?"
Sanchez pulls up a chair, "I'm in!"
Pépin follows suit, "Myself as well!"
The characters swiftly learn that Winston-Smythe is a longtime devotee of the cards with a vicious knack for stealing tricks. He wins 60 Lv.
The characters spend some time teaching the ssaug how to fight with belaying pins. This goes a lot better than trying to get them to cook.
Meanwhile, Catherine-Iphegenia wages her clandestine war to win the hearts and minds of the crew. Unbeknownst to Pépin, Sanchez managed to spike the crew with a couple of sailors who speak languages she knows. Winston-Smythe doesn't care: he's the captain, and if they don't do as he says, then he'll have them flogged.
As it turns out, Catherine Iphegenia is much more effective at enchanting those crewmen she can't actually speak to than those she can. Pépin notices that someone has swept the corridor in front of Catherine Iphegenia's door every day. But his corridor remains dusty. He goes to the cook one day when nobody is looking to get breadcrumbs and molasses. He puts some hard-to-sweep crumbs in front of her door and manages to catch one of the English crew scrubbing them away early the next morning.
Fifteen days out of Earth the lookout comes down his mast to report, "Captain sir! There's a ship out there! Sixteen masts and she's a big 'un!"
"Colors?"
"British, sir!"
Sanchez promptly hides in the closet. The other characters arm up. Winston-Smythe hands Catherine Iphegenia a dagger and tells her to use it if things come to the worst. He draws out his spyglass and estimates that the others hip is 20,000 km out, running a slow intercept course. The two ships will close in two or three hours.
Pépin mentiones to Winston-Smythe that the Musaraigne d'egrappage flies French colors, and that all of her papers are very much in order. He points out that the ship's permanent crew complement includes a lawyer.
Sanchez gets an air suit out and fashions a cooking implement into a little grappling hook arrangement. He tells Catherine Iphegenia to stay in her cabin.
Winston-Smythe issues orders to extend the air webs out to support the deck guns and to shut down the ship's aetheric gravity core. He is pretty certain that the other ship is a pirate, as aetherships don't normally run across each other accidentally in the deep system. It only takes Smith 20 minutes to get the air webs set up. During that time, Winston-Smythe is able to find two crewmen each with Gunner-11.
Sanchez and Pépin head forward to man the gunnery telescope and get a better look at the other ship. Sanchez peers into the objective and confirms, "Yep, it's the Varangian. They blew up our opal dealer. Nothing to do with me. Bye!" He vanishes aft.
Baranov watches Sanchez head by in an air suit and deduces that something is up, but by the time he decides he should ask the Spaniard about it Sanchez has already gone out onto the hull, to the base of a ventral mast.
At fifteen minutes to intercept Baranov hands out a half-ration of rum to the crew.
The Varangian sends a heliograph signal to the Musaraigne: "HMS Varangian. Strike your sails. International fugitive on board. Reminder harboring fugitive penalty is death."
The characters spend no effort at all deducing that the "fugitive" must be Sanchez. Baranov decides that the best plan is to disguise himself as Sanchez and go over to wreak havoc. He puts on his axes, his pistols, his black cloak, and his priest's collar, all the while gleefully chuckling, "Won't they be surprised!"
Winston-Smythe senses an aetheric disturbance ahead. He tells the others, "There's a storm blowing up, and it'll be on us in moments."
Pépin asks the others, "By the way, who exactly is the Master of the Varangian?"
The characters let Winston-Smythe answer. He tells Pépin that the Varangian's captain is Captain Walsingham, a blackguard of the worst sort and a discredit to the service. His First Lieutenant Ivey has been in front of a court-martial four times in his career, but never convicted. Walsingham and his crew are suspected of having done for several merchant vessels in the past but nobody has ever been able to prove anything.
It is at this moment that the Varangian fires. The characters notice that the vessel carries eight guns in each of its three broadsides. Winston-Smythe sends back a heliograph message, "Last message garbled. Not understand. Please resend."
The Varangian replies, "Strike sails now! Or we open fire!"
Baranov and Pépin warn the passengers to expect some turbulence.
Winston-Smythe announces a daring plan: he shall allow the Varangian to approach, then strike just the sails next to the frigate and send the Musaraigne hurtling into the storm. The other characters see nothing wrong with this plan.
Baranov yells out, "Watch your grips! There'll be some strong weather ahead!" as Winston-Smythe order the sails down. The characters all hold on while their lawyer and many of the passengers are send spinning. The lawyer in particular heads straight down a corridor and hits the end for nine points of damage.
The Varangian pursues the Musaraigne into the storm for an eight-hour chase. Winston-Smythe manages to keep the characters' ship just out of reach of the big frigate, but cannot quite draw free. But then disaster strikes as Winston-Smythe loses a mast to an unexpected aetheric surge. More masts follow suit, sending the ship spiraling out of control.
The Musaraigne finally regains stability only to find the Varangian grappled to its bow.
Sanchez tells the others, "See ya!" and slides out off the deck. He dead-leaps onto the Varangian, then scuttles to the hatch closest to his Little Chiquita's quarters.
Captain Walsingham wastes no time in sending a message: "Send over Sanchez!"
The characters response is intended to buy them some time: "He is hiding. He vanished as soon as the wreck happened. Is he dangerous? We know Carlos Juan Rivera. He's a priest. Wow, that was a really bad storm!"
It is clear that whoever is manning the Varangian's heliograph has no sense of humor, and little patience: "You have ten minutes to find him or we fire!"
Meanwhile, Sanchez shoots his way into the hatch. He sneaks up behind the unsuspecting crewman on watch and stabs him through the vitals. The dead crewman goes out through the hatch.
Meanwhile, the characters still on the Musaraigne are plotting strategy. Winston-Smythe suggests to the others, "what if we were to blow some phlogiston into their open gunports? Could we get away in the confusion?"
Baranov has only one thing on his mind: "There could be a hundred men on that ship! A hundred men! A hundred men! Let me kill them, you pansy little weasels!"
This is enough to convince Pépin, "Okay, let's make him up to look like the Spaniard."
Baranov cannot contain his excitement, "Yaaay!"
The characters report that they have the Spaniard in chains and will be bringing him over in their boat. The characters all pile into the boat, along with Klaus Heigen, two crewmen to man the sails, and a stack of loaded blunderbusses. Winston-Smythe recruits the two crewmen by announcing, "I need two volunteers who will get quadruple rum rations if they survive?"
One crewman asks, "Can we have the rations in advance?"
Winston-Smythe replies, "No, but if you die I will mail them to your widows." This is enough to persuade them. He gets his volunteers.
Inside the Varangian Sanchez makes his way to Cynthia Walsingham's cabin. He is utterly silent. He is a ninja. The crew have no awareness of his presence at all.
He enters Cynthia's cabin to find her threatening him with a smallsword. She screams, "You cad! You scoundrel!" and attempts to kill him with a smallsword. Fortunately for the cause of romanticism, she is not that skilled and Sanchez is easily able to disarm her. The blade clatters down the hall. Cynthia threatens, "I'll scream!"
It is at this point that the uncaring universe asks Sanchez, "Do you have any skills in Spanish sensuality?"
Sanchez rises to the occasion, "Curiously, I do!" He gathers Cynthia up into a breathtaking embrace, assuring her, "Even with the danger to life and limb I had to come see you!"
She melts in his arms, "I've missed you so much!"
Pépin has a feeling that if he knew something right now, he could arrange to have Sanchez grievously injured.
Sanchez leaves Cynthia Walsingham with a final breathless kiss, then heads for the wheelhouse. He intends to send the Varangian spinning with a mighty kick to the wheel, hopefully disabling its masts against the hull of the Musaraigne. Once that is done, he will dead-jump back to the Musaraigne.
There is a thud from abovedecks as the Musaraigne's boat arrives. They open the hatch to see a dozen Varangian crew and a swivel gun. Pépin acts with the speed of breath to shoot the swivel gun gunner down.
Winston-Smythe notices that the crewmen are led by the hated First Lieutenant Ivey. He takes a shot at Ivey, but misses. Ivey shoots the fake Sanchez with a pistol, shouting out, "Die, Spaniard!" The others imagine the reputation Sanchez will have if there are any survivors: "He was like two ninjas taped together!"
Baranov and Smith jump across to the Varangian. One of the crewmen clubs Baranov with a musket butt, inflicting no damage. Baranov responds by taking his faggoty hat off and slashing back at the crewman. Sadly, he finds that the Varangian has its aetheric gravity core shut down, and that he has no Free Fall skill. He misses. Meanwhile, Smith eviscerates a crewman.
Klaus Heigen, armed with blunderbuss, leaps out and blasts one cutlass-armed crewman. He shouts in triumph, "I did it! I took him down!" Then his triumph turns into terrible, terrible understanding as the force of his own leap and the blunderbuss recoil combine to send him sailing out into the darkness.
Pépin howls, "My ally! He's headed into space!" He isn't given much chance to think about the situation, as two crewmen attack him with cutlasses. He empties his mab-yetso killing them. Two more crewmen rush him, so grabs blunderbusses from the pile on the floor and shoots both of them in turn.
Having cleared the battlefield immediately around him, Pépin tethers himself and hurls himself after Heigen. He finds the Bavarian drifting across the Varangian's hull. Once he finds him, Heigen latches onto him like a bear trap. Heigen tells Pépin, "You saved me! I love you!"
Pépin cleared his throat with an uncomfortable twitch, suddenly aware that Heigen is clutching him with rottweiler-like desperation, "That's okay, guy. We'll just need to leap back, and everything will be fine."
Winston-Smythe jumps across all the combatants to take control of the abandoned swivel gun. Ivey realizes what he's doing and shoots him with a pistol. "Shite!"
Smith chops down another crewman, then takes a massive hit from a musket.
Baranov is getting very frustrated. Someone hits him in the head, but he's still too disoriented to be able to hit back. He goes berserk, howling, "Great Horrible Horny Toads! I can't tell my up from my down! It's getting in the way of my murderizing! Cursed mulberry bushes!"
Winston-Smythe points the swivel gun at Ivey and yells, "Surrender! Now!" They trade pistol shots. Then Smith storms Ivey and guts him. Ivey pleads through his bloody lips, "Oh god please don't kill me just call your robot off!" Winston-Smythe is inclined to accept this offer, then rescinds it because he notices that Baranov is still berserk. The unfortunate Lieutenant Ivey ends up getting chopped to gibbets under Baranov's axes.
Winston-Smythe observes the mess and asks Pépin, "Is he normally that imprecise with those things?"
Pépin reassures him, "No. He's still disoriented by the zero gravity."
It is at this moment that the characters feel a terrible shudder from the Varangian. Winston-Smythe instantly realizes what Sanchez has done. He yells, "Out! Everybody out!" The characters flee for the ship's boat, barely making it away from the Varangian in time.
The characters reassemble on the bridge of the Musaraigne to watch the Varangian spinning slowly away. Pépin just cannot resist heading down to the gundeck to fire a few shots into the Varangian's rigging and hull. He continues until the others recognize that it is only a matter of time before Captain Walsingham gets his ship back under control and starts sending broadsides back. Winston-Smythe turns the Musaraigne into the storm.
From Venus orbit Christophe Joseph Pépin writes a letter to uncle describing the events of the journey. He claims that the Musaraigne was attacked by a rogue English captain, master of the Varangian. He makes a lot of the fact that the had to launch himself into space to rescue his friend Heigen. He doesn't overwhelmingly dwell upon what he knows of Sanchez' exploits, which is actually just as well from Sanchez' point of view.
Sanchez and Catherine Iphegenia conspire to write up their own version of events. Oddly, it is somewhat less detailed than Pépin's version. Perhaps Sanchez has something that needs to remain hidden from his betrothed.
The session ends with the Musaraigne d'egrappage in orbit around Venus, preparing to touch down at the French colony at Neue Paris. Each character gains four experience points. Dmitri Baranov gains one bonus experience point to spend upon Free Fall. He grouses, "Hrmm. I'll probably never need that skill again..."