"Sir," a Green Rookie in the Naples Dockyard called out to his superior, "we at war with anyone, in particular someone with a reason to park a massive ironclad just outside the jetty?"
"Wha?" The Elderly Dockhand nearly tumbled out of his chair before he rushed over to the Green Rookie and within a moment he saw the beast of a ship which the younger dockhand had been worrying over. "Christ above, what're they going to do blockade the entire damn port?"
"With that thing they could do it, for a while at least." The Green Rookie noted.
"Nah, lad too many of the local ships would tear even an ironclad like that apart," the Elderly Dockhand rebuked as he calmed down, "could be some weirdo with far too much favor for weapons and armor, but trying to hold Naples' itself on it's lonesome is a foolish thing to think. Shouldn't have even mentioned it. Oh," he noted the flash off the portside of the ship as it sat, "huh that's old Brit ship codes. Really old stuff, not the Neathly stuff they use nowadays." The Green Rookie looked at the Elderly Dockhand in confusion even as the old man fished out a pen and notebook. "Let'see here, 'Requesting Docking Permissions. Stop.'" the old man waited a while, "repeats every six seconds, huh well at least they're darned polite about it. Boy," the Green Rookie scowled but held himself at attention, "go get the authorities and tell them the nice folks with more guns that I can count are currently waiting on their permission to dock right and proper."
Later on the Elderly Dockhand along with several of the port authorities found themselves rowing out to the massive ship and the old man found himself worriedly redoing his estimates. The ship was massive, simply put, and he'd put down it's size to the distance and a lack of scope on hand but now that he was rowing to it he was getting a sense of the vessel's scale.
"The hell is that?" One of the port authorities said under his breath as the light flickered across a symbol that stood out, like it was branded upon the wood of the ship. "It's not that Correspondence stuff that those Londoners are always on about is it?"
"Nay," one of the others said with an unsure voice, "not on fire enough. I've got no clue."
"It means Deep Sea," a voice calls from over the rail, "could you lot shine a light up here so we know where to toss down the ladder."
"So it's just some language? Is it Indian or something?" The Green Rookie called out as they held their lantern up and waited. Soon a ladder dropped near them and they started the slow file up.
"Let's just settle on 'Or something' for now, eh?" The man who greeted them at the top of the was thick of chest and his right eye had been covered for some reason or another, no one present could get a clear enough look at the man's face as he had a hat on even during the night. Nearby the crew were moving things around, each and every one cloaked in swarthy clothes and most also had hats of one type or another on, and a person past the forecastle could be seen holding their arms in an L for some reason or another. The Elderly Dockhand felt more and more like he was on a Zee-Captain's ship, it had that unique otherness that he'd felt before, but at the same time he didn't think that this otherness was the same as the otherness of the Zee. "Don't worry your heads off about that though. The Good Captain has been wondering when folks would notice us. We've been parked out her for half a freaking day."
"Wha?" The Green Rookie let out a breath. "But I only just saw you this night."
"Have you recently partaken of any mind-altering substances?" A voice calmly asked and everyone turned as the crew cried out.
"Captain on deck!" A crew-woman called out and the results were impressive. Not a single person did anything more than acknowledge the Captain before returning to their activities, which was impressive because it meant that no one had been slacking off.
"Not really, a week or so ago I was vacationing out near Rome, and the closest I got to that was new brand of coffee." The Green Rookie said.
"Anything special about this new coffee brand?" The Good Captain asked as he settled before the group. He wasn't necessarily tall or thick of body but he was lean in a way that sent a shiver down the Elderly Dockhand's back.
"I... uh it might have been from those stocks from Fallen London," the Green Rookie said, "stuff was called Darkdrop and it kicked harder than any vodka I'd ever drank. I was up for nigh on two days with the shivers afterwards."
"Hn," the Good Captain nodded at that, "an insight into dark things and the vigor to see the through it, in but a cup of coffee? A strange place London has become since my father's time it seems."
"Just the kind of place where folks like us can settle in," the Gunpowder Zealot says with a hearty tone, "bet they have all kinds of needs for hunters of various things that go bump in the dark."
"It will at least allow me to advance my knowledge by quite a bit once we get down there." The person who'd been holding their arms up at the forecastle says in a light tenor, easily identifiable as female, as she walked over. Her form was clothed in stark moon-white robes that fluttered in the sea air and her eyes were obscured by a face mask seemingly formed of raw brass or perhaps bronze. Her face turned to the Good Captain. "As you said though, through sound and blood the Formless One still acts to our benefit."
"Aye," the Good Captain said, "I know enough of the theory to understand that Oedon was doing something different than the others. The people of Pthumeru were close to succeeding but something went wrong, aborted the attempt and damned them all. The Church didn't dig deep enough, even with Mensis' experiment, to find out what ended that last ritual of the people of Pthumeru. There are too many holes to make a theory currently on the nature of the Formless Ones true objectives, other than the widely know one, thank you for understanding Yurie."
"This is true," the Last Scholar acceded, "however I've figured out that the runes you carved into the ship and woven into our clothes have aided as well. A 'bulwark guarding sleep' allows for higher resistance to the effects of the daylight upon the crew. Which when taken into account that this particular rune aids in the resistance of Frenzy, the effect of comic insight literally breaking one apart at the seams, and I am left wonder just what daylight truly is. However, I do believe marking our cloths with 'Heir' was a good idea on your part."
"A cosmic truth eroding someone from the outside in, the inverse of insight as we understand it from the Provost's descriptions? Either 'Ignorance' or 'Simpleness' perhaps?" The Good Captain guessed before he noticed the people around him again. "Another time Yurie, we'll speak of this another time. For now I must speak with these people for docking privileges. Come to my quarters later though, this conversation has my interest." He turned to the men and laughed at their bleary eyes. "It's been quite some time since I've met folk who know nothing of the Eldritch Truth, I apologize for my and my companies candor. As it were though, we are looking to stock up on supplies and instructions on how exactly to get there, to Fallen London that is."
The Elderly Dockhand had thought he'd seen everything that Naples had to offer but as the Good Captain of the ship Flora conversed with the dock officers he found himself far out of his depth. The Good Hunter was a man of absolutes, he gave no indication of how he was going to pay during the entire time he'd been working the Dock Authority over for information and listed out his various demands. He wasn't charismatic as much as ruthlessly good at crushing one's sense of guile under an uncompromising sense of duty, the Elderly Dockworker knew that a few of the Dock Authorities had their fingers in the Game and thus was left in wonder as the only questions that were answered were those of the Good Captain and not the other way around.
"So," the Dock Authority finally ground out after three hours of dancing around various ins and outs whilst the Good Captain murdered their subtle efforts in the crib via appealing to them all 'staying on subject', "you don't need any coal whatsoever, just food, clothes, and such?" Even with the Good Captain's nod the Dock Authority just sighed and set the subject of the Captain's deeper secrets aside. "Alright then," he said and the Good Captain nodded once more, "what'll you be paying in?"
"Oh I think we can all agree that coinage is the best thing for this." The Good Captain said. "Whilst Yharnam's coins may not have any intrinsic value to you, as I expect they don't export nor import, I'm sure that gold and silver is still viable for currency, yes?" He dipped his hand into his pocket and then pulled out a fist full of gold and silver coins which reflected the moons light. There was enough of the stuff that the Dock Authority took a solid step back and the Green Rookie looked like he'd swallowed a pear the size of his head. "We've got chests of the stuff stocked up, even after the Flora and everything else were fully paid off."
The look on the Dock Authority's face was enough for the Elderly Dockhand to nearly double over with laughter, he would have but the Dock Authority was right there so he merely settled for a tight smiled and barely audible giggles. You'd have thought that the Captain had decked the man's rival right in front of him, shock and awe in equal amounts.
"Yessir!"
Later, during the day and thus when all crew and officers were under strict curfew to stay amid-decks for the most part, just because the Runes worked didn't mean they were perfect and the Good Captain didn't want to experiment and thus ordered folk to minimize the amount of sunlight they took, the Good Captain was down among the boilers looking after the upgrades the Gunpowder Zealot had made.
"How do these things even work?" The Captain asked as the Zealot adjusted a few things with deft twists and turns of his tools.
"Same principle that the Boom Hammer used," the Zealot muttered, "bricks of heavily compressed Bone Marrow Ash used in place of conventional flames and a bigger version of the Boom Hammer's core furnace. Mind, the miniature furnace we developed for the hammer burns hot enough to flash burn flesh, scorch bones, and melt muscle at under two tenths the size of these eight and the bricks of Bone Marrow Ash were much smaller as well, I've been spending most of my time down here doing prep work on the stuff." He indicated the heavily tooled system of pipes. "It'll be ages before we ever can push her to full power without the threat of melting entire sections of the hull or taking major crew losses though."
"Build for the hull damage option, if you can favor one over the other." The Good Captain said as he turned to leave the boileroom. "Tea in my room, if you'd like." He offered.
"Nah," the Gunpowder Zealot replied easily, "working on this girl is going to be an all-nighter. Besides I thought you were going to be taking tea with Yurie tonight."
He didn't expect the Good Captain's eyes to widen at the statement before the master of the ship launched himself out of the room with all the blurring speed that a Hunter was often attributed. This was surprising because whilst it was true that most of Moonscented Hunters retained a portion of their blessings from the Night of the Hunt the Captain retained enough speed to rush out so fast that the Gunpowder Zealot compared it to a Hunter in the midst of the Hunt instead of the watered down version that was usually retained, the only person comparable was that old Cynical Crow. A chuckle took the Gunpowder Zealot's chest and evolved slowly into a hearty laugh that had a few of the crew wondering at what had gotten under the normally solemn Chief Engineer's skin.
The Last Scholar found the design of the room in which the ship's Captain dwelt to be one of the oddest of she'd seen in recent memory. The wood everything, floor to ceiling, was a type of varnished redwood which was uncommonly used in Yharnam in recent years, but once a staple in the past. Everything else within spoke of age: from the coffin-like chest to the left of the entry door to various Hunter tools. What had helped tide the young woman over whilst her Captain too his time returning from his rounds was not any of these trivial things though, the very treasure that most interested her even back in Byrgenwerth. She slowly read line after line in the book On the Mystique of Voices and Echoes, an Overview of Runecrafting which was an engaging read to say the least, an actual thesis written by the Runesmith herself in times long past and it wasn't alone in being a singular book of unknown origins stacked next to various Hunter's personal journals and tomes of blueprint and designs lay anything from the common trash like How to Pick Up Fair Maidens were things like the Gunpowder, Repression, and Fire: The Tale of Oto which spoke definitively on the nature of one of the eldest Workshop Heresies and pointed out various informative notions that the Church had swept away in their haste to see Oto, and their latter generation the Powder Kegs, erased or at the very least out of the way.
The Last Scholar didn't understand that part of the Church's agenda very well, being an avid infophile she found the various actions to control the flow of various bits of information to be confusing at best and outright damning at best. However the greatest source of information in her youth had been the Church. Then, from there it had been the Choir and from there she'd been sent to Byrgenwerth. It was there that she'd studied the various arts and acts of supreme discovery that the students and the Wise Provost had put together from merely exploring some ruins and looking at shells for extended times. Then she'd met the Good Hunter on her quest for knowledge and...
The door opened and the Good Captain walked in with an apology on his lips even as he took his hat off and hung it up. The Last Scholar slid a bookmark she'd prepared in place before closing the enticing book and gave the Captain a small smile before forgiving his lateness.
"I've been informed that some of our common things will be taken from us." The Good Captain informed lightly. "After the supplies are eaten and drank we'll be feasting on mushrooms and drinking spirit brewed from the dark halls of the Neath."
"Indeed," Yurie said with a raised brow, "I guess that's well enough. A bit to tide us over before we all must take the plunge. Now," the Last Scholar smiled and poured some tea, "we were speaking on the avoidance of sunlight before?"
"Ah yes." The Good Captain said with a huff as he seated himself. "Sunlight seems to be a part of something else but I know not what. The Runes, being uttering of the Great Ones, are without a doubt the cause of our protection, though exactly which choice was the correct one is up for debate." The Good Captian didn't smile then, he showed teeth. "And any who would try to test such things would be wholly without a position upon the Flora."
"Agreed," the Last Scholar said with amusement coloring her voice, "once we reach this London town do you have a plan, dear Captain?"
"It's highly likely that we'll need to do just as we've done here," the Captain said mildly, "wait around as the folks in control of the local waters to get all the proper paperwork in order and pull their heads out of the sand." He paused to allow them both a moment to laugh at the memory of the dock folk here who where so bent out of shape by their arrival, Yharnam colored ones humor in odd hues often enough. "However after that I believe I'll be working to making my own dreams come true. A cousin was left with the ancestral manor, a fact I'll remedy, and then it is the restoration of my family name, the continuation of my oath." He nodded to the statue at the back of the room upon which a cloak that called to mind black feathers layered in a heavy mantel, belt of knives with shortsword, and face-mask had been placed prominently.
To any person of modern sensibilities the pointed face of a plague doctor was a reminder of a dark time before the latest dawn of human intellect, but to anyone from Yharnam the Crowfeather Garb was as much a uniform as it was armor. To those folk who'd been around during the Hunt the Hunter of Hunters was a being as enigmatic as it was necessary. The bearers of the Crowfeather Garb had been an essential release valve that had kept the various Hunter factions from exploding, mostly by taking out the worst of them before they degenerated to the point of sheer anarchy. Their duty was simple; Watch over the city's watchers and take them down before they devolved or became corrupt, or that was how the Last Scholar had heard the tale, Hunters being an enigmatic sort.
"Indeed," the woman responded mildly before she sipped from her cup and then continued, "I would think that no other town, no matter how extraordinary, would need the Hunters, much less one of the Crows."
"Few could say that Hunter's were a necessary job to begin with." The Good Captain said ruefully as he gazed at the suit like an old friend. "But I find that with learning the lessons of our past we'll be doomed to repeat it over and over again. Hunter's may not be what we are any longer, but we can't let what duties we took upon ourselves fall to the wayside because of a change in venue."
"A fair answer." She replied before setting down the cup onto its dish. "They aren't going to let you keep going, Captain. The Flora herself is too well armed, too potent a weapon to leave in the hands of a rogue agent like yourself. If not this Venice, then whatever powers control this London town."
"Every weapon aboard was revised by a Powder Keg before we set sail, every member of my crew were volunteers at one or another points in their lives, and we've all seen the results of a city misusing it's power." The Good Captain said blandly. His tone was even, level but as he spoke a pressure built up behind Yurie's eyes and she had blink away afterimages of something that had trailed through the air. A light that leaked slightly from a sheathed greatsword nearby she assumed as she glanced over at the weapon, still glowing but not the flashing brilliance that it'd had a moment before. "I'd like to think that there isn't much that anyone could do that we weren't ready for, however you are correct in the fact that the Flora is a grand weapon on a scale that is, as of yet, unknown. Which is why I want you to look into something for me."
From within the confines of his coat the Captain fished out a strange item. An amulet set with an orb of glass which caged white-blue brilliance. Yurie had not seen anything like it in her life and when the Good Captain laid it upon the tea table she slowly took it up into her hands to give it a thorough once over.
"Once during my long hunt," the Good Captain began to speak even as the Last Scholar examined the Hunter's Badge, "I found myself beset on all sides, knee deep in enemy territory, and low on blood." He closed his eyes, seeming to have brought forth a vision of that time to his mind. "If that were not enough I could only just barely find my way," he grimaced, "my guide was the scent of death and fire. Towards that familiar scent I walked and then suddenly at the very moment of my escape I was stopped by a beast wreathed in caged lightning. It dropped that badge and from it and a few other's I've gleaned it's origin." He reached over to touch the clear glass. "I am not able to cage lightning, Yurie, nor do I have the skill to research such esoteric practices in my hobby time. I have other things that keep me up, so I request of you. Check into this."