The Midnight Sky

The Midnight Sky is a sailing vessel that plies her trade along the coast generally between Angasa and Bime, but occasionally as far as the Razadi's and Jekleal. She is owned by the Far Flung Trading Company, which has links into the North Zacharan trading ports and occasionally trades with distant Maztica.

She is captained by a man called Flower, who was originally bought up in Sybarite but tells a story of being taken to the South Zacharan Seas as slave and making his own way back. I understand that he made his fortune on the journey back and is a part owner of the FFTC as well.

She is an old vessel, built along traditional lines and is about 60 feet long with a beam of about 25 feet, although she has been re-rigged recently. She is now equipped with three masts, after the modern fashion, and sports three lateen sails. She has a small forecastle that is used as crew quarters and a store, and an after-castle that houses Flower and his officers, and sports two small passenger cabins. She is also armed with what I believe to be a Kara Turan fire bomb rack on top of the Forecastle, although this is generally covered and I cannot be certain, as flower was not forthcoming about it.

At first glance the crew seem a fairly ordinary run-of-the-mill bunch but closer inspection shows them to be a real mixture.

Flower himself is obviously educated and dresses in the robes of an acolyte, from the Tower of the Heavens monastery in Sybarite, although I would guess that it is some time since he has been there. His navigator is a squat, ugly man with a protruding lower jaw, called Mr Chatterbox, who speaks little, and looks as if he would be more at home living wild in the hills than working as an educated man at sea. The cabin boy, if that’s the right phrase, is in his late teens and wears a loose fitting suit similar to that I have seen described in scrolls from Kara Tur, although he is certainly not from that land. He also carries an unusual, and slightly curved, short sword - which leads me to guess he is as much the captain's bodyguard as cabin servant.

The rest of the crew is just as strange, being a mixture of all races and types although western men outnumber the others. There are crewmen from Zachara and Kara Tur as well as an elf and a gnome aboard. They are a strong crew, and there are many of them, so I suppose they are prepared to fight off pirates and corsairs should the need arise.