Let's Play Choice of Broadsides, Chapter Six
Previous chapter (five, part one) is here.
The game is HERE. A great review of it is over at Jayisgames, and my "review" is here. If you think this game sounds fun, play it before reading, because there will be massive spoilers after the cut.
Also, this is one of those chapters where I let myself, uh, articulate my displeasure at certain events, so beware salty language.
Seeing as how I've run out of breakup songs to listen to*, let's continue with our adventure!
(Ooh, I remember this chapter. I believe it was the hardest chapter in the game.)
Remember how Villeneuve was called back to Gaul? A tragic event, I know, but did you know it was also a signal of things to come?
The peace with Gaul does not last. Before long, hostilities have resumed and the Admiralty is building back up its Royal Navy, to combat the Gaulish threat to the freedom of the seas.
The letter arrives by special messenger, very early on a cold morning. You slit the seal. Your orders are written in fine black script on heavy, cream-colored paper.
It reads, "You are requested and required to assume command of H.M.S. Defender. . ."
Your own command at last!
All right! We get to have a job again! And our own ship! This is good, right?
It's . . . not all that you might hope for. There are barnacles on the hull; the sails are tattered at the edges; the paint is worn.
Well, not as good as we might have liked. The ship is pretty run down. I think they explain the reason...
Indeed, Defender is scarcely even a real ship. Until very recently, the Royal Navy categorized Defender as a sloop-of-war. As a post-captain, you should be in command of a ship, not a mere sloop, so when the Admiralty assigned you to Defender, they simply re-rated him as a sixth-rate ship. But despite the formality, in reality Defender remains a dreary sloop.
I'm no expert on ships, but I think this means we got ripped off. But what about our crew? If they're competent, they'll more than make up for the state of the ship. (For the record, I don't think the ship is that bad.) Let's go greet our lieutenant.
"Welcome aboard Defender, ma'am," says Madam Benton proudly. "Finest ship in the navy!" Her uniform looks as if she'd put it on in the dark. She wouldn't know the finest ship in the navy if it raked her with a broadside.
Huh. Oh, well, at least we're finally captain, right?
Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a familiar sailor: Mistress's Mate Jones! Ah, make that just "Jones" since she was disrated in connection with that unpleasant business with Madam Pigot back on H.M.S. Courageous.
Crap. Jones is on our crew? She's got tons of reasons to hate us, including (1) our courtesy towards enemy Gauls, whom she hates, (2) our foiling of that little mutiny that she might have been connected to, and (3) our affair with a certain Gaulish captain, which I dearly hope did not become a scandal.
She greets you with a respectful salute.
Somehow, this makes me even more nervous than I was before.
Anyway, we meet the sailing mistress, Madam Carter. She works under us as the most senior warrant officer, and she's got some mistress's mates working under her. We have her ready the ship for some shake-down maneuvers, to see how capable both the vessel and the sailing mistress are.
You inspect Carter carefully as she readies the ship for basic action. You quickly realize that this woman is the only force holding the ship together; Benton gives orders, but Carter has them followed. Under Carter's guidance, you manage to get the ship out onto open waters.
Definitely someone we want on our side. Madam Carter is good at her job, but what about the rest of the crew?
The shake-down maneuvers are embarrassing. You sail the ship around, clear for battle, and fire off a broadside. The sails are not hauled taut, it takes longer to raise and lower the sails than it should, and it takes much longer (a full minute or more) to clear the ship for action than it ought. The broadside is ragged and slow, and one sailor injures herself by getting her foot crushed by a gun carriage.
At this point, you believe that, overall, the crew is fairly unhappy and poorly disciplined.
Oh, dear. Well, nothing we can't handle, right? By the way, in addition to our own stats, the crew now has two: happiness and discipline. They are subject to change depending on the actions we make, and believe me, they are important.
You're going to have to turn this ship into a credible fighting vessel; to do that, you'll have to put the women to work. It looks like this crew isn't particularly used to hard work yet.
So let's put them to work! We can have them (A) Do gunnery drills, (B) Practice sailing maneuvers, or (C) Clean up the ship. Let's try (C). Why this particular option? Well... okay, I got some pointers off Jayisgames. Thank you, commenters, for helping me get through this section.
So we have our girls scrub the decks with sandstone, wash everything, polish the brasswork, clean the guns, coil the ropes, and mend the sails. The game describes all of the work in three excellent paragraphs, but I will summarize: the ship is now pristine, the women are proud of it, and happiness and discipline increase.
However, the crew starts grumbling a tiny bit because they're not used to hard work, so we have to decide to either have them (A) Keep working really hard, or (B) Take it easy. We pick (A). Between (A) Gunnery, and (B) Sailing maneuvers, I think we should choose to train (A).
The crew works hard again, and they're getting skilled and very disciplined, but they're now pretty unhappy.
Yes, you're working the women hard. They go to sleep sore, they wake up sore, they do a long day's work, and they do it all again the following day.
You're not sleeping so well yourself, in fact, as the night watch pounds on the deck every night while you're trying to sleep. They roll cannon balls on the gun deck and stomp their feet.
You quickly begin to suspect that they're doing this intentionally, to torment you.
"It's a difficult crew, ma'am," volunteers Madam Carter. "Many of these landswomen came from the jails. I've done what I can with them, but the previous captain and her lieutenant struggled to keep them in line."
So we can either (A) Punish everyone harshly, (B) Punish the worst of them, (C) Punish them lightly, or (D) Ignore it and hope they don't start thinking they can get away with crap like this. Let's do (B).
Because we are such super duper leaders, we correctly separate the troublemakers and punish them, and the crew starts learning not to act up. Discipline goes up, and we get to move on.
One evening, you head below deck as some of the women are taking dinner; you find Jones telling a bawdy joke about the lascivious habits of men in London.
She tells it quite well; you hadn't noticed before, but Jones has a certain natural charisma about her that makes others turn to listen to her.
Oh, Jonesy, why am I not surprised. At least we are realizing your potential. As for the situation, we can (A) Scold her for telling a dirty joke, (B) Have her whipped (if we're prudish and have a stick up our ass), (C) Ignore it but keep an eye on her, or (D) Join in the bawdy joke telling (we are NOT doing this). (C) seems like a reasonable option.
And then we find out that one of our sailors was asleep on her watch. We could (A) Have her whipped, (B) Have her court-martialed and hanged (Holy overreaction, Batman), (C) 'Put her on double-watch and forbid her from rum', or (D) Let this one go. I think we might want to raise our happiness, so let's go with (D).
Predictably, the crew is very happy we're being lenient, but they think they can talk their way out of anything with us now, so discipline decreases by a lot.
As you head below deck, you see a handful of sailors and midshipwomen whispering together, including Jones. As soon as they catch sight of you, they stop abruptly and go their separate ways. (You experience a brief moment of "deja vu," as the Gauls call it.)
Damn mutineers! I try to make all of them better people, I help them improve their skills, I give them slaps on the wrist for their mistakes, and how do they thank me? Great, so now what do we do? (A) Barge in and ask what they're doing, (B) Pull someone aside and question them, (C) Whip them, (D) Have someone spy on them, or (E) Ignore this like a tool.
We pick (B), and we're going to try to have Jones tell us what's going on.
You bring Jones into your cabin for questioning.
"What were those women whispering about?"
She looks confused. "Ma'am?"
"I saw you there, with Walker and Green."
"Ma'am," replies Jones slowly, "we weren't whispering. Green was telling us a tale about her husband back in Albion."
I'm so sure. Anyway, we're going to (A) Drop it, since I don't think the other option, (B) Threatening her, will do any good.
At this point, you believe that, overall, the crew is fairly unhappy yet reasonably disciplined.
There are definitely some bad apples in the crew.
Don't I know it. Case in point: the next day, we find out that Madam Carter died in an "accident" when she fell down the hatchway. Do we think it's a murder? Well, we can say (A) Nah, or (B) Of course! or (C) I dunno. If we say that we don't know, the game tells us that Carter was a good sailor, but accidents do happen, etc, and is generally unhelpful.
This leaves us to (A) Investigate, (B) Arrest the most likely people and court-martial them, (C) Think some more, or (D) Ignore it. We're going with (A), and since we don't turn up any leads, we're letting it go. This is a very tricky situation, and if we push any more, the crew will get very unhappy.
So now we come to choosing our new acting-mistress. We can choose between the mistress's mates, (A) MacDougall, the intelligent slacker, or (B) Avery, the loyal idiot. Or we can promote (C) Jones and choose her. Since the game hinted that Jones was the most talented (but least trustworthy), we might as well choose her.
"Thank you, ma'am!"
"It was really the least I could do, Madam Jones," you reply, emphasizing "Madam".
"You won't live to regret it!"
Fucking hell, Jones, you'd better not, you hear me?
A few nights later you awake with a start, to the sound of shouts and clanging metal outside your cabin.
You swing up out of bed, grabbing for your sword--just as a team of armed sailors breaks down the door. The leader's face is twisted into a sneer. "Not so powerful now, are you?" she says scornfully. Over her shoulder, you can see the Marine sentry and a sailor bleeding to death on the deck outside. "Throw down that sword."
Things just went straight to shit, didn't they? And no, I'm not doing that.
You attack so ferociously she stumbles back in surprise. Ruthlessly following up your advantage, you cut your way through the mutineers and manage to maneuver your way out of your cabin. On deck, you see that the mutiny is just getting started.
You rally the loyalists, including Jones, and assess the tactical situation. Though parts of the crew were unhappy enough to risk their lives to kill you, notwithstanding your efforts to build discipline. . . the numbers are still on your side.
For now.
Jones is on our side?! Really?! Colour me astonished, I thought for sure we'd lose her to the mutineers. All right, then, let's go get them.
"We must re-take control of this ship!" you shout, and the women surrounding you nod. Some of them are armed, with blades or pistols; some have only their bare hands. But at least they are all on your side.
"For Albion!" you yell. They follow you as you charge back down the deck, no longer fighting defensively but now actively attacking anyone in your way.
I'll get you, you ungrateful bastards! All of you traitors are fired as of right fucking now!
So the battle is underway, and we choose to charge in there and engage the mutineers directly. We get shot in the process, but it doesn't stop us from showing those little shits who's boss.
The battle is long and bloody, but in the end, the loyalists are victorious.
Easily a dozen women have died, and a further two dozen more are unable to work, but with that show of force, you have put down the mutiny and re-established control of your ship.
All in a day's work for... fuck this, we need a drink. Show's over, everybody go home.
And our stats:
Name: Madam Anne Smythe
Rank: Post-captain
Seniority: 2 years
Age: 27
Sailing: 85
Gunnery: 77 (+)
Leadership: 65
Fighting: 70
Patronage: 40
Tact: 42
Likeability: 55
Honor: 79 (+)
Courage: 71
Bloodthirst: 39
Intelligence: 54
Wealth: 43
See you in the next chapter!
TO BE CONTINUED.
* This did not take long. I've only got two: Just Be Friends, and Over. Yes, they're both Vocaloid songs. I'm quite partial to the genderbent versions (here, and here).
The game is HERE. A great review of it is over at Jayisgames, and my "review" is here. If you think this game sounds fun, play it before reading, because there will be massive spoilers after the cut.
Also, this is one of those chapters where I let myself, uh, articulate my displeasure at certain events, so beware salty language.
Seeing as how I've run out of breakup songs to listen to*, let's continue with our adventure!
(Ooh, I remember this chapter. I believe it was the hardest chapter in the game.)
Remember how Villeneuve was called back to Gaul? A tragic event, I know, but did you know it was also a signal of things to come?
The peace with Gaul does not last. Before long, hostilities have resumed and the Admiralty is building back up its Royal Navy, to combat the Gaulish threat to the freedom of the seas.
The letter arrives by special messenger, very early on a cold morning. You slit the seal. Your orders are written in fine black script on heavy, cream-colored paper.
It reads, "You are requested and required to assume command of H.M.S. Defender. . ."
Your own command at last!
All right! We get to have a job again! And our own ship! This is good, right?
It's . . . not all that you might hope for. There are barnacles on the hull; the sails are tattered at the edges; the paint is worn.
Well, not as good as we might have liked. The ship is pretty run down. I think they explain the reason...
Indeed, Defender is scarcely even a real ship. Until very recently, the Royal Navy categorized Defender as a sloop-of-war. As a post-captain, you should be in command of a ship, not a mere sloop, so when the Admiralty assigned you to Defender, they simply re-rated him as a sixth-rate ship. But despite the formality, in reality Defender remains a dreary sloop.
I'm no expert on ships, but I think this means we got ripped off. But what about our crew? If they're competent, they'll more than make up for the state of the ship. (For the record, I don't think the ship is that bad.) Let's go greet our lieutenant.
"Welcome aboard Defender, ma'am," says Madam Benton proudly. "Finest ship in the navy!" Her uniform looks as if she'd put it on in the dark. She wouldn't know the finest ship in the navy if it raked her with a broadside.
Huh. Oh, well, at least we're finally captain, right?
Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a familiar sailor: Mistress's Mate Jones! Ah, make that just "Jones" since she was disrated in connection with that unpleasant business with Madam Pigot back on H.M.S. Courageous.
Crap. Jones is on our crew? She's got tons of reasons to hate us, including (1) our courtesy towards enemy Gauls, whom she hates, (2) our foiling of that little mutiny that she might have been connected to, and (3) our affair with a certain Gaulish captain, which I dearly hope did not become a scandal.
She greets you with a respectful salute.
Somehow, this makes me even more nervous than I was before.
Anyway, we meet the sailing mistress, Madam Carter. She works under us as the most senior warrant officer, and she's got some mistress's mates working under her. We have her ready the ship for some shake-down maneuvers, to see how capable both the vessel and the sailing mistress are.
You inspect Carter carefully as she readies the ship for basic action. You quickly realize that this woman is the only force holding the ship together; Benton gives orders, but Carter has them followed. Under Carter's guidance, you manage to get the ship out onto open waters.
Definitely someone we want on our side. Madam Carter is good at her job, but what about the rest of the crew?
The shake-down maneuvers are embarrassing. You sail the ship around, clear for battle, and fire off a broadside. The sails are not hauled taut, it takes longer to raise and lower the sails than it should, and it takes much longer (a full minute or more) to clear the ship for action than it ought. The broadside is ragged and slow, and one sailor injures herself by getting her foot crushed by a gun carriage.
At this point, you believe that, overall, the crew is fairly unhappy and poorly disciplined.
Oh, dear. Well, nothing we can't handle, right? By the way, in addition to our own stats, the crew now has two: happiness and discipline. They are subject to change depending on the actions we make, and believe me, they are important.
You're going to have to turn this ship into a credible fighting vessel; to do that, you'll have to put the women to work. It looks like this crew isn't particularly used to hard work yet.
So let's put them to work! We can have them (A) Do gunnery drills, (B) Practice sailing maneuvers, or (C) Clean up the ship. Let's try (C). Why this particular option? Well... okay, I got some pointers off Jayisgames. Thank you, commenters, for helping me get through this section.
So we have our girls scrub the decks with sandstone, wash everything, polish the brasswork, clean the guns, coil the ropes, and mend the sails. The game describes all of the work in three excellent paragraphs, but I will summarize: the ship is now pristine, the women are proud of it, and happiness and discipline increase.
However, the crew starts grumbling a tiny bit because they're not used to hard work, so we have to decide to either have them (A) Keep working really hard, or (B) Take it easy. We pick (A). Between (A) Gunnery, and (B) Sailing maneuvers, I think we should choose to train (A).
The crew works hard again, and they're getting skilled and very disciplined, but they're now pretty unhappy.
Yes, you're working the women hard. They go to sleep sore, they wake up sore, they do a long day's work, and they do it all again the following day.
You're not sleeping so well yourself, in fact, as the night watch pounds on the deck every night while you're trying to sleep. They roll cannon balls on the gun deck and stomp their feet.
You quickly begin to suspect that they're doing this intentionally, to torment you.
"It's a difficult crew, ma'am," volunteers Madam Carter. "Many of these landswomen came from the jails. I've done what I can with them, but the previous captain and her lieutenant struggled to keep them in line."
So we can either (A) Punish everyone harshly, (B) Punish the worst of them, (C) Punish them lightly, or (D) Ignore it and hope they don't start thinking they can get away with crap like this. Let's do (B).
Because we are such super duper leaders, we correctly separate the troublemakers and punish them, and the crew starts learning not to act up. Discipline goes up, and we get to move on.
One evening, you head below deck as some of the women are taking dinner; you find Jones telling a bawdy joke about the lascivious habits of men in London.
She tells it quite well; you hadn't noticed before, but Jones has a certain natural charisma about her that makes others turn to listen to her.
Oh, Jonesy, why am I not surprised. At least we are realizing your potential. As for the situation, we can (A) Scold her for telling a dirty joke, (B) Have her whipped (if we're prudish and have a stick up our ass), (C) Ignore it but keep an eye on her, or (D) Join in the bawdy joke telling (we are NOT doing this). (C) seems like a reasonable option.
And then we find out that one of our sailors was asleep on her watch. We could (A) Have her whipped, (B) Have her court-martialed and hanged (Holy overreaction, Batman), (C) 'Put her on double-watch and forbid her from rum', or (D) Let this one go. I think we might want to raise our happiness, so let's go with (D).
Predictably, the crew is very happy we're being lenient, but they think they can talk their way out of anything with us now, so discipline decreases by a lot.
As you head below deck, you see a handful of sailors and midshipwomen whispering together, including Jones. As soon as they catch sight of you, they stop abruptly and go their separate ways. (You experience a brief moment of "deja vu," as the Gauls call it.)
Damn mutineers! I try to make all of them better people, I help them improve their skills, I give them slaps on the wrist for their mistakes, and how do they thank me? Great, so now what do we do? (A) Barge in and ask what they're doing, (B) Pull someone aside and question them, (C) Whip them, (D) Have someone spy on them, or (E) Ignore this like a tool.
We pick (B), and we're going to try to have Jones tell us what's going on.
You bring Jones into your cabin for questioning.
"What were those women whispering about?"
She looks confused. "Ma'am?"
"I saw you there, with Walker and Green."
"Ma'am," replies Jones slowly, "we weren't whispering. Green was telling us a tale about her husband back in Albion."
I'm so sure. Anyway, we're going to (A) Drop it, since I don't think the other option, (B) Threatening her, will do any good.
At this point, you believe that, overall, the crew is fairly unhappy yet reasonably disciplined.
There are definitely some bad apples in the crew.
Don't I know it. Case in point: the next day, we find out that Madam Carter died in an "accident" when she fell down the hatchway. Do we think it's a murder? Well, we can say (A) Nah, or (B) Of course! or (C) I dunno. If we say that we don't know, the game tells us that Carter was a good sailor, but accidents do happen, etc, and is generally unhelpful.
This leaves us to (A) Investigate, (B) Arrest the most likely people and court-martial them, (C) Think some more, or (D) Ignore it. We're going with (A), and since we don't turn up any leads, we're letting it go. This is a very tricky situation, and if we push any more, the crew will get very unhappy.
So now we come to choosing our new acting-mistress. We can choose between the mistress's mates, (A) MacDougall, the intelligent slacker, or (B) Avery, the loyal idiot. Or we can promote (C) Jones and choose her. Since the game hinted that Jones was the most talented (but least trustworthy), we might as well choose her.
"Thank you, ma'am!"
"It was really the least I could do, Madam Jones," you reply, emphasizing "Madam".
"You won't live to regret it!"
Fucking hell, Jones, you'd better not, you hear me?
A few nights later you awake with a start, to the sound of shouts and clanging metal outside your cabin.
You swing up out of bed, grabbing for your sword--just as a team of armed sailors breaks down the door. The leader's face is twisted into a sneer. "Not so powerful now, are you?" she says scornfully. Over her shoulder, you can see the Marine sentry and a sailor bleeding to death on the deck outside. "Throw down that sword."
Things just went straight to shit, didn't they? And no, I'm not doing that.
You attack so ferociously she stumbles back in surprise. Ruthlessly following up your advantage, you cut your way through the mutineers and manage to maneuver your way out of your cabin. On deck, you see that the mutiny is just getting started.
You rally the loyalists, including Jones, and assess the tactical situation. Though parts of the crew were unhappy enough to risk their lives to kill you, notwithstanding your efforts to build discipline. . . the numbers are still on your side.
For now.
Jones is on our side?! Really?! Colour me astonished, I thought for sure we'd lose her to the mutineers. All right, then, let's go get them.
"We must re-take control of this ship!" you shout, and the women surrounding you nod. Some of them are armed, with blades or pistols; some have only their bare hands. But at least they are all on your side.
"For Albion!" you yell. They follow you as you charge back down the deck, no longer fighting defensively but now actively attacking anyone in your way.
I'll get you, you ungrateful bastards! All of you traitors are fired as of right fucking now!
So the battle is underway, and we choose to charge in there and engage the mutineers directly. We get shot in the process, but it doesn't stop us from showing those little shits who's boss.
The battle is long and bloody, but in the end, the loyalists are victorious.
Easily a dozen women have died, and a further two dozen more are unable to work, but with that show of force, you have put down the mutiny and re-established control of your ship.
All in a day's work for... fuck this, we need a drink. Show's over, everybody go home.
And our stats:
Name: Madam Anne Smythe
Rank: Post-captain
Seniority: 2 years
Age: 27
Sailing: 85
Gunnery: 77 (+)
Leadership: 65
Fighting: 70
Patronage: 40
Tact: 42
Likeability: 55
Honor: 79 (+)
Courage: 71
Bloodthirst: 39
Intelligence: 54
Wealth: 43
See you in the next chapter!
TO BE CONTINUED.
* This did not take long. I've only got two: Just Be Friends, and Over. Yes, they're both Vocaloid songs. I'm quite partial to the genderbent versions (here, and here).