To Raid San Zanita: Chapter 12

[Obadiah Jib]

Chapter 12:  Fort San Zanita

Mambo Igbe offers you a few of her odd looking treasures in exchange for two of your items (2 for 1 in her favor). Her items include a jar of foul smelling salve, a dried chicken foot, and a box of dirt.

If you choose the salve you discover it is indeed a healing balm and the ceramic dish hold three applications.  Each application will heal one wound.  It does however make the user smell like a rotten egg smeared in a sweat soaked arm pit!

The chicken foot clutching a white snail shell is a lucky talisman and gives the bearer little advantages.  Things like your skill weakness will not become much of an issue and sometimes you will succeed where you should fail. You also notice that the insects which seem to swarm about are fewer, your sun burn hurts less, and your weapons appear to have escaped from a heavy cost of rust despite being soaked in brackish water. The token does seem to keep you lucky against all odds.  It has to be on your person to work.

Lastly is the dark wood box of earth and ash.  When poured out in a barrier line no undead will cross.  At least that is what Mambo Igbe tells you...

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If you have the Religion skill at either the Exceptional or Master level skill you know that Mambo Igbe is a follower of Voodoo, that exotic faith which is a blend of African deities with Christian saints.  What you can't tell is if her intentions are good or evil.

As the Mambo shuffles off she points toward the north with her lamp.  She speaks slowly and tells you that San Zanita is about to be destroyed.  The ghosts of the indigenous people who suffered at the hands of the white men have returned and they are hungry!  Mambo Igbe warns you not to go to the hidden colony because in less than a fortnight nothing will remain to mark its passing.  She then leaves and offers no explanation.

You return to your original plan and hope that you will meet up with your fellow buccaneers.  For two days you head north, catching only a few brief moments of sleep and eating wild foods when the meager rations you carry have run out.  You clothing is torn and dirty, your body filthy and ridden with insect bites, you are exhausted but still push onward.  Oddly if you have the chicken foot you don't seem to being suffering as bad.

A column of smoke draws you back toward the coast.  You emerge from the bush on a pebble covered beach to see the frigate El Toro de Blanco in flames and scuttled a musket volley distant off the coast line.  Your eyes tell you this was no accident, several gaping holes look like El Toro took heavy cannon fire.  If you have the Keen Sense skill at Exceptional or Master level skill you see no survivors on the wreck as it burns to the waterline.

You follow the coast line and find a natural harbor amid the mangroves.  Deep enough for a ship of galleon size to anchor, load an unload cargo.  You discover the drag marks of long boats in the mud on the shore.  Less than a mile down the coast you hear the sound of distant voices.  You wait until just after nightfall and explore closer.  There hidden amid a few stands of pines is a stockade styled fort surrounded by a wide killing ground and a few poorly tending plots of maize.  As you move closer you see that structure looks hastily built and could not stand up against even a single piece of field artillery.  The interior looks to house a few crude buildings and a rough looking chapel.  If is then you see that a series of gallows have been built just outside the entrance of the colony.  In the darkness you can not see who or what hangs from these ropes but you have a bad feeling...

This must indeed be the secret colony of San Zanita.   You expected more than a stockade of hovels at the edge of a muddy natural harbor.  You creep into the maize fields and hide amid the dried and brittle stalks of corn.  There you see bodies hanging from the gallows in the dim light from the colony.  Eight buccaneers from the El Toro de Blanco including her captain Jean Lanoue!  You also see the tell-tale glow of slow matches burning atop the palisade walls, the Spanish are waiting and prepared to fight.  They must know that a second pirate ship is hugging the coast and preparing to raid.

How to proceed is your question.  You scan the edges of the stockade and see two possible options.  A garbage pile has formed outside of a small dump gate on the interior side of the fortress.  You might be able to creep through the filth and pry it open to gain entrance to San Zanita.  A second option is to climb the palisade walls on the north side of the stockade.  You notice that a section of the fortress appears to not have a walk way on it.  This limits the Spanish to patrol the entire fortress.  You would still be in plain sight if a Spaniard turned and well in the range of his matchlock musket.  A final option is to just charge the fortress, guns blazing and screaming your head off!  You have heard that the Spanish are poorly paid and often of low morale.  Maybe you could crush them single handedly?

What do you choose to do?  Sneak into San Zanita through the garbage gate, or climb the walls to gain entrance, or attack with all the gusto you can manage?

[Capt Spleen]

I gave my musket to Mambo Igbe, so Guns ablazin is outa th question!

I already smell bad so I'll pass on garbage detail.

Mama Spleen always said I'd rise to unexpected adventurous heights, so..... "Up the wall I go. A scalin I will go, fingers, toes, A scalin Yo, a scalin walls I go!"

**Quietly so I go**

*My swamp stench rises up with me*

[Welsh Wench]

What, and end up like these two guys? Pass on the blaze of glory stuff.



No, I heard 'taking out the trash' more than once on Date Night....

So I opt for trying to scale the wall. Hoping Captain Spleen will be a gentleman and let me go first because (1) I can use the lift (2) the stench will be below me and (3) I am not wearing a skirt so he can look up my frock coat all he wants. 

[Blue66669]

Count me in with the scaling party. If Wenchie can do it, I sure as hell can LOL!

[Charlotte Rowan]

I'll scale the wall too!

[Captain Jack Wolfe]

I'll scale the wall.  But if I'm downwind of Spleen, there's not a lot of difference from the garbage run... 

[Lady Amy of York]

Well since I have firearms as one of my exceptional skills and also fortitude, and i have the healing lotion, I chos e  to charge  with my guns. Heck, why not ! Some one  has  to  do it. Besides everyone  else is taking forever going over  the wall . I  think the men are taking their  time  so they can check out the ladies  legs, etc..who are climbing ahead of  them.