Garbo Nightsky and Jamhorn Krikoris arrived in Driftwood Landing to find the weathered fishing village shaken to its bones. A woman named Corra — salt-worn and tight-jawed, a former first mate who had once sailed under the legendary Captain Callista Merrow — pressed thirty gold coins' worth of urgency into their hands. Three nights ago, a ghost ship flying Merrow's crimson flag had risen from the sea and destroyed Corra's vessel, the Dawn Chaser. Merrow had hanged twenty years ago. Whatever flew her colors now was not her — but it was using her name, and it would strike again. Garbo brought his own unease to the table: the forest had gone wrong since the last full moon. A deer carcass killed but not eaten, birds gone silent across the canopy, game trails abandoned, and an old man's dog that refused to approach the treeline. Whatever had settled over Widow's Point was not staying put — it was spreading inland. Corra needed answers, and she needed them fast. Jamhorn charmed his way into a free skiff rental with a bravura performance atop a tavern table, and at the docks a boat-keeper named Pella handed over the Mudskipper along with a troubling gift: a piece of ancient black timber, ice-cold and wrong in every way, that had washed ashore after the attack. Garbo turned it over in his hands and recognized it as old-growth ship wood, decades drowned.
The two set out across the water toward Widow's Point, a ruined watchtower clinging to a black-rock cliff where fog pooled like something breathing. A lone gull trailed the skiff. Garbo spoke to it in the language of wild things, and the bird confirmed what the bones of the coast already knew: something bad and cold had settled over the tower three nights ago, and the other gulls had fled. At the tower itself, Jamhorn slipped invisible up the crumbling staircase and found what waited at the top — a drowned figure suspended between death and rest. It was Callista Merrow herself, or the echo of her: truly dead these twenty years, but torn back whenever someone raised her flag and spoke her name. She could not stop what was done in her name. She could only endure it.
Garbo climbed the stairs and, guided by Bardic Inspiration from Jamhorn, reproduced the eerie, resonant song Merrow herself had once sung. The sound unlocked something. Callista spoke plainly: her former quartermaster, Vasha Kell, had stolen the crimson flag and was using its dark power to command the dead ship and her with it. Jamhorn bargained with the spirit — help us stop Vasha Kell, and in return, tell me what you know of the curse that haunts me. Callista agreed. She called Jamhorn's affliction a "deep-water thing," old and tangled in salt and bad bargains, and promised more when the flag was ash. She also gave them their deadline: the next strike would come at the new moon, two nights hence, when a merchant convoy passed through the Serpent's Teeth to the east.
The party left the tower lighter — the tower's grip on the coast had already begun to loosen. The gulls returned to Widow's Point. Garbo struck a deal with the flock: scout ahead, warn of danger, receive fresh ham in payment. Jamhorn sealed it with hard cheese and biscuits. The gulls accepted, on probation. The Mudskipper turned east toward the Serpent's Teeth, and by the time they threaded through the reef-fanged islands they had found Kest — a castaway who ran a smokehouse on the rocks and wanted nothing from anyone. Jamhorn's first attempt at persuasion was a spectacular disaster. His second was a masterpiece of politeness that left Kest handing over three pounds of smoked pork and confirming what they feared: green lights out past the reef, same pattern as the ghost ship, two nights ago. The pirate vessel was likely hiding behind the easternmost isle, waiting for the convoy.
What followed was the birth of Operation Pork Storm. The Mudskipper would drift into the channel as bait, loaded with pork-fat firebombs. The gulls — now formally christened the Pork Gulls — would drop the bombs onto the enemy ship. Garbo would blanket the deck in fog to blind the crew, and the two of them would board through the murk with Jamhorn playing the vengeful ghost of Callista Merrow. Kest called it the stupidest plan he had ever seen and then gave them his lamp oil anyway. After a night's rest, the party received one final warning: the ship could rise from beneath the water, hull-first. Phase Four of the plan became simply: don't stand where it surfaces.
Night fell. The new moon swallowed the sky. On the horizon, the merchant convoy's running lamps blinked into view, and beneath the black water near the easternmost isle, green light pulsed and grew. Vasha Kell's ship was rising. Jamhorn stood on the Mudskipper's deck and delivered a speech — drum-backed and fervent, the kind of speech that made improbable things feel inevitable — staring each gull in the face. "We are all Pork Gulls." The gulls, apparently, agreed. Operation Pork Storm commenced. Fire bloomed across the ghost ship's deck. Fog rolled in. Garbo and Jamhorn boarded into chaos, and the fighting was brutal and close. Garbo cut down two pirates and drove his mark toward Vasha Kell herself before a blind strike from the quartermaster sent him crashing to the deck, unconscious.
It was the gulls who turned the tide. As Garbo lay still, the Pork Gulls wheeled overhead and tore the crimson flag from the mainmast with their beaks and claws. The instant it fell, Vasha Kell and her remaining crew collapsed as though their strings had been cut — the flag's dark power broken all at once. A gull landed beside Garbo and dropped a piece of smoked pork onto his chest. He opened his eyes to the smell of smoke and the sound of wings. The pirate vessel rocked quietly on the water, its deck scorched and still. The flag lay in a tattered, smoking heap. And somewhere on a black-rock cliff above Widow's Point, the drowned figure of Callista Merrow finally, at last, dissolved into rest.