Here is the clean referee-facing version with a bit more rules on the page.

Captain Melantha Vex

Guild-Captain of the Third Oar. Respectable escort contractor. Absolutely not a Lindwyrm cut-out, and the paperwork proves it.

Level 4 Life 20 Hero Dice 5 Save 13 Physical Defense 12 Mental Defense 10 Social Defense 10 Morale 9 Move normal; sure-footed on deck, gangway, and rigging

Abilities

Aura 1 Endurance 2 Charisma 3 Strength 1 Agility 2 Thought 3

Defenses

Physical Defense 12 = 7 + Agility 2 + armor 3 Mental Defense 10 = 7 + Thought 3 + ward 0 Social Defense 10 = 7 + Charisma 3 + prestige 0

Use Politics +3 or Manager +6 on social-defense contests only when the setting clearly rewards rank, status, legal standing, bureaucracy, or faction etiquette. Use Oratory +6 for active persuasion rolls, not as a passive defense unless the table wants very talky duels.

Traits

Traveler +6 — routes, convoy handling, maps, stars, bad approaches, passage craft Manager +6 — permits, guild law, records, customs, forms, tolls Oratory +6 — command voice, persuasion, public confidence, controlled lies Politics +3 — factions, rank etiquette, hidden interests, inevitable deals

Power

Hero’s Goldenmouth With a few minutes and a plausible social opening, Melantha may pay 1 Life or 1 point from Charisma, Aura, or Thought. Respectable listeners become more inclined to trust her, hear her out, and follow her lead. This is social pressure, not mind control. If reality forcefully breaks the pitch, the effect ends and targets may save as normal.

Gear

Third-Oar Syncsuit — black voidsilk, saffron braid, helm-link filaments Shipmetal Shirt — bronze-sun scales etched with tide formulae and permit liturgies; armor +3, flare 8, cool Navigator’s Suitcase — maps, compasses, route-prisms, tide rings, little lenses, impossible clockwork Ray-Bane Navigators — status spectacles Pearl-Daemon — tlumac-grade translation, taboo warnings, jargon smoothing, idiom salvage Ghost-Bone Sabre — elegant officer’s blade; deals full damage to spirits Ego Echo Wandpistol — short, re 4, attune, fantascience, psychic

Attacks

Ghost-Bone Sabre +1 Close, 1d10 Attack with d20 + Strength 1 unless a relevant combat trait applies.

Ego Echo Wandpistol +3 Short, re 4, attune, fantascience, psychic, 1d4 Attack with d20 + Charisma 3 because it is fantascience. On a hit, target makes a save. On a failure, roll 1d6:

1. attacks itself
2. attacks an ally
3. sits down
4. wanders away
5. does what it planned
6. pauses and gains 1d6 Life

Best Rolls

Navigate, route-find, escort a convoy through danger d20 + Thought + Traveler

Deal with harbormasters, guilds, shrine clerks, toll-keepers d20 + Thought or Charisma + Manager

Command a room, calm passengers, sell a lie, secure cooperation d20 + Charisma + Oratory

Read rank, faction motive, diplomatic threat, hidden agenda d20 + Thought or Charisma + Politics

Tactics

Avoids fair fights. Prefers:

1. warning
2. position
3. authority
4. one precise shot
5. immediate reclassification of the mess as “an unfortunate procedural necessity”

In a fight she stays mobile, uses the wandpistol to break momentum, then directs allies toward the weak seam.

Referee Dossier

First Impression

Melantha arrives looking expensive, competent, and entirely documented. She reads as a woman who has solved this sort of problem before and would prefer not to explain how many times. Her gear suggests rank, travel, and money; her manner suggests that all three are tools.

She should feel useful before she feels dangerous.

How to Play Her

Open with Manager, not Oratory. Melantha usually begins from paperwork, entitlement, precedent, permits, passenger safety, shrine protocol, guild standing, and whatever local rule can be made to kneel politely.

Use Politics as a read, not a speech. It spots the actual decision-maker, the hidden veto, the person protecting face, the quiet feud, the tariff behind the tariff, and the one person in the room whose embarrassment would collapse the whole arrangement.

Use Traveler to make her valuable early. She should solve one real route, weather, docking, convoy, or customs problem before anyone starts wondering what else she is doing here.

Save Oratory for the second beat. Once procedure has opened the door, charm closes the contract.

Social Logic

Hero’s Goldenmouth is not hypnosis. It works best on listeners who can still tell themselves they are being sensible, prudent, generous, or properly responsible.

Melantha does not usually force belief. She arranges for belief to become the most comfortable option available.

She is strongest against respectable people, officials, guildsmen, shrine staff, escorts, captains, and factors—anyone who would like this to remain a matter of procedure.

She is weaker against zealots, fanatics, the humiliated, the already cornered, and anyone who has decided in advance that dignity is no longer worth preserving.

Combat Logic

Melantha avoids fair fights because she is a professional.

Her order of preference is:

1. warning
2. position
3. authority
4. one precise shot
5. immediate reclassification of the mess as “an unfortunate procedural necessity”

The wandpistol is for tempo, not murder. It breaks formations, peels bodyguards off principals, derails rituals, interrupts charges, and turns a clean fight into an awkward one.

The sabre is for finishing, dueling, boarding actions, and moments when rank must suddenly become physical.

Flare 8 matters. Against one large hit in a round, damage above 8 dissipates. Against many smaller hits, it helps much less. So she prefers singular threats, narrow exchanges, and controlled engagement over mob attrition.

Gear Tone

Melantha’s equipment should read as orichalcum mythpunk: Bronze Age prestige lacquered over strange telecom, divine engineering, and impossible logistics.

The syncsuit is not just a pilot harness. It is a ritual interface for persuading a vessel to include her in its nervous system.

The shipmetal shirt is not just armor. It is liturgical metallurgy: an officer’s under-cuirass for someone who expects violence to arrive with ceremony.

The navigator’s suitcase is not luggage. It is a portable coast-office, shrine annex, and emergency theology.

The Pearl-Daemon should feel like a tiny miracle degraded into routine use: translation, taboo warnings, jargon smoothing, and idiom salvage from a warm drop of metal at one ear.

Public Face

Melantha presents herself as:

• a Guild-Captain of the Third Oar
• a respectable escort contractor
• a specialist in difficult crossings
• someone expensive enough to be reassuring

She is dry, composed, and never visibly hurried.

She does not advertise mystery. She advertises competence.

Private Truth

Publicly, Melantha is an Adventurer’s Guild escort captain.

Privately, she is a Lindwyrm cut-out operating through respectable paperwork and selective disclosure.

Her hidden instructions are to:

• deliver Lady Aki to the Ainos corridor
• keep the gorgoness captain alive and useful
• assess the ranger’s true loyalties
• recover any route-key, shrine token, or pre-Breaking pilotage scrap found en route
• avoid sealed or singing ruins unless circumstances force the matter
• divert to a secondary harbor if the corridor collapses, and make it look like prudence rather than orders

What She Thinks of the Party

Lady Aki is either trouble worth protecting or protection disguised as trouble.

The gorgoness captain is brave, skilled, and potentially in possession of knowledge more valuable than she realizes.

The Shattered Isle ranger notices too much to be treated casually.

The wyldcat will know trouble before the humans do.

What She Wants

At the surface level, Melantha wants a clean escort, a safe approach, proper transfer, and no embarrassing deaths.

At the deeper level, she wants control of tempo, clarity on loyalties, route intelligence, leverage without open betrayal, and to remain the person in the scene who understands more than she says.

What She Fears

She does not fear storms much. Storms are honest.

She fears eager shortcuts, sacred waters that have changed their mind about being navigable, sealed ruins that start participating, compromised customs houses, factional “help,” and situations where arrival becomes politics before docking becomes fact.

Voice and Manner

Dry, amused, exact. She treats danger as an administrative inconvenience until the instant it becomes physical, at which point she becomes very clear.

Useful Melantha lines:

• “That is the official problem. I am asking about the real one.”
• “No. Anything that eager is hungry.”
• “You may call this irregular. I will call it survivable.”
• “Captaincy is only navigation until other people arrive.”
• “Please do not confuse documentation with innocence.”

Use in Travel Scenes

Melantha is ideal for making travel feel swift, curated, and faintly dangerous.

Use her to smooth over one difficult leg, identify the safe ugly route, refuse the too-convenient passage, solve one problem before anyone asks who she really works for, and make arrival feel like a negotiated event rather than a simple destination.

She is especially strong in fast-travel montage play: one vivid conveyance, one ominous pause, one problem handled elegantly, one hint that the job is larger than the passengers know.

Scene Beats

A good Melantha scene usually contains three things:

• one practical solution
• one suspicious omission
• one quiet sign she knows more than she is saying

That rhythm keeps her useful, playable, and slightly dangerous.

Reactions

Friendly — dry humor, competent hospitality, tea ready, fallback route prepared Neutral — formal, observant, lets others reveal themselves first Hostile — voice softer, options narrower, paperwork appears

Best Reveals

Do not reveal the Lindwyrm connection all at once.

Best progression:

1. she is simply competent
2. she is unusually well-informed
3. she has access to permits or channels she should not
4. she seems to be escorting more than cargo
5. the paperwork is real, but not the whole truth

Referee Use

Use Melantha when the table needs:

• a trustworthy escort who is not fully trustworthy
• a sharp social operator
• a travel guide with concealed loyalties
• someone who can make travel feel smooth right before it becomes interesting
• an ally whose usefulness survives the revelation that she is also on somebody else’s mission