I wanted to use a few more of the bells and whistles (not that there are many) in Broken Compass in the next adventure I ran for my daughter. In this second scenario, her character, Ellie Calhoun, the 18 year old Texan pilot who left her home under a cloudy past, is helping her boss “Cleopatra” Lythgoe, the Bahama Queen with her last rum run from Nassau to Alice Town in Bimini on her schooner. It’s all legal and above board in the Bahamas, but rumors have been flying about the Americans putting pressure on the Bahamian government to hand her over.

In the first scene, she learns from another pilot that Avi Loenstein — the Brooklyn gangster that has recently relocated to Ft. Lauderdale, has been talking a lot of guff about moving in on Cleo. She related the story to the boss over a few hands a baccarat, at which point she stated that the “jinx” had caught up with her. She was wealthy enough and it was time to pack it in before the mob or the feds finally got her.

Later, at her hotel, Ellie was approached by Moses — one of Avi’s goons — who tried to convince her to sell Cleo out by giving the course and time of the run. He left her his hotel room on a matchbox so she could give him her answer. Instead, she let Cleo know and was sent with one of the other henchmen of the Bahama Queen, “Jimmie”, a local man, to set him straight. This led directly to a fight scene, which allowed us to run our first fight with a privileged henchmen. He was rated a critical danger and required three successes to drop him. The fight was quick, and while she didn’t knock him out, other basic successes led to Ellie and Jimmie being able to secure him. They rolled him up in the bedcovers, snuck him out to the waiting Cadillac and took him to the boat for questioning.

While he was tied up in the fiorelocker of the boat, Moses was able to cut his binds with a knife they had missed and he was able to throw himself overboard and disappear into the night. Cleo decided to get the schooner moving and head out.

The next major scene involved navigating to Alice Town, driving the boat, and spotting a seaplane approaching. Avi’s people had found them! There was a trio of dangers to overcome at this point — avoiding the strafing run by the passenger in the plane, who opened up on the boat with a BAR .30. i rated this a critical danger and Ellie scored two basic successes. She used one to push Cleo below, took off a point of the three luck points from the attack, and took a “bleeding” feeling. The second test was to outrun the speedboat that had been led in by the plane, another critical due to the difference in speeds. The last was to avoid the speedboat coming alongside and grappling. Both rolls were failed and the bad guys — two goons I rated a critical threat, and Moses — boarded the schooner.

Ellie handled the initial threat with a burst from her Chicago Typewriter and scored a extreme success; they got mowed down and her Tommy was dry! Moses attacked her with a hatchet, but she rolled a critical success, blasting off her 1911 .38 Super but he had managed to catch her hand and the shot missed (but took one of his luck points and I gave him a disadvantage for his ruptured eardrum.) They wrestled at the rail of the boat and he got another critical success with an added basic. She fired the gun again but missed, however, she plented her knee in his groin and disarmed him. On the next test, she got a critical and basic success again. She decided to throw him over the side of the boat where he was quickly left behind in the open ocean. She and the crew cut the speedboat loose and left if and the dead bodies, as well.

They got to Alice Town, where they offloaded the goods. While cleaning up in her hotel room, Ellie was interrupted by Avi Loenstein and a couple of mooks. She was able to scare them off with her .38 Super, rolling four of a kind. She then complained to the hotel owner and local big-wig, Sir James Guthrie, of the assault and he had them thrown out. Later, she was pulled aside by Guthrie — Cleo has set her up with a few of his friends so that she is out of the line of the feds and mob, with a 2nd class ticket to Gibraltar, and the Fairchild 71 she’s been flying for Cleo as a goodbye present.

We wrapped up with her heading to Gibraltar to link up with a buddy of Gthrie’s from the Great War, a member of the Foreign Volunteer Force, a group of mercenaries known as the “Sky Rats”. (For more on the Sky Rats, see Black Campbell’s Sky Pirates of the Mediterranean. )