So I'm guessing we used Enemy-Castigating Solar Judgement in that scene?
Well, there was a Solar castigating an enemy and passing judgement, but if you're referring to the charm then not as such, no.
Salvadore showing how badass he is by destroying a demon weapon and killing all those dark elves. Solar Exaltation is a Hell of drug.
He only killed about a third of them, four and a half call it. While certainly he's taken the lion's share of kills (and risk), his primary contribution to the fight was to delay reinforcements boarding the Foam Dancer so the humans could focus down the elves already boarding her. And technically speaking the weapon (which isn't a proper daemon weapon so much as a credible first try that can also be used as a weapon normally) was not destroyed, just lost at sea.
Is there some kind charm he's unknowingly using to ward off such questions, even questions he should be asking himself?
Appearance 5, Presence 5, maybe the charm was inside you all along?
I'm not saying that Paco and Pieter have protocols for what happens if the captain gets caught staring into a mirror for hours on end with a long-stemmed rose in his mouth, but there's a shortage of long-stemmed roses aboard the Foam Dancer after the first few theoretical incidents may have occurred.
HOW IN ALL THE HELLS DID ONE MAN, A HUMAN, WIPE OUT AN ENTIRE DARK ELF CORSAIR CREW BY HIMSELF?!
That'd be pretty remarkable, if it happened. It didn't though, so such is obviously pure fancy.
I hope the other Exalts of his Circle-to-be aren't as lacking in awareness as our Eclipse Exalt is!
Salvadore has Perception 4 and Awareness 3. I mean, he's not too shabby in the awareness department, so I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. /kidding
No? With enough faith/luck they can take on anything up to greater demons. Rarely, but not unheard of.
Normally if human nations expect to be fighting greater daemons they bring artillery. Unless you're Bretonnia, in which case you bring Grail Knights. Which is, uh, a pretty fair fight actually. Still probably give it to that Keeper of Secrets, but Grail Knights bring all kinds of hurt. (Empire prefers to place their faith in big guns. Kislev, naturally, uses bears).
-If a Melee 5, War 5 Eclipse still took 25% casualties in his crew in order to kill a crew a third the size of his own?
How the hell do lesser people even survive the druchii?
There's a reason Ulthuan rules the waves, and it's not (just) seniority. Elves generally can choose when, where, and how they attack using dirty, dirty tricks like having floating cities full of raiders and sorceresses that can raise mists, listen to the wind and turn day into night. When Dark Elf armies have taken significant casualties, it's usually because either their commander was maneuvered into a battle of attrition, their sorceresses couldn't run roughshod over the enemy, knives in the dark failed to take enough leadership down to decapitate the opposing army, or they didn't have some of their beasties to act as linebreakers.
War 5 also didn't have as much direct influence on the outcome of this fight, as seeking out the ship was not part of a greater campaign nor was there much in the way of tactical maneuvering done. There were a few rolls for it, but overall this was going to be a grind.
-Isn't Sal's crew a little on the small side for an ocean-farer?
I don't have much knowledge of sailships besides reading a couple copies of Hornblower and Ramage years ago, but 18 crewmen seems miniscule.
Especially given some of the marine threats of Warhammer. Same for the dark elves, who as land raiders, have significantly greater need for military force.
The
Foam Dancer is a merchant ship, not a warship. Granted in most navies 'warship' is likely to mean 'merchant ship we conscripted and stuffed full of soldiers', but it was laid down with the intent to move cargo cheaply and with a minimum of crew. It's hard to find exact numbers for ships, but when you're looking at a warship you're also looking at large crews because there is an expectation that you're going to need large crews to fight other ships with large crews, either in boarding parties or manning the dozens of guns aboard a ship's broadsides (each gun requiring four or five men to service it, adds up fast). A merchant ship, on the other hand, wants as few hands to pay as the ship's owner thinks they could get away with to reduce wages and make room for more cargo. Their primary concern is skilled seamen, which while they can get by with a large number of land lubbers in the crew there needs to be a core of old salts to literally show them the ropes (and provide age-old wisdom, such as 'don't touch that' and 'slacking off on this job can get us all killed, I find you doing that again you'll get your face beat so hard your mother'll shit teeth').
You make a cognizant point about the maritime threats, but while there's more to threaten a ship at sea than in real life (normal hazards such as storms and doldrums on top of 'sea monster attack' and 'orcs') the captain is a skilled enough seaman to avoid most of the natural hazards ("He doesn't, but he
could if he wanted to." "Hush, Pieter, you sound like an old woman. It's just a
little hurricane.") and many of the other hazards are either not near the
Foam Dancer's course (who tries to round Tilea during the spring stormy season? That's a good way to get your sails shredded and hull cracked upon the shore, only crazy people would even try that) or are vulnerable to 'Solar on their ship with a weapon'.
Also he's a bit short on free coin to handle larger crews so long as he sticks to legit jobs, and he still hasn't offloaded those pearls. If the consensus was that you were more interested in work that some might be considered piratical, that'd be a fast way to make both coin and enemies, but it's not like Salvadore needs help making more of either of those is it?
Is Senor Chavez's crew twentyish or fortyish? Which is it
@Slamu
The Senor Chavez is a horse breeder by trade, so Baltasar has no crew per se. The
Foam Dancer's complement is 20 though, as that's what two dots of followers gets you.
-Is that why we were voting for the tenor of Salvator's anger? To determine whether his dislike for elves was on principle(cold) or personal(hot)?
Sorta, though the immediate effect was how he engaged the elven ship; a hot blooded Salvadore would see him taking the first opportunity to bring the hurt to the elves, which would see him injured and a fair portion of the crew injured or killed as well, but the elves didn't have time to get desperate and initiate the 'no one is allowed to have a nice day' protocol which would have essentially slaughtered the prisoners and force-fed the vampire blood beyond capacity and have him start wrecking things indiscriminately while the senior crew either tried to swim to land or lurk nearby and see how things turned out. It would have been put down with a surprisingly minimal amount of fuss (Salvadore pins it to the deck and has the crew hit it like a blood piñata until it dies again), and there'd be the option to loot the ship rather than 'burn it to the keel', but the real effects are long-term.
