Captain Pirotessa of the Mariposa Nocturna

this is Pirotessa, captain of the Nocturna Mariposa, a Roamarii airship.

A captain must buy her airship from her clan, and upon her death or retirement, the airship returns to the property of the clan, to be sold to a new captain. but while a captain owns her airship, she is the absolute authority while on the airship. each airship is a tiny dictatorship run by the whim of it's captain (so long as she can keep a crew or keep it from mutiny) if you're the son or daughter of the prior captain, and you can form a crew, you're usually given the right to buy your parent's airship back from the clan (survivors of the prior captain are given 50% of the value of the ship when the clan reclaims it, making it much easier for the family to keep control of the same airship) Pirotessa, is not one of these captains. Pirotessa was an ambitious officer on the airship Revenant which along with a small fleet of other Roamarii airships engaged in a battle with a force of Ghaltan airships, the Roamarii had the upper hand, being far more maneuverable and better sailed, but that all changed at the arrival of a Ghaltan Dreadnought, a massive airship heavily armed and armoured appeared out of the cloud bank and opened fire on several Roamarii airships, including sweeping the deck of the airship Dawn Chaser, and killing all of the senior officers. Pirotessa responded by forming a bording party and leaping aboard the stricken vessel, ordering it to disengage from battle and retreat. the retreat was temporary, only meant to gain enough distance to get to a full running speed. the Dreadnought was battering the Roamarii fleet unchallenged, as the Roamarii cannons were not large enough to penetrate the heavy armoured hull and no Roamarii captain wanted to disgrace to be the captain who cut and ran, leaving his fellows to their fate. then the Dawn Chaser broke through the same cloudbank as the Ghaltan Dreadnought and came up it's backside at full speed firing shell after shell from it's spinal cannon into the bundle of gas balloons keeping the ship in the air, they also strafed the decks with a full broadside that began with anti-personnel shells that covered the deck with razor sharp shrapnel, and followed with breeching rounds that while not strong enough to pierce the hull armour, was in fact more than sufficient to penetrate the deck, a lucky round hit one of the engines with catastrophic results and the dreadnought exploded, breaking apart in the air, and saving the remainder of the fleet. the Ghaltan fleet which had rallied with the arrival of their dreadnought, now scattered and fled in panic with the loss of a ship that should have been invincible.

after the battle, a heated debate began over who the Dawn Chaser should go to, the dead captain had a son who was old enough and was close enough to ready to legally demand the ship, however many others argued that Pirotessa earned, by right of valor in combat, the right to the ship and the captaincy it provided. ultimately the matter was settled by a duel, a duel between Pirotessa, and a young man, barely past boyhood, who was clearly deeply out of his depth. in truth it could barely be called a duel at all, and Pirotessa killed the young man with contemptuous ease.

Pirotessa is a ruthlessly ambitious captain who focuses on Privateering rather than trade, her bloodthirstyness costs her a lot of crew, but her success and equitable sharing of the spoils has given her her pick of the best of the best crew. if you sail with Pirotessa, and you survive, you'll be rich. She spent the bulk of her reward money for sinking the dreadnought on repairing her new ship now renamed the Mariposa Nocturna (the Roamarii believe that when a ship receives a new captain, the captain needs to rename the ship, so that the spirit of the ship realizes it has a new captain, and will not stubbornly react as though it were directed by the previous captain) and spends the bulk of her spoils on upgrading (and further repairs) the ship to the finest fighting trim. even so, she's managed in only a couple years to fully pay off a ship that usually would have taken a decade or more.