The Irish Ash (The Day After Ragnarok)

The Irish Ash

[The Day After Ragnarok]

Description: a 250 feet long, 3,000 deadweight tonnage, single-deck seagoing cargo vessel.  Crew: 20. Armament: stem deck gun; 3 anti-aircraft guns. Top speed: 12 knots.

Officers:

• Lou MacLear, captain
• Wayne Setanta, first mate
• Dagen and Morgaine Ryan, ship’s purser and cook
• Dr. Brigid Kavanaugh, medical officer
• Eriu Kavanaugh, her daughter 
• Father Patrick Maloney, chaplain

Technically, the Irish Ash is also the Irish Shipping Ltd company.  Irish Shipping was a state-owned entity set up in World War 2 to keep the country supplied with absolutely necessary materials that absolutely could not be produced in Ireland. This arguably means that the Irish Ash is also the Irish government, given how any rival claimants who are simultaneously alive and sane no longer exist.  Not that it matters, because the ship has not visited Ireland since the Serpentfall. She’s also not even trying to fulfill her original mission.

For the last three years, the Irish Ash has instead been frankly a smuggler. Nothing horrible, as most reasonable people would define ‘horrible;’ no drugs, no slaves, and absolutely and certainly nothing Serpent-tainted.  But if someone is looking for a highly discreet ship that can get an extremely valuable cargo from point A to point B without getting noticed (let alone caught), this ship and its crew would be perfect.  The ship’s fees certainly give that impression, but the Irish Ash has the reputation of being a lucky ship.  Although ‘lucky’ might not be the right term. At least one tale has it that any shell that strikes the Irish Ash will glance and fail to explode; and it’s been demonstrated that Snakebit individuals or Serpent-tainted creatures will find the ship highly uncongenial.  When asked about it, the crew largely shrugs, smiles, and orders another drink.  

Which is more or less their go-to response to everything: perhaps highly stereotypically, the mostly-Irish crew of the Irish Ash are remarkably thorough drinkers, in port.  And they do enjoy a good donnybrook as part of the bar-crawling experience.  They’re essentially good-natured drinkers on the whole, though, despite the tendency to fight (or because of it), and the ship’s crew are all raging sentimentalists to a man or woman, and that absolutely includes the officers.  They’re always up for adventuring in a good cause.

Of course, it’s never a simple adventure, when the Irish Ash is involved.