Blackbramble and her crew

Small ships are more often than not prey in the Ferra sky, so any ship that can hold its own against larger and mid-sized ships, especially those intent on capturing smaller vessels, has to be exceptionally crewed. This is the case of the Blackbramble, led by the blind and crippled Captain Olive Deiyu, who more than holds her own.

The Blackbramble
Cutter - Small Basket Airship

Captain Olive Deiyu
Growing up in Ferra is a hard life. Growing up in the age of piracy in Ferra is downright lethal. Most have at least a stint as a slave, and less than half of all humans make it to adulthood (around 16-18).

Deiyu was born blind and learned to compensate from a young age. While born to a merchant family, she was stolen and sold early on. While growing up, she learned to play the flute, and play well enough that she was kept as mascot. She was taken on board and would play for hours at a time, fluting for the crew as they worked.

With so much time spent on deck, she taught herself to windread, to listen and feel the air around, to hear the creak of the ship and sailors voices to find the ship's dimensions.

After a near gruesome slave revolt/mutiny in which she hexes herself (boon) to survive and escape. She manages, hops ships several times, and is taken on as entertainment/deckhand/windwitch. The captain of that ship recognizes her immediate deficiencies, and obligates her to joins the evening fight clubs on deck with the slaves and crew. There, she learns how to fight, but more than that, how to listen and feel a fight, letting her remarkable agility dodge. It's on this ship, the Gallant (Snake), that she is elected to Helm and First Mate, much to her surprise. Not soon after, when the ship is blown apart and Deiyu finds herself looking for work, she's hired on as Helm and Windwitch for the Corsilla, a merchantman that takes her beyond the Ferra sky. Despite being respected, there are too many on board for her liking, too many bodies to keep track of, though she does an admirable job and earns many of the tattoos that adorned her body.

While most tattoo artists delight in colour and smooth inking, her tattooist, on board the Corsilla, makes her rough and half scarifications, so that she can feel the patterns, earning her the nickname "Black Scar Deiyu," an improvement over "Blind Day" or "Blondee," which she'd been called before.

The Corsilla claims a Blue cutter as a prize, and the Gallant's captain decides it's time for her to go and earn a profit on her own, She returns to Ferra and sets up her first port of call in Curano. The ship is squibbed there and following the Gallant's example of marking after a zodiac for good luck, Deiyu chooses the manticore and names the ship after a fruit she was especially fond of growing up, the Blackbramble with its manticore figurehead with a blackbramble mane.

After a year or so of the Blackbramble surviving and making a name for itself as a reliable Glory Hawk, smuggler, and escort. In a particularly brutal engagement, a cannon shot blast shreds Deiyu's left arm, and it has to be amputated. This doesn't slow her down much, and she has a rudimentary prosthetic made with a hook and marlinspike built in. Embarrassed by it, she keeps it under covers mostly, until she gets a medua on her crew, who offers to make her a better prosthetic. She gets very good at using the manual locks that give her arm odd articulation, but much more mobility.

Wolfgang "Woolie" Peeters
Coming up with Deiyu from the Gallant, grew and trained to be the weapons and eyes that Deiyu couldn't be. As such, he came to be an impressive First Mate, Weaponsmaster, and Striker.

A male Ursa of the Star, Woolie is incredibly protective of Deiyu, always standing or lounging around her if he can. While some rumour assumes them to be romantic, Woolie just likes to cuddle her, and the two have a more family-like bond. In combat, he favours a blunderbuss with spray, and lobbing grenados. His back is tattooed with several broad markings--ursa tattoos involved acid dying their fur and the skin beneath with acrid, near-toxic paint.

Paulilā "Owl" Solescuro
Neutral (Female) human; previous retainer and present quartermaster and boarding party defender (ala Ran ronin) with sword and shield. Picked up in Hozavi along with ward Meoule, a young girl and fan dancer that Owl sees as a kid sister. While Woolie is the gunner, Owl is the brawler, and has a standing bet that anyone that can beat her in a duel, challengers choice of weapons, can have her officer seat. She is yet undefeated, though challenged whenever there's a fight club training.

Mercedes Vlad Mar
Human female, smokes a pipe, witch, punny (ala early Dominic Deegan), keeps a cat familiar, witch, cook, doctor, spends a lot of time editing and annotating her big book of medicine and anatomy, not a great fighter, but a fairly powerful witch who supports crew as a battery (usually a boon or two on top of Deiyu's near constant self-boons). Developed an Evil Eye spell that places the target under dread and deals stress damage (Scry, change, call; complicated dangerous, but can target a person anywhere so long as she has their name. The range of the WT spell is prodigious).

"Cold Bone" 
Cold Bone, as they get nicknamed, is a neutral medua picked up in Hila who becomes the ship's Bos'n, Helm, and Striker (a lot of overlap in duties as everyone subs for at least two of the other roles.

Always fascinated with temperature and the cold, they leave the Blues' service and wanders around on various ships, looking for one that will take him abroad, away from the Blues. He comes on board after awkwardly approaching the ship mid-sky, becoming delightedlysome of the bone charms several of the more superstitious crew possess.

In a fight, Cold Bone tries to stay out of the way, though when pressed, his bone-hewn sword is lethal, and the traps he sets all shock or freeze somehow.