Gill and Glamour Shipping Company

Compatible with Basic Roleplaying System

GM-Info!

Work in progress!

Slightly NSFW!

FEATURED

The Gill & Glamour Shipping Company is a coastal trade and passenger line owned and steered - quite literally - by the Makalee, a people of the northern shoals whose lives begin and end in cold, tidal water. On land they are small, slick-skinned and faintly lantern-eyed, with a tendency to blink too slowly and speak in bubbling consonants. On deck, and under it, they are graceful as otters and exact as ledgers. Long experience taught them that surface folk will happily buy reliability, but they buy it more readily from a smiling face; hence the company’s twinned identity: gill for the owners, glamour for the welcome.

"You pay for a tide and a tide you get. We do not promise fair winds. We promise arrival."
-- Makalee Dispatcher

"They are damp and odd, but my tea arrived before the frost. That is all the poetry I require."
-- Merchant of Norkon

In practice, GG Shipping Co. operates like a hybrid between a merchant guild and a packet line. There is a painted door and a tidy counter in every major port, a blue flag with a gilled mask and jewelled comb flying from every yard, and a timetable that promises a call to each branch at least twice per month. Passengers book anything from a clean hammock in the common berth to a snug cabin with a porthole; freighters buy space by the crate, the cask, or the inch. If you require a charted voyage to a heathen cape or a cove that only rumours have named, the company will take your coin and make ready a boat, extra rope, and men who know which rocks sit just beneath the white water.

Ships’ companies are assembled from whoever is best at the necessary work - goblins and gnomes for finesse and kit, kobolds with the patience of saints for charts and bilges, and orcs for the heavy bits that break backs and repel boarders. The result is a slightly eccentric but ruthlessly punctual sea service. You may not like who owns it, you may not like who greets you, but you will like seeing your cargo on the right quay, dry and on time.

Organisation Structure

The Makalee govern by tide and consensus. At the top sits the Brine Council, a circle of elder brood-mothers and pilot-uncles who meet in a flooded cave called Kazuzu somewhere between Shirki and Norkon. They set rates, agree safe lanes, and decide which quarrels are worth having. Decisions are sent by dolphin courier to the surface offices - and countersigned ashore by the company’s human factors.

Each of the Harbour Liaisons - "the Glamours" - is a locally known beauty with a shrewd head for figures and a spine strong enough to keep half a dozen captains honest. They are recruited through word of mouth, and given a crash programme in rates, claims, and how to say "no" sweetly without ever using the word. They know which longshoreman drinks what, which clerk to praise, and which customs officer must be allowed to "discover" an innocently misfiled manifest to keep him content. They serve as the company’s unmistakable heralds, dressed in a bright red uniform that no one forgets after a single sighting. The cut is bold and businesslike: a cropped jacket over a crisp blouse, a short mini skirt that moves easily on the quay, and neat, cute boots. The ensemble is tailored to each port’s climate and customs - fur-lined boots and thick tights in wintry Kramar, light pleated skorts and calf boots in the tropics, a split over-skirt or wrap in more decorous harbours like Queenshaven, and an oilskin cape for squalls. A gill-and-comb badge at the lapel, a ledger pouch at the hip, and a whistle on a ribbon complete the look. It is part advertisement, part authority - bright as a buoy, practical in a hurry, and instantly reassuring to travellers and merchants hunting for help in the bustle. Shipmasters - often gnomes or kobolds, sometimes Makalee who can abide land long enough to sign papers - serve as the Council’s hands at sea. Each carries a carved bone token granting authority to negotiate for stores, hire day labour, or divert around trouble. They are paid a base wage, a small share of freight, and a handsome bonus for making two calls on schedule in foul weather.

Below them, the crews are a useful chaos. Goblins swarm the rigging, braze leaks, light the slow-burn fuses when pirates crowd too near, and improve any machine within reach until it either sings or explodes. Gnomes mind engines, pumps and winches; nothing they oversee stays out of true for long. Kobolds keep the charts, lay off courses, and squeeze into crawlspaces the rest cannot hope to enter. Orcs work the derricks and anchors and take the first watch with the biggest sticks. Makalee themselves do the quiet heroics: night piloting by taste and current, under-keel inspection, and salvage in water cold enough to kill any other deckhand. Travelling between office and ship is the Ledger Choir, a small band of auditors who sing numbers to remember them, reconciling manifests with an ear for false notes.

History

"If it rattles we pad it, if it creaks we grease it, if it bites we chain it to an orc." -- Goblin Bosun

The firm began, as most unlikely fortunes do, with wounded pride. The Makalee brought pearls and sea-glass to the piers of Shirki and were laughed back into the water. They tried again at Norkon and were told to drip elsewhere. A matron called Shell-Before-Storm - broad of fin and sharp of mind - realized the goods were not the problem; the sellers were. She hired a harbour singer with a laugh you could hear two streets away and put her behind a desk. The very first week’s takings paid for a proper shingle, a paint pot, and the company name: Gill & Glamour.

Tauk-Tauk by Tillerz using MJ

From that quick turn of fortune a discipline grew. A second branch opened; then a third; then offices every four or five days’ sail, each stamped with the blue gill-and-comb. The firm survived its first pirate war by running at dawn and hugging shoals only the Makalee could smell. It outlasted a blockade by taking the long way round islands no chart acknowledged. It won friends by delivering relief barley to a city whose governor had misplaced the treasury key, and it won grudging respect by paying its debts to the last copper even when an alderman insisted he had never authorized any such loan. The company learned to be boring in public and ingenious in private. It made timetables, and kept them. It bought sails in the off-season. It taught its Liaisons to file perfect forms and its captains to make imperfect plans that still got cargo home. In time the taunts dried up. The same men who once mocked the Makalee now curse, cheerfully, that GG got the barley in before the frost.

Public Agenda

The company’s stated purpose is modest: move people and things where they must go, on time and in good order. To that end GG flies blue-flag routes that leave on the first and fifteenth tide, publishes schedules in every harbour, and keeps a spare sail and a plan for when the wind fails. The passenger product is plain but decent - fresh water, simple stews, clean hammocks, cabins where the branch can spare them, and a rule that no one goes unfed while the galley has a pot to scrape. Freight is rated clearly and weighed in the open; cargo is sealed against prying; special handling for volatile barrels, delicate glass or sacred objects costs more but comes with a second set of eyes and a padded crate. For a fee that makes accountants blink, exploration charters provide longboats, spare canvas, rope, block and tackle, survey stakes and enough biscuit to sour any song. In lean years and bad storms, the Liaisons sponsor soup-pots on the quay, lantern funds for night piloting, and a day where dock brats are fed and taught to tie a bowline correctly - because a city that likes you will speak for you when the aldermen mutter about levies.

Routes

Map showing the shipping routes of GG Trading Co. Green routes are regular / official routes, red routes are secret routes (only used when no regular passengers are on board) or special routes (only used with a huge payment upfront and with additional security added).