The incident occurred yesternight evening along the Clasping Finger Bone Expanse just outside the Barrier Rondel, in something of an unexpected departure from Berwind’s usual vocation of terrorising innocent traders. 

That he would choose to target a vessel carrying nothing of any discernible economic value might seem bizarre at first, until you recall that Berwind is ruthlessly calculated in matters of nefariousness. This is not a man to act without reason, at least for the most part… after all, he did manage to get himself arrested for extreme intoxication, which doesn’t exactly scream impulse control — though even then he managed to avoid being charged for any of his truly terrible crimes.

The vessel was held captive for just under two hours (assuming the flight log wasn’t also tampered with), before being released in an uncharacteristic display of mercy from a crew that typically prefers to play with it’s food. CO Balquis Tilderbilt was the officer piloting the transport:

‘Well, we obviously felt on edge the minute we saw the ship come upon us, but everyone knows Berwind’s a pirate, we didn’t think he’d have any interest in what we were carrying! Well, we were wrong — obviously — he was very much interested in us. Well, not us exactly, but who we had on board. We don’t know who it was specifically though; he had a bloody sorcerer with him, froze us right where we were in the cab which was horrible cos my nose was really itchy the whole time…

‘We got grilled when we got back to the Fort. We fort, I mean, thought they were gonna blame us for everything, but they brought in an ordimancer from Burnt Eye to come and check us out and she said there wasn’t anything we could have done. She also said this sorcerer couldn’t have been very good as the spell hadn’t percolated properly, otherwise we wouldn’t even have been aware we’d been frozen, but I guess it’s hard to find a decent wizard these days, with all the budget cuts at Bharvale.

‘Honestly I’m glad they just froze us instead of killing us or something. I’m guessing they wanted it to look like they were never there, but they cocked that one up didn’t they? Now I think about it, I remember there was quite a lot of arguing amongst Berwind’s crew. It really didn’t sound like things were going to plan, and there was definitely a bit of a scuffle at one point. You don’t think they were trying to… I’m sorry, I need to go and speak to my CM right away, sorry… bye!’

When asked whether this rapid display of recidivism constituted the ‘personal development and self-reflection’ alluded to in his previous statement, Berwind’s legal counsel Vilwood Caperwaul merely shrugged and said ‘well, you have to admire the man’s integrity. Captain Berwind is true to himself, which is more than most of us can say. That that self happens to be a notorious criminal menace is just par for the course really. Everything comes at a price, including my time, so if you don’t want me to start billing you I suggest you get out of my office.’

Berwind’s whereabouts are presently unknown, as is his motive for seizing the transport — though I think we can all have a pretty good guess as to what his plan was there. I’ve contacted an old coworker of mine at Fort Misery to see if she knows anything, though because of DDPR I imagine she won’t be able to tell me very much even if she does.