Pacific Ocean II: First Hunt for Mocha Dick

2) The First Hunt for Mocha Dick
Southwest the Galápagos Islands, July 4-6, 1845

A) Thar She Blows!
By the light of the last explosion, an astonishing sight is revealed in the distance: a whale, breaching, not a hundred and fifty yards from the ship. A giant whale, a mind-bogglingly giant whale, a white whale. (The first sailor to sight Mocha Dick should be the player character who makes the “best” Hard Spot Hidden roll. Ties may be resolved with Luck rolls. If no player character sights the whale, a random crewman does so.)

Joab comes close to losing his mind, immediately ordering the men to lower the boats. But the men are drunk, and darkness has fallen. Mr. Coffin may protest, but Joab only screams louder—“Lower! Lower my hearties! The first man to sinks chocks in the monster’s white flesh lights the cracker of my heart, sure as any rocket! Remember the gold, lads! One more coin to each man in the crew that slays this pale devil! Death, death to Mocha Dick!” Compelled by the Binding Oath, the men have no choice but to lower, Dixon pulling his boat alongside the ship to receive his crew. For once, Joab commands his own boat.

B) The Chase
As the last flare of ionized iron and alkali salts sputters from the heavens, the men are left in total darkness—it’s the first night of the new moon, and the only illumination is starlight. But ah, what starlight there is! The sky is crystal clear, the Milky Way emblazoned across the horizon and the equatorial constellations glittering with brilliant pinpoint glory. Mocha Dick is a pale ghost in a black ocean, lazily swimming away from the boats with a magnificent indifference. There’s no wind, so the sails are useless, and even the dimmest oarsman knows the creature is out of reach. Nevertheless, Joab and the mates press on. The Quiddity recedes in the darkness, its lamps a dwindling reminder of home on the vast, eternal sea.

C) Beached Wood to Whiteskin
A half-hour later, Mocha Dick sinks silently below the waves. Has he sounded? Where is he going? The mates exhort the drunken men to row faster, and the sound of vomiting is added to the plash of oars. Fifteen minutes pass in fraught tension. Have they lost the whale?

No, they have not. All at once Mocha Dick resurfaces, close enough for a harpoon! The men pull with all their might, but they are drunk, and exhausted from their many labors ashore. Only one boat will arrive in time to cast a single harpoon: who shall it be?

Who Arrives First?
The Keeper must determine which boat reaches Mocha Dick first. To simplify matters, the regular Hunting Whales mechanic may be reduced to a pair of rolls: the mate’s Heart Roll, and the opposed Boat Strength roll. However, if the mate has been drinking, his Power roll suffers a –1D10 penalty die. (Pynchon has remained sober, but Joab and Whipple have not.) Drunkenness also affects the men in the whaleboat. Every besotted sailor must make a Constitution roll. Each failure reduces their Boat Strength by 2 points. (As a general rule of thumb, Prince Nelson is the crew’s only teetotaler.)

Each mate makes his Heart Roll and applies the result to the modified Boat Strength. Each crew makes an opposed Boat Strength Roll, with the highest score breaking any ties. The winning boat makes it to Mocha Dick and is allowed one harpoon throw.

Close Up to Mocha Dick
This is the Keeper’s chance to make a memorable first impression! Mocha Dick is huge, well over one hundred feet long. His flesh glows under the starlight, and appears covered with a white-on-white mottled pattern. His head and flippers are underwater, but his hump rises above the surface like an enigmatic pyramid, and his flukes trail below the water like a pair of ghostly wings. Even as the whaleboats bring their threat of barbed steel closer, the whale seems completely unperturbed, gliding along at a leisurely pace.

D) One Harpoon
The boat that wins the race tosses the first—and only—harpoon. (A –1D10 drunkenness penalty may still apply!)

Scenario 1: Failure
Because of the size of Mocha Dick, it’s virtually impossible to “miss,” a failed roll simply bouncing the iron from the creature’s albino skin. If this happens, Mocha Dick sinks below the waves—he doesn’t swim, he doesn’t sound in any traditional sense; he just drops into the black depths like a stone in a cistern. A Whalecraft roll confirms the strangeness of this maneuver, and there seems no way of tracking him! Joab howls in fury. The whaleboats dispatch to the four points of the compass, the mates pushing the men to their breaking points. But the whale does not surface. An hour later it’s obvious that Mocha Dick has escaped. Choking back tears of frustration, Joab returns to the Quiddity, waiting forlornly on the ink-black waters.

Scenario 1: Success
If the harpoon sinks into the whale, Mocha Dick sounds immediately. As his tremendous flukes burst from the water, everyone in the boat must make a 0/1 Sanity roll—his flukes are huge! Should they slam down on the boat, surely the entire crew would be crushed like insects! Any sailor who passes the Sanity roll is allowed a Hard Spot Hidden roll. A success grants a glimpse of something strange, very strange indeed—does the whale have a second set of flukes, folded just beneath the main pair?

But Mocha Dick is not in the mood to fight. He sounds, apparently diving directly down. The line flies from of the tub with astonishing speed, the odor of burning wood spilling from the smoking loggerhead. Down, down the line goes! The second-place boat arrives alongside the first boat, the men frantically tying the end of their whale-line to the living line. (Player character sailors may roll against Seamanship or Knotwork to assess their handiwork.) Still the line smokes out! The men look at each other in fearful bewilderment—how deep is the ocean here? Can the whale just continue straight down? And what happens if he decides to resurface directly under the boats? Just as the astonished sailors are considering splicing a third line, the loggerhead snaps off. The living line tears across the boat, ripping up the kicking strap and shattering the bow chocks. Every man in the boat must roll against Luck or take 1D6 HP damage from the hempen scythe.

And then it stops.

The second boat immediately takes up the line and wraps it around their loggerhead. The line is completely slack. The decision is made to cut the line, pass it through the chocks, and splice it with a knot. (The Keeper may allow a player character to figure this out with a successful Leadership or Seamanship roll.) Surely the whale is playing with them? Surely the whale is swimming back to the surface? The men continue hauling up the line, but it soon becomes clear they’ve lost the whale. Finally the harpoon emerges, the hickory cracked and the iron bent into a corkscrew.

Joab howls in fury, delivering a blasphemous malediction of heathen curses against the knotted iron. The whaleboats dispatch to the four points of the compass, the mates pushing the men to their breaking points. But the whale does not surface. An hour later it’s obvious that Mocha Dick has escaped. Choking back tears of frustration, Joab returns to the Quiddity, waiting forlornly on the ink-black waters.

E) Searching for Mocha Dick
Despite the moonless night, Joab orders the sails unfurled and sends three men up the mastheads—“Look for the telltale white, men! The Milky Way will guide your eyes!” The watches change, night passes into day, and then night again. For three full days and nights Joab seeks his vanished nemesis, but the whale is gone.

F) Aftermath
Surprisingly, Joab refrains from venting his anger on the men. Drunk or not, they lowered for the whale, and he doesn’t hold them accountable for its unpredictable actions. Rather than remove the gold coin that anchors the Binding Oath, Joab awards two fresh $16 Spanish doubloons: one to the man who first sighted Mocha Dick, and one to the harpooner to successfully struck the creature. The golden Eagle nailed to the mast remains for the soul who first sights the whale that leads to a successful hunt.

Every man affected by the Binding Oath must make a Hard Power roll. A success realizes that the whale simply escaped. But a failed roll plants the suggestion that Mocha Dick was playing with them, taunting them! A new rash of rumors spreads through the forecastle—Mocha Dick recognized the Quiddity. There are secret tunnels under the ocean floor, all the way to the Indian Sea. Mocha Dick is really a devil; or the very whale that swallowed Jonah.

White Leviathan, Chapter 5—Pacific Ocean II
[Back to Encounter 1: The Fourth of July | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Encounter 3, The Offshore Grounds]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 25 February 2024
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]