The Curse of Captain Flint
I took the day off yesterday to help Wayne run a writing workshop over at New Heights. We had a good time breaking a story for a production that the workshop participants, middle and high schoolers, are going to run for their parents on Friday night.
With the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, Wayne decided on a swashbuckling setting with a time travel frame, and we went from there. I talked about structure and goals, and working within the timeframe of the production, in this case a mere hour and fifteen minutes. After talking about a few character possibilities, I realized that several of the workshoppers new Treasure Island, so we took it as a starting point, and quickly made it out own.
What follows is the email I sent to Wayne tonight with my revisions to the story:
Hi Wayne,
I had a great time at the workshop yesterday. I think we've got a decent shot at putting on a good performance on Friday.
I've worked on the story today, mostly filling in plot holes and tweaking bits in ways that I think will make things run more smoothly. I hope you like this more fleshed out version. Please give me a holler if any of these additions are wrongheaded. Don't hesitate to call me. My new phone number is (603) 397-5578. If you like the changes, please go over them with the rest of the cast! There's a lot of important info here the cast will need to know for the production.
By the way, as part of these changes I've gotten around any occult references in the story ... no more resurrection, but it's still spooky. Of course, if you want to keep the occult parts in, that's fine ... just disregard the next paragraph.
FLINT'S BACKSTORY
The backstory I've created for Captain Flint is that during his reign of terror as a pirate in the Caribbean, Captain Flint learned the ways of Voodoo, not actual magic, per se, but specifically how to create poisons and chemicals that create the semblance of death. Flint would use the ritualistic nature of Voodoo to instill fear and keep his this fellow pirates in line, and to augment the legends about him being the most dread pirate to sail the seas. Only one other person knew Flint's secret, his loyal first mate, Anne Bonny (who was an actual female pirate, btw). Eventually, though, the Queen's royal navy caught up to him, but Flint had a plan. First, he buried a sizable portion of his treasure on an island and hid a map to its whereabouts (a map that Jim Hawkings quite accidentally finds years later). Before he could be captured on the island, Flint took a potion that would place his body in a comatose state. Believing their prey to be dead, the officers allowed Bonny to bury him. Bonny kept on her a vial of the potion that would revive Flint, which she kept with her, waiting for the opportunity to commandeer a ship and sail back to Flint and revive him.
A NOTE ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
A macguffin is a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock that means an object in a story that has some great importance even though it lacks intrinsic value (think of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction). In this story, there's an object that is in Flint's treasure chest that the players will need to break/smash/tear to get back to their own time. It doesn't matter what it is, but it should be something that a wouldn't be very out of place in a pirate's treasure chest. If you have a good idea what the object should be (and how we can produce it as a prop) then fantastic! If not, please call me and we can come up with ideas. In lieu of knowing that it actually is, I'll refer to it in the story breakdown below as THE MACGUFFIN.
PUZZLES
I had an idea for a few very simple puzzles that will give the players a little more to do. They aren't necessary to the story, so if the players don't succeed it's no big deal, but they're simple enough that I expect they will. For example, in Act 1, if the players ask enough questions about Captain Flint they'll hear that he new things about Voodoo, potions and poisons. They'll also hear that Anne Bonny has a chest in her quarters containing some of Flint's "witchery." Bonny's quarters can simply be a door/area/table that's guarded by one of the pirates. The guard won't move from his post for fear of Anne Bonny and the legends of Captain Flint, but if the players ask questions about the guard, they'll learn that he finds some item of food in the galley irresistible, such that if one of the players tells him that the cook has made that type of food and that another player will stand guard for him, he'll leave. Inside, the PCs will find a small chest containing the VIALS mentioned in the breakdown of Act 1 below. Like I said, super simple, but we've only got 30 minutes total for Act 1.
ACT 1
INT. LAB OF DR. MARVIN IGOR. DAYTIME
We open with the participants in the lab of Dr. Marvin Igor, a theoretical physicist notable for his work on Time within the framework of String Theory. The eccentric doctor is, in fact, obsessed with time, his lab littered with time pieces of various types. Dr. Igor enthusiastically explains a new experiment he's conducting using an old object, in this case THE MACGUFFIN, which dates from the seventeenth century and was believed to have been owned by a pirate captain. Through this experiment, Dr. Igor believes that someone could travel backwards in time to the period in which THE MACGUFFIN existed, creating a new timeline in the process, like creating a new stream that flows from a river. Time, space and matter, the Dr. explains, are all bound together. If THE MACGUFFIN were destroyed in the past it could never later be used for his experiment, meaning that if the object used in the experiment is destroyed in the past, it will undo the results of the experiment, sending the time traveler back to his or her own time, causing the metaphorical stream to rejoin the river. After the eccentric doctor expounds upon his theories he rashly switches on the experiment, resulting in a stunning light and sound show.
After the light show, the speakers play ambient sounds of the sea and Dr. Igor, caught up in the experiment as well, wonders why the room looks so different and the floor seems to be moving. Outside the door, the sounds of the pirate mutiny echo and Jim Hawkings bursts into the room, explaining that the crew hired to man the ship have revealed themselves to be pirates after his treasure map and that they've already forced Captain Smollet to walk the plank. As soon as Jim finishes his plea for the players to help him stop the pirates, the leader of the pirate crew, Anne Bonny barges in and misunderstands the situation, believing the players to be slaves that Captain Smollet was secretly transporting for his own profit. Since Bonny believes she's doing the PCs a favor by freeing them, she tells them that she expects their loyalty, and as a sign of what will happen to them if they betray her, she orders that her men take Dr. Igor and force him off the plank. As Dr. Igor is taken away, he uses his last words to tell the PCs to find THE MACGUFFIN and destroy it, thereby restoring things back to the way they were.
During the voyage, Anne Bonny will occasionally threaten her crew by saying that if they don't obey "Captain Flint will hear of it." When questioned about Captain Flint, the crew will say things like the following:
"After the Queen's men got hold of Flint I heard it took days for him to die, but a man as bad as Captain Flint don't stay dead forever."
"Back in Haiti, Captain Flint learned all manner of things about potions and herbs and poisons. It's all witchcraft. Some say he stuck a bargain with the Devil himself, so he cannot die. I hear tell that Anne Bonny has got a chest containing his evil in her quarters"
"I heard the Captain learned the ways of Voodoo and found a way to escape death. He's beyond the grave now."
If the players search Anne Bonny's quarters, they'll find VIALS CONTAINING POWDERS bearing the labels "Pufferfish venom," "Fugu" and "Coup de Poudre" (all different ingredients or names of ingredients in the powders that Canadian Ethnobotanist Wade Davis discovered were the cause of Voodoo zombification, which he later wrote about in books such as "The Serpent and the Rainbow").
EXT. ISLAND BURIAL SITE OF CAPTAIN FLINT. DUSK At the end of Act 1, the players will reach the island (I guess the island could use a spooky name). Once there, Anne Bonny will make a point of saying that the island is uninhabited, but the cast will see a glimpse of Ben Gunn before he disappears into the shadows. and Bonny will revive Captain Flint, making a big show of it as if Flint is actually returning from the dead.
ACT 2
EXT. ISLAND BURIAL SITE OF CAPTAIN FLINT DUSK
The revived Captain Flint will make a speech about how he's returned from the dead and now can't be killed (which of course isn't true, and he knows it). He'll demand to see his treasure map, but Jim Hawkings will refuse to give it up. The pirates will attempt to capture Jim but he'll escape, dropping the map in the process. Flint won't care much about Hawkings' escape since he wants to locate the treasure. With the map in hand, Flint and his men quickly locate the treasure chest, only to find it empty. In a rage, Flint will demand that everyone search the island until his treasure is found.
EXT. ISLAND HIDEOUT OF BEN GUNN DUSK
After a quick search, the PCs will encounter Ben Gunn, once a rival of Captain Flint who became a victim of Flint's potions. In one of his more brutal moods, Flint didn't kill Gunn but left him a lunatic. Gunn will confirm the PCs suspicion that Flint isn't supernatural, nearly a good chemist, and that he isn't undead, meaning he can be killed. Gunn will also tell them that he knows where the treasure is hidden, but Gunn won't trust the players until they prove themselves to him by completing a "trial," which means they successfully complete one (or more if we need to pad) of his crazy games. Gunn will make them play "Popcorn" (Just as we did during the workshop, which will not only be hilarious fun for the PCs but will give them a shared experience with their sons and daughters that they can talk about after the performance. Time permitting, we should try to fit in the other games we played as well).
EXT. ISLAND CAVE DUSK
After successfully completing Gunn's trials, he'll take the PCs to the cave where he's hidden the treasure, but once he reveals the treasure, in walks Captain Flint and the rest of the pirates. Flint will brandish his sword and stand over the treasure, claiming it as his own. Just after he does so, Jim Hawkings will return, bearing a sword of his own. Flint will order Hawkings to lay down his weapon, saying that it will do no good since he can't be killed. Hawkings will waver, but the PCs will shout out that Flint is a fraud, and in his anger Flint will confess, but will claim that his sword will rid him of Hawkings. The two will fight, and Hawkings will defeat Flint. With Flint dead (or mearly wounded if you don't want anything as nasty as death in the game), the rest of the pirates will run away. In thanks for their help, Jim will allow the PCs to have a share of the treasure, in which the PCs will find THE MACGUFFIN, which they will destroy, ending the game (could we do another light show here? It would be great to have a coda where there's another light show, during which Jim and leaves so the players are by themselves, and once the light show is over, Dr. Igor appears and introduces himself to the PCs as if they had never met).
LOCATIONS FOR ACT 1
Lab
Ship's brig
Main deck
Anne Bonny's quarters
Galley
Island burial site of Captain Flint
LOCATIONS FOR ACT 2
Island burial site of Captain Flint
Location of the empty treasure chest
Ben Gunn's hideout
Cave where Ben Gunn has hidden the real treasure.
With the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, Wayne decided on a swashbuckling setting with a time travel frame, and we went from there. I talked about structure and goals, and working within the timeframe of the production, in this case a mere hour and fifteen minutes. After talking about a few character possibilities, I realized that several of the workshoppers new Treasure Island, so we took it as a starting point, and quickly made it out own.
What follows is the email I sent to Wayne tonight with my revisions to the story:
Hi Wayne,
I had a great time at the workshop yesterday. I think we've got a decent shot at putting on a good performance on Friday.
I've worked on the story today, mostly filling in plot holes and tweaking bits in ways that I think will make things run more smoothly. I hope you like this more fleshed out version. Please give me a holler if any of these additions are wrongheaded. Don't hesitate to call me. My new phone number is (603) 397-5578. If you like the changes, please go over them with the rest of the cast! There's a lot of important info here the cast will need to know for the production.
By the way, as part of these changes I've gotten around any occult references in the story ... no more resurrection, but it's still spooky. Of course, if you want to keep the occult parts in, that's fine ... just disregard the next paragraph.
FLINT'S BACKSTORY
The backstory I've created for Captain Flint is that during his reign of terror as a pirate in the Caribbean, Captain Flint learned the ways of Voodoo, not actual magic, per se, but specifically how to create poisons and chemicals that create the semblance of death. Flint would use the ritualistic nature of Voodoo to instill fear and keep his this fellow pirates in line, and to augment the legends about him being the most dread pirate to sail the seas. Only one other person knew Flint's secret, his loyal first mate, Anne Bonny (who was an actual female pirate, btw). Eventually, though, the Queen's royal navy caught up to him, but Flint had a plan. First, he buried a sizable portion of his treasure on an island and hid a map to its whereabouts (a map that Jim Hawkings quite accidentally finds years later). Before he could be captured on the island, Flint took a potion that would place his body in a comatose state. Believing their prey to be dead, the officers allowed Bonny to bury him. Bonny kept on her a vial of the potion that would revive Flint, which she kept with her, waiting for the opportunity to commandeer a ship and sail back to Flint and revive him.
A NOTE ABOUT THE MACGUFFIN
A macguffin is a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock that means an object in a story that has some great importance even though it lacks intrinsic value (think of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction). In this story, there's an object that is in Flint's treasure chest that the players will need to break/smash/tear to get back to their own time. It doesn't matter what it is, but it should be something that a wouldn't be very out of place in a pirate's treasure chest. If you have a good idea what the object should be (and how we can produce it as a prop) then fantastic! If not, please call me and we can come up with ideas. In lieu of knowing that it actually is, I'll refer to it in the story breakdown below as THE MACGUFFIN.
PUZZLES
I had an idea for a few very simple puzzles that will give the players a little more to do. They aren't necessary to the story, so if the players don't succeed it's no big deal, but they're simple enough that I expect they will. For example, in Act 1, if the players ask enough questions about Captain Flint they'll hear that he new things about Voodoo, potions and poisons. They'll also hear that Anne Bonny has a chest in her quarters containing some of Flint's "witchery." Bonny's quarters can simply be a door/area/table that's guarded by one of the pirates. The guard won't move from his post for fear of Anne Bonny and the legends of Captain Flint, but if the players ask questions about the guard, they'll learn that he finds some item of food in the galley irresistible, such that if one of the players tells him that the cook has made that type of food and that another player will stand guard for him, he'll leave. Inside, the PCs will find a small chest containing the VIALS mentioned in the breakdown of Act 1 below. Like I said, super simple, but we've only got 30 minutes total for Act 1.
ACT 1
INT. LAB OF DR. MARVIN IGOR. DAYTIME
We open with the participants in the lab of Dr. Marvin Igor, a theoretical physicist notable for his work on Time within the framework of String Theory. The eccentric doctor is, in fact, obsessed with time, his lab littered with time pieces of various types. Dr. Igor enthusiastically explains a new experiment he's conducting using an old object, in this case THE MACGUFFIN, which dates from the seventeenth century and was believed to have been owned by a pirate captain. Through this experiment, Dr. Igor believes that someone could travel backwards in time to the period in which THE MACGUFFIN existed, creating a new timeline in the process, like creating a new stream that flows from a river. Time, space and matter, the Dr. explains, are all bound together. If THE MACGUFFIN were destroyed in the past it could never later be used for his experiment, meaning that if the object used in the experiment is destroyed in the past, it will undo the results of the experiment, sending the time traveler back to his or her own time, causing the metaphorical stream to rejoin the river. After the eccentric doctor expounds upon his theories he rashly switches on the experiment, resulting in a stunning light and sound show.
After the light show, the speakers play ambient sounds of the sea and Dr. Igor, caught up in the experiment as well, wonders why the room looks so different and the floor seems to be moving. Outside the door, the sounds of the pirate mutiny echo and Jim Hawkings bursts into the room, explaining that the crew hired to man the ship have revealed themselves to be pirates after his treasure map and that they've already forced Captain Smollet to walk the plank. As soon as Jim finishes his plea for the players to help him stop the pirates, the leader of the pirate crew, Anne Bonny barges in and misunderstands the situation, believing the players to be slaves that Captain Smollet was secretly transporting for his own profit. Since Bonny believes she's doing the PCs a favor by freeing them, she tells them that she expects their loyalty, and as a sign of what will happen to them if they betray her, she orders that her men take Dr. Igor and force him off the plank. As Dr. Igor is taken away, he uses his last words to tell the PCs to find THE MACGUFFIN and destroy it, thereby restoring things back to the way they were.
During the voyage, Anne Bonny will occasionally threaten her crew by saying that if they don't obey "Captain Flint will hear of it." When questioned about Captain Flint, the crew will say things like the following:
"After the Queen's men got hold of Flint I heard it took days for him to die, but a man as bad as Captain Flint don't stay dead forever."
"Back in Haiti, Captain Flint learned all manner of things about potions and herbs and poisons. It's all witchcraft. Some say he stuck a bargain with the Devil himself, so he cannot die. I hear tell that Anne Bonny has got a chest containing his evil in her quarters"
"I heard the Captain learned the ways of Voodoo and found a way to escape death. He's beyond the grave now."
If the players search Anne Bonny's quarters, they'll find VIALS CONTAINING POWDERS bearing the labels "Pufferfish venom," "Fugu" and "Coup de Poudre" (all different ingredients or names of ingredients in the powders that Canadian Ethnobotanist Wade Davis discovered were the cause of Voodoo zombification, which he later wrote about in books such as "The Serpent and the Rainbow").
EXT. ISLAND BURIAL SITE OF CAPTAIN FLINT. DUSK At the end of Act 1, the players will reach the island (I guess the island could use a spooky name). Once there, Anne Bonny will make a point of saying that the island is uninhabited, but the cast will see a glimpse of Ben Gunn before he disappears into the shadows. and Bonny will revive Captain Flint, making a big show of it as if Flint is actually returning from the dead.
ACT 2
EXT. ISLAND BURIAL SITE OF CAPTAIN FLINT DUSK
The revived Captain Flint will make a speech about how he's returned from the dead and now can't be killed (which of course isn't true, and he knows it). He'll demand to see his treasure map, but Jim Hawkings will refuse to give it up. The pirates will attempt to capture Jim but he'll escape, dropping the map in the process. Flint won't care much about Hawkings' escape since he wants to locate the treasure. With the map in hand, Flint and his men quickly locate the treasure chest, only to find it empty. In a rage, Flint will demand that everyone search the island until his treasure is found.
EXT. ISLAND HIDEOUT OF BEN GUNN DUSK
After a quick search, the PCs will encounter Ben Gunn, once a rival of Captain Flint who became a victim of Flint's potions. In one of his more brutal moods, Flint didn't kill Gunn but left him a lunatic. Gunn will confirm the PCs suspicion that Flint isn't supernatural, nearly a good chemist, and that he isn't undead, meaning he can be killed. Gunn will also tell them that he knows where the treasure is hidden, but Gunn won't trust the players until they prove themselves to him by completing a "trial," which means they successfully complete one (or more if we need to pad) of his crazy games. Gunn will make them play "Popcorn" (Just as we did during the workshop, which will not only be hilarious fun for the PCs but will give them a shared experience with their sons and daughters that they can talk about after the performance. Time permitting, we should try to fit in the other games we played as well).
EXT. ISLAND CAVE DUSK
After successfully completing Gunn's trials, he'll take the PCs to the cave where he's hidden the treasure, but once he reveals the treasure, in walks Captain Flint and the rest of the pirates. Flint will brandish his sword and stand over the treasure, claiming it as his own. Just after he does so, Jim Hawkings will return, bearing a sword of his own. Flint will order Hawkings to lay down his weapon, saying that it will do no good since he can't be killed. Hawkings will waver, but the PCs will shout out that Flint is a fraud, and in his anger Flint will confess, but will claim that his sword will rid him of Hawkings. The two will fight, and Hawkings will defeat Flint. With Flint dead (or mearly wounded if you don't want anything as nasty as death in the game), the rest of the pirates will run away. In thanks for their help, Jim will allow the PCs to have a share of the treasure, in which the PCs will find THE MACGUFFIN, which they will destroy, ending the game (could we do another light show here? It would be great to have a coda where there's another light show, during which Jim and leaves so the players are by themselves, and once the light show is over, Dr. Igor appears and introduces himself to the PCs as if they had never met).
LOCATIONS FOR ACT 1
Lab
Ship's brig
Main deck
Anne Bonny's quarters
Galley
Island burial site of Captain Flint
LOCATIONS FOR ACT 2
Island burial site of Captain Flint
Location of the empty treasure chest
Ben Gunn's hideout
Cave where Ben Gunn has hidden the real treasure.
posted by Christopher A. Dellario at 11:09 PM
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