Candlepin Gang
Flaming bowling pins on every hull, each a little different. The Candlepin Gang is a Baytowne watercraft alliance commanding over thirty ships from Tower Island in southern Baytowne, the only dry land in all of Southie. Their leader, a red-haired smuggler named Angie Cavenaugh, has held the reins of a family operation that stretches back generations through a legacy of rum-running, ship-jacking, and aggressive maritime enterprise.
To the outside world, the Candlepins are hard-working salvagers and escort operators with thick accents and ships loaded with pre-fall relics pulled from the southern waterways. They ferry traders to Tower Island and deeper into the city, and their crews patrol the routes between Baytowne and the Rhode Islands. It is honest work, and most of it is genuinely performed.
The other side of the Candlepins is quieter. Their boarding tactics are legendary among those who have witnessed them: swimmers slip beneath a target vessel and silently eliminate the crew before anyone on deck can raise an alarm. Enemy ships go dark and drift, their cargo already in Candlepin hands by the time dawn breaks. Angie's connections run upward into Beacon Hill's elite circles and outward through Saltwise allies along the coast, creating a web of influence that the Harbor Guard watches with carefully restrained suspicion. The Guard knows what Angie could mobilize if provoked. So far, the Candlepins' affable public face has kept the credits flowing and the confrontation at bay.
The alliance leaves a mark on the wider blueprint trade as well. Gear stamped with the Candlepin name turns up far beyond Southie, and it carries the same double character as the crews themselves: bowling-pin bludgeons that pun on the flaming sigil, alongside the plain, practical survival kit a boat crew actually needs. The signature piece is the Candlepin Basher, a weighted pin that turns a sustained beating into a knockback, backed by the cork-cored club favored for quiet work from behind and the crude, fire-spitting Flame Belcher. Set against those are the tools of staying alive on the water: a medical kit that stabilizes the badly hurt in about a minute, and a single-use splint that keeps a shattered limb working long enough to matter. Older catalogs still list Candlepin food-preservation and survival packs, the kind of gear that says as much about long runs between ports as any weapon does.
To the outside world, the Candlepins are hard-working salvagers and escort operators with thick accents and ships loaded with pre-fall relics pulled from the southern waterways. They ferry traders to Tower Island and deeper into the city, and their crews patrol the routes between Baytowne and the Rhode Islands. It is honest work, and most of it is genuinely performed.
The other side of the Candlepins is quieter. Their boarding tactics are legendary among those who have witnessed them: swimmers slip beneath a target vessel and silently eliminate the crew before anyone on deck can raise an alarm. Enemy ships go dark and drift, their cargo already in Candlepin hands by the time dawn breaks. Angie's connections run upward into Beacon Hill's elite circles and outward through Saltwise allies along the coast, creating a web of influence that the Harbor Guard watches with carefully restrained suspicion. The Guard knows what Angie could mobilize if provoked. So far, the Candlepins' affable public face has kept the credits flowing and the confrontation at bay.
The alliance leaves a mark on the wider blueprint trade as well. Gear stamped with the Candlepin name turns up far beyond Southie, and it carries the same double character as the crews themselves: bowling-pin bludgeons that pun on the flaming sigil, alongside the plain, practical survival kit a boat crew actually needs. The signature piece is the Candlepin Basher, a weighted pin that turns a sustained beating into a knockback, backed by the cork-cored club favored for quiet work from behind and the crude, fire-spitting Flame Belcher. Set against those are the tools of staying alive on the water: a medical kit that stabilizes the badly hurt in about a minute, and a single-use splint that keeps a shattered limb working long enough to matter. Older catalogs still list Candlepin food-preservation and survival packs, the kind of gear that says as much about long runs between ports as any weapon does.
History
The Candlepin Gang is, by Angie Cavenaugh's own account, a generational family enterprise. Her parents taught her the trade; their parents taught them. The details of the founding are lost beneath layers of family myth and deliberate obfuscation, but the Cavenaugh name has been synonymous with Southie's waterways for as long as anyone in Baytowne can remember.
Tower Island serves as the seat of their operations: an old heavy brick compound surrounded by scrap buildings and tents clustered around a clock tower memorial. From the Fen Bay marina and shipyards, the Candlepins dispatch salvage crews and escort runs throughout the southern waterways, managing more than thirty vessels under the family banner.
Tower Island serves as the seat of their operations: an old heavy brick compound surrounded by scrap buildings and tents clustered around a clock tower memorial. From the Fen Bay marina and shipyards, the Candlepins dispatch salvage crews and escort runs throughout the southern waterways, managing more than thirty vessels under the family banner.
