There once had been a time when the seas were infinite, undiscovered, and as wild and unpredictable as nature originally had made them; roaring waves of foaming water glittering in every single shade imaginable - all the possible nuances of blue including the soft light shade of a summer day as well as the deep colour of a cold winter's night, sinister grey as a thunderstorm, infinite black just like the nothingness of space, goldish silver seeming as if made of metal and even mysteriously green -, rolling onto many shores belonging to an uncountable number of strange places, lands nobody had encountered before or even known of by then, existing in isolation, each just for themselves, being shaped by the regular tides of the enormous seas and ruled by a small chosen group of deities.
In these ancient times many dozens of deities existed, but not a tenth of them actually were of importance concerning the world's fate and merely spent their days in leisure looking handsome, while others, the selected ones, ruled over four gigantic realms. The Sky, the Mountains, the Woods - and the Seas. And among those ruling over the Seas one was different from all the others as She was descendant both from divine and human origin.
Her mother, daughter of the highest of all Sea deities in that part of the oceans, an impressive appearance that was referred to as Fairthych the Gargantuan, fell in love with a human fisherman who one day happened to sail out too far and accidentally reached shore of a deserted island no one had any notion of in the country he came from, because they never set out for a journey that long as it generally was considered much too dangerous, and right they were since this particular island was home to various occult creatures, as well as some Sea deities.
Though coming from entirely different spheres and therefore not very likely to match, the Sea goddess and the fisherman fell in love, violently in love, fatally in love, thus exciting Fairthych's anger as he naturally did not want to see his daughter in the arms of a weak man, a mortal man, and also disapproved of his discovering their secret island, for it made Fairthych suspect that once there was a beginning, more humans would follow, eventually resulting in them taking away their hiding spots. So the mighty God made one attempt to separate his daughter from the undeserving man - but in vain, she would not hear a word of it - before making use of his powers, meaning utter violence, and slay his daughter's lover.
Pyiramidha's despair was simply impossible to describe with words, her painful cries and blood-curdling sobs were heard on all islands and larger land masses within a large radius of the secret island where she and her love had met, for days, every single day in weeks, each week in every month, she kneeled on the red beach of Thychwydth Island, grieving for her lost love, never sleeping, hardly eating, and this for months. Her father had ripped her off the most precious thing she ever had had in all her life and now everything seemed void and desolate to her, happiness, even a faint smile, seemed more than impossible to her, she felt as if something in her had died as well and she would never be whole again.
Though time of happiness had been extremely short and Fairthych most successful in getting rid of the poor fisherman Pyiramidha had given her pure heart to, thus condemning his daughter to face an eternity of despair and sadness, those few days had been sufficient to consummate their love and lay the foundation for new life.
Within a year of their meeting, falling in love, and his dying, Pyiramidha gave birth to their daughter who should be the only creature ever in this world to have origin in both the human world and the divine; grand-daughter of Fairthych the Gargantuan, the mightiest Sea deity of them all.
Ailis Abernathy.
Pyiramidha found some purpose in her life again, with a child to care for and the conviction of her beloved Eidhwynn living on in some way in their mutual daughter who reminded her of him exceedingly, and lived to see Ailis grow to a fine woman uniting divine beauty and human nature in a most becoming way, being bright, strong, independent, and talented at once.
Fairthych had believed his greatest worry - that mankind might follow the fisherman's example and set out to explore foreign lands leading to disturbances in divine society - to be no longer an issue since he had killed the one person able to start the whole development but had he never thought that this mortal man had left something of his behind, left it to his daughter who inherited his adventurous mind and rebellious heart which, supported by her unique life story combining fairy tale and tragedy in a most moving way, early in life drove her to follow his example and discover the world. While her father had encountered Thychwydth Island by mere accident, Ailis Abernathy most deliberately resolved on sailing the oceans and explore everything there was to see, set foot on every piece of land there was, no matter if it be a gigantic continent or a mere nothing like a rock amidst the waves, she would find them and make the world her realm.
If this had been her only aim, Fairthych would not have needed to worry much since she did not live among men and therefore could not inspire similar ideas in them, but she actually extended her plan so far as to visit human settlements, make contact with them and very soon gained the reputation of a supernatural creature thus drawing attention to their kind. The Gargantuan naturally could not let this happen and endeavoured to persuade her to give up her ambitions, whatever they might be, in favour of a secluded existence among those to whom she belonged. He undeniably meant the Sea deities, and certainly assumed that she could not but agree with him - but here he happened to be entirely wrong. Ailis Abernathy was most aware of her being half human and did not shrink from telling so as well as pointing out that nothing in the world could ever induce her to give up freedom and independence to spend her entire existence on this deserted island, she would set out for adventure, discover the seas, cross the oceans to find foreign lands...
Fairthych would not hear farther and demanded that she would do as he said. Being by far the mightiest and most intimidating God of them all, he never even got close to considering that there might be people who did otherwise than obey without resistance. But here he was wrong again.
His grand-daughter proved him false by not uttering a word in reply and sneaking out at night on a boat so that she was far off the next morning they discovered her being gone. Intentions of ever returning to the island she had none, she would sail the oceans for eternity and experience everything there was, one adventure after another. She also would visit exotic parts of the world where she found things she never had seen before, sparkling, glittering things that looked exceedingly pretty and she thought absolutely worth keeping and collecting. Gold, silver, diamonds, gems, amber - those were the names the humans had given these things she later got to know and rather valuable they were in their world. But nevertheless she kept looking for them, collecting every piece she could get and eventually ended up sailing to look for those treasures in particular, finding herself crossing vast distances of roaring water only to find more. A simple liking thus grew into a serious obsession and within a few years, Ailis Abernathy was known throughout the world and feared for her reckless methods of gaining that treasure.
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The first pirate of history thus was born.
Ailis Abernathy's leaving Thychwydth Island as well as all her divine kin behind undoubtedly marked the beginning of a new era on Jovi - the conveniently large globe-shaped planet in those distant, unknown depths in the most eastern corner of an also unknown galaxy somewhere to the north of the universe's centre -, at least when it came to time, for it would be rather stupid to assume that so insignificant an event, brought on by only a demi-Goddess and her somewhat childish temper, could have been the main cause of a rapid process eventually resulting in the disappearance of most deities, not only the Sea deities, but also their relatives in the Woods, the Mountains, and the Sky. Actually, it would be pretty arrogant of Ailis Abernathy to claim total credit for this development.
Fact is that within the short time of merely a few decades the importance and power of those creatures entirely vanished who had been ruling the world for millennia. And no one really knew why. Of course, Fairthych the Gargantuan had been profoundly wounded by his grand-daughter's disappearance, the more so as it proved her not accepting his authority - a thing that never had occurred to him before throughout his entire existence, which by then had been almost four-and-a-half thousand years - and wilfully, purposely, ignoring his order by doing the exact opposite. As hard as it may be to believe, but this unfortunate, or rather embarrassing incident, permanently cracked the Gargantuan's self-confidence and faith which both were forces guaranteeing his superiority among the other, less powerful, deities. With a superior thus mutilated it would be easy to understand that inferior Sea deities might win on influence, make plans to take over power, and actually start a revolution resulting in chaos and war which eventually would destroy the integrity of the Sea deities as such. A very plausible scheme indeed. But nothing like what actually happened.
Within only a few months after Ailis Abernathy's sailing off, the weakness of Fairthych became highly apparent to everybody close to him and as religious faith is founded on profound belief in both the existence of some superior being and that being's inviolable omnipotence, power, and dominance, the cracked belief of Fairthych in himself took not much time to affect his performance which made the mortal creatures notice some change. Naturally they could not discern from whence it was originating, but undeniably were sensing some disturbances in natural integrity, especially when by the sea. This uncertain feeling of there something being wrong soon grew into conviction of them either having lost the Gods' good will or there not being the necessity of believing in supernatural beings, Gods, deities, anyway. And once this thought had entered the head of one, it shortly spread over their community and the neighbouring ones and finally even reached the people living farther off the seas which led to doubting the other deities' authority as well.
Existing without being believed in is not only depressing but nearly impossible after some time, since the faith and belief of mortals in their deities is the very condition for their actual existence - for if there were no one to need them, there would be no raison d'être for Gods of any kind and as nature always is very eager to be efficient, needless species are about to go extinct, sooner or later. In case of the formerly mighty Jovian deities, sooner meant roughly seventy years. Ailis Abernathy had been celebrating piracy for sixty-eight years when the amount of mortals believing in or praying to the ancient deities had become less than a thousand and Gods effectively were extinct.
In the end it actually seems to have been caused by the half-mortal grand-daughter of the once mightiest Sea god that the vast majority of Jovian deities vanished into nothingness; but really there was more behind it. In most universes there have been deities and worshippers at some point of evolutionary development among societies but also a process of increasing independence and natural curiosity which finally led to the worshippers becoming scientists and doubting the mere existence of their formerly appreciated deities, so that in the end atheistic societies emerged among those of believers - if deities were lucky -, or atheism made the entire percentage. Therefore it almost was only a matter of time when this fate was to befall Jovi and its coming together with Ailis Abernathy's independent disobedience is to be considered as a mere coincidence. At least that's what most future historians will find reason to call it.
As there is nothing definite in the universe except the fact that there is nothing definite, not every last one of the deities on planet Jovi followed the cryptic superior plan that included their getting extinct, but kept existing, though rather insignificantly and quite hidden. Very few people who kept sincere faith and belief in them still lived and the future did not promise well, but there always have been creatures existing on the very edge of the common, and while monotheism had begun to get pretty popular and those mortals prone to religious delusion chose to pay their attention to some singular divine being of doubtful origin or other, the residues of ancient Gods spent their life in secret.
What eventually became of Ailis Abernathy, daughter both of Pyiramidha the Magnificent and Eidhwynn the mortal fisherman, descendant of Fairthych the Gargantuan, first pirate of Jovi, is not known to anyone. Her trace vanishes some two hundred and ninety years after her sailing off in the first place and no one seems to have heard of or seen her since then, whether she is still alive searching for treasure, or has already died, is left to be guessed. However, rumours have it that at least something of hers has survived the tides of change during these chaotic decades and the following, not significantly calmer, centuries - a treasure of monumental extent. The largest, most valuable treasure ever to exist in the world; the most gigantic treasure of all times there were and probably will be, so large and heavy that it had to be hidden in four different spots as one pirate den was neither spacious nor secret enough to hold it all.
Of course, many generations of explorers, treasure seekers, courageous sailors, and simply greedy bastards have set off to find the legendary treasure, the supposedly three or four dozen chests filled with gold and silver and diamonds and anything a man's heart could desire - at least -, but without success. Which was no great surprise since nobody knew where exactly to look for it and covering all hiding spots there are on a planet that large is next to impossible. For some time a fantastic story became exceedingly popular concerning the immense treasure of Ailis Abernathy - a story about an old seaman claiming to have witnessed the actual demi-goddess drawing a map of the four most secret dens, so that one day a descendant of hers, or any pirate worthy, could find them and all her work had not been useless.
This rumour - as rumours generally do - spread widely within days and weeks and most bizarre theories emerged on where to find the map, or Ailis Abernathy's grave as it was supposed to have been buried with her, which of course was discussed wildly since it wasn't actually clear she was dead after all. Anyway, the mere possibility of such an enormously useful artefact existing inspired hundreds and thousands of brave, or rather stupid, men, mostly males, to follow the traces of the ancient maiden pirate. But no one ever found anything that could be mistaken for a map leading to miraculous treasure and within some time, a few centuries actually, the wild enthusiasm for treasure hunt on the world's infinite seas slowly decreased. Those having been on search told their story among friends and family, their sons and daughters passed it on to their children and thus the fairytale of a pirate treasure survived for many generations until it eventually kind of died. With the death of those who could speak of actual experience and events they had witnessed, plausibility died also.
By now, the map, the treasure it was supposed to lead to, and Ailis Abernathy herself, have become a mere legend, a story people tell their children for amusement but do not believe in, for since the great era of treasure hunting was gone, all details about the mysterious map had vanished in the mists of time and not less than thirty-four different versions of it were in circulation among those who still showed interest in adventure narratives, though evidently not believing one word of it to be true. A narration of real, terrifying events had become a myth, vanished in the misty depths of time, and eventually faded away into nothingness.