Hello again. Today I explored the mountain and found out it was a pirate fortress.

How do I know it is a pirate fortress?

Because there is a big sign in the room with all the ships and bones that says "WAVE WOLF PIRATE FORTRESS" all in big bold red letters.

Subtle it is not. I probably wouldn't have found that room, or any of the others for that matter if not for my rage fed storm banishing yesterday.

I mentioned the mountain got shorter yeah? Well the new mountaintop had some exposed caves and tunnels.

These caves and tunnels worm and squirm their way throughout the mountain. Leaving it rather hollow. Here and there are some steps or smaller tunnels that seem to have been chiseled in later. Presumably by the pirates, but the majority of the tunnels are smooth and polished oblong passages that seem to be entirely natural.

The biggest cave is at the base of the mountain. It once formed a sheltered and hidden bay where the pirates could conceal their ships and rest between pillagings. I say once because the mountain face above the entrance collapsed and sealed three ships and roughly 200 pirates inside the mountain. They died of starvation and dehydration with their only exit sealed.

I collected their skulls to get a count. Assuming none of them had two heads I count 268 pirate skulls. Though I imagine I may have missed some or they fell into the water. The bay is still full of water. I guess there is room between the rocks for water at least. I took the skulls I had gathered and made a lovely pile of them. 

Julius likes to nap on top of said skull pile.

He's so cute.

Other rooms contain rusty weapons, rotten crates and barrels, and one super cool cave is full of plunder! Heaps of shiny coins and rare artifacts litter the floor around a throne that seems to be carved from a single massive rib bone from an unknown creature. It is finely engraved with depictions of piracy, plundering, pillaging, and fighting on the high seas. These carvings sweep across the entire throne from top to bottom aside from the actual seat surface which is worn smooth.

Julius also likes to nap on the throne.

He has basically been spending the day napping on either my head, the skull pile, or the throne. With snack breaks when he gets tired of napping.

The most interesting room, and by far my favorite is way deep down in the roots of the mountain. It was in this place that I learned what a pirate is, and all the vernacular like pillaging, plundering, and words for bodies of water like seas and bays and even the names of those floating wooden things, ships.

Down there, the ocean is silent. All you can hear is the slow steady drip, drip, drip of water from ceiling to the pools in the floor. The cavern is long and wide. Bright blue water fills natural pools that lie scattered seemingly at random across the floor. The water in the pools swell and sway in a pantomime of the ocean overhead, and each and every pool have lines strung across them. Hanging along these lines are large tusks. Dozens of lines per pool and hundreds of dull yellow and white ivory tusks per line.

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They bob along with the water silently, and they are decorated in a fashion similar to the throne above. Fine carvings depict men and women at sea. Fighting the elements, great sea creatures, and each other. There is, however, one key difference between these fangs and the throne. The carvings down here give off a bright blue and green glow. Illuminating the pale and pure water and casting rippling shadows across the walls and ceiling.

Naturally I bent down and grabbed one from the edge of the pool. I was not expecting what happened next.

I saw a life lived before my eyes. I saw a young man named Abern from the day he killed a large fat creature he called a Mors and took one of its large protruding tusks.

I saw him string it and hang it from his neck in a time honored tradition of his people. I saw him carve his adventures and trials into it as the years passed. I saw him age and as he learned the trade of his people so did I. His people were pirates.

He rose from a deck scrubbing oar boy to a captain of his own ship. I saw him face challenges from all sides as he navigated through storm and battle. I saw him face challengers. Envious of his ship and crew. And I saw him lose his final challenge. Finally I saw as his tusk was taken from his body, engraved with his defeat, and placed in these pools.

The tusk was unlit afterwards. Just dull ivory now. I reverently placed it back into the water and stepped back.

I knew things I had no knowledge of learning before. How to sail, how to fight, measures of time and distance and weight. A lifetime of learning had been pressed against my mind, and all I had retained were some very dull impressions of Aberns strongest learned lessons.

The minutiae had faded as quickly as it had come.

I grabbed more tusks. Greedy for knowledge, hungry to know what I had lost. I was grasping desperately at these loose strings. Hoping to find a tapesty, but all I got was a handful of frayed cords.

In the end I now have a terrible headache and after eight tusks I know how to sail, navigate, fish, negotiate, scheme, plunder, and fight. I also learned some very dark things. Ways to hurt people. Ways to break them. I will put those memories away, and I hope to never need them.

There were also a few fish recipes that were so good they left a deep enough impression on the pirates to leave an impression on me. I must try them!

It seems pirates are not very nice people. Though, I will say, some of them seemed like really good people it'd be a blast to have fun with. Most were just greedy and vicious thugs in boats.

Anyway. I am sad that they apparently didn't really care about the 'landlubbers'. I found no clues about myself. and their memories about the composition of the land based countries and peoples wasn't deeply seated enough to leave an impression on me.

I did however get the general location of a den of thieves they traded with. Its on land and maybe the thieves will have something similar to this room only with more memories focused on land. If I can find some memory of me, or at least of a place I could start asking questions. Then my search for myself will finally get some traction. 

Well, its a start at least. 

I guess I could also go to places with lots of dead people. That woke up a few memories last time. But those were gruesome memories. Just vague recollections of death and violence. Excluding the smile of course.

*Sigh* That all sounds so troublesome though. I am no idiot. My memories seem like those of a violent and hated man. Perhaps it is better to just let them stay forgotten. I could just wander the world. Free of worry or cause. No mysteries besides where I will sleep and what I will eat. I have Julius, and I have my tingles. 

What more can a man ask for?

Goodnight.