Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 17 That Olde Tyme Religion

Captain Hermione Talisker took her time, dressing in her ridiculous, outrageous costume slowly and carefully. The trembling eagerness in her hands made buttoning the elaborately decorated captain’s coat a challenge. She carefully placed her huge tricorn hat, bedecked in ribbons, plumes, silk butterflies and flowers atop her tightly coiled bun of hair. She skewered it in place with a fanciful, jeweled rapier hatpin that sparkled in the morning light. All in cobalt blue, her smiling, dark cheeks and predatory grace told her identity out to any who sailed imperial waters…

Amy, Pirate Princess of the Shallow Sea, was hunting this day.

She took a few running steps and leapt, with a wild cry on her lips, in praise of the goddess Joy. She nailed her landing in the billowing folds of a slack sail and slid down to perch above the main deck.

“Ready, me hearties?” She called, balanced on the yardarm and clinging lazily to a stay, above her crew of beautiful, bloodthirsty, colorful pirate girls.

“All in costume, captain.” Bosun Hale chirped sweetly from the throng of gaily dressed women. “We’re getting in character now.”

“Sails are changed out, captain. Weapons are ready and we are rigged for a shore assault.” Lieutenant Tran snapped crisply from the command deck. Her duty to the ship would keep her tethered to the vessel, this time and she let that tension show in her stance and manner.

The captain swung around her line and slipped to the deck in a smooth, silent leap, landing beside the troubled woman in an instant. “Be at ease Tran… I’ll let you open the ghost jar this time… how about that?” The captain murmured softly.

“Really?” The earnest young warrior asked eagerly.

“Yes, you’ve been dying to see… Now is your chance.” The captain handed over a small ceramic crock, sealed with a tight fitting lid, held down by a spring loaded metal bail. “Pop that open when we are within fifty yards of our prey… and watch closely, it happens fast.”

A brief moment later a small bell rang at the bow, signaling the chase was on. Estrella, their lookout was snugly tucked away in her cabin, while her senses cruised the local area with her familiar, an as yet unseen aquatic creature. Despite her refusal to let anyone see her mysterious familiar, she was probably the most skilled tracker on the shallow sea.

Each of the young women aboard the pirate ship Blue Squall had that in common, a talent, a skill, a unique qualification that set her apart and picked her out for this special duty.

“Steady on, we have our bearing, we follow, for now…” The captain called to her helmswoman, who clutched the plain, white clay jar her captain had entrusted to her; watching eagerly for her moment.

#

As the sun burnt the fog off, they caught sight of their prey, a chubby, tubby little merchantman, flying the colors of one of the minor territories in the southern lands… Mixtlan or Aztlan…

The twinned realms were friendly rivals and competitors in trade, and took obstinate pride in their flags being nearly identical. An agave cactus sprouted in the center of the both bright blue banners, with a falcon perched on a long, slender spine, devouring a scorpion. Retainers and citizens of both realms would always express wonder and amazement at outsiders’ inability to determine at a glance, whether the flag’s field was cornflower blue, or periwinkle blue.

Amusing cultural anecdotes aside, the portly little ship bobbed along at a sedate pace, cruising up the coastline, as so many small trade vessels did. Unremarkable little barges and boats would land at any likely looking village, township or camp; moor up and begin trading whatever goods they carried on any given day, up and down the coast…

That occasionally, raiders or pirates would pour from the vessel and descend on hapless fisher folk or isolated farms was a well known risk, along the less populated stretches of coast… Especially in the distant, swampy southern reaches, where no lord held sway ashore.

The long, low sloop cruising along just beyond the horizon, out of view of her prey was just as unremarkable; like many other vessels on the sea, she was running under a single mainsail of unbleached canvas toddling along in the bright morning, waiting until the fog burned off to set sail and start moving.

Without obvious cause, the small ship changed course; heading for a muddy estuary, one of a near uncountable number of similar inlets, by-waters, channels, sounds and rivers that ringed the Shallow Sea.

“Limber up my dears, it’s time, we’re taking her.” The captain called softly to her eager crew of bloodthirsty damsels.

With a soft, rustling sound, sails of brilliant cobalt blue blossomed from her rigging, snatching the wind to their pillowy, silken bosoms, as though welcoming long lost friends home.

Lines of inscrutable text had been painstakingly embroidered into the stitchwork and engraved into the metal grommets that held the things together; sutras and scriptures that whispered for the attention of the spirits of the winds and brought the ship into creaking, groaning, occult life.

No honest trader of those domains would set all sails and begin a panicked flight for the nearest shore at the sight of those infamous blue sails, nor would honest sailors release desperate, wailing cries of fear and despair into the quiet morning.

The sluggish little merchantman pitched and bucked visibly, as her crew scrambled to rig for shallow waters and panicked flight.

“That’s them… merchant ship Leilani, taken near Gallis island, four days ago.” The captain called out to her crew of scantily clad pirate girls. “The single survivor reports the crew were slain and her passengers taken into bondage… She was sailing on a charter excursion for the temple of Healer, twelve young novices and a full priestess physician of that cult were taken, none have been found...”

Whoever was at the helm of that tubby little boat knew their craft, as did their water worker. The wide beamed, two masted ketch showed a surprising turn of speed, in her desperate attempt to escape. Her weather witch began their work, contesting magically, with the arts and skills of the mages on the swift, blue, bird of prey swooping down on them with the wind surging at her sails, and her sails alone.

“The empress Gabriella Rex, blessed of the light, has charged us with this duty… and it will be done…” The captain called to her crew from her new perch, once more balanced in the rigging. “Elite armswomen, skilled weather or water workers, mages, sailors and soldiers, you are the cream of the empire’s vast army and navy… Today, we further the legend of the Pirate Princess!” She cried over the quiet, expectant warriors thronging her decks. They hung there for a long moment, waiting.

“And we feed some of them to the sharks!” The costumed captain whooped at last, drawing a fierce and ragged scream of bloodlust and fury from her crew.

Blue squall overtook the dumpy trader swiftly, her colorful crew boarded, before the frantic trade vessel could find a place to hide in the countless inlets and bogs or muster much of a defense.

Locked in a decidedly unequal combat, the two ships sailed together into a small, hidden cove, holding a scant half dozen similar trade ships at anchor beside a collection of sagging, makeshift huts and piers.

“Now Tran!” The captain shouted from the deck of the tall ship, as the pirate vessel used her greater mass effectively and drove the round bellied trader onto a mudflat, where she stuck fast.

The helmswoman cut the wheel hard to starboard, leaving a dozen of her colorful damsels to take the stranded prize. The rest leapt to the docks, piers and decks of nearby ships, in their desperate desire to come to grips with the hapless, scurrying foe.

Tran braced herself, popped the bail on her little ceramic jar and let the lid flop open. With the seal dangling free, a cloud of darkness erupted out of the little jam crock. The thing bore a paper label, pasted on and written in a clear hand:

Warning, do not open in enclosed spaces.

Judas Priest, Screaming for Vengeance, open with caution.

Four hazy, shadowed figures appeared in a few moments, coalescing into ominous, robed musicians, bearing strange instruments. No sooner were they fully manifested, than a hideous, ear rending cacophony poured out into the wretched town; accompanied by a swarm of fast moving, colorful raiders, wielding bitterly keen steel with gusto in the morning sunshine.

The ‘citizens’ of the wretched village scrambled and boiled like a kicked ant’s nest, when the screeching, thundering, mad music washed over the huts and mires. Bloodthirsty, ululating battle cries and the clash of arms shook the sleepy pirates awake, dragging slavers and bandits from their hungover slumber, albeit too late.

#

Elaborately embroidered coattails swirling, the captain in brilliant cobalt blue finery plied her flashing sabre against two unarmored spearmen, striking one man’s point high, while dancing past his comrade’s weapon with a sly pivot and twirl. Her blade turned just a hair and slid down the shaft of the man’s weapon, snipping all four fingers from his leading hand. Before the fellow could figure out why he couldn’t hold his spear anymore, she solved his problems, by neatly flicking the point of her blade across his throat.

The remaining man watched his comrade die, rooted in place by the sudden and elegant violence, gasping a silent breathless scream of open mouthed shock… and received the polished brass bell guard of the captain’s sabre to his slack, staring face as a reward for his admiration.

She stepped out of the reeking pool of mud and blood, eagerly seeking new prey, while her subordinates bound the unconscious slaver where he lay.

All over the miserable hamlet the scene was playing out in much the same manner; rough looking men came staggering from their rude huts, clutching whips, bludgeons and catchpoles, expecting a slave uprising… Only to find armed, armored warriors in the uniform of the imperial legion and navy stomping down on them, while brilliantly colorful raiders savaged them from the water side.

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No one in the rickety town of bamboo, palm fronds and reeds remembered the shouts of forty armored marines of the imperial navy, as they swarmed over the feeble bamboo pickets of the slaver township, pouring in from the inland bogs.

No one recalled how the mounted knights of her imperial majesty’s legion swept down the shore and wrought bloody havoc on the sand, with lance, blade and hooves. All the survivors could talk about, as they huddled together in chains, was that Admiral Amy, the Pirate Princess of the Shallow Sea had struck again.

A few wiley or lucky slaves, slavers and flesh merchants had slipped away in the scrum and vanished into the endless, reedy swamps that lined the southern reaches of the Shallow Sea.

In tiny, wet boltholes hidden in the trackless bogs, the few survivors huddled in the damp and dark, hoping against hope that they would not be dragged screaming out of their burrows by the horrifying, beautiful, bloody handed girls of Blue Squall.

Most of the slaves and slavers who staggered into the muddy, trackless fens soon found themselves in the inconsistently charitable paws of a number of beastkin warbands, patiently lurking deeper in the mires and bogs, eagerly awaiting their visitors.

Beast’s otter, beaver and badger clans had suffered terribly at the hands of human raiders for untold generations… as had so many others. The escaped slaves, whether beastkin or human, soon found aid and comfort in the surprisingly well equipped warcamps, hidden deep in the back ends of the swamps, where the true wilderness began. The ultimate fates of those unfortunate slavers went largely unrecorded, in keeping with tradition.

In the unnamed town of sagging, rotting wood and reeds, the hard work of cleanup began. Dozens of pitiful people, human and beastkin alike, were chained and staked out on the silty mudflats, or penned in cages under their owners’ rude huts, among the vermin and trapped in squalid filth.

The former slaves were swiftly and gently bathed and tended to by the relief crew of healers and nurses, who poured from below decks on Blue Squall.

The prisoners found themselves bound and hooded in the holds of their own stolen ships, deeply thankful that they were remaining with the hard eyed and grim looking legionnaires and marines…

Far better to suffer the tender mercies of those veterans, than remain in the clutches of that murderous crew of lissome and beautiful young girls. Each one of whom seemed disappointed to not have dipped her blade in their various innards and fluids…

“Admiral Amy sends her fondest regards…” Tran sneered at the prisoners, as they were hustled past, to their certain fates before a justiciar in the imperial capital.

#

Blue Squall set sail, while the legion and the healers were still tending to the captives, slipping out to sea in silence with their grim cargo.

Those slavers who’d taken up arms or refused to surrender, were on her deck; wrapped loosely in cargo netting with a few hefty stones in each bundle. Once they were decently out to sea, the tarpaulin sheets they lay on were unceremoniously heaved up by hand and tipped over the side in silence. The water around Blue Squall turned a faint pink color for a moment, as the corpses splashed down; sinking to the bottom, to feed the crawlers in the darkness.

“The after action report, captain.” Tran murmured solemnly once the decks had been scrubbed of their filth, with clean, honest seawater.

“Three injuries, two are only minor… but sergeant Heather will likely lose her right eye.”

“That is sad news… but we did a brisk business this morning.” Captain Hollister murmured soberly, once she was back in her imperial navy uniform. “I’ll go below and visit Heather, you have the helm. We sail for Bastion, the empress has granted us all leave for four weeks, once we dock. It’s been a busy spring season!”

Tran grinned wolfishly and stepped up to the wheel, as cheers began to spread across the formerly sober and quiet decks.

#

Becky sat back on her lounge in the bright, morning sunshine, reading the latest broadsheets from the mainland with a smile on her lips. Breakfast on the foredeck with the baroness and her husband, while reading the paper was a very civilized way to start the morning… Especially when the news from the empire was so deliciously grim.

“It seems that the dread pirate Amy is continuing her depredations in the southern reaches of the Shallow Sea.” Becky remarked airily to her husband, seated nearby and reading the latest fantasy Adventure digest. “Several more slaver ships and two sloppy little towns have been taken and burnt, that was as of three weeks ago, gods alone know what the score is now.”

“I still don’t like that they are playing at this farce…” Kermal grumbled sourly. “Seems an awful risk, using her name like that.”

“Gabbie has at least three ships flying the blue sails right now… unless my fool brother sent her another set… and the costumes to go with.” Becky smiled slyly at her angsty man.

“Now that the empire is cracking down, the bandit ‘lords’ are feeling the squeeze…” The high priestess remarked wryly. “With Beast’s warbands nipping at their heels from the wastes and the duchies penning them in, this is a hard time to deal in slaves.”

“That still doesn’t explain the costumes and trickery…” The baroness murmured from behind her coffee mug..

“It’s a long running, personal grudge between my family and slavers in general…” Becky mumbled quietly. “Rumors of a terrible pirate girl, dressed in blue have been circling in the empire for a long time now. It all started with a silly game of pretend pirates, when the kids were little…”

She went on to relate a strange tale, even by Ward family standards. “...So the empress put her official chop and seal on Amy’s pretend letter of marque, just for ‘funzies’… Until it was taken by one of the empress’ retainers, who used the document to steal a naval vessel?” Baroness Filly Dunham asked finally.

“There was a whole attempted coup thing going on at the time… and a demon haunted throne…” Becky offered, while Kerma snuggled in with her on the chaise. “So the rumors of Amy, the Pirate Princess were born… We just sorta kept the rumors alive…”

“You… ‘kept the rumors alive’…?” Filly asked quietly. “How, exactly?”

She smiled nervously and squirmed a little in their shared lounge chair “By raiding slavers every once in a while, in fancy dress… just a little… for the last decade or so.”

“Becky does love to dress up…” Kermal sighed fondly.

“Tony always said you lot were dangerous and uncanny…” The baroness murmured softly. “So when you and your fellow mad miscreants go ‘Adventuring’?” She demanded sharply.

“Yeah, we try to sneak in a little piracy whenever we can… They started it!” She blustered at her husband’s heartfelt sigh of frustration. “Ward and the dryads have been tipping off the War cults and justiciars, whenever he finds a nest of the scum.”

Becky frowned and bit into her breakfast sausage roll angrily. “But sometimes they’re out in the wilds… too far from justice.”

“My wife is an unrepentant vigilante…” Kermal sighed quietly. “But she’s so cute in her pirate finery.”

“Gary calls it the ‘Superhero Gambit’... Because he’s a silly creature.” She leaned over and nudged her man with a slim shoulder, smiling wickedly at the baroness, seated across the tea table from the happy couple.

“Essentially, we need to strike fear in their hearts… Not just fear of the law, but the terror that they might be swooped down on in the darkness, by a vicious, implacable foe. Just like the poor folks from isolated places that they prey on. Nowhere is safe, between Beast’s kin, the duchies, the empire and…”

She sighed with sheer delight and leaned on his shoulder. “A terrifying pirate lass, who only preys on pirates.”

“Diabolical… but what if they come for her, for them?” Filly asked in alarm. “You put those children at risk with this gambit!”

“The Ward kids have always faced that risk, lady Dunham. We’re Adventurers and orphans; fighting monsters is what we do, however the monsters may present themselves, even if in human guise.” She smiled grimly, while her husband nodded along.

“I think anyone who wants to try and take those kids will be in for a few nasty surprises.” The highly decorated young knight murmured into the nape of his wife’s neck.

“Kermie! What’s gotten into you?” The high priestess giggled and squirmed under his nibbling lips, until she gently pressed him back with the palm of one hand. She gazed into his eyes for a long moment and sighed at the baroness. “I’m sorry Filly, things may get awkward.”

“Oh?” The baroness inquired mildly, hiding her smirk behind her cup. “More awkward than the adorable display of affection you have been putting on for the last few minutes?”

“Really, lady Dunham… This is embarrassing enough already.” Becky flushed a deep purple on her smiling cheeks. She turned away to hide her amused smirk and spoke loudly, at the canopy of the mangrove tree that shaded Moonrise’s deck.

“Ward… please come out into the light… You’re messing with my husband’s aura.”

After the high priestess scolded the tree, a shadowy form emerged, dribbling down from the branches to form a human figure, swathed in darkness.

“Sorry, I’m having trouble manifesting in full daylight…” The figure sighed breathily, with the sound of a faint breeze through a graveyard’s stones and softly stirring leaves. “My Contracted cultists are all either far away, or underground right now and I only have a few trees, all newly planted on this island.”

“Baroness Dunham, this is my uncle Ward, the god of Death and Vengeance. Ward, this is Filly, Tony’s cousin and the baroness of these islands.” She shook her head and went back to scolding the hazy, inhuman form.

“You can’t just creep around like that, you know how you affect mortals!”

“Yeah, well people would be more likely to Contract with me and less prone to screaming and running away, if you introduced me as the Golden Fig… That’s way less scary!” He grumbled back, his voice still a distant whisper from an open crypt. Somehow, it sounded amused and cheerful, as though this were a contest of wills between friendly, cozy rivals.

“Ohh, that’s what scares people…” She sassed sharply, with a wide smile on her face. “Stop dressing all in black and hanging out in graveyards! Ya big dumb chuni!”

“Hey, if I had my way, it would be all jazz, tie dye and hippy beads.” The vague indistinct haunt sulked merrily at the small breakfast group. “Your culture’s death rituals are dismal.” He complained cheerfully. “I really need to work on that… Maybe a temple theme park?”

#

“It’s… glorious!” Amy whispered, lost in awestruck wonder. Ferns, moss, scattered small shrubs and a deep, icy pool of clear water covered the floor of the enormous, vaulted cavern. Above, a galaxy of brilliant flowering vines rambled over the ceiling, among stalactites and seeping springs. Moths flitted to and fro among the flowers, iridescently colorful and truly colossal.

On the eastern side a huge outcropping of some radiant gemstone protruded from the wall, a single rounded mass bigger than a small cottage. That shining stone scattered light and beautiful, prismatic colors around the vast lava chamber, supporting the small forest glade, hidden in the utter depths of the earth.

In the center of the unfaceted, natural stone, a half dozen or so dark impurities lurked, some form of inclusions in the gem.

Wilf had his bare hand pressed to the surface of it; the shimmering disco lights playing over him as he contemplated his interface gift.

Ancient Glass Ooze, beast, slime. Non sentient lithovore. Threat level unknown/null.

“The shards of the creatures gave me the same message…” The burly lad mumbled, as he blushed with embarrassment. “I don’t get much information from living creatures.”

“Should we… Fight it? Mine it? Have a funeral? An exorcism?” Frankie asked awkwardly beside the huge mass of coruscating, radiant crystal, with six, barely visible human corpses suspended in its amorphous form.

One could be forgiven for mistaking it for a wildly out of place glacier, or some kind of normal, if colossal crystalline outcropping…

Benny and Maya were sifting through what remained of a camp set up in a side chamber, apparently belonging to the group of unfortunates embedded in the creature’s mass. Mining tools and an assayer’s kit lay where they had fallen, now rusted and decayed beyond usefulness by an unguessable stretch of time in the cavern.

Pests and nibblers had made themselves at home in the camp proper, consuming the ropes, canvas tents, the wooden poles and everything else organic, leaving only scattered metal fragments and rich, loamy soil that was best not examined too closely. Slowly, the kids crawled over the site, examining what traces remained, after so long.

“What do we know now?” Dannyl asked, when they had finished sifting through the detritus and setting up their own encampment on a nearby lava flow, overlooking the chamber of dark stone and its gleaming, cottage sized and shaped occupant.

“It looks like they were trying to mine it… I guess they thought it was a mineral outcropping. Pretty understandable.” Rio answered confidently. “It’s a living thing, despite appearances. When they started breaking pieces off, it defended itself.”

“That thing killed them?” Ivy asked suspiciously. “Those constructs were scary and tough, but running away would have solved the problem. They were too clumsy to give chase.”

“Yeah, the constructs are probably a side effect of the ‘foreign matter’ inside it.” Wilf murmured from his little makeshift workshop in the corner.

His wide, smooth slab of stone sported innumerable chalk markings, in all the colors of the rainbow. The big lad plucked a leather rucksack from his storage gift and slowly emptied a stream of liquid light onto the floor in his circle.

Viscous as honey and gleaming with spectacular rainbow hues it flowed out into a low mound about eight feet around, slowly bubbling and pulsing within the chalk boundary.

“Oozes and slimes are magical creatures, pretty much just Mana and whatever they absorb to form themselves from, enveloped in a bubble of hardened Animus.” He rumbled on, warming to the topic. “Being non sentient and simple, they tend to take simple shapes. Spheres, ovals, amorphous goo mounds… that kind of thing.”

“So what were the crystal golems?” Ivy asked, now that Frankie had finished brewing the coffee. “They were way too complex to be a slime.”

“Yes indeed!” Rio chimed in. “Way too smart, complex and competent to be a slime, even one as interesting and unique as this one… But what about a haunted slime? Watch this…” He swung his bongos around and began caressing the ancient skins, his fingers stroking the familiar runes and glyphs inscribed just for him, his first possession and his most beloved.

Rattle-tap, enchanted drums. Spiritual enchantment. Rank, unranked. Rarity; unique.

Effect: Dead Man’s Party, when played by or in proximity of a source of etheric magic, spirits and incorporeal entities may manifest.

Effect: Danse Macabre, player may expend Mana and shadow essence from their Ka to encorporate a willing spirit, shade or ghost temporarily.

Slowly, a pale, shifting form rose from his imprisoned fragment of semi liquid goo. In a few breathless moments it coalesced into a dim human shape, vague and distorted, but a man of early middle years.

“What’s your name, friend?” Rio asked, over his soft, low drumbeat. “What are your companion’s names? We need to know so that we can inform your kin, after we release you.”

#