Vow's to Sea and Shadow - SG RP

[Myyrth]

The smell of brine and tar was heavy in the air, along the coast of the Sea of Storms many vessels sailed hither and yon bringing goods and trade to the coastal towns and villages.  There was much gold to be made on the water, in lucrative trading.  Yet not all the money made on the Sea of Storm’s and beyond was made by legal means.  Smugglers and worse slithered along secret ways or flew false colors to make their daily bread.  Yet worse than smugglers roamed the Sea of Storms, Pirates… brigands of the sea, corsairs and blackguards every one of them, murderers and thieves.  Some worse than others.

“Belay that talk ye light burned wretches, silence on deck!”  His voice a whispered hiss pierces the darkness.  Gaston Waldgrave, Gaston the Butcherer, Gaston the pirate stood at the fore of his ship, a light but fast sloop fondly named the Red Rose, if the crew used to snigger at that name before; they had learned to appreciate it.  Stroking a neatly trimmed brown beard his fingers felt the line of a long and ugly scar that split the side of his face.  “Sail ho!” came a cry from the lookouts nest, squinting up Gaston follows the direction of the mans pointed finger.

“Glass” he says simply, a waiting crewman hands it to him, a grin of anticipation on his dark tanned skin.  Peering through his looking glass, Gaston scans the slowly lightening horizon for his prey.  At sea for the past month, Gaston had tracked this particular quarry for a long time.  Now the Rose and her crew lay in wait within the shallow cove of deserted island.  A flag appeared on the horizon, blue on green with the yellow filigree of an independent trader.  Gaston’s face split in a wide and crooked smile, “There she is boys, unfurl the sails and haul the killick ye know the drill!”

“Ye heard him dogs! Woman and booty less than a league ahead, move like Ole Brine himself ‘ad lit a fire neath ye!” laying about with his six tailed whip the ships provost gets the already eager crew moving with a purpose.  Within minutes the Rose was underway, a stiff and favorable breeze filling her sails.  Gaston calmly saunters back to the stern.

“We’re gun run a rig on em ain’t we cap’n!” Shouts the coxswain from his position at the wheel giggling like a lunatic he hauls on the steer causing the Rose to list hard to port, catching the change in the wind and angling their course across the trading vessels bow.  Already Gaston could see through his glass the frantic movements of the distant vessel's crew.  Torches moved back and forth on the deck, yet the vessels movements where sluggish the crew stunned that any pirate vessel would be located so close to Tear and it’s navy.

Gaston chuckled, though his chuckle was more like a rasping wheeze.  The fools where completely thunder struck, such were the rewards for daring.  “Move smartly now you scabberous dogs, run out the forward ballista, smartly now!”  His crew were a sharp lot, they knew what to do, but he would be a light blinded fool to let discipline slack, Gaston ran his ship with an iron fist and his crew respected and feared him for it.  “They do be moving sluggish, cap’n” yells the lookout, “Perhaps they do be squiffy with rum and spirits!”  Something had been bothering Gaston about this particular take, though it was certainly risky to be operating this close to any civilized kingdom, the ships behavior was starting to make him uneasy, far to messy a response.  Dismissing his fears, he sets down their panic to a green crew.  Things would be fine, the sound of waves draws Gaston’s down, the toss of the sea lay beneath him, the inky depths that held so many secrets.  Mesmerized he was drawn into the depths like a man staring at a familiar yet forgotten lover, the cold chill of the grave settled around his cruel heart.  He could almost hear a whispered summons, a voice as bleak as his own cruel heart.  “Who be ye... Ole Brine himself?”  Lost in the mesmerizing sound he misses the ships first engagement with their prey.

A hissing suddenly filled his ears and his mind snaps back to the now, arrows where landing all about him, a crewman was at his feet screaming, an arrow pinning his leg to the ground.  A man was saying something in front of him, it was his first mate.  Suddenly the roar of a ship under attack flooded into his ears, the splash of the sea the roar of men and the hiss of loosed arrows.  They were so accurate, what green crew could place shots so accurately.

“Your orders cap’n!” yelled the man before him.  Looking about in bewilderment at the chaos around him Gaston saw something that froze the blood in his veins.  Two cogs, flying the colors of Tear where bearing down on them from behind, the schooner they had been chasing had turned towards them, and uncovered what looked like two ballistae.

“Sink me! hard port coxswain! ranks ye dogs, form lines an rake her decks!”  A quick and intense study revealed the purpose of the ballista, thick lengths of rope where looped around the end of the bolts.  They meant to haul the rose in like a fish for market.  “Crank low on the forward ballista; scuttle the bloody mother milking blighters!”

“Burn my eyes captain what ‘appened! Ye looked like ye where struck by the ghost of Ole Brine himself!”  Gaston eyes his first mate sharply, that struck far to near to the truth in his mind.  The rose suddenly rocked hard, Gaston grabbed the railing and hung on for dear life.”  One of the ballista on the schooner had fired in spite of the heavy bombardment.  It had pierced the Rose’s hull at the waterline, a near fatal wound… yet.

“Hard starboard!” Roared Gaston, but it was too late, the Rose already moving at great speed hit the end of the ropes length, and listed starboard.  A horrible creaking groan sounded across the ship, as the barbed ballista bolt tore out a massive chunk of the rose hull, letting the sea come in.

“This is not good cap’n” mutters his first mate, Gaston’s cutlass goes through his throat ending the wretches complaints.  Gaston had only one thought, escape, and no man or monster would stop him.  Rushing across the frighteningly tilting deck he grabs two men from their frantic attempts to control the freely swinging rigging.

“Forget that, the Rose is done for.  Come with me!”  He sprints the next few feet to the lifeboats.  “Get us underway” he says to the men with him, his voice steady despite the situation.  In moments, the men moving with the speed and efficiency of men struck with terror begin lowering the lifeboat the short distance to the water.  The rest of the crew, desperately trying to save the ship finally notice their captain leaving them and the crew goes into an uproar.

“Ye yellow coward! I’ll kill ye!”

“What’re ye doing cap’n don’t leave us to this!”

“Ye dog!”  The closest of the crew try to rush the lifeboat, but Gaston cutlass in hand drives them back.

“I’m sorry matey’s” he rumbles with in a cheerful voice, “Yet a man’s got to look out for himself, I’ll recommend ye all to Ole Brin… trust me on that!”  With a last haul the small boat is in the water, and his two men lay into the oars with a purpose.  Carrying him away from the doom vessel, “It aches my heart boys, to see so fine a vessel go under, yet we’re alive and that’s what matters right?”  The two men nod in assent.  They where making good speed, and if their luck held true they would reach land within days, and Gaston could see about replacing his ship and crew.  Distracted as he was he did not notice one of the men quite rowing and stand, dagger drawn.  Thus his sinking ship was the last sight Gaston had before the mans dagger slide into his side.  Gasping, Gaston is shoved overboard into the darkness of the briny deep.

Gaston Waldgrave sank down for what seemed like the full turning of an age, this had happened before long ago.  He had been a smuggler then, his ship captured by Illian navymen, he threw himself overboard preferring the sea to a life of slavery.  The wound in his side was numb, his whole body was numb his life’s blood flowing out of him.  Yet their was a darkness here that soothed him, a familiar darkness that echoed with the darkness in his own soul.  “Who are ye! Name yourself spirit or monster whatever ye are!” I am the cold darkness of the sea, the shadow that never rest, the bleakness in all mortal souls, I am Shai’tan, the Dark One, The Raven and the Rat…  I am all that turns men’s hearts to ash and despair.

“Ole Brine then!?  Ha, ye are nothing but a myth to scare little lubber children!”  Ungrateful wretch, who saved you so long ago.

“Old lady lucks what saved me.”  Yet it was a weak protest, with little strength behind it.  “Are ye really Ole brine!”  No answer came back to him, and as his strength began to flag and the panic for breath began to set in, dimly felt something hook him from behind.  Dragged up and up towards the light of the sun, he vaguely recognized that he was being saved.  Bursting out of the sea into the bright light of the sun, Gaston gasps for breath weakly.  Falling into unconsciousness he only later comes to the realization that he had been delivered from death into slavery.  Mended and stuffed into the brig of a Tearian navy vessel, he reflects on the words he had heard in the water.  

“The Dark One spoke to me” he says the words, testing them.  They felt right, the Dark One had spoken to him.  Thus it was that Gaston Waldgrave, murderer and pirate kneels.  “I, Gaston Waldgrave, do pledge myself utterly to the Dark On... no, the Great Lord of the Dark, master of the depths and all the lands from coast of the Sea of Storms all the way to the Blight itself.  I be your faithful servant Master, let the seas bleed at your touch!”  A coldness enters his soul as he utters the final words, a cold as deep and bitter as the endless depths of the sea.  He was both more and less than he was before, he was Gaston Waldgrave servant to darkness and his soul was no longer his.  The Great Lord had saved his wretched body, now his soul was no longer his, yet his sword and bitter ire where his still.

Edited February 16, 2013 by Myyrth