Of Fleets and Silvers

NOTE: the following story is centered around sailors, so expect some crude language.

     “Captain Evergrin, The Unbound is on the horizon. We should arrive in an hour.”

     The former slave turned ship captain glanced up from his desk and waved off the cabin boy. Pushing his chair back, he stood with a groan as his back cracked and popped. Keeping the smirk off his face, he reached over and grabbed the hat that marked his status as captain of the Northstar. Giving it a slight twirl as he donned the hat, Captain Evergrin turned to look at himself in the mirror.

     The face that stared back at him appeared to be older than his forty seven years, looking more like a human at fifty than a half-elf of the same age. Even without the matching scars leading from either side of his mouth up to his ears, his years in the quarries and under the whip had left their mark on him. Silver lining, having the top and bottom of his cheek scars outlined in black made him look wicked awesome.

     Checking to make sure the key to his manacles was on the string around his neck, Captain Evergrin left his cabin and made his way up to the bow of his ship. Grinning at the figurehead, a rather crude gesture instead of a woman, he took a spyglass out of a pouch on his belt and gazed through to the largest ship in the known world and the smaller vessels docked to it.

     “One, two, three…four flagships! This meeting must be serious if four commodores are here already,” Captain Evergrin muttered to himself before trying to identify the flagships.

     “Let’s see, we got the Black Depth, the Countess’s Vengeance, the Crown of Argovas, and The Ironwood. So that means that Alebrown, Caerlyn, Lucini, and Menyl have arrived. Good, a couple of Alebrown’s crew owe me a drink.”

     An hour later, as predicted, the Northstar came up to the massive vessel and boarding hooks were thrown over to pull the pirate hunting ship to the docking ramp. Ropes were lashed to pegs on both vessels as the anchor was dropped, and when his ship was secured Evergrin hopped off to land in front of a glaring halfling woman.

     “You have a lot of nerve to come here you scarred broken murderer,” the halfling growled to the much taller captain.

     “For the five hundredth time Kianna it’s Captain Scarred-Broken-Murderer, and you’re not still mad about Blackjack are you? That was twenty years ago before I was more than a deckhand. Besides, he was a pirate,” was his reply.

     “Pirate or not, he was still my cousin. One day soon you will pay for murdering him.”

     “I wish the crew hadn’t vetoed my first choice for a figurehead.”

     Kianna blinked a few times, thrown by the sudden change in topic. As she opened her mouth to ask what figureheads had to do with his future death, Evergrin continued, “It would have been an erect dick pointing straight out. That way I could tell any assassins that you send to try to kill me to ‘Walk m’dick!’ In any case shorty, I’m off to the pub, Alebrown’s crew owe me some drinks.”

     Shivering in revulsion as Evergrin walked off, Kianna asked herself what else could she expect from a man with ‘Welcome Aboard’ tattooed on his cock. Glaring at his back, she swore that one day soon she would avenge her cousin and Evergrin would die a horrible death.

     For his part, Evergrin simply chuckled at getting under the halfling’s skin. It was always fun watching the looks on annoying fharghoghs’¹ faces when talking about the dick-figurehead. Heck it’s always fun to get under anyone’s skin. But his free drinks were calling him. It was with some surprise that Evergrin found himself being greeted by Commodore Caerlyn of the Countess’s Vengeance as soon as he entered.

     “Captain Evergrin, just the bottom feeding bastard I was looking for!” the unusually boisterous elf bellowed as soon as Evergrin stepped through the door.

     “Commodore…is there something wrong?” Evergrin cautiously asked. Caerlyn was mercurial on the best of days, when he looked to be drunker than a crab dropped in a keg of rum like now, then no knew what to expect.

     “I’ll tell you what’s wrong…I’m from Drynaryn! Need I say more?!”

     “…regarding your homeland? No. Why you were looking for me? Yeah I’m going to need some more,” Evergrin stated, hoping that the barb towards the elven city would keep the drunken commodore happy.

     The jab seemed only marginally successful, for a look of befuddlement made its way across Caerlyn’s face, “Why in Dayal Juul’s name would I be looking for a barnacle like yourself?”

     “When I entered, you said that I was, quote, ‘just the bottom feeding bastard I was looking for.’”

     Caerlyn’s look of confusion continued for a few moments before clearing up. In its place was a half-frustrated, half-furious look.

     “Commodore Lucini has asked that you be present at the Seventh Meeting of Commodores to provide information about the so-called ‘Blood Silvers’ that the hobgoblins have. Pure nonsense if you ask me.”

     Upon hearing what Lucini wanted, any and all humor left Evergrin. Despite what Caerlyn believed, Blood Silvers were no rumor. He had seen them devour many an unlucky slave before he escaped his own slavery at the lash of the hobgoblins. Monstrous, deformed beasts that contained features of two distinct breeds of dragon: red and silver. No two looked the same, and most were feral beasts. The worst had a gleam of cruel, savage intellect and cunning in their eyes.

      Whatever they were, the only saving grace was that the hobgoblins only had a few dozen of them. Maybe forty at most, and they controlled far too much land to have them anywhere but a few key locations. One he heard had been used in the conquest of Dilgynryn². It was rubble now, and survivors spoke of a commander dropping flasks of alchemist’s fire on the city from atop a scaled, flying beast.

     “If I may ask, why does the commodore meet-up require background info on Blood Silvers?” Evergrin asked with a bit of hidden concern.

     “Supposedly the source of them has been found along with a big ass shipment of them. If the information is legit, then the whole fleet’ll be attacking whoever’s breeding these freaks and send them down to the Dayal Juul’s Black Depths,” Caerlyn responded with a feral grin.

1.      A curse word in the Goblin tongue, considered to be extremely crude and foul even by goblin standards.

2.      A fallen elven city to the east of Glastig. It was sacked by the hobgoblins about seven years ago.

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