Terence
Noma de Cuisinaire
The Mizzen Market, Tonate Proper, The Southern Isles

Noma raised an eyebrow at the name drop.

"I had no idea you were familiar with Dirk! In fact the lad just dropped me off yesterday! Do give him my thanks when you see him again, and ignore any mention of my 'exceeding debt.' It's all mularkey I assure you."

As the pair were sure to find out, "Farensun," Was actually a common name here in the festival. However Noma laughed in blissful ignorance to the blunder.
Marguerite
Catarina Tanner
The Mizzen Market, Tonate Proper

Her brow furrowed slightly in confusion at the name 'Dirk'. She didn't think she knew anyone named Dirk? Unless Valkrin went by another name or had a nickname she was unaware of? No, she *Highly* Doubted that. The man certainly didn't seem like the nickname type. Not to mention the fact that the idea that this boisterous, lovely man before her would have anything to do with Valkrin simply did not compute. She certainly hoped he didn't have any debts to Valkrin! Valkrin tended to take them back, with interest. A little panic rose in her chest at the thought of Noma's debt, though she tried to keep herself calm and not show her worry. 

"I'm not familiar with Dirk," She said rather hesitantly. "I work for a different Farensun. Perhaps they're related somehow? It's a rather unusual last name."
Emma
Herin Farensun
Libertalia, Uncharted Waters


Since Herin's last visit, Ambrose had been working non-stop on the project for months. He hadn't gotten any more "Gifts'' from Herin since the first one. In that time, he had made great progress on his work. He took a vial of black liquid from his table, and poured it into a steel bucket filled with water. He held a torching over the bucket, and when the first ember touched the black sheen on the water, it exploded into flames. Putting the torch away, he picked up another bucket filled with water, and brought it towards the flames. This was the moment of truth, to see if his creation would succeed or fail. He dumped the water onto the floating inferno, and covered his face as a plume of smoke rose to greet him.
When the smoke cleared, the crackling fire was gone, leaving only a slick surface of black oil.

Ambrose slumped against the wall, watching the bucket blankly. All this work, for nothing. He had made progress, yes, but would it be enough to spare his daughter from the masked man's wrath?
If he ever did complete this project, he wondered what Herin would do with him. He had long ago abandoned the idea of surviving this. Herin couldn't let him leave with the secret of this fire in his head, nor could he keep him here without risking an escape. Most likely he'd be forced to give up the recipe and then be killed. But perhaps Herin would let his daughter live, that was what kept him going, the hope that this work would buy his daughter's life. He hated himself for ever dabbling in alchemy, the pain it had brought him and his daughter was too much to bear. He could only hope that Eva survived to forgive him for his foolishness one day.

In the months since the Hanged Captain told him the truth of his designs, Ambrose had been plagued with that knowledge, listening to the conversation in his head over and over. He at first dismissed Herin's ravings as simple madness, but he had slowly begun to think otherwise. He still believed, no, *Knew*, the man was mad, but his plans were not.
He had heard that there were other Tide Barers before, but these were simply men using the iconography of divinity to add legitimacy to their raids or petty claims of land. What Herin spoke of was a true successor, a new Divine of the Isles. But how could someone achieve such influence? Even Bradai Maith didn't have the power, or perhaps the gall, to declare himself the heir to the Tide Barer. What did Herin have that made him think that would go any differently?

His thoughts were interrupted by the man himself, striding through the door with another man at his side. Ambrose turned his head to look at the newcomer. He was a raider, that was for certain, but he looked more... Dignified than most others who sailed under that flag.

"Ambrose, any progress this week?" Herin asked, gesturing to the flaming bucket in the corner. 

Ambrose rose to his feet slowly, his knee was giving him trouble lately. 
"Yes, I believe I've come close to finalizing the recipe. It's not perfect, it can still be put out with water, but with more time I co-"

"More time? You've had quite enough of that, I think. You might not understand this Ambrose, but I'm working on a tight schedule, and your work is starting to interfere with that. Any further work on the King's Pyre will be done with assistance from your new partner, Ivar." 
Herin patted the newcomer on the back, as the man walked over to Ambrose and outstretched a hand. 

Ambrose tentatively shook the man's hand, more out of reflex than any actual respect. He looked past the man and towards Herin, confusion on his face. 
"King's Pyre? Sir, at this stage I think the last thing I need is a partner."

Herin waved his hand dismissively. "King's Pyre is the name I gave your project, Ambrose. Poetic, is it not? It's flames will consume all that Maith has built, a funeral pyre for our 'Pirate King'. As for your partner, well, you want to go home with your daughter, don't you? That means someone needs to know how to make the pyre once you leave."

The way he said it, like an inside joke between two old friends. Ambrose hated him more than ever in that moment, because he *Knew*. Both of them had a mutual understanding, they both knew Ambrose would never leave this place alive, he had to die to protect the secret of the pyre, and he had accepted that. He accepted he would never see his daughter grow old, he would never be there for her birthdays, her wedding, he wouldn't be able to protect her against the dangers of life, and this monster, this inhuman creature that had tortured her, was laughing about that. He wanted to scream, but instead he simply nodded. 
"Of course, *Sir*."

"Good, I'll let you both get to work on it then." Herin clasped his hands together, then walked out of the room. As the door closed, Ambrose realized he was now fully alone with this 'Ivar'. He was an islander, a big brute of a man with calloused hands and a bushy beard that seemed to resist any attempts to wrangle it's hairs. These were not uncommon traits amongst Hanged Raiders, but the way Ivar carried himself, the way he dressed, it spoke of a man with a bearing rarely found amongst those who plied the trade of piracy. 

"Are you just going to stare, or are you going to show me how to make this 'King's Pyre'?" Ivar said, breaking Ambrose's train of thought. 
"Yes, yes, of course." Ambrose said, going to collect the ingredients needed. He was eager to get this over with, in a way. This might end with his death, yes, but it would finally end his worries. Every day he woke up terrified that his daughter might be gone, every day was a waking nightmare. Once he taught Ivar how to make this weapon, he would die, but he would also finally stop worrying. He almost hoped that there was no afterlife for him to look down upon his daughter from, it would be easier that way. 
He recoiled from his own thoughts. That wasn't him, that wasn't the type of man he was. He wouldn't think those things, right? 
Looking over at Ivar, already busy mixing his own batch of the Pyre. Simply to exorcise the dark thoughts from his mind, Ambrose struck up a conversation with the man.

"Ivar, was it? May I ask you a question?"

"Maybe." Was all the man said in response. He had a strong accent, certainly a native of the isles. 

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but you seem a little more... Educated than most raiders."

"You wonder why I'm not a syphilis ridden buffon like most scags?" 

Ambrose held up his hands in apology, flinching at the thought of this man getting angry with him. "No, I just wondered how someone like you, with a grasp of basic alchemical sciences, ended up in a place like... This."

Ivar was silent, turning back to his work. Ambrose sighed, apparently starting up a conversation wasn't something his new partner was interested in. 

"Bradai Maith killed my family." Ivar said suddenly, his eyes still glued to his project. "One of the pirate crews he allowed to operate did, at least. My sons, my wife, all gone thanks to him. That's why I'm here, because I want him to hurt the same way I do."

Ambrose looked at Ivar with a mixture of confusion and anger. "Your family died to pirates, and so you decided to join the Hanged Raiders?! You think they don't kill women or children? Where's the reason in that?!" He didn't mention it, but he thought of his daughter, the prisoner of these sadists. What sort of grieving father would inflict his grief on others?

Ivar turned to Ambrose, his expression so cold, it caused Ambrose to flinch. 
"Save your judgments. I might have failed my family, but at least I'm not whoring myself out to their killer." 
The comment hit Ambrose like a punch to the gut. He didn't have anything to say, he just turned back to his work, mouth agape. 
For a while, neither man talked. 

"It doesn't go away, you know." Ivar said, breaking the silence "That urge to protect them, it never does, even when they're gone. It's all you have left, really, that drive to keep them safe, and the knowledge you failed."

After that, they worked in silence. 


Herin Farensun walked the streets of Libertalia without fear. He had no guards, no protection besides the sword at his hip and the small crossbow hidden on his person. Yet despite being in a den of thieves and murderers, men who would sell their mother for a few silver coins, he needed no protection. As he walked past groups of men, some his own Hanged Raiders, some Scags, they all showed respect. A few bowed their heads, but most simply gave a quick salute as he passed them. He needed no guards, because he had the greatest protection of all, his mask.

Herin had learned something important about leadership, flesh is weak, yet symbols are eternal. A king can die to an assassin's blade or fall in battle, and he must, because he is a mortal man, and therefore invites death. But a symbol? You cannot stab a symbol, you cannot kill a symbol, because it exists within the minds of those sworn to it. A symbol is much like a god in that way, men throw themselves at it's altar, sacrificing all in its name. And so Herin made himself a symbol, the symbol of the Hanged Raiders. But a man cannot be a symbol, so Herin had to eliminate his humanity as well. That was the power of the mask, because it hid the human beneath. Now when the men looked at him, they didn't see Captain Herin, they saw The Hanged Captain, the leader of the Hanged Raiders. And while Herin Farensun was very much a mortal man, The Hanged Captain was a symbol, and you couldn't kill that. 

Herin finally arrived at his destination, the shipyards. The Hanged Raiders had many hidden shipyards around the Isles, building and repairing the ships of the Hanged Fleet, but this one was by far the largest. Herin had invested more time and gold into this place than just about any other facet of his empire. As he walked through the grand wooden halls, he looked upon the fruits of his labor, men hard at work building multiple warships, great beasts that would drench the seas in blood. Normally, most scags focused on smaller, faster ships, ones that could raid settlements and towns, then escape quickly. Herin had bigger ambitions than that, and so needed bigger ships, but he had not come here for those, the object of this visit was more than just a warship.

Walking through a small door in the massive wooden wall that separated the two halves of the shipyard, Herin stepped into a cacophony of noise. Slaves and workers ran about, carrying planks and pieces of wood, all converging on the very thing Herin had come here to see. 

It was a massive skeleton of a ship, more than double the size of the largest warship in the Hanged Fleet, and larger than anything Maith had, as far as Herin knew. It was only a collection of boards and planks right now, but Herin could envision it finished in his mind, and he knew it would be glorious. 

"Cap'n! I heard you were comin 'ere, glad ta see yer in good 'ealth." Came a voice from behind him. Herin turned to face Normais Fairrite, the chief shipwright of Libertalia. Normais had formerly been a shipwright for one of the more powerful pirate clans, however when Bradai Maith unified the Isles, they resisted, and Normais was left without a job. Refusing to work for Maith for what he did, he made his way to the Hanged Raiders, and was probably the only reason why their fleet was even close to as good as it was. 

"Normais, good to see you as well, any reports on the progress of the Livyatan?" Herin said, clasping a hand on the old man's shoulder. 

"Ah, things are goin well, at least, as well as they could be." Normais turned, leading Herin down the length of the ship. It truly was a massive thing, a true successor to the Livyatans of old. 
"When this beauty is finished, doubt anything on the seas could scratch 'er. But with all the resources ya poured inter this, Ai dunno if it'll be worth it in the end. Big as it is, it ca'only be in one place at once."

"It only needs to be in one." Herin replied, staring up at the skeleton of the monster. 

"That may be true, but if this sinks, you lose everything ya put inter it. I coulda made five smaller warships with all the gold an' time spent makin this beasty."

"We have warships, Normais, what we need is a symbol."

"A symbol? I don't follow yer."

"What is our greatest weakness, Normais? What do we lack that Maith has?" Herin asked, looking the older man directly in the eyes. 

"Numbers, simple as." The man replied quickly. "At full strength, we barely reach 'alf of what he's got, maybe tree-quarters if we called in some favers."

"Even if we called in every scag crew that owes us something, there would still be more out there that wouldn't fight. Houses that doubt Maith, scag crews too cowardly or too cautious to stand at our side. But if we united them, we would have a force fit to fight Maith."

"Heh" Normaise shook his head "That may be true, but Maith has a firm grip on 'is houses, he ain't likely ta let any of em go."

"Then we loosen his grip, and once they're free, we give them a symbol to rally around, the only symbol that has ever *Truly* United the Isles."
Herin gestured to the massive ship, he had already given it a name, *The Livyatan's Wake*, the weapon of the Tide Barer. 
"You see my mask, Normais? That is the symbol of the Hanged Raiders, that is *My* Symbol. But if we are to grow beyond petty raids and smuggling, then our symbol must be *Larger*."
Herin looked at the old man, holding his shoulder and pointing to the massive ship being built before them. 
"You can sink a warship, Normais. But no man can sink a Livyatan."