â€œSwab the pooping deck!â€<br/><br/>It was Captain Rotterâ€™s only command of the day, but he had been giving it frequently, to a lot of pirates, and now he demanded that his first mate Yagos do it, even though that was not his job and despite the fact that<span style="font-style: italic">he was already doing it!</span><br/>â€œYaaarrgos, do it properly this time. I want this pooping deck so clean you will want to eat my dinner off it.â€<br/>The problem with Captain Rotter was that he sometimes displayed no knowledge of nautical travel whatsoever. For instance he continuously misspoke the â€œpoop deckâ€, not to mention it was not the poop deck he pointed at and demanded to be cleaned over and over!<br/>The good news was that he did not need nautical knowledge on his ship, because the proud vessel, The Flying Rotsman, never touched the ocean. It was the only ship in the known world to hover through the sky. Captain Rotter could not tell high tide from tsunami, and he did not have to because neither would ever affect his ship.<br/><br/>And so far he had managed to get them all booty.<br/><br/>It was a commonly held theory that Pirate Captain Rotter was solely in the business of piracy because he liked to say â€œbootyâ€ and liked to claim he got a lot of it. It was not known how he had managed to make the ship fly, but he had once told it was simply because it was the coolest way to travel, and the mad captain did appear capable of doing the impossible in the name of â€œyaarrsomenessâ€. He was a skinny man who still towered over the rest of the crew, clad in equal parts typical pirate gear and old bandages. He was unsure what was the best look for a pirate captain so he wore them all: three different blue long coats and a blue tricorn hat on his head and another, narrower one strapped to his back and underneath it all he appeared to go for the mummy look.<br/><br/>â€œThatâ€™s enough!â€ He said in a voice brimming with undeserved confidence. â€œThatâ€™s enough, Yaaaarrrgos, we donâ€™t want the pooping deck too clean. This is a pirate vessel, for goodness sake, it should look like one. Right, aherm,â€ he cleared his throat and started pacing back and forth on his ship, shouting now and then that people should look at him.<br/><br/>â€œPeople, our ship is ready to go on our grandest adventure yet. We have gathered booty before and we will gather more booty before the end of your lives, but there is a treasure greater than any other. I have looked at the latest booty we reclaimed, and I chose the smallest, least valuable booty for myself using my right of picking-whatever-I-want-first, as you remember. And I have analyzed this booty, inspecting it, probing the booty thoroughly until it turned inside out and spilled all its secrets in my greedy lap. We will find the single greatest piece of treasure this world has ever seen, along with some other stuff, probably, when we find the oft-whispered Pearl of Atlantis. And my rigorous booty probing has led me to conclude that the first clue â€“ and hopefully the last, and failing that a good couple more than the first â€“ rests within the bloodline of our old rival, Captain Tom Leumas of the Moonlit Tugboat! Set sail, Magenta Beard Rain, we sail at immediately! We sail for Captain Tom Leumasâ€™ secrets!â€<br/><br/>â€œAnd Yaaarrgos, swab the pooping deck, will you?â€