Interlude: Tales from the Wetwar

During their year-long stint in the Fifth Hell, Cormorant takes to telling Clwyd, Pyt, Wilfred, and Nix a story of the past over a series of nights. The old pirate's memory might have failed him in a couple places, but his deft use of artistic licence smoothed over any patches with no-one the wiser. 
== Ok, here's a story. ==
This one’s about the four captains who turned on Twice-Hanged Artemis and ended the Wetwar. Ever heard of em?
Well, there’s Jerebax the beholder. Nasty beast. A true friend to no-one, he was arrogant, yet  hated arrogance in others. It’s frankly a miracle he spent so long allied to the criminal Artemis. 
And then there’s Bloody Mary.  In a former life she was a—a lady of the night. Poor as dirt. Then she married a captain who whisked her away. She was more ruthless than him, and when he died, she took his place. She always had a real thing about hatchets. Of all shapes and sizes. Kept scores of em lining her deckrail and knew how to use em.
The third captain was Ojam, a man of little loyalty, except to the clinking of coins in his hand. His whole crew and he were multi-skilled war veterans. To be honest, if he hadn’t had such a problem with authority he might’ve been a champion bounty hunter for the Rumidians. But as it was, Artemis paid his wages.
And the fourth? The famous Skeleton Jack. Not just skinny like you might’ve heard. No, no. That man was bones and nothing else. A frightening sight for sure—only Mary could stand it for long. Jack starved himself to death in the Zarthe Hole. Then in undeath, he picked the lock of his cell with naught but his bony finger. Artemis might take credit for the Zarthe Hole Riot, but it was Jack who sprung her from her cage. 
So these were the captains that heralded the end to the Wetwar. Oh, and it had been a bitter war. Long and bloody. No sense in any of it by the end. It was dragging on to its twelfth year when there came whisper of a thing coming. 
== The Miasma. ==
Foretold by omens and prophets, but its true nature remained a mystery. Everyone was sure it was sinister and meant disaster. Even the two warring lords, Senestrago and Artemis, they were worried. 
That’s why our captains were searching for information. About this Miasma. And that’s why, when they captured their next enemy galleon, they took its prisoners alive. 
I heard this next part from eyewitnesses. Picture the aftermath of battle: the water littered with burning rigging and burning corpses. 
This wreckage had a captain, and he’s been taken aboard Bloody Mary’s ship, called… the Cocktail Bar? The Cocktail Bar. Sure. The captain’s there, pushed to his knees, what remains of his crew lined up behind. And there stands Mary with her back to him. She used to make this show—funny show out of choosing which hatchet she wanted to use that day, pulling them from the rail one-by-one, testing their weight, shaking her head, trying another. Without turning she calls behind her, says, “left or right?” 
He’s confused. She asks again, “left or right?” 
And he says, “please, I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you anything!” 
And she says, “it’s a simple question.” 
He knows. His hands are outstretched. His eyes shut, he says, “left.” 
Bloody Mary grins. She turns round, and she takes his right.
He’s screaming on the ground, blood pouring from his arm, and through his clouded, tear-streamed eyes, he sees Skeleton Jack walk up and kneel down, get to eye level, and say, “come on, mate. It’s not that bad,” pulling off his own hand to mock him.
The information they get out of him is thus: that the Miasma is some fiend, come to scour the ruins of the world. And it’s heralded by the hellfire rain.
While this is going on, Ojam’s crew swarm over the burning wreckage like maggots. And yet it’s slim pickings, there’s barely any loot here. This is a band of mercenaries, mind you. When there’s no loot they get more than a little unhappy. Even Ojam’s first mate, Derrick, he’s pissed off. I think this is the closest Ojam’s crew come to complete revolt. It’s only the promise of an end to the war that quells this unrest. The end, Ojam says, will be their payday.
So. These fierce generals meet that evening for dinner with their commander. Twice-Hanged Artemis, the triton—she trusted no-one in her lifetime, but these four came close. All of them, though, are far too untrustworthy to spend any real time on another’s ship. They dine on a sandbar, safe territory. They eat off a mahogany table hauled onto the loose sand. And here, they tell Artemis what they’ve learned. Accounts of this meeting are confusing, but I know she was quiet, unusually so. They interpret this as worry. There was talking, eating, drinking, arguing. And by the end they decide they need more information. They’re worried that Senestrago’s summoning this Miasma to end the war, right. So they decide to parlay with one of the most dangerous creatures surveying these waters—a hag, an elder hag. The Night Mother.
Now, she lives on one of the Phantom Isles, so called because they barely exist in this world. Except there are times when you can access them, when you can go. And for the Night Mother’s isle, it’s only under the light of the full moon. When it isn’t in the sky, the island simply doesn’t exist.
So Artemis departs in another direction, and the rest of them set sail, and it’s on the way that they first encounter this foretold hellfire rain.
== It comes in waves. ==
The first: dark clouds rolling unnaturally quick from the horizon. Then you hear the sound—there it is! The screaming of tortured souls fuelling the magical storm. Then before you know it you’re sailing beneath a hail of burning droplets that incinerate wood and flesh alike! But our captains are ready.
Ojam’s crew were certainly ready in kind. Their only thought was for money, for selling the hellfire on. And so they gathered every bucket they could and reinforced them with all the metal they had on board. Each man and woman held one out in front of them as if they were begging for pocket change. And the hellfire rain pattered down, singeing their flesh but collecting in the buckets.
Meanwhile Mary and Jack followed behind the ship of Jerebax. Beholders have this effect, right? I believe it’s some sort of . . .cancelling out magic? Anyway. It managed to plough a route for them through the storm . . . uhhh . . .
—Picture the moment though. There’s a—the beholder parting the storm as they go through, but these spectres, faces, are screaming all around them, racing towards them. Mary and her crew pull out their weapons and slice through the faces as they come, and each one they carve through makes the storm ever so much weaker. And the storm doesn’t like this.
It doubles down. It pushes harder. Their sails are starting to catch alight. 
Jerebax,he’s had enough of this. And his loyalty, as I said, doesn’t extend beyond his own skin. He turns his magic-field-thing to clearing his own path, leaving Jack and Mary in the lurch as he ploughs on ahead.
Ojam’s crew can’t face the collection anymore. And so what do they do? They take their collections below deck, pool them in barrels, and then they turn turtle, using the buckets to cover their bodies, hoping to weather the storm. And they don’t have to weather it for long.
Have I told you about Jack’s ship? Crew as dead as he is, only with less body to go around in. He kept their souls in a jar, bound to his will. Jack had command over souls. And as he stands on his deck, the tempest whirling above him, he holds his jar aloft and tricks the hellfire rain itself into it. And it goes, swirling down like bathwater, roaring into the jar until the sky is clear, the sun shining, and Skeleton Jack is there with a piece of the Miasma in his very hand.
== The Moonlit Isle of the Night Mother... ==
...is a rocky, barren place. Hostile beaches of twisted obsidian. The other three catch up to Jerebax here and they press on. Inward.
The water falls behind, and the harsh light frames their world in black and white. It looks like a storybook. Then they stop, suddenly, because the moon is in front of them yet they see their shadows stretching out in front too, facing the wrong way. And as their eyes follow their shadows upwards, they see standing in front of them a living shadow, eight-, nine-feet-tall, its mouth open in this twisted smile two inches below where a normal mouth should be.
The Night Mother agrees to parlay. She takes them inside her stone hut, and they talk, and they make a deal. The Night Mother will give them information about the Miasma, but she wants something in return. She casts her greedy gaze around, up and down their forms; she sees the jar that Skeleton Jack holds in his skeleton hands. The jar filled with a thousand trapped souls. And her eyes narrow. She will take only that.
And Jack says to her, “you may take the jar, but I need to keep the souls inside.”
And the Night Mother says, “I will take the souls as well.”
And then there is some argument about whether the deal means the souls in the jar as well as just the jar itself.
During this argument the arrogance of the Night Mother annoys the beholder Jerebax. He approaches her, right, with the full force of his will—each eyestalk whirling like a dervish—but as he comes close his mind is wracked with pain, and he falls back beaten. And with his mouth he apologises, but in his heart he vows revenge.
And then Jack says, “but these souls are my crew. If you take my crew from me, I can’t sail my ship. You must take me as well.”
“And very well,” says the Night Mother. “I shall have you too.”
Jack agrees to this proposition, agrees to stay.
And the Night Mother tells them what we now know. That—of course!—the Miasma wasn’t getting summoned by Senestrago but by Artemis. Their own commander, Twice-Hanged Artemis! The woman who trusted not a soul! The woman had turned to dark, fiendish forces to accompli—
—Not that there’s any problem with that.
Anyway. The Night Mother, her hut, and Jack all fade from view like fragments of a dream. Jerebax, Ojam, and Mary get left on that isle with their allegiances as twisted as the rocks around them.
== What happened next is already in the history books... ==
...although there are a few details I can add.
The event now called the Cocktail Party took place on Bloody Mary’s ship. There, our remaining three traitors met with Greenbeard and a couple of his generals. They spoke for a while. The three might’ve been desperate, because for them it was a point of no return. Artemis would’ve never accepted them back after a betrayal like this. So they were staking everything on Senestrago believing them.
And he almost didn’t, you know. The Wetwar might not have ended then. But it was something in the eyes of Bloody Mary—no, not the selfish Jerebax—or the haggling Ojam—but the battle-weary Mary, the one who could-not-would-not go back to her old life. Something in those eyes made Senestrago believe. 
So the parties shook hands, and Artemis’ fate was sealed.
They hunted her down over the next few months, ruthlessly and without mercy. And all the while, poor Jack was the plaything of that twisted hag. Who knows what cruel diversions she had for him? I do know that the hag was playing both sides. Artemis was her champion—that was why they were summoning the Miasma. It would both win the Wetwar, and serve the hag’s own ends. The more bodies that piled up on the day of the ritual, the more effective it was going to be. That’s why the Night Mother had told the captains the truth, to hurry the war on to a bloody climax. And to think, she even managed to get Jack and his crew while she was at it!
All this meant that the Night Mother and Jack were there, right, at Sawtooth Basin, at war’s end. Both of em were there at the climax of battle. A terrible day. Fiendish power roiling through the seas, the sparking of long-dormant volcanoes across the sea floor. These new-formed basalt spires erupting all over, turning the basin into a maelstrom, while in the centre, Artemis rushed to complete her hellish ritual.
Hundreds of ships sank that day.
== I know because I was there. ==
I saw Jerebax face down the hellfire storm alone, cackling and screaming.
I saw the mad crew of Ojam the mercenary take every item they had aboard and force their way through the narrow channels and razer-rocks to reach Artemis’ shiprail.
I saw Greenbeard’s ship of living coral plunge beneath the waves and then resurface, to flank Artemis on the other side.
I saw Bloody Mary take her finest axe, arch her arm back, and throw it six-hundred-feet through the storm to strike the wrist of the Night Mother, severing the hand that clutched Jack’s jar. And Jack caught it from the air. Quickly he opened it and released his invisible crew, even as the Night Mother took his shadow in her own and slammed him to the deck, fracturing his fragile skull.
The crews that now fought for Pirate Lord Senestrago, they boarded and fought their enemy hand-to-hand. Bloody Mary’s twin hatchets whirled, her face caked in gore, her trusted lieutenants by her side—Cosmo and Spritz, for posterity.
Unseen in the violence, Skeleton Jack’s crew took silent command of the helm, and rammed the enemy boat into the rocks, puncturing its side. 
Artemis rallied and exerted her powers. Tentacles rose up from the water and were tearing timber away from the hull of Ojam’s boat. But he and his mate Derrick were off it like a couple shots. They tackled Artemis to the ground, stopping her ritual dead. 
Mary saw Cosmo fall beside her. She yelled and charged onwards, headlong at the triton. Jerebax meanwhile closed on the Night Mother, his chosen prey—his teeth gnashing, his one eye wild. He shot her through the chest with a single ray of force, and then he ate her whole.
In all this chaos, Ojam gave Artemis a chance. He asked her for money—a raise to work for her again. But she was blind. She refused. Even then she might have been saved, right? But she did refuse. 
So Ojam and Derrick lashed her to her own mast, and Senestrago took her head—that which had twice survived the hangman’s noose, that malevolent head, he took off with a single swing of his cutlass.
== So ended the battle at Sawtooth Basin, and with it the Wetwar. ==
Mary took her friend Jack onto her ship, and all the forces still fighting around the Basin retreated as the volcanoes kept churning. The ritual must’ve triggered something geological. I suppose there were silver linings: the danger made the Rumidians pull back from their Southern Reach, which left space for what’s now the Pirate Republic to spring up on the new volcanic islands.
Greenbeard was right flush with victory, but he had a great many promises to fulfil. That’s why he created the Council of Ten—to give power to some of his most loyal, and quell any resistance from Artemis’ lot. And also to maintain his new Republic as a place of freedom—I mean, relative to the rest of the world—out of the reach of Shandy or Svavil or Great Rumidia. Freedom, to do whatever you want. 
And the four captains? Three went on the council.  Not Ojam of course, who was paid and went on his way. But Jack, Mary, and Jerebax joined such fine folk as Gaia Gold-Drinker, Feverfletch, and the Blind Butcher. 
And Senestrago sat at its head. Until Jerebax suddenly-yet-inevitably betrayed him after only a year. Jerebax took the ship of living coral for himself, and Greenbeard was left powerless. No power meant no spot on the council. They’ve left the tenth seat empty ever since.That’s why we now have a Council of Nine. 
== What’s the point? ==
Oh. Uhh. That’s why the Pirate Republic and Council of Nine are as they are, I suppose. Also why Greenbeard seems a washed-up drunk in Tortuga most days. And why I’d really prefer to avoid the coral-ship captained by a mad beholder. The end.
== TL;DR ==
You got four captains
* Bloody Mary (female half-elf hatchet-woman)
* Skeleton Jack (commands a ship of tortured souls)
* Jerebax (arrogant beholder)
* Ojam (hard-nosed, high-skilled merc)
All fighting in the Wetwar for Pirate Lord “Twice-Hanged” Artemis, against Pirate Lord Senestrago (“Greenbeard”).
They found out Artemis was trying to summon a fiend called the Miasma. They betrayed her, and with Senestrago, killed her and ended the war. Subsequently, the volcanic area became the modern Pirate Republic, ruled by a Council of Nine (that at the time consisted of Mary, Jack, Jerebax, and others).
Also there are hags.
Category:Misc. Stories