Meat Baby

Meat Baby is an unusual creature, pieced together from various limbs and animated by dark magic. A crazed pirate captain grew tired of having his orders questioned and grumbled about, and was contemptuous of such ragged men as he had hired thinking themselves his equal. He killed them all while they slept one night, then butchered them into their component parts and selected the very best of each. Piling them together atop an unholy altar he had secretly built in his cabin, he performed a profane ritual to reanimate them. The limbs and head all oriented themselves to the torso like filings to a magnet, and dead flesh melded together and pulsed with new life. But something had gone very wrong, whether in the selection of the parts or in the ritual itself: the resulting flesh golem was compacted to no more than two feet tall. It was tiny when it stood from the altar, but proved to have the collective strength of the mad captain’s entire former crew. Cackling with his success in spite of the apparent error, he resumed his career as a pirate, now with one underling who would obey his every command without question.

They two pillaged successfully for a time, their victims at first laughing heartily at only two pirates attempting to plunder them, one of which was the size of a child. But they soon began screaming in horror when Meat Baby hopped aboard and began ripping them to pieces as though they were paper. It never took long to secure their surrender, though Meat Baby was always drenched in blood by then. They would hand over their goods, and cower as the sloop made off, the flesh golem standing eerily astern, bathed in red, and watching them with unflinching eyes until they were out of sight.

But tales of this horror soon spread to the Spanish Navy, and they dispatched a mighty pirate hunter to track them down. The mad pirate and his magical puppet were set upon in the middle of the night, the Spanish brig peppering them with grapeshot in the hopes of salvaging the ship and possibly getting a glimpse at this terrifying midget. Meat Baby stood astern as the captain tried to come about and face them, but while the grapeshot did nothing to the golem, it took but one tiny ball, striking the captain at the base of his neck, to drop him to the deck, dead before he finished falling. With his master’s death, Meat Baby’s magical shackles were sundered, and sentience came suddenly to him. He struggled to sort the jumble of other men’s memories surging through his mind while the Spanish came alongside and boarded, and he looked up to see bristling muskets all aimed at him, and a very uneasy Spanish captain demanding that he stand down. Confused and afraid, but somewhat relieved to be free at last, he suffered himself to be taken prisoner, and went aboard the pirate hunter vessel as his own was scuttled.

He was locked up belowdecks, and was prepared to sail away with them wherever they might be headed, but while down there, he overheard some of the officers discussing him. They let slip that their prisoner would likely be taken and dissected for study, and Meat Baby’s newfound sense of self-preservation recoiled at the thought. He snapped his chains as if they were vines, and began to chew his way through the hold of the Spanish ship, gnawing away great chunks of wood as if they were meat on a bone and spitting them aside. When water rushed in through the hole he had made, he tore a few planks free with his hands, and used them to float to the surface as the pirate hunter began to sink. He drifted away as he watched the doomed crew scramble to repair the damage he had done, to no avail; by morning, there was no further sign of the vessel, save for some lifeboats hauling away toward the horizon, away from the freakish little creature who had shredded through their ship effortlessly.

He floated along for many months, gathering the flotsam of the sea that he came across and fashioning it to his makeshift raft as he would, and it grew to be quite a comfortable floating home. As he was sustained by his magic, he had no need of food or water, so he busied himself as he could with what odd treasures he came across. He read books that floated to him, at times wondering when exactly he had learned to read, and he learned much from them; about sailing, about craftsmanship, about wars and weapons. His favorite tales, however, were about pirates, and he dreamed that he might one day become one.

His wish was granted one day, when he saw a ship flying a black flag far off in the distance. When it turned toward him at full sail, he stood in his raft and waved them down. They let down a rope for the diminutive lad, but he alarmed the lot of them by leaping the full height from his raft to the deck of their ship. He looked about, and admired the ramshackle construction of this ship, which reminded him very much of his own. A dashing young man stepped forward and introduced himself as Pic, Captain of the Gutless Goon, and inquired after the lad’s state. Meat Baby had not spoken in months, and then only briefly, so he could not find words to explain himself. He instead displayed to Pic his skills as a sailor, and was met with incredulous stares when he proved able to do the jobs of any three sailors at once. Thoroughly impressed, Pic granted him a spot on his crew with a hearty laugh, and they came about and made for the Isla de Oro.

Meat Baby remains loyal to the Goon, whoever happens to be her captain, reminded of his own piecemeal origins when he looks upon her mismatched beams and animal-skin sails, and feels the magic coursing through her frame, holding it all together and keeping it afloat through any and all trials. They are a perfect match thusly, and he has installed himself as her Quartermaster, serving gratefully and joyously. The Goon remains a force to be reckoned with, and the sound of the child-sized First Mate barking orders is inspiring to her crew - and terrifying to her victims.

* Isla de Oro Wiki
* The Island
* The Town
* The Council of Bones
* The Fleet
* The Captains
* The Officers
* The Nightwatch
* NPCs
* The Library
* The Hall of Legends