Tale of Two Captains
For many years after the golden age of South Coast piracy had passed, in the harbour of Portselyme, there remained the hulks of two decaying pirate galleons—The Nightscare and The Thunderdark. These were the very last ships of the once-feared pirate fleet, now little more than rotting shadows of their former grandeur. Their sea-slimed timbers, splintered and crumbling, were held together by sagging hempen ropes and tangles of rotting rigging. Masts, reduced to splintered stumps, still struck skyward, but now only rot-streaked tatters of shredded sail drooped, swaying dismally in the breeze. With each groaning swell of the tide, their blackened hulls settled deeper into the mud.
The ships were no longer home to riches and treasure but to strange scavengers. Whiskered sea-worms wriggled among the bladderwrack tangled in their bilges, and many-legged sea lice, their scissor-sharp jaws flexing, crept amongst shore crabs now at home in waterlogged ballast bricks. These vessels, once instruments of terror, had been reduced to little more than kingdoms of rot and decay.
Aboard these wrecks, the last remaining members of the pirate crews still lingered. But they were shadows of their former selves—gaunt, skeletal figures with pale, drawn faces and wide, wary eyes. Driven mad by hunger and damp, they fretted in mouldering cabins, rarely stirring from their damp hammocks. They muttered and coughed, crooning half-remembered shanties in the dim daylight that filtered beneath decks. The stench of bilge, mildew, and rot was omnipresent, clinging to every inch of their decaying ships. Decrepit and ancient, the crews—and the hulks they clung to—were sinking into oblivion.
But amidst this crumbling ruin, one thing remained unbroken: a rivalry. For aboard these ships too, resided their respective captains, each locked in an eternal battle of stubbornness, vanity, and pride. Captain Crudrudder on The Thunderdark and Captain Canpake on The Nightscare refused to abandon their vessels. Each was as foolish, vainglorious, and implacable as the other, and neither would give the other the satisfaction of being the first to leave. Their futile standoff had stretched into years, a bitter stalemate of determination and futility.
The only reprieve from this endless battle of wills came on Friday evenings. A temporary truce, honoured begrudgingly by both captains, allowed them to leave their rotting ships behind for a few hours. From sundown to dawn, they would venture ashore, where the life of Portselyme awaited.
At sunset, among the creaking ruins of The Thunderdark, Captain Crudrudder snored himself awake. The deep rumble of his snores seemed dulled by the ship’s damp timbers as he stirred. Pulling back the dusty, threadbare drapes thick with mildew and fungus, he squinted into the gloom. Draughts from the deadlights swirled the fetid air, doing little to dispel the stench of bilge rot and tar. Rats scurried across the cabin floor, their claws clinking against empty bottles scattered amid piles of mouldering clothes and worm-eaten wood.
Crudrudder’s weathered hand reached instinctively for the hilt of his iron leg, which always lay heavy beside him in bed. The iron leg was his most prized possession—more dependable than the rusty cutlass hidden beneath his sagging, wool-stuffed mattress. Propping himself up with a groan, he peered through a grime-encrusted porthole. The shadows had deepened across the harbour, and the time had come—it was Friday, and the town awaited him.
Meanwhile, aboard The Nightscare, Captain Canpake stirred in his bunk. Around him, his skeletal crew clung to what remained of the ship, their minds long since lost to madness. They lived on a steady diet of fat, juicy rats—so plump they could barely squeeze through the holes they gnawed in the woodwork. But Canpake, with his disdain for such unrefined fare, clutched his finely carved wooden leg close to his chest as he dreamed of finer things. His thoughts turned to Gloria, the beloved figurehead of Captain Glisters Galore’s ship, now serving as the proud greeter of the Sleepy Squidde tavern. Tonight, he vowed, he would dine on something finer than rats—it was pirate pension day, after all.
At the same time, the two captains emerged from their vessels. The Nightscare and The Thunderdark, their hulls so close after years of disrepair, groaned in unison as their figureheads, locked together by the slow drift of time, seemed to protest their captains’ departure. The two men stepped onto their respective gangplanks, their uneven gaits marked by the clatter of wood and the clang of iron. Sparks flew from Crudrudder’s iron leg as it struck the cobblestones, while Canpake’s polished wooden peg thudded solidly with each step. Together, they made their way towards Ossuary Road, where Portselyme’s gambling dens, brothels, and taverns hummed with life.
Despite their bitter rivalry, Crudrudder and Canpake shared a storied past. Both had sailed under Captain Glisters Galore, the most infamous pirate lord of the South Coast, and both had been part of the legendary battle against Captain Cornelius Kurdle of the North Shore Pirates. The battle had been fierce—splintered masts, shredded sails, and the deafening roar of cannon fire. It was during this chaos, they claimed, that they had lost their lower legs. Each captain had forged a fierce pride in the prosthetics that replaced their missing limbs, though this shared experience only fuelled their rivalry. Wooden versus iron: it was an argument that had persisted for decades.
Their destination was the Sleepy Squidde, a tavern that had once been Gloria, Captain Glisters’ flagship. After Glisters retired, he dismantled the ship and rebuilt her as a tavern overlooking the harbour. The golden stern of Gloria still adorned the building, a reminder of its illustrious past. Even after Glisters’ death, the tavern remained a hub of Portselyme life.
Inside, the Sleepy Squidde was a haven of warmth and noise. The fire crackled, filling the low-ceilinged room with flickering shadows. The scent of Old Buoys Bitter mingled with the earthy aroma of Ancient Mariner’s Ale. Chandlers clinked their tankards in boisterous toasts, while fishermen swapped tales of the sea. Amidst the revelry, Canpake and Crudrudder shuffled towards their usual fireside table, their outdated pirate garb and mismatched gaits making them a familiar sight.
The figurehead of Gloria stood proudly at the entrance, her wooden eyes seeming to wink knowingly at the captains as they passed. Settling into their worn high-backed chairs, the two wasted no time launching into their favourite argument.
"My wooden leg is the finest in all the sixteen salty seas!" Crudrudder bellowed. "Carved from the best oak, it’s warm as toast and smooth on the old stump!"
"Nonsense!" Canpake retorted, thudding his iron leg against the floor. "Iron is as sturdy as any ship’s hull! It’s saved me more than once—used it to poke a fire and even block a cannon’s mouth!"
The argument, loud and heated, carried through the tavern with them seated in their usual chairs by the hearth. But later that night, something strange happened. As the captains fell to drunken drowsing by the fire, the figurehead Gloria appeared to them in a shared dream.
"Ah, my dear captains," she purred, stepping out of the shadows, her carved features softening into a mischievous smile. "You spin such grand tales of bravery and heroism. But we both know the truth of how you lost your legs, do we not?"
Crudrudder stirred uneasily, while Canpake’s brow furrowed.
"Captain Crudrudder," she said, fixing her gaze on him, "it wasn’t cannon fire or a sword that took your leg. No—your stubborn refusal to treat a splinter in your sea-slipper led to gangrene. That’s why the surgeon sawed it off. Hardly the stuff of legend."
Crudrudder groaned in shame as Canpake smirked, but Gloria wasn’t finished.
"And you, Captain Canpake," she continued, turning to him. "An ingrown toenail, left untreated until fungus spread to your knee—that was your undoing. No glorious battle wound, just neglect and pride."
Canpake’s cheeks burned as the truth of his loss was laid bare.
"Perhaps," Gloria concluded, her voice a haunting melody, "it’s time to embrace the truth instead of spinning yarns to impress the drinkers at the Sleepy Squidde."
With that, she faded into the mist, leaving the captains to stew in the shame of their folly.
That very night, leaving Canpake drowsing by the fire, Captain Crudrudder returning to his ship, missed his footing on The Thunderdark’s gangplank. His iron leg sent him plunging into the harbour, never to be seen again. Canpake, meanwhile, unobserved and overlooked as the tavern emptied and closed, met a fiery end beside the hearth. His polished wooden leg caught fire, and by morning, all that remained of him was a pile of ash and the faint smell of bacon.
Even death could not end their rivalry. Now, their ghosts haunt the Sleepy Squidde, still debating wood versus iron for all eternity. On foggy nights, the spirits of The Nightscare and The Thunderdark drift through the harbour, while the two captains, seated by the fire, puff on spectral scrimshaw pipes, locked forever in their futile argument.
Swirling fog cloaks the harbour in mystery as though drawing a veil over the past, hiding the remnants of long bygone times, but the ghosts of that that golden era, it seems, still linger…