Harthas Droigan Prequel

Here is a prequel for the story I wrote earlier. If anyone actually reads these bloogs, any feedback would be lovingly accepted.

Through cunning, charisma, and a talent for recognizing opportunities other men would wisely ignore, Heulog Fraan came to control an unremarkable stretch of land. Other than housing thick eastern forests and a prodigious number of birds, along with a dearth of water in bodies larger than rather large ponds, Fraan’s Land was worthless. Harthas Droigan was a heroic figure within Fraan’s little nation and the manager of the region’s only profitable mercenary army. He found that the features of this insignificant land fitted him quite comfortably. Droigan appreciated the mysterious qualities of Fraan’s thick woods, and though he had a nagging distrust of birds, his hatred of water was almost legendary.

As a young man, Harthas Droigan’s opinions of birds and water had been far more charitable. Indeed, Droigan had enjoyed a brief career as a ship-owning smuggler and relied on various gulls to relay messages to and from employers. If any period of Droigan’s life could be called happy, it would be the time he spent aboard the Infinite Punches. Unfortunately, the captain approached his life as a smuggler much as he had approached his earlier life as a priest. Droigan’s flamboyance was overwhelming and his activity quickly drew the attention of the Rochdale Shipping Company. This large, influential company quickly blacklisted Droigan in every major port along the Goldwater Coast, and the bright orange hull of the Infinite Punches attracted more gunfire than profitable ventures.

One morning, Harthas Droigan awoke aboard the Infinite Punches to discover he was bankrupt and his crew near mutiny. Succumbing to the demands of his shipmates, Droigan agreed to divide the plunder, but he first had to acquire plunder. His plan for profit, though hastily formed, was quite brilliant. Droigan would retire from piracy intact while simultaneously striking at the heart of the oppressive Rochdale Shipping Company. Indeed, on paper this plan would have to be considered one of the cleverest pieces of trickery Droigan had ever designed.

The morning after learning of his bankruptcy, Harthas Droigan sent the Infinite Punches out to sea without a crew, hoping her mighty orange hull would bother and confuse any who came across it. The sea always has enough depth for one more tale of a ghost ship. Droigan and his crew hiked through dense jungles to the nearby harbor town of Osta. This town was quite wealthy but vigorously defended against sea-borne raids. The citizens of Osta never saw the surrounding inland jungle as a source of danger, as the place was too horrific for any but the most suicidal of raiders to dare travel through. Harthas Droigan was hardy, daring, and utterly disdainful of the well-being of those under his command.

The plundering of Osta had been meticulously planned. Droigan would send in crewmembers adept at sabotage to make alterations to the cannons of the two forts defending the town (it was this preference for specialization that would later bring Droigan success as a mercenary general). These clever alterations would cause the cannons to violently explode the instant they were fired. Upon the return of his saboteurs, Droigan would kill said saboteurs (a cost-cutting method the captain tended not to make common knowledge), storm and plunder the city, then sail off with the fastest ship available in the harbor. This plan, clever as it was, became subject to change as soon as Droigan’s pirates emerged from the jungle.

While Harthas Droigan attended to various wounds inflicted upon him by the residents of the Ostan jungle, he sent a scout to spy upon the town. The scout returned earlier than Droigan had expected, and her report threw him into a foul mood. It is difficult to lower the spirits of a shipless captain stitching his cheek shut after spending three days trudging through thick, poisonous wilderness, but the news that a Rochdale warship was sitting in Osta’s harbor did just that. One must wonder what ran through Harthas Droigan’s mind when he realized that he had no ship, no money, no food, and no hope of defeating a crew of Rochdale mercenaries. The teeth lodged in his back certainly became less of a nuisance.

As a final act of futility, Droigan sent his saboteurs into the town to do whatever damage they felt they could get away with. When they did not return quickly, the captain assumed the specialists had deserted or been killed and made plans regarding the survival of his remaining crew. It is perhaps ironic that that when the saboteurs did return, it was the ship’s cook Droigan and his crew were enjoying as a meal. It is certainly ironic that the chef was by far the least nutritious member of the crew. The report delivered to the captain was far better than anything he could have hoped for, given the dire circumstances he was in. The warship had been cautiously approached and it turned out that it was all but unmanned, having reported into the harbor for various small repairs. The saboteurs had found themselves entirely free to carry out their work on the town’s forts without taking incredible risks. They had gone so far as to inflict a further injury upon the town but they could not divulge this information to their captain, as Droigan had rewarded their success with the rapid executions he had originally planned.

After consuming the rest of the ship’s cook and the meatier portions of the saboteurs, Droigan’s crew descended upon Osta in a frenzy only Harthas Droigan could induce. Banks were emptied, taverns drained, churches defiled, women raped, and children tortured. It was only when Droigan himself noticed a flurry of activity at the town’s barracks that he made a most unwelcome connection between the events that had led to his present circumstances: if the warship had no crew onboard, then that crew had to be somewhere else. As over two hundred angry, well-trained Rochdale soldiers poured out of the barracks and rushed to the aid of the plundered city, Droigan decided that the time for retreat had come.

In a move that certainly seemed brilliant, Droigan’s crew seized the unmanned Rochdale warship and fled. The Rochdale soldiers, though skilled, had been taken by surprise and could not quickly commandeer another ship and pursue the pirates. The order was given, after some hesitation, for the fine warship to be fired upon, but the work of Droigan’s former saboteurs caused the forts to be shattered by the shots their own cannons fired. Droigan sailed peacefully out of Osta’s harbour with a new ship and an entire town’s wealth, having only lost his original ship, a third of his crew in the Ostan jungle, another third of his crew in Osta itself, and a favorite ivory dagger Droigan had buried in the thigh of a resistant woman and later forgotten to retrieve.

A thick fog descended shortly after Droigan’s daring escape and the captain, though confident in the power and speed of his new ship, nonetheless grew fearful of an encounter with Rochdale forces that would end his retirement from piracy before it even began. The fog made navigation all but impossible and for three days Droigan’s crew could do little more than peer into the surrounding mists for any sign of pursuit. Finally, on the fourth soupy day, the fears of captain and crew were confirmed. A pursuing vessel was seen through the fog, though barely. With daring and bravado, Droigan swung his ship about and fired at his approaching foe. Immediately afterwards, the captain painfully regretted killing his saboteurs before they had finished reporting on their activities in Osta.

If truth be told, there were two things Harthas didn’t know when he issued the order to fire on the pursuing vessel. The first was that his saboteurs, having found the Rochdale warship all but abandoned, had turned the ship’s cannons into death-traps. They had assumed, incorrectly, that their captain would opt to steal a smaller, less conspicuous ship. The second, less crucial piece of information was that Droigan was not being pursued by Rochdale forces, but had been intercepted by a more familiar vessel. The consequences of these inconvenient truths were disastrous.

The order to fire on the pursuing vessel having been quickly obeyed, Droigan’s new warship was blown to pieces. Most of the ship did not actually sink, but was instead scattered across the ocean’s surface. The only unmolested object was a small, oar-less, sail-less war canoe that housed two corpses that had landed there by chance, two living members of the pirate crew, several of Harthas Droigan’s messenger gulls, and Harthas Droigan himself. With the mists quickly rising, the captain regained his senses in enough time to see the orange hull of the unmanned Infinite Punches cutting through the wreckage of what had once been an excellent warship.

The war canoe spent two hundred and fifty two days on the ocean before being rescued. The corpses of the sailors were eaten and their bones saved for making a variety of tools. The absence of fresh water claimed the living crewmembers within a few days of the warship being destroyed. An unusual pairing in Harthas Droigan’s ancestry allowed the captain to survive on salt water, and after carefully rationing the corpses as they were made available to him, he spent the rest of his time in the canoe depending on his gulls to bring small fish. His opinion of birds soared to new heights.

Eventually, a trading ship on a routine mission came across the war canoe, and they learned that the blackened, emaciated man living in the boat had escaped a terrible accident on the other side of the Tapaas Ocean. The merchant crew quickly returned Harthas Droigan to reasonable health and set him ashore at the nearest port. His career as a pirate certainly finished, Droigan spat in the ocean, took leave of his gulls, and began his search for a land that would never remind him of his embarrassing accident and subsequent ordeal.