Mirros Gazette: Exclusive - This Skeleton Crew

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Mirros Gazette: Exclusive

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Black Eagle Infighting
This Skeleton Crew III.

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A year of attempted retraining. Surprise visits from all areas of the Army and Church. Excessive force, spying, intentional mismanagement, led into Kings Naval Blockades and non subtle pushes into recognising the level of discontent. We had become used to being audited, exterminated, sent on special missions. 

We were skinny, sunburned, hungry, angry and violent. 

These punishments merely encouraged the risky moves that were making us increasingly powerful in the minds of the world around us. Escaping through the skin of our teeth, winning despite all odds and hopped up on poisoned and or amphetimous supplies. We slept either deeply for too many hours to metabolise the poisons or not at all from the amphetamines. 

Whatever was intended from this intense regime of punishment and power and control had misfired in an unusual way. It made us something else.

The intensity with which we were being pushed away from the mainland and our 'King and Country' the more we were at the express desire of the sky and sea. We were nothing like 'them'. The mainlanders. The clean ones. The healthy ones. We were fully committed to the ferocity of the waves and the roulette wheel of fate when it came to the weather. 

Although we were, at first, at odds with one another - the crew of mismatched human bodies became a cohesive machine against the potential of failure. 

We trusted others who understood the sea. 

We were still not sharing beliefs, no love was lost in discussion on the future - but we would live and die together, so we clasped arms in the darkened night to create a human chain. Wet and desperate for the ever-screeching of the wind to slow, so that we could lie on lightning blackened boards and breathe again. 

I do not think that Fort Hendriks could comprehend the connection it had unintentionally forged between us, the crew... and Us. The Navy. 
Big capitalisation for the big feelings we had together. Unloved, unwanted. The mutts of the 'Kingdom'. 

They forged us in salt. 

As we approached the turn of the year, we were expected to clear the bulkheads of excess salvage and tally up our yearly finds. Expected to give all for the King and the war approach. 
The bigger the portion given in, the more likely the ship would be to receive the latest arcane upgrades, battlements and creature comforts. 

Some of us still had to wear a patch inside and switch when coming out, due to the lack of arcane illumination during the day. Still using minimally shielded oil lamps and nighted lumination candles. Cold cleaning showers and baths. Hand washing our clothes, sheets, sails and dishes. 

We were bumping shoulders for basic citizen requirements, something we'd found out the Kings Naval Forces got gratis with every ship. 

I suppose they forgot we had the capacity to think and research for ourselves. Perhaps they thought we'd be too scared to consider what we could do on our own. 
So when ship by ship, the return of gold and salvage was far lower than the average expected, known and spied upon - I suppose they had reached a wits end. 
I can only imagine the disrespect that they recognised in these hired outsider Captains. What they saw in the gilded uniforms, lifted chins and formed backup.

Assassination was not an option. We were too learned in our ways now. All talks talked and all walks walked. 

So when we received coordinates to our next mission, we, our ship - complied. Though, slightly short of the total for an armored hull upgrade and illumination kit from the Elven contingent of the Islands, the best artificers we could afford. Aside from the Bay Dwarves. - we had taken a short detour to romp some ruined fortress. I did not know, as we vaulted crumbling walls and filled our packs with trinkets and relics - we would probably remember this as so much more than it was. Our xenophobia had dried up early, the hatred of others that we had reserved for 'wrong bloods' had transferred to the ones who hurt us more. 

As the Black Eagle Kingdom began to try to drown us. The loving hand of the Island, Bay, Beach and Travelling races had grasped us. Not just by the hand, but elbow. We had gripped one another many times now. Repairing boats, sharing food, seeking treasure. In some cases, dangerous cases. We had loved, lost and enmeshed. 

In one year, we had become 'other'. It was one of the best times of my life.

I know, every bit of banter and ribbing was echoing in my ears for weeks after. I still love those voices. I still breathe the humid island air, honeyed with unfamiliar plants and the petrichor of afternoon storms. A shared task with Elves and hin that day. We split up reluctantly, slowly, an extended goodbye in the cool night air. 

Arriving our required allocated destination late, though by hours, we were dirty and tired. Unprepared. 



We burst through an invisible barrier. A miasmic bubble of power. From dark, to sudden blinding light.
Centrally a huge adamantine and steel barge - surrounded and latched on to hundreds of ships, smaller boats, an arcane tow and rowboats. It was not immediately clear, as some sort of centralised storm had circled the area. White heavy cloud cover and a stilling of the wind within. Outside, it appeared to be actively rolling the waves away. A created island, it's own little sphere of gravity and weather. Like a big flat spider, all the arms and legs and then docks and planks like a huge web of control.

From afar in a way though it looked like a glittering city. Twilight brought on the active lighting of the more luxury ships, varying shades of the rainbow in the heatless flames reflecting in iridescent glass. Triple height windows of the Captain's Cabins in most ships featured frescoes of stunning coloured glass, depicting various scenes of sea and scenery. 

In awe, we really did not manage to read the emotional miasma around us until our ship was hooked by the docking system of the barge. A team of white skinned goths, male and female, effortlessly hoisting us in to our space at front and center with the other smaller ships. A slightly askew series of decorated trees and wrapped packages scattered along the barge. Placed there in a way that showed no care for visual perfection or alignment. The bare metal floor and dark patches of unknown substances beside the glimmering decor was immediately so contrasted and conflicting that it became sickly. 


"HELLO, ABOUT TIME YOU ARRIVED. HAPPY ODE TO JOY!" The words were inflected wrongly, the highs and lows switched and garbled. The arcanically amplified voice of the head of the Tower of Von Hendriks was unmistakably it's own. Full of deeply sincere excitement and none of the empathy of human communication. 

It was the first time I had ever seen this 'man'. In being led down the gangplank, created docks and over a planked walkway I stumbled and was almost dragged - I finally understood what I was seeing. We were being brought to join our illustrious comrades. The standing group of beautifully appointed and uniformed Captains and Enlisted. The ragged haphazard uniforms of the rest of us. A sea of black, red, gold and regret. 

I was deposited finally. I thought I could stand. I made the mistake again, of looking directly at him.

Dropping to my knees, I was face to face with the subcutaneous layers of fat, muscle, viscera, bone and pulsing deep red veins. Somehow wearing an outer layer of crystalline skin, exposing every inside onto the outside. Only to stop at the neck, a collar of true bright power and then the face of a madman. He looked at me. 

He sat on a gold and red throne with jolly sprigs of mistletoe and threaded candied popped corn. I wanted to vomit. I didn't.

Instead, looked back. 

"Good girl." he said to me. Sotto Voce. 



Author: Unknown

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The Gazette takes no responsibility for the voracity of the claims for or against the Black Eagle Forces and merely attempt to bring balanced coverage and truth in journalism directly to the Karameikan people.