Athena's Fortune - Ramsey
The Voyage Through the Devil’s Shroud
In the middle of the seventeenth century...
no one knew what was in the Devil’s Shroud and piracy was dying. Ramsey Singh, a pirate of some renown nearing his forties, had guaranteed his family a comfortable life from the spoils of his exploits, but he couldn’t just stop living out his dream. He wanted to continue in his piracy, though the presence of the Grand Maritime Union made that rather difficult. Ramsey had an idea though. There were many theories as to what the Devil’s Shroud was hiding; riches, magic, or a paradise for pirates were popular theories in tavern discourse. Ramsey didn’t exactly know what was on the other side, but whatever it was, he wanted to be the first to find it, claim it, and amass fame and fortune. So, he set out to build a crew that could withstand the journey. First, he sought a competent navigator; Mercia, a woman of the enlightenment who believes in natural philosophy and wishes to uncover the mystery of how the shroud works. Next, he searched for a quartermaster who could keep up with his plans and found Shan, a spindly yet talented craftsman with a fast brain. The last crewmember, and first mate, was Rathbone, an old friend of Ramsey who had always been a part of his exploits as a pirate. He was a robust and cunning man who could keep track of a thousand schemes.
Leaving his wife, Athena, and twin children behind without warning, Ramsey charted course through the shroud on the Magpie’s Wing. They sailed for days without sleep through the deadly fog, their ship creaking and rotting, their lungs burning. They finally make it through and end up in a sea where the stars are completely different. Ramsey and his crew set up camp on an island now known as Thieves’ Haven and begin plundering the riches they found. After having collected a substantial hoard, the crew returned to the outside world, Mercia making her charts of their path through the Shroud more accurate. Reaching the port town where Ramsey’s friend, Rowenna, runs a tavern, Ramsey begins sharing the story of his journey. A ratty little man named Stitcher Jim calls him a liar and a fight breaks out. Jim sneaks away and runs into Rathbone outside, who, forming an insurance plan for if things go south, gives Jim a copy of Mercia’s charts in exchange for loyalty, as a ‘friend’. Jim takes the map assuming its hogwash and plans to sell it for a fortune to some gullible pirates.
The Merfolk Rescue
Now that the map had been spread around, pirates began entering the newly dubbed Sea of Thieves, with Ramsey being treated as a celebrity. Outposts cropped up and some attempted to attack. The crew searched for an island to make their hideout, and they settled on Thieves’ Haven, setting up a sort of home. Over time they made observations that things worked differently in the Sea of Thieves. Everything seemed livelier, injuries healed faster, you could get drunk and recover from the hangover in a couple hours. Since the arrival of others, the region seemed to respond with more storms and bursts of wind.
Ramsey believed that the mysterious nature of the Sea of Thieves was magic, and now that the land inside the Shroud could no longer be his hideaway, he wanted to be in control, so he sought to find some magic of his own and use it. He told only Mercia this plan, making Rathbone upset that the rest of the crew was being left out of decision making. Mercia, still skeptical of magic, managed to get a map from an old woman’s story about an ancient underground chamber she found. The map led to the chamber described, and inside, Mercia found a pair of magic earrings that allowed her to hear merfolk, singing a song in unison. They asked Mercia to help save two merfolk that had been captured by a gang of pirates planning to sell them off in the outside world.
The crew decided to help the merfolk, so Mercia and Ramsey sneak attacked the ship of the captors while Rathbone and Shan went to rescue the merfolk. The plan didn’t pan out and the crew ended up disturbing an altar, causing the cave to collapse, and having to fight the captors, led by Captain Douglass, who had caught a nasty curse that was turning him to stone. This allowed him to take a blast from Shan’s blunderbuss. Following the freed merfolk, the crew of the Magpie’s Wing jumped into the river, and Douglass followed, soon realizing that his stone body was too heavy to let him float in the water, and he was crushed in the collapsing tunnel. Thankful for the rescue of their kin, the merfolk told Mercia of their relations with the ancient people that lived here and agreed to take them to the remains of the Old Mother, a great kraken that the ancients had chained up to help the merfolk. They said that the ancient people were good friends that helped them deal with things like the Old Mother and something called the Whispering Plague, but one day they sailed away where the merfolk could not follow, never to return. The merfolk gave the chains to Ramsey and his crew and promised to help humans from then on out of gratitude for the rescue and for new companionship. From there, Ramsey formed a plan.
In the corpse of the Old Mother, a sleeping kraken was disturbed.
The Parlay at Golden Sands Outpost
After him and his crew had sufficiently tinkered away at the cursed metal, Ramsey was ready to enact his plan. He called a parlay between the most notorious captains in the Sea of Thieves at Golden Sands Outpost; the most notable among them being the straight-talking Captain Eli Slate of the Morningstar, wild card Captain Briggsy of the Homeward Dove, and the heartless Captain Gideon Graymarrow of the Twisted Horn (Stitcher Jim of the Wailing Barnacle also attended, though nobody really wanted him to). Ramsey presented the captains with Cursed Chests he made from the cursed chains, chests that physically cannot be opened except through the keys that only Ramsey possesses. Some of these chests have other properties, like a chest that makes whoever is holding it completely drunk (a Chest of a Thousand Grogs), or one that ‘cries’ by periodically letting out water from within (a Chest of Sorrow). The proposal he makes to the captains is an alliance; with the growing power of the Grand Maritime Union, Ramsey wanted to trade these chests and keys in exchange for loyalty. They would never steal from one another and would protect each other’s secrets, becoming untouchable by any other crew or organization. Ramsey would naturally be the leader of this alliance, a Pirate Lord of the Sea of Thieves, if you will.
The captains, of course, were in uproar. His crew also was also surprised as he had not relayed his plan to them beforehand. Graymarrow thought this whole assembly was beneath him and he stormed off and prepared his ship to leave. As he left the tavern in chaos, it took a moment for the different crews to notice that a sea monster, the kraken that awoke in the Old Mother’s remains, was attacking their ships. The crews of the Magpie’s Wing, the Morningstar, and the Homeward Dove worked together to fight the kraken, with the kraken targeting the Morningstar first. Ramsey, searching for a weak point, noticed that this kraken was blind in one eye, and would be incapable of sight if they could take out the other.
As the Morningstar was crushed by the kraken, Shan attempted to throw a Chest of Sorrow into the maw of one of the many mouthed tentacles, but it got stuck so he used one of his one-size-fits-all cannons (which he made while tinkering away at the cursed chains of the Old Mother) to fire himself at the kraken and kick the chest down the tentacle’s throat. Briggsy helped the crew of the Magpie’s Wing as the kraken turned its attention to the ship that disturbed its mother’s remains by distracting the behemoth with harpoons as her little sloop drifted around it, and Mercia quickly joined her aboard the Homeward Dove to steer it. During the chaos Ramsey had been filling a cannon with broken glass and gunpowder, and once he was satisfied, fired the shrapnel at the kraken’s remaining eye.
The creature shrieked in pain and conceded, releasing ink as it retreated to the water, but dealt blows to the Magpie’s Wing as its tentacles pulled across the deck. Ramsey’s leg was caught by a tentacle, and he was dragged to the edge until he caught a railing. The kraken swam away, but Ramsey was dreadfully injured and holding on for dear life. As he clung to the edge, Rathbone, the only crewmember left on the ship, came over and grabbed his wrist before he fell. Rathbone took this opportunity to shame and insult his captain for all the idiotic mistakes he had made, never listening to his old friend or letting his crew in on his plans. He told Ramsey all about his secret deals behind his captain’s back and how Ramsey never even noticed because he was too busy with his delusions. He took the cursed keys away from Ramsey so he could take all the gold hidden in the chests for himself and his secret ‘friends’, and as a final insult, he took Ramsey’s diamond wedding ring and commented, “I wondered if she knew how little you really cared about her.” Rathbone tossed his old friend against the hull and into the sea.
Aftermath
Twenty years since he first entered the shroud, Rathbone had established his little group of “Gold Hoarders” as a lawful company outside the Sea of Thieves as they ferried gold out through the Devil’s Shroud. The pirates in the Shroud weren’t huge fans of a new trading company and they attacked the Gold Hoarders’ ships. They were running low on fortunes until Stitcher Jim was approached with a proposal from a pirate with a cursed chest; if Jim opened the chest, they could split the gold. This set the Gold Hoarders up nicely, and Rathbone built his estate in the outside world. After getting news about a huge treasure trove hidden in the Wilds, Rathbone returned to the Sea of Thieves alone to claim it himself. He found this trove in a deep chamber of an island engulfed partially by the Shroud and sat on the throne in the center of the room. It felt strangely warm. He decided he would no longer have his gold spread and used in his business, but instead have it all brought to this chamber. He began taking as much gold as he could out from the chamber and loaded it onto the ship to buy supplies to make the island his home, still feeling the warmth of the throne. He covered himself in as much jewelry and gold as he could and started to plan his way back through the Shroud and noticed his arm painfully starting to turn golden, a curse from the gold, no doubt. He was also starting to go insane, his judgment becoming cloudier and cloudier. His little sloop was pinned by two galleons captained by Eli Slate and Mercia, and they sank it into the ocean with regards from the “Pirate Lord.” Rathbone drowned, but he did not die. He slowly brought every piece of treasure from his shipwreck on the seabed back to the throne, his flesh falling off his bones as he was filled with a warm and greedy desire.
More years went by and Ramsey, now known as the Pirate Lord, decided to pay a visit to Rathbone, now called the Gold Hoarder, on the island now known as Tribute Peak, taking the flagship of his now-strong fleet, Athena’s Fortune. His crew ventured down into the caverns from a different entrance and crafted a bridge for Ramsey to cross a great chasm. The Pirate Lord crossed it and entered the room where the skeletal Gold Hoarder sat, and Ramsey began to talk. He told Rathbone of his adventures since they last met and ridiculed him for his foolishness and greed. He apologized for being a bad captain but still berated Rathbone for what he did, saying people will only remember his friend as the monster he now was, Ramsey’s final words calling the Gold Hoarder, a skeleton with green gems in his eyes and gold on his bones, the poorest pirate he ever knew. He saw the ring Rathbone had stolen but said nothing and left. Alone, the Gold Hoarder screamed.
