Jolly Red Roger
"Red roger!" Shanku shouted out to the captain as the pirates raised their traditional skull and cross bones, but this one had a red field instead of a black one.
"Pirates, again? Will they not learn?" Captain Morgan asked sadly and shook his head. "Alert the men. We'll take her and see her crew hanged."
Shanku wasted no time dropping below decks to stir the crew. A jolly roger was worrying enough to see, but a red roger meant that the pirates would have no mercy and would sink the ship.
"Whitten! Marley! Ed! Smith! All of you, up! We've got pirates on our tail!" Shanku yipped into the crew quarters.
"Let them come," Whitten growled and withdrew his sword. He was not an archer, but he and Clements were especially skilled with swordplay.
The smaller brigantine gained on the heavy fluyt and the ships soon were running parallel. Unbeknownst to the other, each kurach lay in wait in their masts, preparing to dive down into the opposite crew.
"Steady... Aim..."
Notes & Commentary
February 23, 2012, Thursday
Jolly Red Roger
Yes, pirates. Possibly an overdone character class nowadays thanks to Pirates of the Carribean, but the Meriweather is a trade ship. Trade ships tend to have problems with thieves, onshore and off. So Captain Morgan has seen to it that his men were all trained in combat. (Whitten perhaps enjoys the whole "combat" part a bit too much.) At present, there are no guns or cannons in the story. All fighting is still done with blades, sticks, and stones. There are, however, crossbows. Nice, pointy crossbows. What, you think Shanku is much of an advantage outside of spotting the ships?
Gotta love long range weapons. It probably took them a long time to learn how to properly shoot with the wind blowing. You can bet that Captain Morgan made sure his arrows stock was all heavy arrows to help combat the wind better. He's only got five archers. Templeton, Marley, Smith, Henry, and Pete. Smith was on the previous page. This page has Henry and Pete.
I don't think Red Rogers are historical. Just a little something I added to my ships to denote pirates that have no intentions of leaving their prey alive.
Now what's that strange Kurach up to?
Also, I am pleased to announce that I will be moving soon! My husband recently was able to a get a good job after about four months of no callbacks or anything from almost everywhere he put in, so we're quite excited! We've found a good apartment and we'll finally have our own place! So if there is a gap in updates, my apologies, but I'll be in the process of packing and relocating over the next week or two and I will make up the missed pages as soon as possible. The last page of this chapter is 220, so I don't think I'll be leaving everybody on too terrible a cliffhanger if I have to take a one week break.
Characters - Shanku Ravenwing - Meriweather Trade Ship - Brelland Seacat Pirate Ship - Captain John Morgan - Caleb Whitten - Samuel Marley - Jeffrey Templeton -
Tags - Just Another Day -
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