94828-2 RAA Outer Seas TEXT R1 Proof

The Outer Seas

The pirates, after a bit of deliberation—and after watching a particularly bold swordsman named Ivan get his head crushed by a cannonball Old Barnabus had tossed when they kicked down the door to the children’s quarters—felt that bringing him along to avoid further bloodshed made the most sense. However, this would prove to be their undoing, as after Barnabus ensured the children were all settled on the mercenary ship and as comfortable as possible, he removed the salt crystal charm hanging from a necklace he had never been seen without and drove the hook-shaped object into his cheek. Teach said that Old Barnabus did this without a grimace or foul word, and as Teach watched the salt crystal hook soak through with blood, he said Old Barnabus bit the thing in half, promptly swallowed part of it, and spit the other bit overboard into the sea. As dawn broke, Teach was awakened by screams from the decks above, or so he said. Old Barnabus sang jaunty tunes to the children to keep them laughing and calm, and soon after the screaming started, it quickly stopped. The sound of running feet could be heard outside the door of the room where they were being held. A bloodied pirate burst into the room and bid Teach, Old Barnabus, and the children follow him, as they were to be promptly freed. Once topside, Teach said, they saw the deck was littered with salt crystals and the broken bodies of the pirates who had captured them not hours before. However, the twisted borns and torn flesh of their captors and errant piles of salt were not what held the old man’s attention. Humanoids with the head, arms, and torso of muscular warriors and the lower bodies of brightly colored fish sat coiled about the deck. Some wielded massive war hammers made of salt crystal, others picked errant shards of bone from the flesh of their knuckles while blood ran freely down the channels of great salt discs encircling their wrists. The most fascinating of the details of Teach’s story were of the merfolk there who commanded beasts made of salt crystal, which prowled the deck, menacing the surviving pirates. I would learn from Old Barnabus that these were merfolk who served an eldritch entity known as Tide Queen Valcora, whose favor he had gained sail ing in his youth. The Valcora merfolk would craft a small ship of salt for the children and Tech to return to the merchant lords’ fleet, while Old Barnabus would stay with the Valcora merfolk and return to the merchant fleet a few days later with half the pirate vessel’s hold worth of treasure. Before he left the service of the merchant lord and settled on the raft city, Teach said Old Barnabus passed from this place to the next, and when his body was lowered into the sea, his physical form instantly crystallized into salt before sinking below the waves. I’ve been collecting as much as I can on the Valcora since I first heard that story, and am including what I’ve learned from research, stories, and second-hand accounts in my notes below. VAL

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