Today’s snippet, titled “Pirate Booty: The Legend of Mim”, is a background piece I wrote about my current character, Mim.
      Be forewarned, there are mature themes and naughty language below. Also, yes, this character sketch takes place in a DM-modded version of 3.5 Faerûn so some place names may be familiar to fellow nerds. For what its worth, we’re actually playing a Pathfinder game set in the Nelanther Isles Dalelands.
      Without further ado, “Pirate Booty: The Legend of Mim”. Again – consider yourself warned, there be ARRRR-rated elements below and if you keep reading, and get offended, its not for lack of warning. And yes, I did go there. Arrr!
      P.S. The title seems silly but it is applicable to Mim and her background story in multiple, punny ways. Tee-hee.
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Pirate Booty: The Legend of Mim

Part One

      He looked remarkably dashing in his salt-dusted leathers; their fit so taut across his broad, muscled chest that she swore she could see his heart beating beneath them. The sight of him set her own heart to racing and stole the breath from her lips. Amber rays of the setting sun turned his fair hair to a halo of fire and cast mysterious shadows upon the rugged angles of his handsome face. She might have fainted dead away, swooning with girlish desire, had sheer terror not been blazing adrenaline through her veins.
      “Ah, is this the treasure you teased me with, Shingle?” he asked, gesturing at her. Shingle, who had taken great delight in explaining how he had come to be called after the grotesque phrase ‘shit on a shingle’, nodded eagerly.
      “Told you, boss. She’s aces. Betcha we’ll get her weight in rubies. If her folks won’t pay it, I know some blokes what know some blokes who’d double our ransom for a gash like that. Virgin, I bet. Smells like it.”
      The sodden rope that bound her wrists and ankles to the mast was rubbing her flesh raw and her jaw still ached from the blow Shingle had dealt her this morning. It might have been momentarily satisfying to watch her spittle drip down his face, but his retribution had been swift and packed a hell of a lot more punch than she had expected from such a slight, weaselly little man. Her nose felt swollen and breathing was painful; if her piss-poor attempt at rebellion had earned her a mangled nose she would likely regret it until the day she died.
      Which, by the look of things, could be looming quite near.
      The buccaneer drew closer and rubbed his stubbled chin, appraising her like a side of manatee trussed up to dry. Those eyes! She tried to avoid their magnetic gaze, but could not. Despite the hungry, overt lust and a disturbingly predatory glitter, she felt her heart flutter when they met. His eyes were the clearest, deepest, most startleing green she had ever seen.
      “Surely does,” he said at last. He nodded once and slapped Shingle on the shoulder, dislodging a few pests, no doubt, and sending a small cloud of dirt and debris into the air. Filthy pig, she thought. “Cut her loose, take her to my quarters. And Shingle? See that she arrives there unharmed.”
      He looks at me like I am nothing more than a shiny bauble on a hawker’s cart! No, worse still. He looks at me like I am a Kara-Turan geisha lined up at auction to have my maiden’s head bought. A commodity – one he would love to fuck – but chattle nonetheless. Bloody hell, my mother was right.
      She resolved to never admit that aloud, even should she survive this ordeal and see her mother’s dear face again. Instead, she would embrace her tightly and apologize profusely for her trespasses (not to mention for this whole idiotic affair) and vow to be a better daughter in the future. She would lie and promise that her purity was unsullied, either by young Lord Kalam, any of these malodorous, malevolent criminals, or by the dastardly captain himself. It would be a lie by then, for as Shingle slashed off the moldy bindings and goosestepped her down into the belly of the galleon, she was wholly certain that by the end of this night, she was scheduled for a good, sound raping.
      Shingle’s grip on her shoulder was surprisingly light – but it was not as if she had anywhere to run on a ship two days out to sea. He pressed his thin, bony body against her as he leaned in to open the door and she shuddered in revulsion, bile rising to the back of her throat.
      “Hope you enjoy your evening, you filthy little snatch,” Shingle said with a scowl she could hear. His fetid breath was hot and queerly dry upon her cheek.  “Captain may look awful sweet but he’s a right bastard. And he’s gonna give it to you good – whether you wants it or not.”
      With that oh-so-lovely image in her mind, Shingle planted his shit-spattered boot square on her ass and gave her a shove. Unprepared – again! – for the little man’s strength, she was propelled into the cabin and fell to her knees with a cry. She had adamantly refused to give Shingle, or anyone else, the satisfaction of seeing her tears. Not when they broke poor Muffin’s neck and tossed the pup’s corpse into the pond. Not when they had bent Nanny Stanacia over a barrel and taken turns raping her for hours. Not even when they had slit dear, foolish Alix Kalam’s throat and pitched him into the sea.
      “You are a hopeless, wretched, hateful bitch, Suriah Vermeire,” she told herself, crawling from the floor to sit on the edge of the captain’s bed. “And you deserve every bruise and broken bone you get.”
      Alix had loved her. Silly boy. He had been mad to have her and she had taken merciless advantage of him, she could see that plainly now. She had never loved him, barely cared for him at all as anything more important than a plaything. But his family was blooded and titled and even if they were a bit impoverished these days, the very idea of marrying into that echelon of society made her tingle. Suriah had allowed him to court her for a full year now; escorting her to all the finest performances at the Playhouse and two masquerades held by actual Lords of the city. They had supped at absolutely every distinguished establishment and attended salons and card parties with the glittering nobility – the finest folk the realms had to offer. It would have been enough for her; the loveless union could have been buried beneath all the benefits Lord Kalam’s status afforded. For money – and her father had oodles of it – was not enough in the City of Splendors.
      One must have blood as well.
      Suriah shook her head sadly and smoothed her rumpled skirt down upon her thighs. Her lust for adventure had gotten four people and one precocious puppy killed. Instead of a lazily chaperoned tryst on his Lord-Uncle’s private island, they had ended up pirate’s prey. Rather than giving him her maiden’s head on the lush canopied bed his Aunt had custom-ordered for his cousin’s wedding night, consummating her decision to marry him afterall, they had been beset by ruffians the instant they dropped anchor.
      The skiff, for all of its antique enamel work and elaborate ornament, provided no reasonable defense. An arrow through the throat ended Gig’s young life. Suriah shed a tear to mourn him, but spared hardly a thought for his young wife and their newborn son. It was his blood that stained the frothy white lace neckline of her boating gown.
      Alix’s other bodyguard was an old, grumpy man whose name she had never bothered to learn despite the fact that he had accompanied them nightly for the whole of the year.
      He had met the bandits bravely, head-on, leaping heroically from the skiff and drawing his blade. “Go, Alix, take the girl and get out of here,” he had shouted, taking up a position on the beach.
      Despite his age – for he was ancient, surely at least forty! – Bodyguard Two was nimble as a water sprite. His blade flashed in the setting sun and Suriah wondered if it were a trick he employed, purposefully blinding the enemy, so that his wards could flee unhindered. She knew nothing about swordplay, but as she and Alix ran hand-in-hand up the beach, Suriah had glanced back and watched in awe as the courageous man cut down four foes before a coward from the shadows shoved a dagger in his kidneys.
      The only reason she, her chaperone, Nanny Stanacia, her puppy, Muffin, and Alix had been able to elude capture was because Alix – thank Waukeen! – had spent several summers visiting this isle and the invaders had spent mere hours. The three of them had hidden, shaken and terrified of course, but absolutely certain of their own value and youthful immortality, in a copse of weeping willow trees set quite remote from the main house. Alix had whispered the entire story to her as they waited – for what, she still did not know – beneath the limbs. Apparently, his great-great-great-grandmother had been imported, so to speak, to marry a Waterdhavian Lord and was not happy about it. The Lord Kalam of the era had doted on his surly bride and spared no expense to recreate her native lands here on the family’s private island. The willows had been painstakingly transferred by barge and cart and ship, kept alive by, legend had it, a druidess. Suriah imagined if there had been such a person, she must have been an exiled druid, cast out for being such a scrupleless mercenary. Still, Alix insisted it was a druidess who came with the trees and saw them planted and made them thrive in the sandy foreign soil. The then-Lord Kalam had an army of laborers turn a quiet field spring into a secluded grotto, carving delicate ebonwood benches and coaxing the trees to grow just so. Hours into days into months they toiled. These artisans created a whimsical, rustic garden for the then-Lady Kalam, perfectly matched to one she might have found in her homeland.
      She hated it. She hated her Lord-husband. Fortunately for the familial lore, she died in childbed after bringing twin sons squalling into the world. Then-Lord Kalam maintained it out of unrequited love and taught his sons to revere it as their mother had – a blatant lie. Still, they did, and so did their sons, and so on. Suriah asked Alix, “How do you know she hated it, if your Papa and his Papa and all their Papas going back to that Lord Kalam, have told their sons she loved it and to honor it?”
      Alix had laughed at her. “Silly girl,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek (and leer at her breasts in a manner he would not have dared had Nanny Stanacia not sobbed herself into exhaustion and dozed off in the shade). “Because no matter how well you guard your secrets, if you are possessed of even one servant with a tongue, eventually – they will be revealed.”
      “Aye, and you remember that well, young Lord,” Nanny Stanacia hissed, “For this old biddy still has her tongue and eyes to see how you are looking at my young miss. Now hands off and quiet, keep you. Those brigands ain’t gone far, I wager. Looting the big house, probably, and then off to wherever their like goes. Pah! To the depths of the Abyss if I had my way about it. Liars and cheats and thieves, all. Worthless sots. Probably left half-a-dozen girls with big bellies anywhere they go. Nice girls too, what didn’t know any better. Oh, my poor Annie. She never knew what lie on the other side of Henry Halfhand’s bed, I’ll tell you what. ”
      Nanny Stanacia’s stern admonishment had stilled Alix’s wandering hands, but she had gone off on another of her mindless ravings and promptly fell asleep again. Suriah had begged her mother to keep the old nurse on as governess, not because of any great fondness mind you, but simply because the poor old cow was gone a bit senile and was ever so easy to trick, bewitch, or escape.
      Night had fallen in truth before they were discovered. Evenings grew unseasonably cold on the island and they three humans were huddled together listening to their bellies rumble when suddenly Muffin began to bark. Suriah imagined that the pup believed she was being protective and threatening to approaching danger. Then a deep, gravelly voice rang out, “Over here, they’re back here! Send Greensick back for Shingle.”
      Muffin’s high-pitched puppy voice became a menacing growl as heavy boots tromped through great-great-and-so-on Lady Kalam’s delicate honeysuckles.
      “Run!”
      Nanny Stanacia threw her considerable girth between the approaching villains and her charge, but the men were too many and too clever by half for they had flanked the copse quickly and there was no way out. Muffin, may the Gods bless her, sunk her needle-sharp teeth into a dirty, bared calf and shook with all her might. The man howled and fell backwards, inadvertantly helping Muffin rip a hunk of flesh the size of a child’s fist from his leg. Muffin dropped the bloody prize in an instant, her charcoal-colored muzzle drenched in red. She pounced upon the downed man’s chest, going for his throat.
      Suriah had been frozen with fear, unable to run or scream or sob, but she felt a surge of hope and pride as her puppy latched on to the ruffian’s neck. Suddenly, there was a pitiful yelp and a horrifying crunch of bone and cartiledge; the pup’s prey had wrapped his beefy arms around her neck like she was no more dangerous than a chicken. He wrenched her head half-way around and tossed the corpse aside, muttering to himself.
      “Come on you lazy pigfuckers, get in here and get the little lordlings. Captain’ll pay a rich bonus for this lot, see if he don’t.” The wounded one grabbed hold of his compatriot and yanked himself to his feet. “And get Greensick out here with a bottle of Dragonsbreath and some bandages. The ruddy mutt fucked my leg up something fierce.”
      Now she sat, feeling terribly sorry for herself, wishing she had never coerced Alix into this little adventure, that she had never begged her mother to give her a lax, loony old governess, that she had never brought poor Muffin along, and that she had chosen a gown she loved less than this one to wear today. All-in-all, she decided, pulling her knees to her chest and gazing around the buccaneer captain’s dank, dimly lit cabin, this is the worst day any one has ever had, ever. And you, Suriah Denise Vermiere, are an utter and absolute twat.

* * *
      Although she had been determined to meet her fate on her feet and fighting – tear-free, mind you – Suriah was made to wait so long for her beating and raping and whatever other vile things a pirate might dream up that she dozed off.
      When she woke, the cabin was black as death and she could see nothing but a pale poof of white when she exaled and a few motes of moonlight sneaking in through a shuttered porthole. Disoriented, she tried to sit up but she found that she could not move. Panic suffused itself through her body and she cried out, struggling like a caged cat.
      “Ow!”
      Suriah froze, her fist still curled tight, about to strike out once more.
      “Calm down, lass. For fuck’s sake, you’ll break a nail – or my damn nose.”
      The bed shifted beneath her. A bed? A bed! She seized upon the knowledge to help identify her surroundings. She wasn’t bound up or tied down, she was simply buried beneath a couple of heavy quilts. For warmth. How… thoughtful, she thought with a frown upon her lips. The acrid tang of a tindertwig was immediately followed by a flare of ruddy light and her involuntary bedmate turned to face with a candle in hand. He placed it in a little iron-lined niche above the bed.
      “What?” he asked, probably in response to the cow-like expression she felt form upon her face. “What’re you looking at, lass?”
      Hastily, Suriah sat up, bunching the blankets around her protectively and tucking her knees together. “You scared me. I-” She hesitated, glancing down to ensure that her filthy gown was still firmly in place. It was. For an instant, she was almost disappointed. “I just- I don’t know.”
      The pirate gingerly felt his nose. “Mine’s not broken anyway. Not sure about yours. Now put out the candle, quit your hitting and let me back to sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
      With that, he rolled back to his side and yanked the quilt up to his ears.
      “What? I-” Suriah stammered stupidly. “What are you going to with me? Rape me? Kill me?”
      He chuckled, turning over to look at her with a rogueish grin. “Nah. What I’ve got in mind is worse, lass. Much worse.”
      Suriah paled, trying to imagine what depths of depravity a man such as this might plum and whether it would hurt too awful much before she died of it. She wanted to kill herself for asking, but the words slipped out anyway.
      “W-what are you going to with me, then?”
      With a single breath, he killed the candle, plunging them back into darkness. Despite the utter lack of light, Suriah could see the mischeivous glitter in his eyes.
      “Why, I’m going to marry you.”
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