Drink and the devil had done for the rest

[jeregenest]

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.


Eco-tourism, swim with the whale sharks, mysterious giants of the deep. It made sense, perhaps to escape, perhaps for adventure, perhaps to fulfill a lifelong dream. Booking passage you’ve boarded a high tech catamaran -- solar powered, water recycling, the pinnacle of green technology – off the coast of Zanzibar. There is a diverse assortment of fellow passengers, but you only have to dive with them, not live with them, for week with the gentle giants of the ocean.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed

Then came that storm, the mother of storms. The satellite radio screamed that it came from nowhere and threatened to swamp the entire Pacific eastern rim. Struggling to get to safe harbor you lost contact with all outside the ship. And then when the storm broke your radio must have been broken, together with the gps and the satellite phone and...and...; there was no broadcasts, no signals.

The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle

Then the pirates attacked. They could have been right out of Disney. Well except they stank and were lewd and violent. Amazingly enough you beat them off, though there were deaths amongst the crew.

It’s a strange new world. There are pirates who seem to think the year is sixteen something or rather. It’s hard to tell, they’re not exactly literate. And there are even stranger things in the ocean. Things that no history book told you about.

So this is the tale of the castways,
They're here for a long, long time,
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.

This game is where time travel meets planetary romance meets fantasy of history. Tim Powers meets Stirling’s Nantucket series if both learned their craft from William Hope Hodgson that starts with the idea that what we understand about pirates, the stereotypical picture in our heads, is a blend of fact and fancy, coming to us in equal parts from literature, the movies, and the reality of their lives. And that much of the historical record can even be wrong. It explores the interstices of what was and what could be through the lens of the weird and the horrific.

Comments

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Sounds kind of interesting...can I be Ginger? Seriously, though, it sounds cool.

[badger.livejournal.com]

Oh, this sounds like fun. Nice idea. As I mentioned here (http://badger.livejournal.com/1002054.html#cutid1) a few weeks back, I found David Cordingly's book _Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates_ an excellent look at the equal parts...literature, the movies, and the reality of their lives that is what we think of as "pirate".

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I always recommend Cordingly, his stuff is very thorough.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Astoundingly cool. It also sounds like it might (or perhaps should)
include elements of Michael Rohan's Spiral series, since it seems as much sailing off the map as into the mythic past.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I wish this was the premise they used for Lost.

And I know you're just taunting me with that theme song.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Maybe a little.

[michele-blue.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a great idea.

[foxtown.livejournal.com]

Neat

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Niiiice.

[neelk]

I think I would have a hard time resisting the temptation to think in terms of George McDonald Fraser's The Pyrates. On reflection, that sounds like a design goal for you. P-)

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

Sweet deal, man.

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

Dibs on playing the captain!

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

That can be arraned.

Maybe I should download the Active Exploits Pirate book and take a look.