Ask A Pirate's Life for Me

[Hatice Altaris]

Dark stories surrounded the seas of Listehol. Forget the dangerous storms and summer heat—rumor had it there were monsters lurking in the depths, with claws that could snap a ship in half, or mouths large enough to swallow islands, or bodies as long as the ocean was deep. Sea demons, the locals called them, said to have laid waste to coastal settlements and trade ships. It frightened them. No matter what they threw at the sea, bounty hunters or monster slayers or pirates, nothing worked.

Hatice was there to change that. She and Amira Din, a Sith she’d only met days ago and whose name she rarely remembered, had been dispatched as Sith envoys in order to ‘help’ the locals with their little monster problem. It was up to the two of them to find whatever was haunting their shores and end it, and so earn the planet’s allegiance. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of job they’d be doing on their own. The locals had been insistent on leading the hunt themselves, and by traditional means. They’d supplied her and Amira not only with sailor’s uniforms, but a sickly crew and a ramshackle ship dragged from the last millenium.

Oh, and a captain, to boot.

Captain Sabetha Grim was an older woman with cracked skin and a withering smile. She wore a tricorn hat tipped with colored feathers and a bandana, and her black braids spilled out from underneath like a tangle of dark eels. She must have been beautiful, once. Some men might still think she was. As for Hatice, she just felt mildly intimidated. The older woman exuded a kind of authority, a presence, similar to that of a Sith Master, only she lacked both the Force, and the strange, gothic fashion sense customary to most Sith.

Sabetha set down the sheaf of papers and stared between the two young women. Inside the captain’s cabin, there were only the three of them while the rest of the crew labored on deck, steering the ship farther out to sea. “So,” she began. “You must be Hatice.” Sabetha gestured to her, then to the tiefling. “And you are… Amira, am I correct?” Whatever her answer, the older woman clicked her tongue impatiently. “Pretty names, although I expected something a little more… menacing. I thought you Sith liked to go by dreary-sounding adjectives. Like ’Ruin,’ or ‘Misery,’ you know?”

Hatice resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Sure, there were Sith who liked to take on new names in order to sound more threatening—Bane, Maul, Sidious, Raze—but that was the whole point. To sound threatening.

She didn’t bother explaining the complexities of being a Sith Lord to the old pirate, however. Instead she stayed quiet, leaving the talking to Amira, who according to reports, had already made quite a reputation for herself as a diplomat and charming emissary. Things Hatice was, most certainly, not.

@llamallove

 

[Amira Din]

With a name like 'Sabetha Grim', it was a wonder the woman had the gall to ridicule Sith monikers, particularly when both she and the ship she captained looked like they were straight out of the dark ages. The captain's cabin was no exception, dingy and lit only by candlelight and metal lanterns that hung from the rafters above. Amira wouldn't have been surprised if they still burned with whale oil. It was as if the ship and the captain herself were relics of the past, untouched by modern technology and progress.

It didn't exactly instill confidence, sailing toward a sea monster that, according to rumors, was larger than life—aboard a ship that creaked and groaned every time a large wave struck starboard, with a crew that appeared to be ridden with scurvy and would probably topple over at the slightest wind. If Amira was to trust her life to strangers, she wanted to know everything she possibly could about this creature. "What do they call this sea monster?" she asked the captain, leaning against one of the wooden support beams.
Sabetha Grim sat across from the two Sith Champions, behind her desk in an upholstered red leather chair, with an old, wooden helm for a backrest. It was missing several of its handles and spokes and didn't look the least bit comfortable, but the Tiefling imagined it held some kind of sentimental value to the old captain. The captain considered her for a moment or two, as if Amira were her pupil and had just failed a pop quiz, but eventually, she answered.

"It has lots of names. Not unlike you Sith. The superstitious like to call it the demon of the sea, but it has other names. Older names. Livyatan. Lotan. A pain the bazoo, if you ask me."

Perhaps an oversimplification of a creature that, if legends were to believed, could coil itself around a tanker ship, snap it in half, and drag it into the depths of the ocean—masts, men, and all—never to be seen again. Sabetha, however, was a no-nonsense woman. Hardened by the sea and the wind. Every wrinkle, every scar told a story. That much was obvious.

"Took my leg with it," she added, heaving her left leg onto the table in front of her, knocking over empty tankards and baubles she had collected on her journeys, as she hiked up her pant leg to reveal a prosthetic leg. At last, a modern convenience. Amira almost expected her to have a wooden stub instead. "...among other things." That she added to herself, in a low grumble, twiddling her thumbs in her lap. The Tiefling's golden eyes wandered the length of the captain with morbid curiosity, trying to imagine what other body part might be missing.

Until Sabetha's sable eyes settled on her, the reflection of the candlelight's flames dancing across her pupils. "You've seen it then?" Amira questioned, arching an eyebrow as she spared Hatice a look. There was no way of telling if the old captain was spinning them a tall tale or telling the truth, other than her word.

"Of course I've seen it," Sabetha barked, glowering at the Tiefling. "You force users are a lot denser than I thought." As if she already anticipated the next question that would be put to her, she added, "No use trying to describe it to either of you. You'll just have to see it with your own two eyes to believe it. While you still have two eyes, that is." Then she cackled, evidently pleased with herself, as if she took great pleasure in trying to scare the living daylights out of them.

Unable to stop herself, she leaned forward in her hair, a shadow crossing over her face. "But its eyes are the size of a king's dinner plates, and it can swim faster than a kaadu can run, and on its breath is the stench and the viscera of a thousand dead sailors—whose souls they say haunt these waters to this day, trapped between this life and the hereafter, searching for a resting place and a safe harbor." @Song

 

[Hatice Altaris]

“Whatever size the monster is, whatever havoc it can wreak, I wouldn’t be too worried, Captain Sabetha,” she said, taking care to use the older woman’s official title. It was common etiquette. Hatice might have loathed the pirate in the little time they’d spent together talking, but she at least had to appear respectful, and like Amira, play the part of a proper Sith diplomat. A Sith Champion, too. “My partner and I have dealt with plenty of monsters on our own. I’m confident we can handle yours.”

“You think so?” said Sabetha, one eyebrow cocked. She balanced the tip of a knife on her finger, then caught it with a deft hand. “Alright, Darth Pretentious. If you feel so comfortable with what lies ahead of us, then I suppose you wouldn’t mind lending the crew a spare hand.” It sounded less like a question and more like a demand. There was no bite in her words, but Hatice had obviously struck a nerve. So what if she thought this ‘sea demon’ was easy prey? They were Sith. They were the real monsters to be afraid of here, not local myths or abominations.

“Just because you are Sith,” the pirate captain continued, as if she'd read her mind, “do not think you are free from the duties of this vessel. You want to prove yourself to us and earn the loyalty of our people and this planet? You can start by helping run the ship like the rest of us.” Sabetha tossed her a stick with a bundle of coarse strings attached to it, which Hatice caught and looked at with a very strange and confused expression.

“What is this?” she asked. “Some kind of ancient weapon you dug up from the ocean floor?”

Sabetha deadpanned. “It’s a mop.”

“Ah, I knew that.” An embarrassed flush touched her cheeks. No wonder it had looked so familiar. It had been a long time since she had seen one, let alone with her handmaids, who used automized droids to steam-press the tiled floors of her penthouse. Hatice knew she was rich and entitled, used to her new life as the heiress of the Altaris family fortune, but even as an indenture in the criminal underworld, her contractor kept the menial labor to droids. Why she was expected to do the same here was mind-boggling. “I’m sorry,” she said, none too kindly, “but you expect us, envoys of the Sith Empire, to serve on your cleaning duty?”

Sabetha didn’t look too bothered as she fiddled with an old spyglass, closing and extending it as if it was a toy. “Of course not,” she replied. “You would be on the rigging, too.”

Hatice gaped. She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t. There was no way in Korriban she’d ever demean herself with a sailor’s duties and chores, even if she was dressed like one. No way in hell.

Ten Minutes Later…​

Hatice stood on the foredeck, a wet mop in hand, wiping it over the wood grain of the ship. Soft waves lapped against the hull. White clouds hung in the sky above her, sunlight trickling between them like liquid gold. She did not like being ordered around. She was supposed to be the crime boss here. She should have been the captain. And yet, there Hatice was, on scrub watch. It was ridiculous. But deep down, she knew if they had any hopes of earning the locals’ trust and adding Listehol to the Empire’s growing menagerie of planets, then she’d have to play along.

She would have to bite her tongue and pretend everything was alright. Even though it most certainly wasn’t. “This has got to be the worst mission I have ever had the displeasure of working on,” she muttered in earshot to Amira, who seemed just as on duty as she was. So much for living a pirate’s life.

@llamallove

 

[Amira Din]

This creature—be it a sea demon or a pain in the bazoo—evoked some of the stories Amira's father had read to her when she was a little girl, desperate to stay up past her bedtime as he would tuck her in at night. Tales of sea monsters and dragons and giants, with supernatural powers that transcended sentient understanding—from something as simple as spitting fire to invading the dreams of their victims while they slept. It was improbable, to think that such a monster could exist and thrive within the waters of Listehol without being documented and studied, left up to the imaginations of the superstitious locals, but if Amira had learned anything from her master over the years, it was that in a galaxy so vast, nothing was impossible. The most outlandish of myths and the most unfathomable of legends all had a kernel of truth at their core, underneath all of that illusory, and couldn't be dismissed. At least, not according to Master Roth.

Hatice, on the other hand, was confident. More confident than Amira, it would seem. The Tiefling couldn't be called a seafarer, not even on her best day, and felt out of place aboard the bygone vessel, drifting towards destinations unknown, in search of a monster that could and would, if given the opportunity, swallow them whole. Were it not for the crew and the captain, Amira would be helpless to direct the ship toward land. She did not know these waters, and she was no helmsman, but she did not enjoying leaving her fate to the hands of strangers. Not even the calloused, well-worn hands of experienced sailors, who were, by their very nature, expendable.

Amira wasn't sure whether she ought to laugh or scoff when the captain shoved a mop into Hatice's hands and the Champion looked at it as if it was some kind of cursed talisman. What adult woman had never seen a mop before? A very privileged one, the Tiefling surmised, and yet Hatice did not strike her as a fragile flower, unremoved from the hardships of life, petals unmottled. There was acuity in her emerald eyes—the kind that only came from experience. For now, she remained a paradox.

"I wouldn't let the captain hear you say that," the Tiefling muttered in reply to Hatice, rolling her eyes. If this was the worst mission the emerald-eyed Champion had ever been assigned, perhaps she was not the paradox Amira imagined after all, but a woman that never left the upholstered walls of her mansion. They hadn't been set upon by pirates or the monster, and not even the sailors had made a pass at them yet. Now that would be something to complain about.
Still, as the sweat gathered on Amira's brow and the humidity clung to her clothing, she found that she, too, had formed a particular dislike for their captain. Down on her hands and knees with a deck brush in hand, the handle of which had been broken off, she scrubbed each plank in a circular motion. The Tiefling's skin was sticky, as if someone had cracked open a bolus nut and rubbed it down the length of her arms. "Otherwise there'll be the devil to pay and no pitch hot." Amira didn't actually know what that meant. It was just something she'd overheard one of the crewmen say when she'd boarded earlier, as they were preparing the ship to set sail.

The duo continued to scrub, working the saltwater into the wood as they moved toward the bow of the vessel, ignoring the occasional laugh or unsolicited remark from passing sailors. The work was slow and tedious, not to mention hard on the back and knees, and the only alleviation either of them would find was the sun's steady descent. It had nearly set when a cry went out, from the sailor on watch up in the crow's nest. Crewmen rushed to the side of the boat, leaning over the railing to stare and point portside. Amira didn't hesitate to abandon her brush and push her way to the front of the group to see what was going on for herself.

There was wreckage in the water—barrels and crates and wooden planks, ripped in half and floating derelict, bobbing above the water and tossed with every wave. And there was someone in the water, clinging to one of the boards for their life. @Song

 

[Hatice Altaris]

“Let her hear me,” Hatice said defiantly, “I don’t care.”

Although, she kind of did. The last mission she’d done for the Sith had ended in a disastrous failure, and if what had happened to her brother Jaikus was anything to go by, the Empire did not like failure. Listehol had to side with them, or else Hatice’s career as a Champion would be ruined. And while she could just as easily return to Axxila and continue life as a highborn and underground crime lord, the last thing she wanted was to embarrass herself a second time. Of course, that did not stop her from staying as her old, bitter self.

Amira’s remark, for one, left her rolling her eyes. “Do you even know what that means?” she said, because Hatice certainly didn’t, and neither did she want to.

As the two of them continued working, the weather had stayed relatively consistent. A steady wind from the west, clouds that came and went like pockets of sea fish, endlessly smooth waves that gleamed under the sun like a thousand-faceted sapphire. It was almost beautiful. The crew was lucky. Had it been scalding, and Hatice had to suffer both sweat and cleaning duty, then she’d probably have thrown someone overboard by now. Captain Sabetha, to be specific. That was a woman she would not forgive very easily anytime soon.

Fortunately, before she could begin fantasizing about strangling the pirate to death, a cry went up. A man shouted from the crow’s nest above, pointing and waving his hands like a flailing child. Crewmates began to move toward the ship’s aft, crowding the side, eyes searching the waters. Hatice didn’t even hesitate. She let the mop clatter to the deck and joined them, pushing her way through until she was side by side with Amira, watching the remains of a ship.

“Finally,” she said. “Something actually worth my time.” It was a horrible thing to say in the midst of so much ruin and destruction, but once again, she didn’t care. Spending the last several hours mopping the foredeck had worn her patience to dust. She wanted action, excitement, and at long last she was going to get some. “Man overboard!” one of the sailors cried, and fumbling for a line of rope, tossed it over to the shivering stranger in the water. They grappled for it, waves lapping around him and threatening to pull him under. “Bring him up!” another crewmate said. “Heave!”

As they did, eventually dragging the sailor aboard, Sabetha herself came from around the stern. She wore the same natural look of confidence on her face, but even Hatice could see the thread of worry in her eyes and expression. “What in the hells has happened here?” she asked, like any one of them knew.

The only person who did now lay on the deck, panting for breath.

@llamallove

 

[Amira Din]

Every deckhand parted like the Red Sea for their captain. None of them answered the question she put to them, but a few of them jutted their fingers toward the man slumped across the deck, as if they were afraid she might cut out their tongues if they said the wrong thing. It was astonishing, the way one woman was able to command both the fear and respect of an entire crew—the majority of them men—without wielding the force.

Sabetha stared at the man that had been drug aboard her ship, waiting for a response. He was not her shipmate, nor did he answer to her, but by the steady, impatient tap of her boot against the wood it was apparent that she expected him to fall in line just as her men. He was an Orc, with long, unmanageable red hair pulled into a low ponytail at the back of his neck. His clothing—a pair of old breeches that were too small for his wide frame and a stained, white shirt—were torn and burned. He wore no shoes. There was a recent, jagged gash across his gray face, where it looked like someone had taken a fillet knife to him. Dark red blood dripped from between thick lips, and Amira realized with a frown that someone had sawed his tusks off.

The Orc retched, before throwing up all over the deck. Instinctively, as if on cue, everyone backed up. "I just scrubbed that," Amira twined to herself, just loud enough for the Champion beside her to hear, afraid that the captain might order her to clean it up right then and there. There was something unnerving about watching a full-grown Orc, in the prime of his life, terrified and whimpering, as helpless as a small child, despite being the size and possessing the strength of a Wookiee.
Sabatha swiveled her head to one side, and in a sharp tone devoid of any sympathy, said, "Come on, sailor. Spit it out!" For added effect, one of the crewmen kicked his bare foot.

Amira expected him to speak in T'Orcish, a language she had never learned, or perhaps even in basic, but in an incoherent and shaking voice, he spoke in Huttese. "Kacankakee kee bidkit dott...rakshasa."

Silence settled over the crew like great storm clouds high above the galley, blocking out the sun. Even Sabetha, for all her confidence, was troubled. Thick eyebrows knit together, she said in a low voice, "Show me his arm." One of the sailors grabbed the Orc, who was too weak to put up any resistance, by the wrist and tugged it forward. The sleeve of his shirt was pulled back to reveal a fresh mark on his skin—in the crude shape of a twisted tentacle, with suction cups, and a massive, bulging eye behind it. A burn, where a hot, searing branding iron had been forced against his skin and held there. He'd been branded, like livestock. As if he were a piece of meat that had no more value than what he could be sold for at the slaughter house.

No one said anything, but their eyes and the rise and fall of their chests betrayed them. Sabetha spun around, the tip of one of the colored feathers in her tricorn hat slapping a sailor in the face and making his sneeze. "Take him below deck. And the rest of you—get back to work," she ordered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Trim the sails." Then she marched away, without any explanation given to the pair of Sith.

The Tiefling looked over at Hatice, before following after the captain, cutting through the sailors scrambling to their posts. "What did that mean?" she asked, falling into step behind Sabetha. "What he said about chit and the rak...rakshasa." Her Huttese might have just been rusty, but it sounded like nothing more than gibberish to her. "Was he attacked by pirates?"

"Sea creatures aren't the only monsters that plague the waters of Listehol," the captain spoke over her shoulder, never breaking stride. "And there are demons worse than pirates that sail these seas." @Song

 

[Hatice Altaris]

“You and me both,” she muttered beside Amira as vomit and saliva pooled around the deck. Hatice briefly considered throwing her mop overboard, if only to keep from cleaning the mess up. It was odd that she cared more about that than the nightmarish scene playing out before her, but she had seen worse. She might have screamed ‘privileged’ to the average man, but she had a strong stomach and a dark past of her own to deal with. Seeing branded orcs was nothing new.

“Don’t look at me,” she said at Amira’s question, shrugging. “It’s not like I talk to slugs for a living.” She waved a dismissive hand as the injured sailor was taken below deck for treatment. She wandered by the railing, clearly taking a break from cleaning duty. “It was probably nothing. Just a poor man asking for mama. He was in shock. It’s a miracle he survived in the first place.” She chewed on Sabetha’s words, thinking. Sea demons. Exaggerated nonsense. “Whatever it was that attacked him, I seriously doubt it’s the supernatural demon everyone else here thinks it is. It’s a dangerous sea creature. Nothing more.”

“Is that so?” said a voice, an old woman lurking behind them.

“Holy hells,” said Hatice, barely stopping herself from punching the sailor in the mouth out of sheer surprise. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

“You don’t know these seas like I do,” the old woman crowed, completely ignoring Hatice. “There are things in these waters you would never believe. Things neither Sith, nor Jedi, would understand. Things much more frightening than the abominations your people concoct in your fancy alchemical labs. How about I tell you a story?”

“No thanks,” Hatice said blankly.

“Long ago, back when I was only a girl,” the woman continued anyway, much to Hatice’s irritation, “I was traveling with a ship of cartographers, men hoping to plot out the mysterious seas of Listehol. They studied all manner of sea creatures, too. Fish with retractable legs, ocean snakes with healing venom. What they discovered could finally put Listehol on the map. But one night, during a particularly bad storm, they found something else, too. A beast the size of a Star Destroyer, with four sets of teeth. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw as it devoured the entire crew.”

“Except for you, unfortunately.”

“But somehow, I survived, left adrift at sea. I was lucky enough to not have come across whatever demon our new friend below deck encountered, and luckier still to have been found by Captain Sabetha. I wouldn’t have been alive if not for her, which is why I serve proudly at her side today.”

Hatice folded her arms over her chest, feeling especially petty. “That story would have been much more interesting if your breath didn’t smell like a graveyard.”

“Stupid girl,” the woman grumbled. When Hatice was about to fire back her own unsavory remark, something to do with the tangled mop on the pirate’s head, she suddenly froze. In the distance, a heavy blanket of fog was rolling in. She had no idea what it was, but it seemed ominous enough. “As if this trip couldn’t have gotten any stranger,” she said under her breath, and wondered if the sea might just open up and swallow them whole.

@llamallove

 

[Amira Din]

"Supernatural?" Sabetha cut the Sith Champion off, arching an eyebrow. "Who said anything about supernatural? Not all demons are evil spirts that spring up from the clefts of Chaos. Some of them walk among us on two legs. Steer the helm of a brigantine with two hands. Some demons are flesh and blood." The captain's sable gaze flicked back and forth for added effect, between Hatice and Amira. "Not unlike yourselves, Sith."

There was bitter emotion in her voice that hadn't been there before, as if Amira's incessant questions and Hatice's attitude had finally driven her over the edge. She looked like nothing would've pleased her more than to pull the holstered blaster at her side and shoot a plasma bolt between their eyes or walk them off the plank. Amira wondered—was that even a thing, walking the plank? Or was that just something you saw in holomovies? Sabetha would do neither. Like it or not, admit it or not, she needed them. And because, in the Tiefling's not-so humble opinion, she was no match for two trained Sith Champions, and she knew it.

Their skepticism was not lost on the captain, her sable eyes narrowed as she studied them, cracked lips pressed into a white slash. "No use trying to reason with 'em, Bethel," she said, addressing the old woman that had snuck up on them. "Couple of landlubbers. They'll understand in time."

"Bethel?" Amira mouthed to herself. Didn't anyone onboard this vessel have normal names? Something that didn't sound like it came straight out of Best Baby Names for Your Little Pirate: 29 ABY Edition?

Whatever had attacked that Orc—it was flesh and blood, of the human variety. Just like Sabetha said. Sea monsters didn't saw off an Orc's tusks, and they certainly didn't brand men and let them go. Amira looked around at the rest of the crew, amber eyes studying their wrinkled and sun worn faces, scarred and covered in sweat and dirt. They carried out their assigned tasks with the precision and confidence of sailors that had sailed the sea their whole lives, but there was fear in their eyes. It was unmistakable, rippling off of them in the force, stronger than the waves that splashed the sides of the ship.

The Tiefling probably should have pressed the captain for more answers, demanded that she and 'Bethel' quit talking in riddles so they could get a grip on what they were up against, but she wasn't in the mood for more verbal sparring. Not when her back ached and her hands burned. Sabetha wasn't in the sharing mood apparently, even though the Champions were here to help her with the planet's little monster problem.

Later, perhaps, Amira would ask her more.

For now, she turned portside and rested her elbows against the wooden railing, closing her eyes as the wind swept through her hair. Eventually, she turned to regard her companion, so long as Hatice was still there and hadn't followed after the captain. "I didn't know captains could be so high-strung." She spoke in a low voice, just in case Bethel decided to eavesdrop again. There was no need to ruffle any more feathers.

Ahead of them, cutting through the gray mist, was a barque with three masts and great red sails, as ancient and outdated as the ship Sabetha captained. Amira would've thought it impossible. From behind the helm, the captain called out, "Batten down the hatches!"

It was like a cliché scene from a swashbuckling holoadventure, but the sight of the other vessel, sailing straight toward them at high speed, still managed to send a shiver down her spine. The Tiefling had a feeling they were about to discover firsthand what Sabetha meant by "demons worse than pirates." @Song