Snippet 85: Lord K
Oh jeeze. You leave for a week, and the thread
moves. Time for some general catch up, but first, a quick (re;
long) summery of the Butterknife Bastards I've been mulling over.
Yellowhammer said:
Colombe D'Aubigny-Muramasa née du Chasteler
Picture of her avatar:
Spoiler
"Bonjour!" (complete with Muramasa Smug Fighting Bitchface)
"Look out Norimune, I'm coming for you!" (your worst nightmare is a daughter that is just like you as a teenager)
True Form: A French-pattern rapier from 1707, unique distinguishing characteristics are an engraving of a dove between the primary crossbars and a blade of tamahagane steel with itame tree like grain. To an expert in the subject or a sword familiar with the Muramasas, the 'family resemblance' will be plain upon close examination..
Hehehe, I like the general basis and ideas of this! It's convenient too, as while I have some ideas for her other two 'main' bastards, I was somewhat struggling to figure out what to do for her kid with Julie.
Spoiler: Kid with Jèzabel de Breuil
*Yes I know that's not an era-accurate firearm
I'm now pretty entertained by the idea of her kid via Jèzabel being an agent of the modern incarnation of the 'Anne Winter' information broker network, and considering the time period of her birth, I'm torn between having her be either a
Model 1850 Army Staff & Field Officers' Sword, or to make her a bit unique and 'modern' compared to the other two, she ends up as a
Model 1853 pattern Sharps Rifle. Alternately, because reasons/'it's fucking magic' factor, her form is that of one of two more iconic/useful guns that would only actually come along a few years after her birth, either the
Springfield Model 1861 or a
Henry Repeating Rifle.
Spoiler
"aaaand that's what happened. Seriously, you should have seen his face!"
"Sometimes I don't know whether to be horrified or grateful that you inherited your courage from your 'father'. Thank god you at least inherited my brains to go along with her heart."
Considering Jèzabel's blue-blood and old money upper class background, I'm thinking of going with something like Delilah Naomi de Breuil
Delilah to continue the theme of clock-and-dagger ladies with the names of traitorous biblical wives, who are actually good.
Naomi, because it seems like an innocent enough western name (meaning 'pleasantness') that Jèzebel could have slipped past her father with the excuse of using the English version rather than the French Noémi, when in fact Naomi is how you'd romanize the Japanese name
直美 (
直 (nao) meaning "straight" and
美 (mi) meaning "beautiful")
And obviously de Breuil because over his dead body would Jèzebel's father have not only a bastard in the family, but one running around with some foreign name of the eastern harlot that corrupted his daughter!
Which is ironic, as he kicks it only a few years later, resulting in Jèzebel inheriting everything and doing what ever the hell she wants anyway (not that she does so openly, as she's a lot smarter and wiser for everything that's happened, along with being rather driven thanks to her experiences and the knowledge that her daughter likely isn't entirely human in nature)
Spoiler: Pirate Kid
After some thinking on the idea of her bastard from her pirating days, I've slowly settled upon a new fun idea for her parentage, that doesn't clash with the fact that Anne Bonny and Mary read are to be
magpied taken in by the Potters. (although I still think the idea of there having potentially been something between the three and maybe Rackham, to be hilarious, since that then means Norimune's now two-for-two on Potters/Masters of Juuchi or their relations she's unknowingly bedded).
So in Black Flag, there's a song with a rather fun twist you can sometimes hear being sung, called "William Taylor".
Or as some of it's alternate names according to the Wikipedia article rather spoilerifically call it, 'The False Lover, The Female Lieutenant', 'Faithless Lover Rewarded', 'The Life and Death of Billy Taylor', and 'Sally Brown and William Taylor'
To quote wikipedia for the gist of the song;
The story of the song concerns a young couple due to be wed. On the morning of the wedding, the groom William Taylor (Billy in some versions) is pressed into service. The bride searches for him, disguising herself as a man to become a soldier[8] or sailor.[9] When her true gender is revealed (usually in an incident involving accidental exposure of her breasts), the captain points her in the direction of her beloved, but mentions that he now has a new suitor. When she finds him, she shoots him and his new bride. In some versions, she is then rewarded by the captain with command of her own ship.
Spoiler: The lyrics for those interested
William Taylor was a brisk young sailor
Full of heart and full of play
Until he did his mind uncover
To a youthful lady gay
Four and twenty British sailors
Met him on the king's highway
As he went for to be married
Pressed he was and sent away
[Chorus]
Folleri-de-dom, de- daerai diddero
Folleri-de-dom, domme daerai dae
Folleri-de-dom, de- daerai diddero
Folleri-de-dom, domme daerai dae
Sailor's clothing she put on
And went on board a man-of-war
Her pretty little fingers long and slender
They were smeared with pitch and tar
On that ship there was a battle
She amongst the rest did fight
The wind blew off her silver buttons
Her breasts were bared all snowy white
[Chorus]
When the captain he did discover
He says Fair maid, what brought you here?
Sir, I'm seeking William Taylor.
Pressed he was by you last year.
If you rise up in the morning.
Early at the break of day.
There you'll spy young William Taylor
Walking with his lady gay.
[Chorus]
She rose early in the morning
Early at the break of day
Here she spied young William Taylor
Walking with his lady gay
She procured a pair of pistols
On the ground where she did stand
There she shot poor William Taylor
And the lady at his right hand
[Chorus]
And so an amusing thought occurred to me. What if in the HPatSG Universe, this sea shanty was so popular because it had it's roots in something that actually happened?
What if during the Golden Age of Piracy, a real William/Billy Taylor is pressganged by the Royal Navy, and like more than a few sailors during this time period, eventually decides to just jump ship one day while in Nassau. Inevitably though, Taylor then falls in with a bunch of pirates, thanks to his worth as a navigator and chart reader. Norimune's pirates to be precise.
Unfortunately, the man turns out to be just a good a pirate as he was a sailor in the Royal Navy, and quickly proves troublesome. When the life of a pirate turns out not to be filled with repeated Henry Every esque fortunes, and that 'fairer' conditions and laws upon ships run by pirate code do not always mean 'easier', Taylor then leaves. While he cites his new found love of a fair maiden in Kingston as his reason for breaking his promised service aboard the Impenitent, it then turns out that not only is the 'fair maiden' in fact one of the other problem crew members, but Taylor has also attempted to filch many of her less-regularly used sea-charts. While the nodachi gets the maps back upon confronting him (i.e. beating the tar out of the guy), the parting is on bad terms, with Norimune only barely restraining herself from killing the man, lest she raise the ire of the authorities in the British haven.
Meanwhile his original bride to be (one Sally Grey if we go by one of the common names for the fiancee in the story), is going through the general gist of the shanty. She disguises herself as a man, joins a royal navy ship, eventually rises to lieutenant, and gets into a battle where the buttons of her shirt are torn off, revealing her as a woman.
Where the divergence is though, is that the battle she is in, is with the pirates/privateers of Norimune and the Impénitent. And thanks to the supernatural qualities of the Impénitent, and the Royal Navy captain's underestimation of the pirate vessel as a merely upgunned trader rather than an actual fifth-rate ship of the line, the pirates actually manage to win the battle and flee. When Grey is later asked by the Captain what she's doing on the ship and she says she's looking for Taylor, the man doesn't actually know where exactly Taylor is or mention the new woman, but is polite enough to let her stay on the ship until they get to Nassau, rather than immediately dropping her off at the nearest port.
So of course, once in Nassau, Grey runs into Norimune and company who are there on some other business. Grey very nearly manages to shoot the cocky pirate captain before Norimune wins the duel/brawl, but in the fight, it comes out that she's looking for Taylor. Upon the nodachi's glib response that the useless thieving rat is living it up with women, wine and song in Kingston, in order to avoid his just desserts from her and a number of other priates he's crossed, Grey does not believe her.
Norimune then offers a deal to Grey. She's impressed with the girl's quickness with her pistols, and any woman who can rise to lieutenant while dressed as a man on a Royal Navy ship must surely be worth her mettle as an officer, as well as a sailor. Also, she find's Grey's love of and belief in faithfulness of 'the useless thieving rat' hilarious.
Grey at first flips her off, but upon discovering that most of the ships in Nassau are either pirates who are barely skirting the recent King's Pardon, and that she lacks the money to buy passage on most of the legitimate vessels heading to Kingston any time soon (or the gender if she wishes to work her passage there), Grey grudgingly joins Norimune's crew.
Some kind of adventure then probably ensues, and along the way to Kingston, she then comes to grudgingly like many of those aboard the Impénitent, and even Norimune herself. Life among the pirates (at least among Norimune's crew) is hard but fair. Women among the crew aren't actually an oddity thanks to the sensibilities of it's mostly magical crew (and isn't that a shock to discover). Grey learns of other women pirates when they at one point cross paths with Read and Bonny. And as much of a drunken lush and scarlet woman as Norimune can be, she is never the less and adequate captain who cares for her crew and keeps their loyalty. By the time they finally get to Kingston, Grey is already more than a little pirate-ified and guiltily fond of the Impénitent and it's crew. Maybe even it's captain too, even as she awkwardly tells herself she needs to stay loyal to Taylor (because girls can't love girls!)
Except, then they get to Kingston. And true to Norimune's word, exactly when then nodachi said, and exactly where she said she'd find them, when Grey goes down to the port with the captain, she finds Taylor waling with his new lover (a different girl to the one he was with when she last stopped by even, Norimune idly notes)
In full plain view of dozens of witnesses, Grey then pulls out her pistols, and with the speed and accuracy she has become famed for among the Impénitent's crew, she then guns Taylor and his lover down, before she even realizes what she's doing. Coming to her senses, she then looks at Norimune in shock at what she did, with the Muramasa herself looking town between satisfaction at the end of the thieving rat, hilarity at such an ironic turn of events for the unfaithful lover, smugness at Grey doing such a criminally piratical thing, or horror at the fact that she just gunned down a couple in plain view of so many people, in the center of a British colony.
Making their escape from Kingston before any of the guards or the port officials can be alerted and stop them, Grey then becomes an official part of Norimune's crew.
Somewhat continuing the tradition of successful pirate Captains mentoring future ones, Grey eventually rises through the ranks of Norimune's crew, until eventually the Muramasa finally puts her in charge of a ship of her own. At some point Grey becomes involved with Norimune, but unfortunately, the Muramasa is only really looking for adventurous flings and can't find it in herself to attempt to fill the void Julie left behind. Like many 'apprenticed' pirate fleet captains, Grey eventually strikes out on her own, but still holds a torch for Norimune, who she meets up with from time to time.
Eventually however, as the Golden Age of Piracy enters it's closing acts, Grey's luck runs out as it does with so many other of the legendary pirates of the period. Unfortunately, while Norimune had been content to use magic to stick around in the Caribbean, and to cheat in order to lie low between raising hell for the English and Spanish, Grey had no such luck. With the West Indies now far to tightly controlled and governed for most pirates to remain free for long, and the ships she usually cycled through too small to engage in the occasional legitimate venture like Norimune would with the Impénitent, Grey decides to follow in the path of Bartholomew Roberts and strikes it out for the West African Coast in 1722.
Before she leaves however, Grey meets with Norimune as she expects it to be some time before they ever see each other again. With the deaths or disappearances of so many of their friends in recent years, Grey seeks comfort in the Muramasa, even if to Norimune it's just another FWB fling. Though she doesn't admit it, Grey herself as a feeling this will be her last voyage.
Unfortunately, Grey never makes it to Africa, as after becoming caught in an Atlantic storm, her vessel is instead blown towards the Carolinas, where damaged by the storm, they are forced to put ashore. Not helping matters is the fact that she is increasingly ill, which is baffling due to the fact that even in the worst of storms, she has never suffered from sea sickness or maladies brought about by bad food. Before repairs can be completed, they are then discovered by the British and rather ignobly captured while on shore.
Most of her crew are then swiftly hung for being pirates, but on a desperate hunch, Grey then decides to play the same card Read and Bonny Did by 'pleading her belly'. Something that to her shock and relief turns out to be true as the months goes on, but also tragically pointless. While she had hoped somebody, or even Norimune herself might hear of her and rescue her before the nine months is up, the news is too slow to travel and made even worse by the fact that everyone assumes her to be in Africa, and expects news of her travels to come from there. Complicating matters, is that due to the expectation she will be hung anyway once the child is born, little proper care is given to her during her imprisonment, and then labor.
With guilt in her heart for the child she realizes she will be leaving behind, Grey dies shortly after the birth of her daughter, living only long enough to call her Jacklyn.
A child with the ears and tail of a fox, and seemingly accompanied by a cutlass-style boarding saber.
The girl's birth immediately garner's the attention of MACUSA, who are horrified and baffled by the news that a nomaj pirate in a nomaj prison, has seemingly spawned a child that is not only the product of a magical-and-nomaj union, but potentially not even fully human at all. MACUSA officials swiftly obliviate everyone they can find, who was potentially involved or knew of not only the girl's birth, but even the imprisonment of the mother. Assuming that her 'father' was one of the executed members of the crew, or somewhere else entirely, the newborn 'orphan' is then taken away and placed into a orphanage for magicals, with her last name switched to Fox as an uninventive method of further separating her from anything involving the name and deeds of the swiftly erased fate and history of Captain Sally Grey.
By the time Norimune learns of the capture of her one time apprentice/casual lover, and has the opportunity to sail up to the Carolinas to try and find out what's going on, the trail has fully gone cold. All she is able to discover is the bare bones facts that Grey was captured, most of her crew were swiftly executed, and that Grey herself was held for some time but is now dead too. With no mention of her pleading the belly, Norimune guiltily figures that Grey must have been found of something that also garnered the ire of the American magical authorities, who later left her for the British to gibbet or hang in chains at some point. No doubt the plan was for a drawn out method of execution or warning to other pirates, only for Grey to die in prison before a new gibbet was available. Completely ignorant of her daughter, Norimune turns around and heads beck to the Caribbean for a few more years before the pirating/privateer life becomes difficult enough she finally gives up and heads to Europe.
Spoiler: Captain Jacklyn Fox
Sometime circa the 1740s
So, Jacklyn grows up in an orphanage in a small seaside magical community, surrounded by other magical children. While not exactly the best childhood thanks to having fox ears and a tail, on top of her her lack of parents and a strange connection to the Cutlass she seems tied to, she never the less grows up exactly as one would the child of pirates. A mouthy, a defiant and free-spirited girl, who often spends more time watching the ships come into port and badgering stories out of sailors than she does at the orphanage, Jacklyn's rebellious nature only grows as she gets older and realizes that Magical North American Society probably isn't the best traits for someone as 'bestial' as her.
Not allowed to go to Ilvermorny or learn magics with a wand, she instead learns of the sea and the trades of ships from the old salts, fishermen, and sailors on docks and in the taverns. Though the Golden Age of Piracy has by now definitively passed, and even it's twilight is now a decade gone by the mid-1730s, Jacklyn becomes enamored with the tales of the infamous legends who are still living memory for many of those that plied their trades in the waters of the Caribbean and Atlantic between the 1650s through to the 1720s. The buccaneers of the Brethren of the Coast in Tortuga. The magical colony of Libertatia, founded in Madagascar by those who worked the Pirate Round. And then of course, the Flying Gang of Nassau, who's membership read like a who's-who of legends, many of whom would go on to establish the short-lived Republic of Pirates.
It is during this time, that Jacklyn stumbles across stories of one pirate in particular, who doesn't seem to exist in nomaj records. The infamous Norimune Muramasa, or 'Captain Longblade' as many of those who couldn't wrap their heads around her name ended up titling and nicknaming her. Tales of a magical pirate, noted to have fox ears and a tail when not in the company of nomajs, and rumored to be somehow tied to a large sword from for lands far, far to the east, drawn her interest. Is this 'Captain Longblade' somehow related to her?
Upon coming of age in the wizarding world at 17 in 1739, Jacklyn leaves the orphanage and her home town, and strikes out for Nassau as part of a crew who know her thanks to her years of mingling with them whenever they were in port. Unfortunately, once in Nassau, it turns out that what few ex-pirates and retired sailors of the period remain, haven't seen 'Captain Longblade' in years. Much to her disappointment, the last time it seems anyone even heard Norimune was in the Caribbean, was back in 1733. Since hen, she's supposedly been involved in at least one or two wars right in the depths of Europe, but that's all anyone knows. The only people who might have a clue are some of her crew from the old days, but a number have ended up retiring to the US mainland, and those still serving with the Impénitent haven't been seen since the ship last stopped by under the command of the Muramasa's old first mate in 1735. Since then, the Impénitent's supposedly been running a number of more legitimate ventures back and forth across the Atlantic while it's actual owner is god knows where.
Making contacting her even harder, is that Jacklyn makes the mistake of addressing many of her attempts at communication to the Longblade alias. Unfortunately for her, Norimune actually hated the name for it's relative uninventiveness and never thought of, or identified herself by the moniker that was initially a mocking joke by friends. As such, none of those owls find her.
In the end, Jacklyn joins a group of privateers when the War of Jenkin's Ear breaks out in the West indies as part of the War of the Austrian Succession. Afterwards though, everyone ends up out of work, and in a tale as old as time, they turn to piracy. Unlike the pirates of old however, the crews Jacklyn eventually rises to captain are far more low key and far less bold than their predecessors.
Eventually rising to captain of a small, ever-changing and transient band, Jacklyn soon adopts a reputation for hitting small but regular marks, and knowing when to move on to greener pastures before she over stays her presence and brings down the heat of the various navies. She regularly changes ships to avoid becoming known or recognizable for any one vessel or type, often effects being a bit of a cuckoolander, eccentric or drunk to get people to underestimate her, soon comes into her own as a surprisingly shrewd trickster, both in battle and diplomacy. More than anything else though, she is often just plain lucky. The one trademark she does become known for, is her preference for a simple red flag as her personal colors, shying away from many of the more personalized and iconic designs or elements, causing some to nickname her 'The Red Fox of the Sargasso Sea'
Unfortunately, she spends so much time being a pirate, she misses when Norimune briefly makes a low key visit to some friends in Nassu in 1770.
During the American Revolutionary War, she joins up as a privateer for the US, but due to her preference for smaller boats and numbers in shallow waters, she never runs into Impénitent, which is well suited for the high-risk-high-reward of long solo chases against larger prey in deeper waters thanks to it's larger draft. And ironically, when Norimune does finally come back to the Caribbean, Jacklyn decides to take a stab at plying her piratical trade and privateering skills on the Mississippi.
After the war, Jacklyn continues on as she has always does, and leaps right back into her 'low-key' piracy. Unlike Norimune who leaves the US because of the increasing implementation of Rapport's Law, Jacklyn doesn't give a damn and continues living it up in the Caribbean as she always has. Craftier than most give her credit for though, she slowly begins to craft for herself the persona of 'quirky gentlewoman pirate' and 'seagoing Robin Hood' whenever hitting magical marks. This 'romanticized pirate' image of herself makes it easier to move among many coastal magical communities unnoticed, and usually makes bring her in an unpopular prospect in areas populated by more marginalized magical demographics.
The Napoleonic Wars provide her with a rare opportunity to 'go legit', and so she does so, acquiring (re; stealing) a French ship, attaining a (forged) Letter of Marque from the British Crown, and then going to town on Revolutionary and Imperial French Shipping in the Atlantic and off the African Coast. She largely gets away with this, as it at least means more French ships going to the bottom, but ironically, it also means she misses Norimune when her hunt for the Impénitent briefly takes her to the West indies.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Jacklyn initially moves to return to her old haunts in the Caribbean, but is then presented with an interesting prospect in 1816. Hearing of her infamous piratical exploits and buying into her repute as the 'quirky gentlewoman pirate' and 'lovably scandalous lucky scoundrel', an American wizard secretly hires her for an off the books mission in the lead up to the British and Dutch Bombardment of Algiers. Knowing that his heir had been taken by magical members of the Barbary Pirates and was not returned after the Second Barbary War, in spite of being alive which he knew thanks to an enchanted family clock, the man pays handsomely for one of the few veteran american pirate-raiders still around, to sneak into Algiers and get his son back.
With more than a little luck, Jacklyn pulls off the rescue almost perfectly (almost thanks to the issue of Algeirs blowing up around them) and even manages to free a few extra slaves in the process. The bigger part of the mission though, is that it causes dollar signs to light up in her eyes. While there is the stumbling block that the US Navy's African Slave Trade Patrol is initially a massive farce of underfunded and under-assigned lip-service, the Royal Navy on the other hand, is offering bounties for slaves freed and even Letters of Marque to pursue slavers. While this isn't actually a profitable venture on it's own. Jacklyn realizes that with desperate magicals who's families are sometimes caught up in the Slave trade offering rewards for their return, there is an opportunity to double-dip. All she has to do is turn over and free anybody who isn't magical, or is magical but not the subject of a reward, over to the British muggles for a reward, before she lets them go. An exploit that actually will net her money, and further her popular repute in order to makes condemning her unpopular if she's ever caught by the magical Authorities.
Except in the US. Flouting Rapport's Law rapidly makes her unpopular among the higher levels of MACUSA at least, even before the fact that she is a thorn in the side of the magical elements of the slave trade as well. This continues on for years though, until eventually some of her 'rescue missions' start to take on new twists. In the 1830s, Jacklyn begins carrying out secret rescues outside the scope and justification of her Letters of Marque, moving from stopping slavers in intentional waters, to sometimes going up rivers to retrieve specific slaves and magicals. By the 1840s she's running a smuggling operation for anybody who can pony up the cash and get to rivers deep enough for her to take boats up. By the 1850s, she's basically an unofficial part of the magical and sea going 'branch lines' of the Underground Railroad.
In 1857 however, she then receives an extremely odd request. Heading up to New York, expecting yet another mission or a 'donation' from abolitionist supporters who are willing to work at a distance through the pirate, Jacklyn then instead meets a shocked Jèzebel de Breuil. Apparently having heard of 'a fox eared and fox-tailed pirate with a sword', Jèzebel had vainly hoped that 'Captain Jacklyn Fox' was simply another of Norimune's bad pseudonyms she sometimes used.
Still something of a fan at heart though, Jacklyn badgers Jèzebel for stories of her childhood piratical hero. It doesn't help that Jèzebel is still very much a looker, even if she is a recent mother of a 1 year old.
This gets rather awkward however, when Jèzebel mentions the tales of Sally Grey's involvement with Norimune, and that the Muramasa had never figured out what became of her. Only that she likely stumbled into something or crossed MACUSA while in the Carolinas, and got erased from the official nomaj history books for her troubles after her capture. Jacklyn meanwhile, realizes that while she never knew her mother's name, she knew her mother was a nomaj pirate who died in prison in the Carolinas.
Also, Jèzebel had a kid with Norimune.
Despite both being women, one of whom is a actually a sword.
And doesn't little Delilah have a weapon she seems to be tied to all the time too?
One magic based family relations test later (plus a copious amount of alcohol to brain-bleach the fact that she was trying to hit on the mother of her half-sister), Jacklyn now has her answers to a bunch of questions she was never really bothered about looking for answers to anyway.
Preferring the life of a 'lovably incorrigible and quirky pirate' to 'wizarding upper class' or 'agent of nascent 19th century fantasy shadow broker', Jacklyn returns to the seas, though she does make the effort to stick around as a friend and ally/asset of the future 'Anne Winter' and as something of a often traveling older sister and role-model for the young Delilah (occasionally to Jèzebel's dismay).
Throughout the Civil War, Jacklyn haunts the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, using a variety of different aliases and vessels to defy Rapports Law and pursue privateering missions against both wizarding and nomaj Confederate shipping. On occasion, she also undertakes missions for the Anne Winter network, often sailing groups behind enemy lines to either drop them off or deliver supplies without potentially leaving signs of magic that could alert their foes. On other occasions, she picks up groups, either to move them to new areas, extract forces, or take on freed slaves. At other times still, she takes on the disguise of a trader, putting into confederate ports to gather intelligence on southern magical communities for the Anne Winter network.
At the end of the war, though, Jacklyn finds out about Norimune's capture, whch initially causes mixed feelings for her. On the one hand, she's never actually met her parents, one of whom has even turned out to be a childhood hero. On the other hand, her father never seems to have known about her, and she hasn't given a toss for the mysteries of her ancestry for most of her life. And then on the third point of thought, is the fact that Norimune is in rather deep trouble. In the end though, she heeds Jèzabel's advice, and leaves everything up to 'Anne Winter' to sort out.
Ironically though, with the end of the Civil War, Jacklyn then does something Norimune never managed. She willingly settles for a life less filled with adventure and the lifestyle she has chased for most of her existence.
Even when she first became a pirate, Jacklyn realized she was entering a world that was already long past it's golden age and era of heroes. In fact, for most of the 19th century so far, she's been semi-legitimate more often than not, if what she does even counts as piracy at all, rather than privately sponsored anti-slavery and privateering missions. The increasing rise of steam powered merchant ships and the prominance of global western navies has by now spelled the end for even the Barbary pirates. Better communication also makes it harder to offload or fence stolen cargoes and vessels. Even magical aided piracy is not only no longer 'easy' or 'reliable', but it is increasingly no longer economical or feasible to catch prizes.
So, rather than ending her more than 125 year-long career with a bang like Blackbeard, or fading with a whimper into the obscurity of retirement like so many others, in 1666 she decides to finish her tale with a mystery that will hopefully keep alive the legend of the infamous gentlewomen pirate, Captain Jacklyn Fox.
Seeding rumors that she has ended up meeting a rather messy end in the aftermath of the Civil War, Jacklyn then spins more rumors that the people who really did her in, had some kind of motive and that they were looking for something. More false tales are spread, as the pirate slowly trickles into the ears of papers and reporters through different channels and sources of scuttlebutt, that the real reason the Red Fox of the Sargasso Sea disappeared, is because she was murdered for her treasure that she'd been squirreling away for the last century and a quarter. In reality, while Jacklyn does have enough of a nest egg to retire comfortably and without attracting attention, it is no where near enough to match the kind of fabricated fortunes people are happy enough to imagine, postulate about, and make up for themselves.
Releasing her will to a 'friend', then results in a number of notes being 'stolen', which are then later 'sold' to a Wizarding newspaper, who merrily publish what they can get their hands on. Coded documents, that even when decypher end seem to border on gibberish! Maps that make no sense, and only seem to hint towards locations to find further instructions rather than riches! Tantalising letters between someone who can only be Jacklyn, and someone threatening her unless she reveals the location of her riches! A rebuke that only the worthy shall find the treasure she has hidden and be able to understand it's true worth!
The Lost Treasure of Captain Jacklyn 'Red' Fox of the Sargarsso Sea, captures the attention of wizarding America in the same way that the lost treasure of Captain Kidd does for the nomajs.
Which makes it all the more hilarious for her, that there isn't any real treasure, and the whole thing's an unsolvable farce to hopefully elude people for a few decades until they get bored or forget. Adding to her entertainment, is when some people start further muddying the waters by publishing fake coded papers, maps and cyphers that they have supposedly discovered or brought from the thief.
Satisfied with her work, Jacklyn decides to finally hang up the pirate hat in 1667, figuring she should change her last name to Grey for a few decades just to be safe and as an extra measure to avoid attention as well.
When she decides to drop in on Jèzabel unannounced for a laugh and so she can get in touch with somebody who can forge her some new ID, a shocked and tearful ten year old Delilah hugs her and refuses to let go. Apparently while Jèzabel had figured out what she was up to, Delilah hadn't and her mother had not realized her daughter was following along the whole thing out of an aggrieved desire to know more, rather than the entertainment factor of Jacklyn getting one over against the gullible.
One awkward apology later, to make things up to her half-sister, Jacklyn then invites Delilah along on her next big adventure; Sailing around the world.
Much to Jèzabel's relief, Jacklyn then guiltily acquiesces when reminded that just because she never went to Ilvermorny or bothered with a higher education, doesn't mean Delilah won't. And in all fairness, the ex-pirate did forget. Delilah meanwhile, requires a few pouting matches, sulks and a shortlived tantrum, before Jèzabel finally gets the ten year old to accept that while she can visit her half-sister on every other weekend or during school breaks, Ilvermorny still takes priority. Secretly however, Jèzabel is all for the idea, she wants Delilah to see the world, to expand her horizons, and to have the opportunity to gain the kind of empathy and consideration for those points of view and lives outside the comfortable halls of blue-blood magical New York, that she never had thanks to her own upbringing.
Jacklyn meanwhile, now has to figure out how to incorporate and international floo fireplace and a portkey pad, into whatever vessel she ends up with for the trip.
Distant and prone to scandalous roving though she is, Jacklyn eventually takes on a role somewhat akin to a much older and mischievous sibling, or rather embarrassing and irresponsible uncle (in spite of being her half-sister). In spite of the distance and constant travelling, Jacklyn is a presence in her sister's life, either when joining her for the trip, or simply via letter. Jacklyn teaches Delilah how to throw a punch when other girls pick on her for the 'story' that she has an absent father and was probably born out of wedlock. When she has her first crush, Jacklyn good naturedly ribs her about, and after her half-sister gets shot down, cheers her up with a faux-tirade of how she's going to show him 'how pirates deal with those who play with their sisters hearts'. After Delilah gets into dueling, Jacklyn shows her a few 'unorthodox' and 'less than standard' tricks learned from her years of 'real world experience'.
Finally, after taking a few years to build the yacht for the trip herself (which she names Horizon Bringer), Jacklyn starts her trip aster casting off in San Francisco on New Years Day 1870. I imagine that she briefly stops off in Japan as the first stop on the trip, but unfortunately Norimune turns out to be off fighting in the Franco-Prussian War at the time. While she simply shrugs the bad luck off, the now teenage Delilah is disappointed and saddened.
In the end, Jacklyn draws her trip out for years, partly out of casual laziness, and also because she occasionally moors up and lingers in certain places for weeks, until she can properly show her half-sister some of the sights. Occasionally though, it's the less appropriate sights and attractions that draw Jacklyn herself in, and Delilah has to badger her sister into moving on from the bars, card houses, bordellos and other such places Jèzabel has forbidden the ex-pirate to take her half-sibling.
Spoiler: Around the World in 10,950 Days
As well as visiting Tokyo and Nagasaki in Japan, Delilah also stops by when Jacklyn puts into port in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau in China. In Annam (modern Vietnam) they visit Hue, then Bangkok in Siam, and Singapore and Malacca in Malay. After that, it's on to India, where Jacklyn pauses for her half-sister's benefit in Calcutta, Colombo, and Bombay.
From there, it's on to a variety of locations down the east coast of Africa. Zanzibar island, Mozambique, and the modern and gentrified successor state to the original magical-pirate colony of Libertatia, before finally Jacklyn arrives in Cape Town. Going up the west coast and territory she is more familiar with from her pirating/privateering/slave-rescuing days, Jacklyn repeatedly stops along the Skeleton Coast to hunt for washed up salvage and treasure among the wrecks, though for most of the Congo Coasts, she avoids putting ashore after hearing tales of the Belgian colonization of the Congo. Continuing on north, stops off in Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, then eventually stops at Dakar. After that, it's a long trip north to Casablanca, before she enters the Mediterranean.
Timing this part of the trip as an Ilvermorny graduation present and 18th birthday gift for Delilah in 1874, Jacklyn then takes her half-sister and her mother on a solid, unbroken holiday through the coastal regions of the world of Classical Antiquity. They see the ruins of Carthage in Tunis. In Alexandria they visit one of the small magical 'successor' Libraries to original great library of Alexandria. Stopping at Port Said, Jacklyn and Jèzabel take the opportunity to impart an important lesson to the young Delilah; never underestimate nomajs, for there is a thriving city and trade hub that didn't even exist 30 years ago, but now owes existence to a canal that cuts across a desert and removes the need to travel around the entire continent Jacklyn (admittedly taking her sweet time) took months to circumvent. Next up is Cyprus, then the wonders of Ottoman Constantinople, before moving on to Athens in Greece. Briefly in Lesbos, Jacklyn gets herself (and her sister) in trouble and very nearly earns Jèzabel's ire and the end of the trip, after the ex-pirate has to flee an angry mob, retrieve her love-potioned sister, and sneak the yacht out of Eresos in the dead of night. Making up the next leg of the trip is Italy with Venice, Naples, Rome and Genoa. After that, the Mediterranean leg of the holiday is rounded out with Marseilles, Montpellier, Barcelona, Valencia, and finally Gibraltar.
The European leg of Jacklyn's journey is completed largely on her own between 1876 and 1888, as Jèzabel heads back to the states and the Anne Winter network, while Delilah now focuses on figuring out what she actually wants to do with her life after graduating and her year traveling the Mediterranean with her half-sister (most likely Auror, or becoming an agent of her mother's information brokering network), though she still sometimes joins her to visit some of the major cities and attractions. Following the Atlantic coast, notable stops she makes among the multitude of smaller ones are Lisbon (in Portugal), Bordeaux, Nantes, Cherbourg, Le Havre (in France), Antwerp (in Brussels), Amsterdam (in Holland), Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, and Kiel (in Germany), Copenhagen (in Denmark), Riga and Saint Petersburg (in Russia), Stockholm (in Sweden), and Oslo (in Norway), before finally rounding out her trip with a loop of the British Isles. By the time she finishes her meandering route between Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Liverpool, Southampton, and then finally London, Jacklyn boasts that she's been to a bar and a brothel in every coastal nation in Europe.
After eventually outstaying her welcome in London, between the cardsharks she's outfoxed, the bar's she's been kicked out of for drinking dry, and the wizarding nobles and patriarchs she's earned the ire of (thanks to all the hearts of sons and daughters she's stolen over the course of her two years spent dawdling in London), Jacklyn finally decides to continue on her journey at the beginning of 1890. For good measure, she ditches using Grey as her last name, and goes back to Fox, just in case anybody tries to catch up with her.
Going to North America, she starts with Halifax, and gradually makes her way down the East Coast, hitting most of the major ports and coastal cities of the era until she gets to Florida. Looping into the Gulf of Mexico, she follows the coast all the way around to the Yucatan, before then launching off into the Caribbean, revisiting numerous old haunts as she goes from Cuba, to the Bahamas, down to Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and then the rest of the various islands that form the chain arching down to South America. Further south she goes, hitting the major coastal cities of Brazil, Uraguay and Argentina, before finally rounding the infamous Cape Horn, proving her mettle as a sailor by traversing the most southerly of the Great Capes and the 'furious fifties'. After that, it's the homeward stretch, hitting up the majors ports of Chile, Peru and Colombia, before then stopping off on the western coasts of the various Central American nations she missed going south.
Finally, she arrives back in North America. Stopping off in a few Mexican seaside towns along the way, Jacklyn calls into San Diego and Los Angeles, before at last arriving in San Fransico, just in time for the New Year and the Turn of the Century. Parked up at the Embarcadero, Jacklyn welcomes in the year of 1900 with Jèzabel and Delilah, almost 30 years after she first started her voyage.
Spoiler
"Do what you want cause a pirate is free! You are a pirate!"
The rest of Jacklyn's history, from the 20th century until the modern day, I see as slightly less action packed and adventure filled. Partly so I can figure out how to mesh her and Delilah's histories into finally crossing paths with and meeting Colombe.
Maybe in WWII, Delilah is involved in the MACUSA version of the OSS and runs into her in France or North Africa or something.
Jacklyn though, I can see her doing a few things of adventurous note and daring-do in 20th century.
During WWI, it would totally be in character for her to do a 'reverse Seeadler' of sorts; As the US never actually signed the 1856 Paris Declaration which outlawed privateers, I could see her going through Delilah and the Anne Winter network to acquire a Letter of Marque from the British Ministry of Magic (and then later MACUSA), in order to re-live her pirating days against the shipping of the Central Powers. Buying an old cargo clipper, Jacklyn completely rebuilds the vessel as a modern day privateer, arming it with concealed QF 4-inch naval gun Mk III borrowed from the British, Maxim Machine Guns, and a few Carronades and Long Guns on pivots for use of magical ammunition against warded or shielded foes on wizarding vessels. At the end of the war though, she sells the 'Red Fox Reprisal' due to peacetime expenses and her preference for living aboard the comfy home she's made of her old Schooner, 'Horizon Bringer'.
Delilah meanwhile, probably spends WWI as either an intelligence officer looking into the magical aftermath of the Zimmerman telegram or temporarily expands the web of the Anne Winter network into Canda and the UK, selling their services as infomation brokers, and spy hunters in neutral America for the early part of the war, until the US is actually involved.
In the 20s and 30s, Jacklyn takes up smuggling moonshine up and down the Mississippi for the hell of it.
In the 40s and WWII, she engages in a new kind of modern piracy. With the world going all in for the Great Global Bust Up - Round Two, Jacklyn is secretly recruited for a joint MACUSA/British MoM project, after a lot of prodding and behind the scenes wheeling and dealing by the Anne Winter network and elements of MACUSA who don't let their prejudices blind them. The inital expectation is for Jacklyn to make a Red Fox Revenge mkII, and then raid into the Pacific against Japanese shipping. Instead, having learned from WWI and watched the Battle of the Atlantic in the war so far, Jacklyn joins forces with a number of other British wizards already involved in the idea of stealing plans for and building a small squadron of magically enhanced submarines. Of the small wolfpack eventually produced and secretly operated against magical Japanese vessels moving bulk cargoes or goods to delicate or unstable to be sent by faster or compact magical means, Jacklyn ends up being the skipper of SSM-3. While the MoM never officially names any of the vessels, and scraps them all after the war due to a combination of expenses and inability to blend with the muggle navy due to most of them being based on pre-war American designs, many involved in the project unofficially name SSM-3 'USS Foxfish'.
Delilah meanwhile, is involved in the MACUSA version of the OSS in North Africa and France.
After the war in the 50s, I like to imagine her having to save Delilah from hot water, when some of her half-sister's friends who don't know she in fact is the same Jacklyn Fox as the 'Red Fox of the Sargasso Sea', then think they have finally uncovered her treasure. One post-war holiday turned misadventure later, Jacklyn gets a punch when she lamely tries to explain why she never at least thought to tell anybody after the first few decades, and all the time wasted by some of the more riches obsessed hunters, that there was never any treasure at all. ("May'haps, the reeeaal treasure, was the friends ye made along the way, and the journey you had with them yeah? We all savvy with that then?" *PUNCH*). Ironically, most people don't believe she is the original pirate, and the misadventure only revitalizes interest in the fake 'Lost Treasure of Captain Jacklyn Fox' which never existed.
In the 60s, she gets no end of mirth from the fact that her adopted home port of San Fransisco becomes the center of the counter-culture and the Summer of Love. Delilah meanwhile, takes on an ever increasing role in the network, as her mother gets older.
In the 70s, Jacklyn uses the Horizon Bringer as an offshore pirate radio station for a West Coast wizarding wireless network. Occasionally, Delilah also convinces her sister to broadcast certain songs and/or to use certain phrases.
In the 80s, she then discovers a new brand of piracy. Music piracy and bootlegging.
In the 90s, Jacklyn soon moves into video piracy as well.
In the early 2000s however, Jacklyn has an adventurous idea, and a vision is soon born of something that was initially a joke hobby. With the way the nomaj internet is evolving, and in particular the advent of elements like the public release of Tor in 2004, Jacklyn decides she wants to bring a new kind of piracy to the magical world, in a theatre most Wizarding authorities will never be able to understand. What she decides to do, is build a dark net website, dedicated to the piracy of digitized scans of magical books and texts (and in some cases, video recordings for books that have moving pictures or magically animated elements).
The project flourishes for the first year it is in run, primarily praised as the saviour of more than a few (usually muggle born) students and apprentices pursuing higher education in the US and the UK, who lack for the money or connections to access certain rare tomes or expensively priced textbooks. Then the servers which were hidden in Libertatia to avoid copyright and tax laws, get blown up during Blood Week. Afterwards, Jacklyn rebuilds the website, this time with a couple of mirrors as a preemptive measure against both shut down or raid by the authorities, and unplanned rapid disassembly by Abyssals.
By the early 2010s, a new generation of far more tech-savvy muggleborns and halfbloods has arisen. Post-Blood week young adults and teens, who often remain connected to the muggle side of things and modern technology for the sake of things like phone networks and online Abyssal warning systems. This allows Pirate Bibliotheca to take off massively.
Some people see it as an opportunity to upload and preserve rare documents and texts, thanks to Blood Week causing a massive loss of written knowledge and historical archives in some coastal cities. Other people use the site as a learning resource thanks to the brain-drain Blood Week causes in some magical communities. A few of the more fringe sorts, see it as a potential 'last bastion for magical knowledge' uploading scores of books in preparation for the witch-hunts 2.0 once the Statute finally falls, or the apocalypse/end of days should the Abyssals ravage the world to thoroughly to recover, or prove to be the start of something larger.
Much to Jacklyn's amusement though, the vast majority of Pirate Bibliotheca ends up being a hive of scum and villainy, dedicated to porn, scanlations, and video and music piracy.
Jacklyn's pet project makes her half-sisters facepalm. Delilah herself though, occasionally makes use of Pirate Bibliotheca, primary as a method to keep the Anne Winter network running. Blackmail, leaks, and the threat of timed information dumps are already hard enough to counter or control when you understand the Internet, nevermind if you are some Luddite of a pureblood offical with the threat of a scandal being revealed if you keep trying to succeed where so many others have failed, in attempting to root out the 150 year old information brokering network and it's shadowy master.
Yellowhammer said:
Posting here Part II of
A Dove in a Dumpster Fire, the continuing madcap misadventures of Colombe D'Aubigny-Muramasa née du Chasteler
Yellowhammer said:
A Dove in a Dumpster Fire, the Continuing Madcap Misadventures of Colombe D'Aubigny-Muramasa née du Chasteler (Part III)
A few minor things I will kind of note though;
- I'm not exactly sure why everyone seems to hate on poor Masamune-no-Tokunotakai. She was basically a civilian miko and teacher (albiet a very skilled one with a prestigious heritage) who had some drunken lout stumble into her home. Norimune isn't exactly a faultless or unbiased person either. She's something of a walking greek tragedy, but her 'Byronic-ness' is also partly her own fault as well.
- I'm not sure Hachiman (at least the idea I had, but this is Harry's sandbox anyway) would work that way. While he is called a 'God of War', he's more correctly a patron, protector or guardian of warriors. This is (part of why) Norimune was constantly involved in wars, and Tokunotakai teaches. They're both opposite sides of the same coin, but Norimune got into so much shit because she was so far from where the Japanese pantheon might have power, as well as the fact that she was a battle-junkie. He's also technically a god of archery, agriculture (why Norimune chooses to buy a farm), fishermen, the Imperial Family, and the people of Japan. So probably not really the kind of person to be a dick or have people sign onto things without the fine print. It's a bit like how Ares and Athena are different aspects of war.
- Also my original idea was that the three each kind of inherit a different trait of Norimune's, but without the associated flaw that was her undoing.
- Delilah has Norimune's strength of convictions and quiet but powerful belief in a cause, only with the smarts and mentors/support network not to be run off or cause herself to be an undesirable by the end of the conflict if things go bad.
- Jacklyn has Norimune's sense of adventure and wanderlust, but she also knows when to stop, how to not put a target on her back, and how to enjoy other things in life/accept when something is at an end. While she enjoys justifying everything she does as 'piracy x.0', she is smart about what she does.
- At least with the original idea I was bandying about, Colombe/the Julie kid, would have inherited Norimune's combat prowess and luck abilities, without the pride and emotional issues that caused Norimune to constantly be fighting and have difficulty connecting to people.
I
do like what's been written of Colombe while I've been away for the last week, but at the same time, I'm iffy of her being Norimune 2.0 if she continues on as her 'father did' until present day. I'm not sure what kind of fun, interesting or exploratory character interactions could be made off of Norimune looking in a younger, angrier mirror, when there's already the fun idea of Colombe having the grudge against her thanks to the mistaken perception that her 'father' simply abandoned Julie and she needs to avenge her.
At least it's just my opinion, but I think seeing her kids being relatively successful or happy with their lives, would have more of a lot more of an impact on her, than if they'd had the optimism beaten out of them by life and foolish/rash decisions, an inability to deal with their problems, and bad luck. Nothing throws and surprises a burnt out cynic who has lost their faith, more than good things happening.
