by Nate Crowley
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6. Best one I saw was by Captain Liz Blacktooth, who tattooed the map to her loot on the arse of her long-term rival’s pet ape. They had the map right under their noses for years, but never saw it until the ape got the shits and they had to shave its rear end, revealing a dotted line and an ‘x’ marking the spot.
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7. Eagle-eyed travellers will note that there are, in fact, only five seas. But this is just not polite to point out to the Pirates, who are adamant about there being seven.
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8. Don’t underestimate these Spume kids, though – the little bastards can put it away. I got in a drinking contest with a nine-year-old and the little git utterly bladdered me.
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9. I must admit, I hadn’t heard much about Doldrum until someone told me all about it on my way to a wedding – I have to say he was an odd bloke, but he really sold it well.
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10. Not in the good way, either. It may sound like the stuff of cheap romance novels, but more often than not it involves a vast amount of deck maintenance and very little in the way of teaching twinkly-eyed ruffians the ways of love.
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11. Case in point – ‘shiver me timbers!’ can be either an exclamation of mild surprise or a demand for vigorous manual stimulation, depending on the company you’re keeping.
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12. Of course, under the terms of the Code, nowhere on Spume is technically anyone’s domain, but you get the picture.
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13. Eliza says I can’t use that word, as it is apparently disrespectful. I don’t care: it’s what everyone else calls them, so I say it’s authentic.
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14. I guess you could say they aren’t very … humerus.
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15. So – you know I mentioned the CFC freeing me after the incident at Mulligan’s? Their clemency was on the condition that I give them full approval over the copy in this guidebook, so I had to be careful about what I included. However, these footnotes went in after they made their edits, so let me say this clearly: Map’s Edge isn’t empty. Not by a long chalk. If you listen to enough rum-chat among the old salts of the Stormwrack taverns, you’ll hear the same: there’s danger out there. Real danger. The kind that comes at the tip of a rusty machete, and which laughs with rotten-toothed malice at the Pirate’s Code. I’ve seen it, and I’ll never forget it.
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16. Floyd, what does this mean? It sounds an awful lot like bullshit to cover up something dreadful. – ES
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17. Look, there’s something about ‘Riddles from the Silver-antlered Ones’ in the songs, but I think it’s just the writers being silly. What’s so hard to accept about haunted gold, Eliza?
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18. This line was, admittedly, inserted into my copy by the CFC, but I really didn’t like that prison, so I let it stand. Needs must when the devil drives and all, eh?
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19. I mean, it’s all basically the same, isn’t it? Just a load of wet water. Eliza insisted I do a section on climate and terrain anyway, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s a bloody Pirate world – if you’re reading this in the hope that I’ll suddenly reveal a massive desert, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Of course, I say that, but according to the primer Eliza gave me, there is in fact such a thing as a marine desert. I reckon that’s bollocks – if there are no cactuses it can’t be a desert, end of story.
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20. I have fond memories of the first time I tried what the Pirates refer to as ‘the saveloys o’ the sea’ – if you can get past the fact that you’ve got to prise the fangs off first, they’re great eating.
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21. Admittedly, this practice is also the reason why many pirates have hooks for hands in the first place.
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22. According to the primer Eliza has forced me to read, they are in fact ‘Pseudo-architeuthimorphic parazooids presenting features common to both Bryozoans and Siphonophores, but with astonishing emergent complexity’. However, since I have no idea what the hell that means, let’s just agree on squid.
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23. Hilariously, the same primer reckons the Kraken aren’t natural at all. It says ‘if you were going to engineer an organism in a hurry to facilitate the survival of civilisation after a catastrophic rise in sea level, you could do little better than the Kraken’. Come on, seriously? This is meant to be a textbook, not science fiction.
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24. Please stop. – ES
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25. Slogan: ‘Release the Krakens!’
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26. FLOYD. – ES
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27. It’s fair enough, I suppose, since they’ll be roaming the Seven Seas for centuries to come.
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28. Be wary when booking tours aboard such craft, as Skeleton Pirates have no sense of smell.
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29. A boneless face over two crossed, floppy arms. It’s understood that this was a sort of ‘see how you like it’ move, in response to the Pirates’ refusal to give up the skull and crossbones as their own symbol. And believe me, you’ve not seen rage till you’ve seen a woman who’s braved a ten-thousand mile quest only to find a scrap of parchment reading ‘it turneth out ye real treasure was ye friends ye mayde along the way’.
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30. The official position of the CFC is that there is no organised non-Pirate culture in the whole world. But then, that’s exactly the impression they would want to give to prospective tourists, isn’t it? And while I’m not going to flat out say there are hundreds of thousands of hostile humans living in the expanse of Map’s Edge (which is not nearly so empty as the CFC insists), I’m trusting you, dear reader, to put two and two together here.
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31. Oh, did you think that was just a nice little flourish by a cartographer? No, it’s a massive stone compass sticking out of the sea, and nobody has any idea who put it there.
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32. As Captain Olivia Ravenswain argued in her famous address to the CFC when the tradition of the Governor was initiated: ‘If the Navy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.’
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33. Other than the dreaded ‘Sea Weed’, that is.
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34. Just remember that you don’t technically buy anything in Spume – you just pay to steal it. Property here really is theft.
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35. Generally speaking, the more senior and experienced a Pirate, the more prosthetics they will have. There is usually a practical limit to levels of replacement, but Pirates still sing the legend of Captain Jurgen Bunchfist, who supposedly went ‘full sawdust’, only being declared dead a week after his shipmates realised they had replaced his last original body part with a block of wood.
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36. Be aware that your children will learn skills such as ‘punching’ and ‘threats’ on such outings, however.
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37. Of course, everywhere on Spume is technically lawless, but it’s mandatory under the Code to refer to all Stormwrack ports as ‘lawless’ in order to preserve their rough mystique.
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38. A discreet note: despite the ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’ line that gets thrown around about life in the Stormwracks, it’s worth pointing out that only the rum is compulsory, and even then alcohol-free options are available. If the other two do happen to be your thing, you should know that Keelhaulyer has a well-regulated, heavily unionised sex industry, which its participants take great pride in. Rest assured, there are plenty of opportunities to get Jolly – and ethically – Rogered in these parts.
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39. Please, please remember to make sure yo
u sign up under a temporary contract.
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40. Some anatomical diagrams can’t be unseen.
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41. Piratical dive technology is not recommended, being essentially a wooden barrel on the end of an air hose.
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42. Mostly the latter.
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* * *
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CHAPTER FOUR: CHUGHOLME
1. You’ve already rinsed 120 of them, mind. And on what I have to say is the most atrociously pompous paragraph I’ve yet to see you produce. Well done, I guess? – ES
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2. Sorry, Eliza – is it ‘a eulogy’ or ‘an eulogy’?
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3. Figure it out yourself. I’m not going to edit a word of this chapter. I’m just going to bin it on press day, so write what you like. – ES
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4. Pronounced ‘Chalmondesleydale’.
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5. They were mostly boarding-school kids enjoying a break from their studies.
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6. I met her once, by the way.
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7. Their gripe was something about independence, or the means of production – I can’t remember, to be honest.
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8. Although I was devastated to forfeit my reserved table at the Botherstone.
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CHAPTER FIVE: SPACE
1. They may think they’re clever, but really – when it comes down to it, what are astrophysicists but overqualified geographers?
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2. Floyd, isn’t this both a) alarmingly colonial, and also b) entirely against the ground rules we agreed for your travels? Those flags are meant for sports games, not fucking conquest. And don’t you dare tell me it ‘doesn’t count because they’re only plastic’. – ES
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3. Wow. There’s just so much to unpack in that last statement. It’s a work of art. I don’t know where to start, so I reckon I’ll just let you continue. – ES
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4. Yuck. I don’t ever want to hear that sequence of words from you ever again. – ES
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5. Neither things are as bad as they sound. The SPACE Pirates are largely recent immigrants from Spume and are thus way too polite to be much genuine trouble, while the Xenads haven’t been proven to lay their eggs in anyone’s mouth.
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6. I really can’t cope with the capital letters every time I read this, so this is henceforth the style when referring to them and them alone. – ES
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7. Who can fathom the Missions of the Space Men?
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8. My favourite is Captain Karl Bludgeon, by a mile.
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9. But the guns can be put on a setting that just makes people sleepy, so it’s not a military force, OK?
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10. It’s called “terrorforming”.
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11. As far as I can tell, the designation is largely about bragging rights. This way, people can boast about being the best pilot in the Galaxy, or making the finest soup in the Galaxy – or whatever – and it’s harder for people to disagree.
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12. ‘Who would win out of the Syndicate and the Galaxy’ is always a cracking debate. And for the record, if all the best Syndicate Captains teamed up, they could totally defeat the whole Galaxy in an afternoon. It’s just beneath the Syndicate, is all. They’re classier than that.
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13. Floyd, you have to at least try. – ES
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14. They’re really not OK, the poor bastards.
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15. About that: if you run into any disgruntled diplomats on Outpost Bravo grumbling conspiratorially about a supposed ‘land grab’ by me on Earth’s behalf, just ignore them. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And Eliza (since I know you’re reading this), don’t pay any heed to talk of me bribing Syndicate Captains to look the other way on all the flag-planting. Aliens talk a lot of shit, you know?
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16. Hmm. Right. – ES
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17. Has anyone tried talking to them? I don’t want to point out the obvious, but they look exactly like the Scolopendrakin on Mittelvelde, who were also exterminated on sight as vile monsters, until they turned out to be thoroughly decent people (and they definitely don’t lay eggs in anyone’s mouths, for the record). – ES
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18. Even so, to this day it’s illegal to turn a telescope towards any of the systems once blighted by the Multibears, just in case they’re still there.
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19. They reproduce by budding, just like yeast. It’s extremely odd. The newly budded Space Men aren’t even babies, just sort of … crunched-up, muscly little men born with the minds of their progenitors, who slowly expand over the course of a few weeks. They’re prolific budders too, so it’s lucky they’ve such a titanic mortality rate, or they would overcome the whole sector.
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20. The Space Men are very anxious about *everything*, given the sheer amount of amphetamine rations they feel compelled to chew their way through.
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21. I have no idea how they got from Spume to SPACE, of course. Certainly, the suggestion that I accepted bribes from Spume to allow certain individuals to relocate is simply bunkum, and fodder for the credulous mind.
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22. It’s literally only you who calls them that. – ES
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23. They’re not balls, you fool! They’re external kidneys! – ES
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24. Ugh, seriously, they’re astonishingly boring. All they talk about is maths.
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25. Their bloody lawyers are always pulling contracts out of their arses ‘proving’ the Olang have rights to various SPACE-bound resources, but the canny Syndicate Captains always see through their nonsense.
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26. Important: do they call themselves a ‘warrior race’, Floyd? Because if not, that is really not an OK term to use. – ES
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27. Oh shit. It’s only just hit me. They’re … they’re Orcs, aren’t they? This is Mittelvelde all over again. – ES
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28. Sadly, falling debris usually exterminates all life on the planet the Moon was constructed around, but that’s not something to worry about during the shindig.
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29. I mean, who fucks a salad?
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30. When dining with these people, it’s incredibly funny to say ‘bleep bloop’ in the middle of sentences, and then swear blind that you didn’t say anything when questioned. Really messes with their heads.
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31. Floyd, you do realise one light minute is eleven-million miles, right? – ES
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32. It’s just more amphetamines.
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33. Especially if you like the idea of being able to see the accusing, spectral forms of long-dead Space Men in your peripheral vision.
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34. Is that really what they’re calling their battleships? I thought the Bison King lacked subtlety, Floyd, but the Syndicate really take the cake. – ES
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35. Floyd, it’s a complete grift, mate! They’re just lumps of plastic! And, like, have you never stopped to realise that everyone, in every World, speaks English anyway? I mean, that struck me immediately, but you do you. – ES
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36. Well, actually, it was wine. But still – those Space Men and their shoddy kit!
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&n
bsp; 37. I suspect he was a Wizard.
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38. SPACE weeks are six days long.
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39. You could also argue that some visitors are frankly reckless about getting lunchtime-pissed and then passing out in zero-G, before drifting slowly through the flames of a barbecue and catching alight. – ES
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40. Some might say ‘ghetto’ – ES
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41. The reason this area has been left to the robots is that it’s saturated in radiation from the engine’s amateurish shielding, so either find lead-based fashion choices or bring plenty of anti-rads.
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42. Floyd, in what world does ordering a robot to breakdance for your amusement not count as ‘sticking one’s oar in’? – ES
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43. Your mileage may vary: I paid through the nose for a man with a wrinkly ear to give me a ‘vision of the future’, and all I saw was some lady with antlers beckoning me through a load of fog. Nice try, mate, but I could do that myself with dry ice and a couple of tree branches. He wasn’t fooling me for a moment.
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44. Privately, many suspect there’s a good reason that Mission Control has never phoned back. After all, we only think the Space Man was his civilisation’s greatest pilot because that’s what his identical descendants tell us. Honestly, if he was much like the bunch of dolts who currently run Outpost Bravo, I can imagine why his people wanted shot of him.
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45. I said she’s better than Bludgeon. That’s not hard. – ES
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46. It’s not as dilapidated as some of the rougher bars in the Galaxy, but it’s nasty enough.
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47. I beg to fucking differ, Floyd. I saw the cargo manifest, and I know full well Bludgeon sold five platoons of Unk ‘security officers’ to the Stellar Warriors and pocketed the cash himself. He’s a hair’s breadth from being a goddamned slave trader, yet you still love him because he’s got a cool jacket and a winning smile. Don’t give me that bullshit about it being his ‘evil universe counterpart’ either – he trots that out every time he commits an atrocity, and you believe it. – ES
