The Ghost-Admiral of the Stagonids

The ferry back to Port Ives was crammed full of tourists on their way back to the Capital, but they kept their distance from the Magistrate and her Marshal, distinctive in their black uniforms of office. Cara had grown used to being given space by now, but her attention was drawn by a child, wide-eyed as he approached them.
"Miss! Are you a pirate?!" The boy pointed at her side-cap. "That's a pirate's hat, isn't it?"
Toreo grinned. "Yes, this is the Lady Pirate-Admiral Lindena, the terror of the Stagonids."
Cara pulled her hat off and slapped Toreo in the arm with it. "Not funny! Children are impressionable!" She adjusted her side-cap back on and gave the boy a bright smile. "I am Magistrate Caranda Valier of the Principality, and this is Marshal Toreo. We are traveling investigators."
The boy seemed disappointed. "But you look so much like the pirates in the drawings!" He pulled a well-worn travel brochure from his back pocket and unfolded it. There, on the inner fold, was a caricature of a pirate woman, dressed in black sea leathers, front leg planted on a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins, with rapier held high.
Toreo leaned closer. "Blonde hair in a ponytail, always angry, wearing all black. I don't see the difference at all."
The magistrate sighed. "Don't believe everything you see in the brochures, child."
"But my dad said that the pirates would come back to take their revenge! Everyone knows that!" The boy's tone had changed from excited to petulant.
"Revenge for what? The pirate ghosts aren't real, child. Linden is long dead. It's just a story. I would know; I'm a magistrate - it's more likely the victims merely drowned..." Cara drifted to a stop as the boy clearly had stopped paying attention.
The marshal shook his head. "Don't bother. Let kids be kids, Cara."
"It's a blight on our profession that these sorts of myths continue to perpetuate." Cara adjusted her hat and stood. "What sort of magistrate would I be if I wasn't devoted to delivering the truth?"
"Presumably one that doesn't spend hours lecturing children, I'd hope?"

Summary

Littered throughout the islands of The Stagonids are the graves of hundreds of pirate sailors; men (and it was almost always men) attacking traders in the moonlight and reaping great treasure and bounty. Their shipwrecks are everywhere, the bleached timbers stranded on beaches, the rotting frame of a errant ship waylaid against a coral reef, the broken wrecks visible on shallow ocean floors as a result of the Principality's judgment.
Yet the pirates continue in their wrath. Should any fool visitor to the Stagonids disrespect the final resting place of a dead pirate's crew, a visit will be paid by the restless spirit of the Great Pirate Admiral, Linden the Black-handed, as though they may have fought amongst themselves as living men, all pirates unite under one banner as the dead.
A survivor of a visit, who dared not reveal her name for fear of more ghostly reprisals, described the visit in chilling terms. She was vacationing in the Stagonids with two friends from the Etoile Capital City, and had disturbed a local pirate shipwreck whilst hunting for souvenirs (pieces of the rotted mast, a rusted belt buckle). While taking the overnight ferry back to Nenuph, she woke with a start in her cabin. Her best friend, the one that had made the buckle into a makeshift eyepatch as a joke, was out of bed and walking out of the room. Though her eyes were open and unseeing, she could not be lifted from her trance, following a pale figure in a tattered mariner's coat along the bow deck. The ghost (for what else could it have been?) simply floated off the stern of the ship, and her friend followed, slipping into the ocean with only the faintest of whispers, never to be heard from again.
Thus the shades of the ancient pirates protect their graves. Linden's view of the irony, where the treasure hunters of the Stagonids become looted in turn, is likely to be quite dim indeed.

Historical Basis

The pirates of The Stagonids had a fearsome reputation at the height of their influence pre-Unification, as tales of their exploits in commerce raiding terrified the average trader captain. The Principality of Etoile made a point of extinguishing the piracy in the area, in a bid to ensure the safety of the great circular trade routes. The Pirate "Admiral" Linden the Black-handed, named as such for his malice and brutality in pirate boarding actions, was the last of the pirates to be slain, his Scythe smashed to pieces by the Siege-sails of the Principality Navy.
The rise of the myth in the modern era, that the pirates have returned and are taking their ghostly vengeance, is rooted in a number of sensationalized disappearances of tourists vacationing in the Stagonids. More than a few tourists have boarded a inter-island ferry or pleasure cruise and never made it to their destinations, disappearing somewhere en-route. The myth of the ghost pirates as the cause was likely a marketing effort in poor taste, a tale concocted by the tourist consortiums attempting to elevate the intrigue and mystery of the islands and make their vacation package seem more 'exotic'. This is coupled with the more grounded conspiracy theory, that conflict between the local residents and the tourist interests have spawned a serial killer.
Of course, ghosts and spirits are unlikely to be real, and magisterial investigation has found no evidence of a serial killer in operation, so the official explanation of the disappearances is simple: the victims simply were intoxicated and fell off the ship mid-transit. Bodies do not linger in the warm waters of the Stagonids, with flesh-eating jaw-fish capable of reducing a body to its skeleton in mere hours.

Spread

A special investigation conducted by the Etoilean Standard in 703 was the first to connect together reports of disappearances in the Stagonids. Unfortunately, that same issue of the Standard hosted an advertisement from the Unified Trade Consortium, a major tourism interest, in which fictional stories were told of the exploits of the old Stagonid pirates and of Admiral Linden in particular. It was inevitable that the wild-eyed would link the two together, and by 710 it had become 'common knowledge' that the Stagonids were haunted by ghost pirates. Said ghost pirates are now mentioned in every travel brochure to the Stagonids, which only cements the myth in the common imagination.

Variations & Mutation

Less well known are rumors local to the Stagonids, that the disappearances are the work of an anti-tourism serial killer, who targets victims that 'disrespect' the area. This is less a myth and more of a conspiracy theory, and a tale that the consortiums would rather not tell themselves.

Cultural Reception

The more excitable segments of Etoile are always looking for new areas of mystery, and the concocted tale of ghost pirates and their ghostly Admiral is designed to cater to this type of audience - a tale full of magic and wonder, but not actually particularly dangerous (as there have been few disappearances related to the myth). The more pragmatic find the myth to be no more than bad marketing.

In Art

Annual editions of the tourist brochures typically feature campy artwork depicting the pirates of the Stagonids, both in their pirate lives and in their supposed ghostly un-lives.

Date of First Recording

703

Related Locations

• The Stagonids