On a muggy afternoon, a fancy carriage rolled into Murky Bay, escorted by ten knights on horses. They wore golden surcoats over their shiny armors, swords hung on their sides, and their helmet's visors were down. As they reached the border of the town, a bunch of the locals gathered around: a ragged group, men and some women too, dressed in mismatched clothes. Some just wobbled out of the town's inn to see what's the fuss about, others came from their homes or lodgings. While they weren't nearly as well-armed, many of them had some sort of weapons, and they easily outnumbered the newcomers.

The knights halted their horses and the carriage came to a stop. The locals began to cuss them, threaten them, and ask them who the hell they are. “Go back to Lazarus and tell him to fuck himself!” someone yelled.

“We aren't Lazarus' men. We mean no harm, we are only here to gather some information,” the head of the knights, a dignified, middle-aged man said. He removed his helmet, revealing his grey hair and stern, clean-shaved face.

“What information?” someone asked.

“We are searching for a man named Victor Goldman. He was supposed to arrive in Newchance not long ago on a ship named Annabelle, but it never reached the town's port.”

“Fuck Newchance!” someone yelled, and many seemed to agree.

“If anyone can tell us about what happened to the ship, my master will reward you with great gratitude.” The man detached a bag from his belt, and poured a couple of golden coins in his hand, holding them up high between his glowed fingers, making sure everyone sees them.

After a moment of silence, the pirates began to argue amongst themselves. One dude lunged forward and started saying something about a certain pirate captain, but someone dashed after him and hit him on the back of his head, knocking him out. With that, the yelling and arguing only increased, some even began to fist-fight. The knights carefully distanced themselves from the ruckus, urging their horses to back away slowly, while paying close attention to what's happening. The coachman who was sitting on the front of the carriage squirmed in his seat uncomfortably.

“Cut it out!” someone bellowed, and the commotion quickly quieted down. The pirate-folk gave way to a man: he was an unusually big dwarf, half-naked, tan-skinned, tattooed, bald, and with a white goatee. It was clear that everyone respected him greatly. “If you want information, get off your horses and walk with me to my place!”

The knights exchanged a look, their grey-haired leader nodded, and they all dismounted.

“And who would be that generous master of yours?” the dwarf glanced at the carriage.

The vehicle's door opened, and a young man stepped out. He was short and chubby, his black, straight hair reached his shoulders, his eyes were dark and big, his nose wide but pointy. He wore good quality, clean black clothes and a golden cape. His skin was quite pale, suggesting he hasn't spent a lot of time outside. He seemed kind of timid, but there was an elegance to his movements too, he was kind of owl-like.

“Good afternoon!” he said not too loudly. “My name is Eric Goldman. Nice to meet you.”

The dwarf took a long look at him: the two of them were nearly the same size, but everything else about them was quite different.

“They call me Goliath, I'm something like the head of this town. Come with me!”

They brought their horses inside a stable near the inn, and they left the carriage there too along with the coachman and two knights to look over their stuff. The rest of them walked after Goliath, with their master in the middle of their walking formation, as usual.

“What do you think, Sir Kleid?” Eric Goldman whispered, making sure that the dwarf pirate won't hear them.

“Definitely seems like the people here know something. It was a good idea to come here after all. The only question is how easy it will be to leave,” the head-knight replied quietly.

“Oh, you think they...”

“They are pirates, my lord, you can never be sure with them. But worry not, we won't let them so much as put a finger on you.”

Eric gulped. “Let's just see what Goliath has to say to us.”

Cobblestone streets, shady alleys, stone houses with dark wooden frames, mossy corners, lazy green-ish waves splashing against the promenade's foundation. They reached their destination quickly: a tall, hemp-smelling house that was right on the seafront.

Goliath was blunt and to the point, they only spent about a quarter of an hour in his home. The dwarf told them straight that the ship named Annabelle was stolen by a pirate captain called Carlos Wayne, who is a regular in Murky Bay, and who everyone here supports. He assured them that Carlos is no evil man, and that he wouldn't murder people senselessly, in fact he was just here a day ago with that newly stolen ship of his. Supposedly, he captured all the rich passengers and passed them on to someone else, who is already carrying them back to Midridge. If Eric's uncle (because Victor Goldman was his uncle) was still alive, he was most likely amongst those folks, and they could find him on Midridge, Goliath said. Otherwise, they have business with Carlos, in which case they should approach the whole thing as diplomatically and friendlily as possible.

“He is a great man, one of the fairest pirates I know, but he is smart and powerful too, and he has all of us backing him. At least he definitely has me. So you better not attempt to boss him around like you are above him just because you have some kind of family title shit. I would highly recommend going to him as an equal.”

“Oh, of course,” Eric replied humbly.

“And if I may advise you, leave the town as quick as possible. I can see you aren't malicious, probably. But us pirate folk don't mix too well with your fancy kind, and since your knight flaunted some gold too... you better not linger around. I might be respected here, but I cannot guarantee your safety.”

“Understood, we won't be bothering your people longer. Thank you for your time,” Eric bowed.

“Now if you don't mind,” the dwarf extended a hand and stared at Eric intently. The lord was confused for a second, but then he realized what's going on, and quickly told his knight to give the man that bag of gold.

They walked back to the stable straight away, with many curious, suspicious or disapproving eyes fixed on them. As they were getting their horses ready, Sir Kleid and Eric briefly discussed what's next. The young lord wonderer if they can trust the information they got here, and the knight argued it's more than what he hoped for either way. So they agreed to go back to Newchance and set sail towards Midridge the next day – not much else they could do.

“Excuse me!” a man approached them. He was brown-haired, young, probably around the same age as Eric, but quite a bit more handsome and in-shape. His clothes were nothing too fancy, but good quality, better than most people's in this town.

Eric looked at him shyly, feeling hesitant to talk to a stranger, especially after Goliath's words of warning. Sir Kleid was quick to notice his anxiety, and he stood in front of him, along with two of the other knights.

“What do you want? We have no more gold.”

“That's fine, I'm not after your gold,” Porco said. “I'm just curious. Not often would you meet a Cesanitian noble and his squad of knights around here.”

“We have no time, pirate.”

“Oh, I am no pirate, I'm just a visitor here too.”

“Sir Kleid, guys, step aside!” Eric said, and his knights obeyed him.

The young lord shook hands with Porco, and asked him where he is from.

“Midridge. I travelled here on Annabelle. Well, I was originally meant to go to Newchance.”

“Oh. Would you mind going on a ride with us, then? We could talk more safely in my carriage,” Eric offered. “And we are going to Newchance, so we could bring you there with us.”

“I would gladly chat, my lord, but I no longer intend to go to that settlement. I would prefer to be dropped off at the edge of town once we are done talking, if you don't mind.”

“Of course!”

The carriage began to get going, surrounded by the knights on horses. Inside, it was just Eric and Porco, sitting on comfortable, cushioned seats. The young lord even closed the curtains to make their conversation more private.

“Are you a relative of Victor Goldman?” asked Porco.

“Yes. He is the older brother of my father. He went missing seventeen years ago, when I was just a toddler.”

“Oh, really? Where did he go missing?”

“He was on his way to Midridge, he never let the family know why. My mother says he was rumored to have an affair there with some elf noble woman. Either way, his ship got in a bad storm, and it was lost forever, with no known survivors. Or so we all thought until recently. Have you travelled with him? Have you met him on Annabelle?”

“I travelled with a man who called himself Victor Goldman. I knew nothing about his past though. Have you met him since he reappeared?”

“No. It was Ike Lazarus who met him, and he told my father months ago. He was visiting us to earn our support for his settlement-project, but my father wasn't interested. He shrugged off the news about his brother too, they were never particularly close, but really he just refused to believe he was back. Even though Lazarus gave an accurate description of his appearance, nobody in the family cared, but I did. I couldn't help myself. A long lost relative suddenly reappearing, after seventeen years! It's something you would read in tales of adventures, a miracle, if you will. If no one else could bother to check on him, I had to,” Eric straightened his back proudly.

“I understand,” Porco nodded. ”So Ike Lazarus told you Victor will travel to his Newchance, right?”

“He did. And so I went there myself, waiting for him.”

“But he didn't arrive. Although it's still just a few days since his supposed arrival, isn't it? How did you know Annabelle isn't simply late?”

“Ike Lazarus has a pair of magical mirrors, and he communicated with his ship's captain through one. But it went blank days ago.”

Interesting, I had no idea about that, Porco thought.

“Lazarus did not want to admit it to us at first, so he did say the ship must be just late due to weak winds or something. But he knew for days now that something is up. I think he still wishes to make a good impression on me, hoping to get the favor of my family. Yesterday, my trusty Sir Kleid realized he is hiding something, and got the truth out of him. Lazarus believes something happened to the ship, he isn't sure what, but he suspects that the people of Murky Bay might be behind it. He has a bit of a rivalry going on with his pirate neighbours. And so, we came here, just in case we can figure something out. It's already quite the tale, isn't it?” the young lord asked with an almost childish sense of excitement.

“It is, but i'm afraid I can only provide a grim twist to it.”

“A grim twist?” Eric's already large eyes widened.

“The man who called himself Victor Goldman, the one who travelled on Annabelle was an impostor. He was really someone else disguising himself as Victor Goldman.”

“Huh? Why? And who?”

“Have you heard about Warren Crown?”

“You mean the infamous pirate?”

“It was him. He disguised himself as Goldman.”

Eric coughed, then cleared his throat. “But how? Wasn't he defeated years ago?”

“He was defeated, but not killed, apparently.”

Porco did his best to explain what happened on Annabelle: how its captain (Kraus) was cooperating with Carlos Wayne who was blackmailing him, setting up for the overtaking of Annabelle, and how Warren used the chaos of that day to his advantage, stealing back his original ship, Heartbreaker, from Carlos. What Porco did not speak about was Arabella and Chio – he didn't feel like further complicating the story, or confusing Eric.

“That's the gist of it. I assume Warren Crown somehow sniffed out this deal between captains Carlos and Kraus, so he pretended to be a passenger to get close to his old ship. Why he chose to impersonate Victor Goldman specifically, I cannot say. Maybe he knew the man and had a natural resemblance to him. I have the suspicion that if anyone knows what happened to your uncle seventeen years ago, it's Warren.”

“Oh.” Eric got a little pale. As someone who liked reading a lot, he knew about Warren Crown quite a bit: his atrocities, his liking of destruction and torturing people (especially women), but also how futile all attempts were of taking him out. The Cesanitian Empire itself has sent warships after him on multiple occasions, but the pirate always found a way to either get away, or to somehow defeat his pursuers. One time, he sent the head of a warship's captain to the king himself in a gift-box. Eric was actually there to see it as a young teenager; the Goldman family was an old and rich one, and it had close ties with the Dandenars, so Eric spent a decent amount of time in the royal palace in his youth. That “gift day” was something that really stuck with him.

“So he is still alive,” the young lord mumbled, then he looked up at Porco. “If this is true, then I don't think there is much I can do. I'm no warrior, and even if I was, the things I heard about Warren Crown...” he shuddered.

“In that case, I suppose your adventure will have a rather anticlimactic ending,” Porco leaned back in his seat.

“What would you advise me to do?”

“The man who once defeated Warren Crown is still alive. I travelled alongside him too, and he is a fair guy. Carlos Wayne, he has Annabelle now, and he swore that he will take out Warren once again. You could try to find him and talk to him. I'm sure he could use any help he can get, and you, my lord, might be able to help. If nothing else, you have money, and you have your valiant knights. Maybe even a ship of your own?”

“Uhm, yes.”

“At the very least, you could have my story confirmed by him.”

“Well, Goliath also told us we could talk to this Carlos. Where do you suppose we could find him?”

“I don't know. He tends to visit Murky Bay from time to time.”

“Hmmm.”

“You know, I would love it if someone could put an end to Warren Crown's spree. He is a despicable man, so it would really wroth the effort. But I'm just an orphan boy with not much to my name. You, on the other hand... you are somebody. And I can tell you have got the spirit, but also the humbleness, and the necessary caution. You already proved that you are not afraid of dealing with pirates, so... just think about it.”

“I-I will,” Eric said a little hesitantly, but he straightened his back again.

Porco pulled the curtain aside and glanced outside. “We just left the town. May I get out?”

“Of course! It was nice meeting you.”

Murky Bay's only Inn was in the centre of the town, not far from the seafront. A four-story building, the largest in the settlement, and one of the first ones to be built around 30 years ago, when the pirate town was formed. It was owned by Goliath from day one, and he still served as bartender in it from time to time, that's how everyone in Murky Bay knew him. But this time around, he wasn't in, so the one who poured Friska's drinks was a reptilian.

“All is fine, they build the town, Copperdust, eleven years down the... Hick! And then they start going out to the river, gold panning.” Friska raised her freshly refilled mug to her mouth, while his audience – some five men of various species – watched her delightfully.

“One day, this girl, Cesanitian freakin princess,” Friska wiped her mouth, “she was here for a visit, and she just happened to find this skull in the river. A large, old skull. Beast skull. She took it back to her own room, wanting it for Hick! self.”

“She finds a skull like that and takes it home?” a strikingly skinny halfling asked, standing on a chair by the human-sized bar counter on which Friska was telling her story. “What a fool!”

“I can totally picture you doing something like that, Mouse,” a chubby man grinned.

“Maybe when I was young and dumb, but not anymore!” the halfling retorted. “Who takes a weird skull like that home? It's obviously bad luck!”

“Oh shut up Mouse, I wanna hear her tale!” a black, long-haired cat-man complained.

“Yea, so she has that skull for a few days,” Friska continued. “She is obsessed, she stops leaving her house, spends all day with the skull. Her older brother worries for her, but she says she fine. Hick! Then one night, she runs out, screaming for help, saying her skull was stolen. She is a freakin princess, so of course the major takes her seriously. Big whole town meeting, who did it, yada yada. Of course nobody admits to it.”

She drank some more, then put her mug down. “So next day, she asks this artist woman Guligang, to draw her skull. I mean not her skull but the one she found. To make posters. The artist saw it before, so she could do it from memory. So they plaster those across town. People shrug it off, but then they spend more and more time looking at the pictures. And slowly, everyone gets weirdly obsessed.”

“Hah, I knew it was a cursed skull!” Mouse cheered.

“Oh, you genius, it's the story of how that empty town got fucked. What did you expect?” the cat-man rolled his eyes.

“Well...”

“It was cursed, or perhaps an archdemon's skull,” Friska guessed. “They never found out who took it. Anyway. Hick! There is the brother. Princess' prince brother, older. Another Dandenar. He brought her little sister here, and now he worries he will get the blame for her sister's madness. Cause he dragged her to the Scorched Lands and all, despite the king's disapproval. And the girl is visibly turning mad, along with many settlers. So for some reason, prince boy comes up with this whole ass plan, to pretend that he gets kidnapped. Another lord is coming to the town, a few weeks after the skull was found, some Cesanitian big head, of course smaller head than the Dandenar prince, but still. The prince wants to make it seem like he gets kidnapped when the lord is here. He talks the major into it, convinces him. And they do it, but then the prince really goes missing. The people who faked taking him come back empty handed, somehow they actually lost him. Never turns up again.”

“How did that happen?” asked the chubby man.

“That's the... Hick! The major was already losing his mind by that part. His diary is harder and harder to understand... right, Chio?” Friska looked around, only just noticing that her friends are gone.

“Your friends are gone,” the chubby man laughed. “They said they will be back in a bit.”

“Damn them... so give me one more!”

“You sure?” the reptilian bartender looked at her dubiously.

“Goddam I'm sure!”

Rum pouring, few more gulps, mouth-wiping. “So they... yea, they are chaotic. The town. That visiting lord sends out his men to find the prince, they can't. Meanwhile, the young princess gets desperate, she offers to have sex with every man in town if they bring her skull back. Or even if they don't. She is doing obscenities like a maniac out in the streets. Sex-maniac.”

Someone whistled. Friska was too drunk to realise what that meant, so she just carried on.

“Men's husbands... I mean wives go mad, fights break out, that guest lord runs away, back to Cesanitia. But the town still functions somehow for a few days. Really weird stuff happening. People shitting everywhere, attacking each other randomly. The smith hammers his own penis off, then apologizes and still works. But then a rain comes in. And you know what that means.”

“Oooh,” said Mouse with an all-knowing expression.

“What does that mean, Mouse?” the chubby man asked.

“Uhm... you know.”

“The posters!” Friska yelled.

“Oh yea, the posters!”

“They get washed away. And big chaos happens. Many die. Then the rest leaves. Except for the major. He stays there and dies in some dick-infection. Maybe he shouldn't have fucked a madwoman...”

“Interesting,” the reptilian bartender scratched his scales. “So you are saying that the town got doomed by a cursed skull that is lost ever since.”

“Yep. And now the town is gone too, we burnt it down. To set the ghost free.”

“Oh.”

“Except for one building. That brick one. Hick! That one is indestructible. Some gift from mysterious visitors, travellers. When the town was built.”

“I know which one!” Mouse said. “The one we couldn't open.”

“How come nobody heard about this tale?” asked the cat-man.

“Cause the Cesanitian Hick! royals. Obviously” Friska stated. “They wanted the world to not know, cause of course they did. Disgrace with the princess and the prince and all that. I bet they wiped the town off their maps. And kept quiet.”

“Makes sense,” the reptilian nodded.

“We of course knew about that empty town for a while, and that mad goblin in it,” the chubby man said. “It's not too far, after all. But we had no idea who built it, or how it got abandoned. This is some wild shit you are saying.”

“People would love to hear about it on Midridge,” the fairy grinned. “Cesanitia wouldn't be thrilled... but it's been seventy years! Why so stuck up? It's bad image. Stupid kingdom.”

“Do you actually have that diary you are talking about?” asked the cat-man.

“I'm no liar!” Friska straightened her back. “It's right here in my... I mean, with my friends.”

The drinking group quieted down a bit, then the chubby man told them an anecdote of some pirating thing he was recently partaking in. To be honest, Friska didn't really care, she was quite drunk by this point, and somewhere deep down, a little worried and resentful for being abandoned by her friends. She knew that they will surely come back for her, and she had a good idea of what they were doing, of course. She tried not to think about it, but now that her storytelling was over, that was difficult.

The chubby guy and the halfling named Mouse left, and Friska asked for a final drink, which she consumed alone, on the far end of the bar counter, feeling a bit funny and a bit grumpy. All of a sudden, a hairy black paw grabbed her and tossed her inside a bird-cage.

“Tha fuck?” Friska mumbled.

“Hey!” the barkeeper yelled.

But the kidnapper was already running out the exit.