Y’arr, mateys! It’s time to sail the seven seas on an adventure to find the greatest booty of them all: a pirate’s tale!
Let’s hoist the sails, sharpen our hooks, and write some together as a crew.
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write some pirate stories.
Watch the edited recap here or scroll down for the stories.
The first twisted pirate prompt that chat voted on what this: pirates in search of water in a barren land.
Here’s what we came up with:
It was Soren’s first day on the Dowser, sailing the sandy seas, under the helm of the infamous pirate Captain Stormlock. Soren had no choice but to join up with the outlaws after he’d been banished from home for committing the gravest crime: stealing water from the tower.
He’d had no choice. His little brother Feldon was sick, and their family had already used their moisture rations for the week. It was either watch him slowly wither to dust, or risk breaking into the tower and climbing to the clouds to scoop an extra bucket of precious water.
Soren hadn’t even made it up one flight of stairs before the sand priests caught him. He didn’t even get to say goodbye before they threw him out of the town walls, shut the doors behind him, casting him into the eternal dunes.
If it hadn’t been for the Dowser sailing by, its engine loud and screeching through the sand to catch Soren’s attention, then he would’ve been sucked underground by the quicksand within minutes. The crew threw him down a lifesaver, yoinked him up, and Captain Stormlock herself proclaimed him part of their family.
“Only two rules on the Dowser,” she said, holding up two dried-out crinkly fingers. “One, you’re responsible for finding your own water. And two, if it looks like you’re not going to make it, then you become someone else’s water.”
Up until then, Soren had no idea about other sources of water besides what came from the tower. The crew showed him their storage area, chock full of spiky succulents and dead sand-animals. Living things were around seventy-percent water, and the rich members of towns they visited paid a nice price for new, exotic ways to drink. A single cactus could easily sell for a week’s worth of water, plus gas and oil for the motor, all because of its novelty factor alone.
Soren stared at the bounty, wishing he’d had even a drop of it back home for Feldon. But that part of his life was over. The crew slapped a bandana on his face, to protect from the sand winds and soak up moisture to wring out later, and they headed back on deck to an excited Captain Stormlock.
“Well look out there!” she said, pointing toward the sandy horizon. “Looks like you’ll get your chance to earn your drink today, new blood.”
It was a shipwreck. Another pirate ship, half undersand. As they approached it and slowed to a stop, Soren saw the desert swallowing it before his eyes.
“Forgot to tell you about the third rule,” the captain said, smacking Soren on the back. “You’re not officially part of the crew until you’ve been on a salvage team. Now get going.”
Soren was teamed up with two other newcomers — Roops and Cob — and together they crossed over to the sinking ship on ropes and hooks, ready to scoop out whatever bounty they could from inside. The crew cheered them on from a safe distance as the three disappeared below deck.
“Now remember,” Roops said. “Grab what you can, then get out. Not doing anyone any favors dying undersand.”
The storage area was not nearly as full as the Dowser’s. There were some barrels and jugs, but mostly just dust and empty space. Cob just grabbed a jug in each hand then shot back up outside, and Roops seemed satisfied with a very sloshy barrel.
“Just grab something and go,” he said to Soren before popping back up outside. Soren looked around to find something to impress the Captain, really show her he was part of the crew,
A glass window caught his eye. It peered out into the sand the ship was sinking in, but there was also something else there. Something green.
Soren walked over and took a closer look. Outside the porthole was the tip of a plant, somehow growing underneath the sand. Rather than any jug or barrel of water, he could bring this information back to the captain!
The ship rumbled, and suddenly the sand outside the porthole started sifting quickly. Something had snapped, and the ship was sinking for real now. Fast.
Soren ran to the hatch to get out, but sand was already pouring through so quickly and hard that he might as well be trying to push up through solid wood. It was filling up the storage space, and there was no other way out.
Panic overtook Soren. He ran to the porthole, banging against it. Maybe he could pop it out somehow and be sucked up to the surface!
What he saw made him stop. He didn’t even have the strength to move his fist anymore. It was just too beautiful.
Underneath the sand, however many dozens of feet below the surface, was water. Endless, endless water, feeding into green plants above and little creatures swimming around inside of it. Soren had never even imagined there could be so much water in one place.
The sand was up to his knees now, slowly making sure that the secret of what lay beneath stayed beneath.
Next up was these two merged together:
- A parrot uses mind control on a crew member.
- Steampunk airship pirates in a monster-filled world.
Here’s what we came up with:
The pirate ship flew into monster space. Thick black clouds atop Mount Tresnar signaled the boundary between the human and monster realms. Most flying ships stayed as far away from the area as possible, but the pirate ship flew right into it, devoured by the blackness.
Mere seconds into monster territory, the unholy howls and roars came booming. The clouds were still too thick to see anything, but the noises could send ripples through brave men’s blood. Some of the less experienced crew whimpered and curled up on the deck, remembering the same sounds when monsters attacked their villages, turning them to orphans who had no choice but to become pirates.
But this time, there was one difference. The pirates had a secret weapon.
A parrot. Atop the shoulder of the captain, clenching hard with its talons.
The cloud began to dissipate, and the monster’s realm came into view. It was a rainbow swamp boiling on the top of the mountain, with horrid creatures soaring in the hot air bubbles. Dragons with teeth the size of cutlasses, serpents that slithered through the air like mile-long fish, and strange cephalopods with balloon heads and hundreds of slimy tentacles.
A giant spider the size of ten ships flew into view, floating on sticky webs. Its eight eyes each stared down at the crew, and bright green acid dripped hungrily from its fangs.
Some of the crew cried and shrieked, but the captain himself stepped forward, his parrot gripping tight on his shoulder. With a quick whisper into the parrot’s ear, the bird began squawking, but not in any human tongue — in monster speak.
“Blech drrmmpt ffvxxzremm! Yqipdessssfg salllpvvbnm!”
The parrot barked out what the captain had told him in perfectly fluent Nargul, the language of the monster realm. When he finished, the spider clicked its fangs and replied, and the parrot whispered the translation back to the captain.
“She said that she accepts your trade. She will take the sixty pairs of pants, twenty hats, one hundred pens, and those three pictures of monsters doing questionable things with their tentacles, in exchange for the pile of yellow rocks.”
The captain agreed, and the crew brought up all of the goods to trade. As soon as they were in sight on deck, the spider opened her back with moist pop and released thousands of smaller baby spiders to crawl down her limbs and snatch them up. One by one, the babies returned atop their mother, brandishing their new pants, hats, and pens, the real things monsters were after when they destroyed human towns.
Mother then vomited up a pile of gold onto the deck, and snatched up the erotic monster images for herself. With a saucy glance to the cephalopod hovering above, she leaped away, leaving the frothy, bubbling mountain of riches for the pirates themselves.
“Good job, Sasuke,” the captain said, patting his parrot translator. “Want a cracker for a job well done?”
“Screw crackers,” Sasuke squawked, rubbing up against the captain’s head. “I just want a friend.”
Be sure to check out the video for some dramatic readings!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
