Editing Endless Isles: Tales from the Fringe (section)

== The Tale of Davy Jones ==

Now Jones was a good captain, always straight and fair but firm, and his men loved him dearly in those deadly days of Navies and Patrol. A cunning old coot, and lucky too, but one day his ship Cornelia had the fight of her life. She won, in a manner of speaking, but such a victory as a sailin' man never prays for; left drifting with a holed hull and no masts left a-standing, barely able to stay afloat much less move.

Now, forty nights she sat adrift, stores run low and all the while men workin' the bilges, as desperate for a few more hours as any Unoathed you've seen starin' Lady Death in the face.

It was beginnin' to look grim indeed, the good captain considerin' an honest and dignified end for himself and then, should they choose it, when sails were spotted! Help had finally arrived...

...In the form of ol' Two-Dagger himself!

Now old Torreau pulled up with a bonny grin, and hailed: "Why, is that a waterlogged dog I see, paddling desperately to keep afloat but with no true hope of dry land to be found?"

Wary glances were exchanged and both crews put hand on saber, but sly old Davy stood with stern lips and a cold glare and said nothing, exercising that cunning willpower of his so legendary in a profession where a lack of self-control is practically a prerequisite... Which ol' Torreau was counting upon.

"Why, no, if it isn't a fox! Me old pal, Davy Jones himself! Looks like you're in a spot of trouble... Come aboard, and we'll tow the Cornelia to Louisport!"

And so it was done, the crews mingling and the Cornelia saved.

While she was being rebuilt, however, Torreau beseeched Jones, "We've got quite the job planned, old Davy boy, and I could use another commander and advisor with a level head and a fearsome name! The Cornelia will be fine under the watchful eye of your quartermaster and first mate. Sail with me, just this once, and I'll lead ye to glory!"

Now if it were anyone else, old Davy would have doubtlessly socked 'em in the mouth and stalked out with that steely glare, but Two-Dagger Torreau is nothing if not silver-tongued, and against his better judgement, Davy Jones accepted his offer and joined him for another run on the waves.

It would be his last.

Now, here's where the tale starts to go all different accordin' to who'se tellin' it. Where precisely did Jones and Torreau strike? What did they take? I've 'eard a thousand different versions if I've 'eard one, but they all agree... it was as grand and bloody a venture as had been seen in the days 'afore Torreau's Trick. The waters ran as red as the holds did shine of gold, and those who made it out alive were sure to be kings among men.

Torreau and Jones almost got away clean, too, when a stray ball of grapeshot caught Davy right across the teeth, taking his jaw clean off.


Well, the mists rolled in and the pirates escaped, but it was a long, hard death for Jones, the last casualty of that glorious haul. Torreau, so they say, was despite his own treacherous nature beside poor Jones every minute, even as other wounded in his own crew also passed. Perhaps the guilt was too much even for him to ignore, for it was Two-Dagger himself that brought him along after all.

As the mists roiled and the dying passed, however, talk cropped up on the ship. Death, they said, was walking the planks, to be seen with the naked eye, taking the poor bleeding curs with a gentle caress and a soothing whisper, when their time it was.

Finally, Two-Dagger himself saw her, when only dying Jones was left... and when his eyes alighted on that pale face, to whom he'd sent enemies and prey by shipload and then some, Two-Dagger Torreau fell eternally in the purest and most sinister of hopeless love, that love which transcends all logic and even the inscrutable laws of the cosmos itself.

"Stand aside," she whispered. "This one is mine."

None know what Torreau said to Death then, and pray that none ever should. He pleaded, he cajoled, he offered and debated, plying that silver tongue like no other trickster in all time has done, and somehow, he stole the heart of Lady Death herself away... but he was too late. As he turned from elaborating some sub-point of his bottomless devotion, presumably, Davy Jones was already gone.

But Death was not.

Whence they sailed then, and what they did, would take years to outline. The Driftings With Death are a whole 'nother Odyssey all their own.

What's important is that, one day, amidst their strange and terrible wand'rings, Death's hopeless paramour came to her, and he pleaded for the famous Trick, that she should take none who sail in his name, ever again.

What he offered in return, if anything, remains a mystery, but, well, as any of you who've taken [[Endless Isles: The Oath|the Final Oath]] know well, "in his name" turned out to mean more than just his immediate crew. I like to think old Torreau was sly enough to know what that wording could mean, and that this whole state of events isn't just one big supernat'ral fuckup, in which case the old bastard has saved my life a few hundred times now, as a matter of course.

But there was one man... one mean old spirit to be precise... who took great offense at this. Davy Jones.

When the deal was struck, old dead Davy was enraged. Who was Torreau to ask for this, rather than bringing back the man he wronged, the man who's death brought Torreau his beloved in the first place? This was betrayal, dishonor, blackest treachery!

And so that day, the spirit of Davy Jones, the last pirate to fall to Lady Death's cold caress, tore up out of his rotten bones from the seabed below, and set out to stalk the waves, ever searching for his traitorous friend.

It's true, I've seen him myself! On a calm dusk, when the wind dies out, look to the west, and you just might see him, standing there when the sea is flat as though it were a vast decking, stumbling and wailing his torment and a promise of bitter vengeance from his hideous throat, still jawless from his terminal injury.

...and that's why they call it Davy Jones' Locker, for every night the spirit must return to the rotting sea-casket in which Torreau tossed him over, all those centuries ago, there to seethe in his betrayal and misfortune, the Last Pirate to Die.

''Golden Neckbeard''