Editing Endless Isles: Tales from the Fringe (section)

== The Iron Molars of Thompson P. Beckman ==

What's that, yer sailin' west?

Well, there's somethin' ye should know, then, free o' charge. A place... a place ye ought to avoid.

Old Tommy's Molars they call 'em. You know all the good metal, lead for bullets and iron for barrels, comes from the Fringe, aye?

Well, long ago, this *was* the Fringe, and whoo boy did ol' Thompson P Beckman find hisself a whale of a Barony when he sailed out, just that way yer plannin' ta head yerself.

Y'see, t'was a whole archipelago out there, risin' out o' the water like jagged knives... dozens, hundreds of rocks big and small... and each a-one about as solid with iron ore as an island can be, nary a quarter-inch of dirt. Sterile.

Well, now, I don't need ta tell ye what the price o' good virgin iron is, you can just imagine what Tommy saw when he looked at those cold, jagged rocks: not iron at all, but 'twas gold that glittered in his eyes that day.

So he got hisself some poor landlubbers and transported em blinfolded, set up a secret colony, the whole works, put his whole fortune on the line, lookin' ta reap tenfold.

But ol P. Beckman, well, he didn't have much in the way of scruples. Nigh every landlubber is at the mercy of the folk of the wave ultimately, a'spose, but this... this was a pure slave colony, and then some. Worked em to death, worked their women to death, worked their children to death, and always bringin' more back on the return voyages to wherever he could offload all that iron ore... 'prolly Reekwater, I reckon, since it was all foundries even then.

That is, whenever he made it back. Didn't take long fer folks to catch on that there was loot to be had out this far, and, well, the Game was afoot.

Still, in between a few Shadow'd Jigs, he did a fair job of lordin' his turf, keepin' it secret by takin' prisoners of any other pirates that got to close, like a goddamned Crusader madman. Prolly woulda made slaves o' them, too, if the work waren't dangerous enough to offer escape by way o' cheatin' death.

All that death... folk say it's made those waters choked with the mournful spirits of slaves.

But, well, they say that the Isles and the Deathless are proof that good things don't last, and for Tommy that was true.

He was nearin' the end of his labors, fat and rich, with only one big spire left. He'd leveled every single one of the rest of those rocks to just below the waterline, taking every scrap of iron that could be got... and a good thing, too, for Tommy, as by that point the Fringe had expanded and his competition was fierce. Secrecy would no longer do, and instead he had to rely on the treach'rous field of truncated isles surrounding his final spire as deterrent. Kept the few safe routes through t'himself and none others, no matter how many ships he got.

Finally, the day came when ol' Thompson moved his pers'nal effects back to his ship and ordered the slaves to start digging down that last lonely rock. And just as he was about t'board, a pickaxe from nowhere caught 'im full in the back.

Now, see, at this point, most of Tommy's crew were just as sick of the ol' bastard as anyone, so they simply watched him bleed, gasping for death, as a slave sauntered up, all his hate and rage written across 'is face.

"Did ye really think ye could order us to dig away the very last place to stand while you sail off with our sweat, our blood? To file down one last tooth under our own feet, and then stand here 'till a storm comes to wash us off it?"

That was when the rest of the slaves attacked. Unable to leave without Thomas' direction, the bastards were forced to fight, and a bloody day it was, then.

No one knows what happened to old Tommy. Some say he changed 'is name and plays the Game a-still, others say he's wound up in Deadwind, others that the slaves nursed 'im back to health, against 'is wishes, and keep him there on that last rock still so's no one can ever know the way to their home.

But one thing's a-sure. If you spot a spire, stabbing out of the water to the west of here, or hear ghostly work-chanties drifting on the breeze of a moonless night, you give em a wide berth, lest the Iron Molars of Thompson P. Beckman grind yer keel ta bits.

''Golden Neckbeard''