IT IS ALL LEGEND, IT IS ALL RUMOR

I am the captain of the Dalton and I am writing these pages with my own hands.
The first time I decided that I was going to tell my story, I was young and foolish. Things have happened since then, and I am changed as changed are my ship, my crew and ultimately my life. What has never changed and, God willing, never will is my ultimate goal, which I am about to achieve as I write these words. If I ever was to come back to these pages without accomplishing what I set my mind to do so long ago, these words will never be read as they will be buried in the Sea of Wonders as I will be.

My name is Blaine Devon Anderson and I'm the second son of Baron Cooper Blaine Anderson I. In the year of our Lord 1756 after the Great Disaster – when I was born – he ruled all the North Countries from the East Coast to the West and was indeed the richest and most influential man of that part of the world.
My mother, who will remain unnamed in these pages, was a fragile creature whose use to my father had always been limited to give him children. So when she died giving birth to me, he just bothered to have her buried in the family mausoleum; and even that was of great annoyance to him, since the event robbed him of two hours of his precious time.

I assume that my father is now happy that his wife had had the courtesy of delivering two sons to him before wasting everybody's time dying, but at the time he was not pleased with neither me or my brother Cooper Anderson II who, as the firstborn and only heir of the family empire, was named after our very own old man. Me, I was too young and useless for my father to take any interest in me as long as I was soiling my diapers. Cooper was seven and he was not, by any definition whatsoever, a brilliant mind. He struggled with his studies and he was average as a swordsman. A disappointment for our father who gave up on him very quickly as he would do with everything he considered a lost cause.

Me and my brother grew up in a big house with an army of servants, none of which loved us. But they were afraid of our father and would mistake his orders to keep us fed and clothed as love, when it was just the necessity of a man to have at least a living son to whom entitle his fortune once he was gone, a thing he planned to do as later as possible anyway. In fact, he is still among us and very crossed with me for reasons I will tell you in time. So we weren't neglected children, but we weren't loved either.

Cooper – who loved singing and dancing more than anything else – would try to ignore his true passion and concentrate on pleasing our father. He would study twice and learn half of what he was supposed to. His brain was not made to assimilate any of the information that was required of him. He hated his duties and pressure made him anxious. Anger would turn him violent and the servants would pay the price of it. He was, as you would say, an insufferable, spoiled prick who was cursed with enough wit to understand how dumb he was. Knowing he was never going to be the mind our illustrious father wanted him to be, he tried to be the swordsman our family needed and failed miserably at that too.

I had never known my mother and my father ignored me, so obviously I loved Cooper. He was everything to me and I looked upon him with a love usually reserved to God. He found some sort of accomplishment in educating his little brother in the simplest things of life, therefore I was spared his wrath and could count myself in the small number of those he liked.
The God blessed us with a few years of happiness and father's absence – him being busy slaughtering innocent people in the Southern regions of this world – before the destiny of our tragic relationship caught up with us and fulfilled itself.

When I turned six, the law allowed me to start my studies, if I ever wished to. As a second son, I was not required to learn all the things my brother had to. My education was just the mannerism of a baron's son. Nobody expected me to ever use notions of history, geography or economics to manage the family wealth because I was not going to have any wealth to manage in the first place. Not of the family and certainly not mine. The law would not let me have money. I was going to receive a monthly allowance from my father first and my brother later. Basically, as far as my father or the law were concerned, I could as well roll around in mud with the pigs all day.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, I was a curious child and I lived in Cooper's adoration.
I wanted to do everything he did – no matter how hard it was – and I did it way better than him. Calculus and geometry were not much of a challenge. Numbers were not hostile entities to me as they were to my brother and I would easily understand their secrets and behavior. There was no equation I couldn't solve or mathematical question I couldn't find the answer for once I was properly equipped with the right formulas.
Geography and literature were not much of a challenge either, and foreign languages came easily to me, once I was provided with the right grammar book and a partner to practice them with. By the time I was twelve, I was already speaking four languages as if they were my mother tongue.

But my real true passion was history. I loved books and I had good memory, so I only had to read the pages my tutor gave me once to remember facts and dates as if they had been events of my personal life, and I was fascinated with the figure of Lord Alastair Stevenson, of whom I would not ignore the flaws, as many historians seem to do, but considered them precious character traits that had allowed him to become the great man he had been. And, thinking about it now, the life of a man who had left everything behind to become the greatest man this world has ever seen after its destruction almost two thousands years ago might have had a little influence on my own personal choices.

Eventually, as it was clearly bound to happen, my brother Cooper started to hate me and, even though my love for him was so deep-rooted that it was impossible for me to eradicate it completely, I finally realized that I was better than him under every aspect, and that me, and not him, should have been the heir of the family fortune.

By the time I was fifteen, my character already bore all the traces of what I was to become in five years time. I was stubborn, strong-willed and self-assured. As far as limits, I had none. I would do what I wanted, when I wanted and in the way I wanted to, and since I was extremely charming and had a way with words, I would explain the reasons behind my every action and usually get away with whatever I had done.

The servants ended up loving me whereas they had come to hate my brother and his whiny behavior. He was a petty man who had resolved to be mean in order to get noticed because he could not achieve the same result in any other way. Also, he was aware of the task that expected him as the heir of the Anderson family and that he was not ready for it. He felt my breath on his neck and he knew that I was planning on taking his place as soon as I could.

My plan was simple, really. I didn't have to make my father believe that I was better than Cooper because I was better than him. I had achievements to show for myself. I was a good student, a perfect swordsman, I had spent my time making connections with all the most important people and I had studied our lands and possessions. I was the son he wanted and, if anything, my father was a man who could recognize proofs when he saw them. It would have worked, if it hadn't be for puberty.

As a young man, I was supposed to marry a woman of a family as noble as mine, possibly more. My tutor educated me to that aspect of life as well. I knew how a proper gentleman, like I was, should handle himself around women. I knew how courtship worked and several suitable young women had been suggested to me already. I was to attend a ball, pick one of these girls and start the long process of court her in order to marry her later. It really was a pity that, as far as my own pleasure was concerned, I was more attracted to cocks and, as much as I tried, I couldn't fake interest for any of the girls just for the sake of politics, especially if they were dumb and their breasts were the only things they had to offer me. I would always resolve to quickly excuse myself and find someone who better satisfied my appetites.

The number of my servants that responded to the description was higher than you can imagine, but there was a young man named Taylor whom I preferred to anybody else. He was the stableman of the house and he was three years older than me, a whole lifetime for a young man seeking guidance in certain matters. He was tall and dark, in the fashion of those country men born and raised on the mountains. He had a beautiful voice and deep blue eyes that looked at me with mockery and a certain defiance that I made mine own in time. We would meet at night in the stables and I would entrust myself to him completely, letting him do to me whatever his fantasy suggested him. Those first nights in the arms of another man were precious to me and filled only with pure pleasure, with no angst or regret tainting them. I still remember him with affection and it's safe to say that I did for him my first and last act of kindness towards another human being.

The rumors of my inclination, as both my father and Cooper called it later, spread fast and my father called me one day to address them. You must understand that our father rarely called us, especially not in his private rooms that had been inaccessible to me and my brother for most of our lives. I instantly knew what that call was about and I was ready to explain myself. My father was not a patient man, as you can imagine, and he didn't like to deal with problems that in his own eyes were caused by others' unreliability and improper behavior. I had not only acted against nature but, most importantly, against the family and I had to be held responsible for some current defections in my father's circle of allies. My love for boys had ruined his business and his life and he wasn't going to tolerate that. Obviously the fact that I did not choose to be like this and that, if anything, I cared for our land and our name more than anything else didn't matter to him. I was a disgrace.

Everything could have been fixed, I believe, if my father hadn't been so incredibly narrow-minded and he had known a little mercy but he didn't possess any quality except his nose for business and he had always lacked the mere trace of humanity. He was an hard, regretful and vindictive man who thought he could make me like women by killing the only man he knew I loved. It is fascinating now, as it was then, as this reasoning is so puerile and illogical. Sometimes I wonder if he believed that my homosexuality was just an act of naivety on my part, like when you are a child and you touch the fire because you don't know that you shouldn't do it. The burn teaches you not to do it anymore. Maybe my father thought that I would associate Taylor's death with my lusting over him and stop lusting over men for fear that they would die.

I had to be an idiot to believe that, honestly. Instead, as soon as I realized what was going to happen, I run to warn my stableman. My father's men were already there but I was not too late. I fought for Taylor's life and had him on a ship towards the Vale of Bailey, outside of our lands and those of our allies, where my father couldn't touch him. And as for me, it was time to go. I had disobeyed my father and ultimately I had defied him, bringing what he would surely consider disgrace on us all. I was not sad for my family and I didn't feel guilty but my chances to become the heir were ruined and I had not other reasons to stay.

So I left, not without bringing with me a considerable amount of my father's money that I considered my inheritance – or the one I would have had if he hadn't be so stubborn about my sexual preferences. Becoming a pirate was not part of the plan, considering that I didn't really have one. It was a logical choice, tho. Living as a fugitive was not an option, but pirates live outside the common law and they are harder to find than any other criminals. We have our law and our territories. The army doesn't come bothering us that easily and not for a baron's sodomite son who run from home.

I embarked on a ship called The Warbler, a big sailer with the black sails and black flags of a proper pirate ship. Her captain was Old Smythe, an ironic name for he was in his early twenties, a man who was about to weigh anchor toward the Darkest Lands. Nobody who had gone there had ever returned. It was an hopeless journey, exactly what I needed to disappear. More dangerous was the endeavor, less people were likely going to follow us. I thought too high of myself – I still do – to believe even for a second that God could do without me. He wasn't going to let me die at the end of the world before I could even prove the kind of man I was.

He didn't. It was an hell of a journey and half the crew died in the most horrible ways, but I came back alive and unscathed. Old Smythe grew fond of me during that time and I of him. I am the captain of a ship he gifted me years later and some of his men are with me now. I owe part of me to that journey and the rest of myself to him who molded me how my father never did, turning me into a pirate, which is the best thing I've ever been so far.

You will learn – if you read further – that my ambition is far greater than what I showed you in these few pages. I don't content myself easily and I never take only half of what I demand. When I dream, I dream big. When I want something, I want it all. I believe that half measures only take you half the way. So when I become a pirate, I knew I was not going to be just one among many. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to be honored and feared. I wanted to be the greatest pirate that ever was and ruled them all.

After twenty years of searching, I've found a way to achieve my goal. A weapon that comes from our legends and had been thought to be lost in the Great Disaster. It is said to bring madness upon those who dare to touch it but after all they say the same about me. I am one step closer to locate it and one step away from the greatness I deserve.

I am about to become a legend.