The Legend of Ce’Tus

Information

Class: Biography
Wc: 909

Publishing

Aut: Adrot E’Tolar
Dt: 703 A.T.
Ogn: Space Plunder

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• Pirates

The old avoc smiled. As much as a creature whose skull was, quite literally a skull with no opening jaw and instead three vertical slits where skin—as much as you could call their exterior skin—opened into the body. The tips of these openings, could, on all Avotoc curl to form a facsimile of a smile, frown, or other recognized facial expression. Then they had their own expressions. The old Avotoc knew he was nearing his own mortality. Not from any divine predilection or other source of magical insight. He figured that after this long, the likelihood of a fatal mistake was high. He had committed many crimes worth dying for in the eyes of many, including those who hated him. He knew what the laws were and understood he would die soon, but none of his previous feats were worthy of death, to him. So, he knew he would commit something soon enough that would either be worthy of death or result in it. So the old Avotoc smiled.

Word travelled to Koskno that a pori researcher had begun unearthing what they believed to be Porrair’s Crown. Of course, this fabled artifact had to be confirmed by the pori government, certified by the researcher that the government had confirmed all details correctly, authorized for transport, a real time consuming endeavor by all accounts. The pirates knew this process and how long it would take for this process to take place and knew their resulting timeframe. Two days at most to plan, once travel time was factored in, and planning could continue during the trip. At this point they had to assume that the artifact had indeed been confirmed—they figured if it wasn’t Porrair’s Crown, a find rumored to be that important would still be fairly valuable.

Off they went after a day of planning, with a slow route from Koskno and meandering down across the western section of Parallelium until they found the undeveloped planet-star where Poria believed they found the crown. From there they waited for several hours, jetting around the planet-star as they had no way of knowing where the ship would depart from, perhaps even spending this time doing reconnoissance on the area or the surface to find the ship or ships they were looking for. The primary obstacle to the plan would be the presence of security vessels. One or two—if small—could help alert them to the correct ship, in case the ship carrying the crown isn’t clear, but several ships or large ships in general would result in a messy ship fight that could see the target ship escaping. The plan was set.

Postscript- This story is continued in To Thieve, concluding the story of Ce’Tus, the great pirate. I garnered this information to compile into a story over years of eavesdropping in the pirate stronghold of Koskno. By the time this book is published, I have no doubt that the pirates will move to a new, more secluded stronghold.

The plan was perfect. It didn’t matter how many vessels they had for security or even what they were made of. Ce’Tus and his crew wove their ship in and out of the fray, setting up the pori ships to accidentally fire upon each other. With no time to board the vessel and take the prize, Tus sent the best of his crew to commandeer the vessel and sail away. It didn’t take long to override the engines of the research transport and join The Dunnage in rocketing towards the planet-star, using the pull of the celestial body to slingshot away.

In the day prior the pirates spent much time planning for different realities. They believed that it truly could be the fabled Crown of Porrair on the surface, but it could be any number of other important items, each with different potential outcomes. The Crown was important culturally, but wouldn’t be able to fetch a price. Instead, the pirates decided that if the Crown was indeed what the research transport was carrying they would affix it to their ship for use as a battering ram. However, securing the Crown would be a problem. The worry over this Elder Artifact is that it can burn even pori alive, so they wouldn’t be transporting it by hand. Ultimately they realized that however the pori were transporting the crown could be used by them to transport it elsewhere, and could likely disassembled to use to secure the crown in place for their future use.

There are no official records of what Ce’Tus stole nearly 100 years ago and while some disagree on whether or not it was the Crown, there are reliable reports of The Dunnage being able to set ships on fire in close quarters without any known pori or turth fireslingers in her crew. Though there is no reputable documentation from the pori on what was stolen, there is reliable documentation of several later attacks and sieges by Ce’Tus and The Dunnage that mention the ship’s ability to trail poria vessels and directly make contact with their engines. The Dunnage not only survived many of these collisions but disabled several ships with this tactic. We may not know where Ce’Tus went after his final voyage many years later, but I am reliably sure that his fabled ship was affixed with Porrair’s Crown even though the ship too was lost.