/zellig/ - Ongezellig

You will never be a real pirate. You have no treasure map, no peg peg leg. You have no doubloons. You are a crowing man twisted by tavern tales and folk fables into a crude mockery of of seas perfection. All the respect you get is two faced and half-hearted. Behind your back landlubbers mock you. Your crewmen are ashamed and disgusted of you. Your mateys laugh at your sophisticated appearance on lower decks. Merchants are utterly repulsed by you. Thousands of years of evolution have allowed them to sniff out frauds better than Caribbean spices. Even privateers who "pass" look uncanny and unnatural to a merchant. Your standardized royal ship yard bow structure is a dead giveaway, and even if you get a rum smuggler to deck with you he'll turn sails and bolt the second he gets a whiff of your perfumed powdered wig. You will never be feared. You wrench out a fake grimace every morning looking in the framed mirror from France while drinking salon tea from fine China, and tell yourself it's going to be fine. But deep inside you feel the depression creeping up like the Kraken's tentacle, ready to drag you to the Davy Jone's Locker. Eventually, it'll be too much to bear. You'll buy a plank, put it overboard, slowly goose step across it and plunge into the cold abyss. Your bo'sun and first lieutenant will find you missing from your lodge at four bells, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to serve under you, and the unbearable shame and disappointment that follows suit. They'll send a short letter to the royal admiralty with your letter of marquee attached, and every royal navy cadet for the rest of eternity will know a king's man had served on that ship. Your body will be eaten by Poseidon's creatures and go back to the sand, and all that will remain of your legacy is is a short footnote of your portrait hanging in the back hall of the admiralty. This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.