Lore of Yore
Histories of the known universe... and beyond
Upon signing up at the enlistment offices past Saturn, a would-be officer of the Royal Space Navy might dream of a career upon the High Galaxies. Striding into the Royal Docks of London, boarding the gangway of a Vaunted-class cruiser, even serving amidships aboard a towership of the Realm.
Service to the British Empire would be a fine thing indeed, were it not for the existence of persistent, perspicacious, and downright peril-inducing pirates. While towerships are typically large enough to simply bash aside any galley or cosmic corvette hoping to waylay them, smaller ships of the line have become easy prey for canny corsairs in recent years. Although brigands such as the Vulture Hawks tend to stick to ambushing tea trawlers, and typically turn tail at the sight of a Royal Cruiser, some of the cosmos's more desperate (or insane) pirate gangs have perfected techniques to leave even a well-armed ironclad frigate becalmed and divested of its fuel, cargo, and suitably attractive personnel. The Gentlemanly Privateers of Voth utilised a dummy vessel to flag down Naval ships passing through the Voth Cartency; this was a converted British schooner whose cargo hold had been outfitted as a den in which the privateers hid while their ship was taken aboard the unsuspecting larger vessel. While this may be a duplicitous tactic in anyone's book, the Gentlemen were to a man wash-outs from the Navy, and still considered themselves men of Albion despite their reduced status. As such, the Toppest Gents greeted their victims with cheery hulloos, dressed in their Naval finery, and their fellows burst from their hiding place to rob the unfortunate officers blind. Moosh the Black, known as the Deadly Cow of Space, liked to outwit xyrs targets, typically cloaking the Bos Taurus in the mass shadow of a nearby planetary object, before ramming xyrs victim at full speed with the horn-like prongs affixed to the trireme's prow. Unfortunately for Moosh, xe scuppered xyrs own craft after unwisely ramming what xe believed to be a simple space-whaling ship, but turned out to be a solid-metal planetary core, detached from its host and supercooled as it drifted through space as an impenetrable ball of iron. Moosh was said to have modified xyrs tactics thereafter, choosing instead to wait in the alleyways of Succhurene and knock victims over the head with a big plank of wood. Such hit-and-run tactics were small time, however, compared with the protracted campaign carried out by the Royal Navy on the Shanty Moon. While the worlds of the Thirteen Colonies have largely accepted British rule, the pirates inhabiting the moon's coves refused to kowtow to the Empire's iron fist, and fought tooth and nail against the would-be British occupiers. Most infamous of these rapscallions was Capering Jack and His Band of Loons, who pestered Naval marines by throwing coconuts from within their dens, and scurrying through labyrinthine tunnels to give sore-headed pursuers the slip. These days, the moon is rather more civilised, although inhabitants are still sure to give any nearby coconut tree a wide berth.
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