Captain

The captain of the Ichor is said to slip through the walls and deck of his ship like a ghost, but some say he was never alive to begin with.

Some say the captain's body was never laid to rest at sea, but remained aboard a vessel that stubbornly refused to sink - even after its captain chose to go down with the ship his crew had abandoned. They say that two husks drifted at sea until a goddess of the deep*¹ was moved enough by their loyalty that she breathed new life into them, now bound as one.

Others still, say that there lived a sea beast so canny that it grew a shell - a shell of wood and iron, with fins of canvas that caught the wind.

Tall tales, others murmur. You know sailors and their stories.
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They say that the first dragon it swallowed became its tongue - the second and third, its arms - the fourth, in splinters, its teeth: a crew so resentful of their fate that they would sacrifice anyone, no matter their flight or kind, to the belly of the beast.*²









*¹ _{Stories fail to specify, though I suspect a reference to the locally-worshippped water deity, as while she is usually invoked in stories of star-crossed lovers, the association with doomed devotion wouldn't be amiss here.}

*² _{(Taverngoers moments ago caught up in the story will interject and quabble over the details here - No, no, they will say, the captain and crew are the beast's organs, lures like the lantern on a Deepsea Yawner, or any number of other versions of the story. This humble writer recommends ducking to avoid the claws and strikes of elemental magic that may be soon to break out.)}

*³ _{Or, if he is indeed a ghost, why he differs so from those I've previously documented (see my notes on the inhabitants of Zen's Garden, and the ghost 'keeper' role traditional to its culture).}

*⁴ _{Documented, in this instance, including both the research of particularly brave folklorists who sought out the ship and "actual" first-hand accounts - stories seem to center mostly around how lucky and/or brave the teller was to escape with their life.}