Queenpins 2: The Big Brass Ballad of Kronii Ouro

Oath of the Owl

It all began far away, one stormy evening eight years ago.

I remember it like it was just yesterday.

I remember lightning flashing in the gloomy heavens above me, illuminating the restless, turbulent waves and a small fleet of rowboats cutting through them. They were lifeboats jettisoned from a merchant marine ship that sailed out from the busy Dockyards of The City: from the S.S. Winningson, I think.

This wasn't some abandon-ship scene from the P.M.S. Teutonic or something like that though, no. The fine folks manning the oars weren't refugees or folks fleeing the S.S. Winningson. They were able-bodied, gruff-looking rowers with rough hands, unkempt hair and a singular thought in their minds.

' We're gonna be fucking rich! '

Heh, you should have seen it, friend. Those lifeboats were stuffed - filled to the brim with stuff we took from the freighter. Fruit salad cans from Lemon Shark. High-end luxury stuff brought in by Swingwell. We had so much of it that if the oarsmen made a big enough mistake, or if the winds of the seas got temperamental, our boats would have capsized!

Why take from the freighter, you ask? Well, it was all over the news that the war was almost over after we took Sunfish Hill from the Pekolanders.

That was why fine, law-abiding and upstanding citizens like myself and my crew wanted a little bit of a 'peace dividend'. Surely, Uncle Yagoo and the politicos in Winningson City didn't expect us to take six years of war rationing and all those war bonds we had to buy without a fight, right?

We wanted something for our trouble.

Ten thousand dollars each, a small fortune, wasn't too much to ask, now, was it?

That's what each and every one of us in those rowboats being tossed to and fro in the high seas thought. Wood creaked and moaned. Oars stabbed the sea, propelling our overstuffed boats onward.

The sea fought back with fierce waves, winds and surf. The skies looked on with flashes of lightning. But we weren't deterred.

I wasn't deterred.

All of these forces stacked against us? I tell you.

It was fucking exciting.

So there I was, sitting on the foremost ship in the group. I had a rain-slick yellow raincoat on, just like everyone else, but the winds blew my hood off. Still, my long, blue hair blew in the wind absolutely gloriously, I kid you not.

Through the rain and the spray, I saw the Dockyards of The City coming into view.

Filled with fire, I rose up from my seat, stomped on the edge of the boat and channeled my inner whaling ship captain. Then, I roared over the elements, "BREAK YOUR BACKS AND CRACK YOUR OARS, BOYS AND GIRLS! WE'RE ALMOST THERE! WE'RE GONNA BE RICH! RICH!!"

"YES, MA'AM!" The rowers answered me.

Then.

FUUUWAAASSSSHHH~!

Powerful waves crashed against the boats, drowning out their cries. But the rowers followed my orders, doubling - and even tripling - their efforts. Against the sea, the winds and the watchtower spotlights of the Dockyards, the lifeboats approached our hidden moor: a hidden nook just past the Dockyards that we called ' Strawberry Cove '.

There, we were going to meet our buyer: a stolen goods fencer named Enma. Heh, but she's a story for another time.

Anyways, one after another, we steered the lifeboats into the cove. It was like a scene from the War Ministry films: troop transports landing on the Pekolander shores of Sunfish Hill thousands of miles away. Like our soldiers overseas, we beached our lifeboats and made our beachhead. Then, we started to unload our booty in a hurry.