Back to text
11. Case in point – ‘shiver me timbers!’ can be either an exclamation of mild surprise or a demand for vigorous manual stimulation, depending on the company you’re keeping.
Back to text
12. Of course, under the terms of the Code, nowhere on Spume is technically anyone’s domain, but you get the picture.
Back to text
13. Eliza says I can’t use that word, as it is apparently disrespectful. I don’t care: it’s what everyone else calls them, so I say it’s authentic.
Back to text
14. I guess you could say they aren’t very … humerus.
Back to text
15. So – you know I mentioned the CFC freeing me after the incident at Mulligan’s? Their clemency was on the condition that I give them full approval over the copy in this guidebook, so I had to be careful about what I included. However, these footnotes went in after they made their edits, so let me say this clearly: Map’s Edge isn’t empty. Not by a long chalk. If you listen to enough rum-chat among the old salts of the Stormwrack taverns, you’ll hear the same: there’s danger out there. Real danger. The kind that comes at the tip of a rusty machete, and which laughs with rotten-toothed malice at the Pirate’s Code. I’ve seen it, and I’ll never forget it.
Back to text
16. Floyd, what does this mean? It sounds an awful lot like bullshit to cover up something dreadful. – ES
Back to text
17. Look, there’s something about ‘Riddles from the Silver-antlered Ones’ in the songs, but I think it’s just the writers being silly. What’s so hard to accept about haunted gold, Eliza?
Back to text
18. This line was, admittedly, inserted into my copy by the CFC, but I really didn’t like that prison, so I let it stand. Needs must when the devil drives and all, eh?
Back to text
19. I mean, it’s all basically the same, isn’t it? Just a load of wet water. Eliza insisted I do a section on climate and terrain anyway, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s a bloody Pirate world – if you’re reading this in the hope that I’ll suddenly reveal a massive desert, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Of course, I say that, but according to the primer Eliza gave me, there is in fact such a thing as a marine desert. I reckon that’s bollocks – if there are no cactuses it can’t be a desert, end of story.
Back to text
20. I have fond memories of the first time I tried what the Pirates refer to as ‘the saveloys o’ the sea’ – if you can get past the fact that you’ve got to prise the fangs off first, they’re great eating.
Back to text
21. Admittedly, this practice is also the reason why many pirates have hooks for hands in the first place.
Back to text
22. According to the primer Eliza has forced me to read, they are in fact ‘Pseudo-architeuthimorphic parazooids presenting features common to both Bryozoans and Siphonophores, but with astonishing emergent complexity’. However, since I have no idea what the hell that means, let’s just agree on squid.
Back to text
23. Hilariously, the same primer reckons the Kraken aren’t natural at all. It says ‘if you were going to engineer an organism in a hurry to facilitate the survival of civilisation after a catastrophic rise in sea level, you could do little better than the Kraken’. Come on, seriously? This is meant to be a textbook, not science fiction.
Back to text
24. Please stop. – ES
Back to text
25. Slogan: ‘Release the Krakens!’
Back to text
26. FLOYD. – ES
Back to text
27. It’s fair enough, I suppose, since they’ll be roaming the Seven Seas for centuries to come.
Back to text
28. Be wary when booking tours aboard such craft, as Skeleton Pirates have no sense of smell.
Back to text
29. A boneless face over two crossed, floppy arms. It’s understood that this was a sort of ‘see how you like it’ move, in response to the Pirates’ refusal to give up the skull and crossbones as their own symbol. And believe me, you’ve not seen rage till you’ve seen a woman who’s braved a ten-thousand mile quest only to find a scrap of parchment reading ‘it turneth out ye real treasure was ye friends ye mayde along the way’.
Back to text
30. The official position of the CFC is that there is no organised non-Pirate culture in the whole world. But then, that’s exactly the impression they would want to give to prospective tourists, isn’t it? And while I’m not going to flat out say there are hundreds of thousands of hostile humans living in the expanse of Map’s Edge (which is not nearly so empty as the CFC insists), I’m trusting you, dear reader, to put two and two together here.
Back to text
31. Oh, did you think that was just a nice little flourish by a cartographer? No, it’s a massive stone compass sticking out of the sea, and nobody has any idea who put it there.
Back to text
32. As Captain Olivia Ravenswain argued in her famous address to the CFC when the tradition of the Governor was initiated: ‘If the Navy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.’
Back to text
33. Other than the dreaded ‘Sea Weed’, that is.
Back to text
34. Just remember that you don’t technically buy anything in Spume – you just pay to steal it. Property here really is theft.
Back to text
35. Generally speaking, the more senior and experienced a Pirate, the more prosthetics they will have. There is usually a practical limit to levels of replacement, but Pirates still sing the legend of Captain Jurgen Bunchfist, who supposedly went ‘full sawdust’, only being declared dead a week after his shipmates realised they had replaced his last original body part with a block of wood.
Back to text
36. Be aware that your children will learn skills such as ‘punching’ and ‘threats’ on such outings, however.
Back to text
37. Of course, everywhere on Spume is technically lawless, but it’s mandatory under the
