Blue ocean waves steadily rose and fell beside the large three decked sailing ship. Giant currents propelled it at great speeds through the water due to the magical phenomenon known as the Sea Lanes of the Shattered Kingdom. The setting sun lit its white sails as man’s voice sang a slow shanty from the quarter deck of the lone ship.

  Sally and Polly done found me out!

  Trying to kill me, there’s no doubt!

  What a frightful pair they make!

  Thank Karma they ain’t found Jenny.

  Cuz she cost a pretty penny

  But now I’ve nothing left.

  So I’m out on a boat,

  Trying to stay afloat.

  Wishin I’d kept my bed.

  But out in Drast,

  You’ll forget your past!

  Long as you ride out the sea!

  And with plenty of rum

  You can be anyone

  Deep within the Kingdom.

  A concertina's wail finished off the final line of Ace's song as he sat against the quarterdeck railing. A past memory stole over his eyes as he gazed over the blue roil around them. The water seemed to answer his shanty song with its low rumble of water that churned outside.

  For a moment, Ace lost himself, feeling as though it were just him and The Whirl's Chaos sailing the great unstoppable currents of fate. A harsh voice interrupted the man's quiet contemplation.

  “That your latest?” Howler questioned.

  “Aye, it's all I’ve got so far,” Ace replied as he absently played around with his concertina. “Figured the chorus will be catchy.”

  “Didn’t really know there was a chorus,” the hobgoblin Howler jibed as he cleaned his ear out with a long finger.

  “It was the last few verses,” Ace retorted, giving the concertina bellows a few experimental tugs. The smaller human male was growing annoyed by the pestering of Howler.

  The lanky red humanoid guffawed and smiled at Ace. “If it's a verse, how can it be a chorus?”

  Crossing his arms, Ace sighed and appeared to concede the point to the pestering bosun. “Fair enough my friend, I leave it to you to know the true form of shanties and songs.”

  Ace didn’t really understand why Howler insisted on dogging him every time he played for the crew at night these days. Soon after they had entered the whirl’s sea lane, Howler had taken it upon himself to be Ace’s critic. The rest of the crew didn’t really mind, as it amused them after a month of sailing on the ocean. Though Ace was a fairly shite sailor when held up to Bosun Howler’s standards.

  “I think it's got potential,” a deep voice from behind the quarterdeck interjected. “It starts a bit fun yet subtly sad, yet it's also got hope for a new beginning by the chorus. I’m sure it’ll catch on, especially once we reach Drast.” The stocky human, Captain Renfallow, leaned over the quarterdeck railing as he flashed Ace his white teeth from his lightly bearded and tanned face.

  Bedecked in a vest over his sailors clothing, an average person would be hard pressed to think of the captain as anything but an average sailor. The only distinguishing features on him was a cutlass always strapped to his waist and the gauntleted hands that never strayed far from its hilt. The confidence of command rolled off of him even as the captain stood relaxed against the railing, leaving no doubt as to who was in command of the ship.

  Ace smiled back quickly, “Thank you for the kind words sir, I hope to finish it before we arrive.”

  “I’m sure the good people of Drast will be all the more welcoming to us for that,” Renfallow replied warmly.

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  “Better figure out that chorus and verse bit first,” Howler prodded. Chuckles arose from the rest of the crew.

  Ace sighed and took up his concertina again, content to fill his role as shantyman to the crew. He began to sing an upbeat little ditty about a sailor in a tavern. The crew just beginning their night shift began to wake up to the shanty. The other crew began to relax and prepared to get some shut eye.

  Ace had never expected to live this way, had someone asked him a few months ago. The captain had found him on Ace's way through the port city of Blackshall. Blackshall was a thriving seaport city on the tip of an enormous landmass that jutted out from the western part of the Eusa continent.

  In a dark portside tavern, Ace had sat atop a small stage made of two tables pressed against a wall. The barkeep had allowed him to have a room and meal if he could play for the sailors, so he was playing the lively tunes. An energetic event had followed his music playing to the point many were singing aloud with him to the popular songs of the area.

  Renfallow had heard Ace singing there that night. He had caught Ace's eye and flashed a bit of coin so Ace would entertain his patronage. Somehow the captain had been able to tell that Ace was looking for a way to get out of the town. Renfallow had informed Ace there was a shantyman position open upon his ship and offered to take him on. The captain had told him that Ace would help fulfill part of the three S’s that Renfallow adhered to for his crew.

  Supplies. Spirits. Survival.

  Ace had thought it curious that a captain of a vessel would adhere so much to his crew’s standards. The captain usually owned the ship completely or was loyal to the owner and had a group of henchmen to keep order. So few of them cared about the crew's problems. Since this was the case, ships were considered to be a last resort to the poor or desperate, as their conditions were usually miserable and many died before ever seeing a coin.

  Ace was both desperate and broke though, so he considered himself lucky to be greeted with the option of a shantyman. Ace had figured he would just sing songs and haul on some lines for a bit until they reached the city of Drast. Many celebratory drinks were had in the tavern and everyone at the tavern cheered and laughed when Ace drunkenly announced he had found a ship to employ him. The rest of the night had gone so well he had even reached the ship and passed out in one of the hammocks in the sleeping quarters.

  After sending off from the docks, Ace made it a few days into their voyage when he had thought to ask what their ship even did to make money.

  Ace had decided to investigate for himself and possibly avoid some of the grief the crew would give him. He hadn’t wanted to seem stupid to his new crew of strange bedfellows. He was the new blood after all and Bosun Howler had already chewed him out for his complete lack of sailing talent. Ace could already hear them asking what kind of idiot decides to sail with a ship and not know what they do?

  Ace. Ace was that kind of idiot.

  After checking the ship's cargo hull, he had noticed a strange lack of extra cargo outside of the average supplies that would indicate they were sailing a merchant vessel. Actually, there were too many supplies for their crew of over 50 sailors. Unless supplies were their mission.

  Ace had started to believe that they were meeting another ship or a settlement for a resupply and quick cash grab before setting off. He wouldn’t have minded taking up with a crew that traveled the coast, as it was much safer than taking the sea lanes.

  There had been one problem with that thought: the direction they had been sailing. The ship had been traveling towards the open sea, so he had known it was headed to the shipping lanes of the whirl.

  Ace had decided to change his tactic up after that. As he wandered the ship he began asking various questions about the journey to Drast itself. Naturally, that had included asking about the whirl.

  Ace had been told that a whirl acted in the same manner as a vast whirlpool of spinning water, except it was thousands of miles across. He also learned that an entire whirl took up over half of the continent of Eusa. To add to that crazy fact, Ace had also learned that there were four of them, not just the singular whirl Ace had been told of growing up.

  Each of them sat in a cardinal direction around Drast and the other two stationary islands nearby. The whirls were spread out from each other far enough that sailors had learned to use the counterclockwise outer currents to swiftly propel themselves through the water at almost two to three times the speed ships would normally be able to sail at. This had created a vast highway of shipping lanes that the nations of Thrae used to speed themselves around the world at greatly increased speeds.

  The outer edges of the whirls were a bit rough, yet it wasn't the whirls that you had to be careful of. Sure, they could bring about an uncomfortable journey, but that's why you had expert water mages. The mages would smooth the currents out with little effort during rougher patches of water. It was the islands and the things that came with them that were dangerous.

  These islands were strange due to the fact that they weren't stationary things. They drifted, carried by the currents inside of each whirl, in their thousands, each containing its own dangers. The further you went into the whirls, the stranger and deadlier things would become.

  This world had a way of twisting things the closer you got to high concentrations of magical energy, of which the whirl was full of. Though you would need to spend a lot of time in these regions or purposely create something in them for the environment to really change the way the magical energies would create them. So it was generally just the things that lived in or were always there that would be strange, create special affinities, or exceptionally powerful.

  But with great risks came great rewards.

  The smoke shrouded fae woman with ever-shifting grey hair was more than willing to fill his lack of knowledge in these things. Ace learned her name was Piper, the navigator of the ship. She had stood, propped up against the railing, looking dreamily out towards the islands.

  Piper explained that all the intense magic of the whirls created objects of great power and wonder. Each island also held unique or extremely useful resources. Most of these resources were rare due to both the danger as well as the fact that people had no way to find the same islands when returning to the whirl.

  Upon hearing this explanation, Ace had begun to realize she wasn’t the only one who constantly looked towards the floating doomlands. He also saw that they weren’t staring out at them with fear, as his upbringing had taught him to. The crew gazed upon those floating portents of doom and danger with greed and anticipation. That was when Ace’s stomach had sunk to its deepest point in his body. For he had finally realized what the occupation of the crew of The Whirl’s Chaos was.

  These were privateers, men and women of fortune, otherwise known as pirates, and their destination was the isles.