Dolthe 11, 5681

Trapped two days on a ship crewed only by women is enough to make any man uneasy. My only consolation is we’ll reach Meda sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve had some interesting conversations with the captain, a woman fair and lithe, who is probably in her fifties. Her name is Ivee’Lyn, but she calls herself the Queen of the Sea.

Out of curiosity, I inquired about her connection to the song by that name. She claimed her mother was the girl mentioned in the song, and that she had it written and spread across the sea to build her reputation. Some things mentioned by the song did happen, while others did not. She even influenced variations of the song to keep everyone wondering. However, the Queen of the Sea did not go into much detail about that, no doubt to preserve some of the mystique. Even so, she did say the line about finding merchants to cleave was originally about finding merchants to thieve. I guess someone misheard the song, and the change stuck.

Despite the song and the reputation that pirates attack merchant vessels, the Queen of the Sea does no such thing. Instead, she seeks out and attacks other pirates. This explains why Captain Kiiyu seemed so frightened when he realized who commanded these ships. For a pirate, encountering the Queen of the Sea is just as bad as a chance meeting with the Great King’s navy. Neither ends well for the pirate.

So why did the Queen of the Sea spare our lives? I’ve managed to arrive at two conclusions. First, Tora’Sor is a Sisterhood operative. Fear of the arcane powers combined with knowledge of Tora’Sor spread by my journal made any attack on us a bad choice. The second reason is political maneuvering. Assisting us provides her with additional ships under Captain Kiiyu for her to use in an attack against the Overlord. It also means I mention her in my journal, and by duress caused by the point of her sword poking my back, I also add to my account that she is willing to coordinate with the Great King’s navy in an attack on the Overlord. If you cannot stop piracy altogether, perhaps the next best thing is choosing their leader, perhaps someone as savvy as the Queen of the Sea.