> Fallout Equestria: Black Flag
>  by Chokfi
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue: Legends
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prologue: Legends

'War never changes,  but the seas and skies will.'

When I was little, my mother told me that that was an old family saying. That since we started sailing the Oceans and seas of this world, parting from our island chain homeland, we had been looking to the seas and skies as representations of our people, instead of the steadiness of battle and war that seemed to entice other races. But, I must say, I never understood it.

Because, despite whatever she said, our people had fought in wars. From navel, to air battles, and each time that we had fought it was completely different. From beak and claw, to sword and steel, to cannon. We were the kings of the seas, scourge of the skies, and we loved it. That was our solemn heritage, as she told me every night... but I digress.

I recall a story she told me, about one of my greatest ancestors:  Aello. She was a great pirate, who controlled the Budgie Dream before giving her fleet to her two daughters, Celaeno and Ocypete. Aello had two ships, the Budgie Dream and the Carrion Skull. The dream, which was given to Ocypete, was the finer of the two. And, despite her heritage, Ocypete decided to go into trading rather than Piracy.

I was always more interested in the stories of Aello, and those few glimpses at Celaeno, than Ocypete, despite being a direct Maternal Decedent of the trader. Trading Spices and gold and things, from Abyssinia to Zebraca to Saddle Arabia and back. She was known throughout our people as a great trader, and yet, my attention was not drawn to her. No, it was drawn particularly to the tale of Aello and the great pirate Roc.

***

The tale, which my mother told me almost every night, started like this: One day, the young captain Aello decided to visit a small port town in the middle of our homeland's sea. Known as a den for piracy, she was not worried, for she had worked as a privateer in the army of Abyssinia. And so, she smiled as she stepped off her sea based vesal, this being a few years before she had converted the dream into an Air vessel, and walked into town.

The small moon shaped island was known for its massive volcano in the center, that it was said had formed due to a large meteor falling down and crashing into the mountainside. But that didn't worry it's current rough inhabitants, who ignored the constantly flowing lava on the other side of the island... dispute it making their island bigger every day. Instead, they stayed in their little tree-covered bay, and partied with bottles of grog.

And so Aeleo walked her way into the bar, leaving her crew behind as they did business, as each of them had refused to join her in this adventure.  She didn't care about anything, as her wing slammed the door behind her. The people around the bar glanced at her, but generally ignored her as they had much more important things to do. For this was the bar of pirates.

In her fancy red suit, she was a bit out of place, because everyone around her wore shades of black and brown. She ordered herself a drink, a large thing and strong, and sat down in a corner to observe. She was happy because, though she was a trader by trade, she still sometimes wished for the piracy life. Which is why she had accepted privateering jobs in the past.

After some time had past, and she had struck up several conversations with people around her, she found herself quite drunk. She was generally having a good time, buying rounds for whoever sat with her, and drinking just as much herself. But silence came over the bar as someone walked in.

This was Roc, the head of the greatest fleet of Pirates in the sea, and he was staring right at Aeleo. "What's this, an Abyssinian whelp? I leave for a month and you start bringing in the rabble?" He asked, his large chest heaving as he laughed. "At least she's a bird, I'm surprised you aren't letting the damn cats in my bar." He looked at his bartender. "What's her tab."

"200 Gold over what she's paid, she's been a right riot with everybody." The Bartender said, standing steady under Roc's stare. "Good" Said Roc, marching over to Aeleo and grabbing her shirt. "I think we need to see about paying off your debts."

"Oh, I have the money, if you let me go and get my ship." She said, calmly, but Roc refused. No, he had a much more sinister plan. So he took her, and forced her into a cage in the back. Right outside the back room where he slept, and right for everyone to see. He forced her to dance for the patrons, which for the first few hours before sobriety came on she didn't have too much of a problem with.

However, by the time Roc was asleep she had become painfully sober, and completely awake. She was able to pick her lock with just a feather pulled from her own tail, but it took an inordinate amount of time. Still, she managed it, and broke in to the Roc's bedroom to kill him dead. The next day she was gone, along with his flagship, which she renamed the Carrion skull... for it's new masthead.

And She sailed until she caught up to the dream, which had left her there. She stepped aboard, with a new crew, of five debtor Pirates. They never again returned to that bay, but Aeleo became the captain of two ships. She would not go into port with the dream, but her friends stayed loyal, and she protected them from all ravagers.

***

My mother told me that story one last time the night before she died. In the morning our airship were attacked by northern Pegasi dogs, and while we made it mostly unscathed, she died to a lucky shot. The Pegasi didn't want us, they wanted our cargo. They managed to grab one box, a shipment of High power Balefire Eggs we were bringing to a Trading base in Somnambula. It wasn't that big of a loss, but my mother was gone. Leaving me the heir to the Budgie.
> Chapter 1: Crew Troubles
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Chapter 1: Crew Troubles

It was my ship now... My ship, and it would have been nice if it had been my crew. "Guys, come on, you can work with me. It won't be that bad." I said, staring around the long round table at all the other crew members. They were mostly parrots, although there was the odd pegasi or griffon. "I know you all loved mom, but she's dead..."

"That's the thing Ellie." Came the voice of my mom's first mate. "I accept that it's your ship, and I'm willing to give you the dream, but I'm not taking orders from a child!" He slammed his hook hand into the table, and stares at me. "The whole crew agrees with me. We arnt going to take orders from you."

I looked at the rest of them, the crowd that was thick with people. "There has to be some agreement we can come to." I said, trying to be amiable before slowly getting mad. "I have been on this ship as long as you have bouford. You don't have any more right on how it was run then I do!"

The parrot shook his head, and stood up. "This conversation is over. I will not stay on this ship if you are not willing to take orders from me, at least until your older." He sighed and turned around, walking out into the deck. "Everyone else who doesn't want their life to be run by a child, come with me. I'm going to do up the gold and we're going to get off this thing."

And that's how it went, I was unable to stop them as every one of the people who I had worked with my entire life followed him and went to start bringing trade goods out onto the deck. Following them I stood at the helm, staring down at the somnambula port and woundering if it was worth it. But no, my mama told me, I could never let anyone else take this from me.

***

After several hours, my former crew we're ready. All the gold they were owed we're in their pockets, and they had sold enough trade goods to compensate for this Trip's wages. And they were gone, going to find work in caravans and some of the other airships ported in the dock.

"I'm sorry Ellie, but I couldn't take orders from someone who's diapers I changed." Bouford said, standing on the dock with his small pile of goods, and that made me blush. "Look, maybe in a few years I'll be able to do that. Okay? I gave you your mother's share, and I got the guys to get the goods into the market before booking it. So you could feisably have enough gold to live for a while. Take care of yourself." 

He handed me the bag of gold and caps, and walked down the ramp into the docks. Dispapering into the crowd as I sniffed, and went to sit in my... In mom's room. I cried my eyes out, acting like a fucking chick. But I was still reeling from the pain. I stayed like that for the next few days.

*** 

A few weeks later my provisions finally ran out, and I was forced to go down into Somnambula. Thankfully I had plenty of caps and gold, as I walked my way through each and every street, buying little bits of old food, and a few southern crops... the kind that my ship used to be used for transporting.

Thankfully, the trade city was completely devoid of radiation, as the small cultural landmark was able to avoid any aggression from the striped forces. It did, however, have a few interesting things to it that I had learned as a young chick, as it was almost a home for our ship... not that we had a real home.

Back before the war, an archaeologist named 'Daring Doo' had fought many people here, and she eventually funded an expedition of more... low-key magical researchers to come and resurch the ruins, funded by the MAS. But what they found was much more than what they expected, as they found one of the most powerful magical gems in Equestria... right before the war struck.

So, Somnambula's newest export became small amounts of this gem, and a large magical study facility was built in the old temple. However, that temple is filled with dangers, and no one should ever go there, or so I was told as a child. In any case, that lead to the mechanization, that alowed Somnambula such trading power in the post-bomb world.

***

I was cut off from my thoughts by a shout in the distance. "My goods, thief!" came the yell from a 
stand, just a block away. The guards were around, but it would take them time to get the thief, and by then everything would have run amok. So, with a sort of daring that would have frightened my mother to bits, I ran after the movement in the marketplace where I knew the thief must be.

I drew my Cutlass and stared after the perpetrator, trying to find him in the crowd. Thankfully, the crowd was mostly made up of ponies this far north, so I had a good bit of height on everyone. I was able to see the movement through he crowd, so with my blade in hand I began to dash through and get closer to the thief... Tight on their heel, despite their incredible speed at dodging through everything.

Soon he dodged into an ally and I followed, tight and following step by step. "Stop right there, I've got yo-" I said, before seeing what I was chasing after. It was a smaller, thinner creature. With the body of a lion and the head of a pony. It was a sphinx, and it was holding a peice of bread.

"Seriously, that's what you were stealing?" I asked, looking at the pitiful creature. "For Celaeno's sake... Look, you see that ship? with the colorful wings? yeah, go and hide there. I'll take care of this." I turned around, taking a few gold out of my pocket.

As I heard the cat-pony run I signed, and walked back into the crowd. "Hey, guards, he went this way. But he escaped." I said, pinching my beak. I then walked over to the stand and whispered to the person who had been stolen from. "Listen, here's enough gold for two pieces of bread. I'm paying for that cat as well" and without another look, I tossed the caps at her and took a sweet roll.

And so, I simply walked away, going to my ship. The guards didn't find anything, and looked somewhat disappointed, but I didn't care. This creature was pitiful enough that I'd had to give it another chance, hopefully it wouldn't make that another mistake of mine.

Footnote!

Electra:

STR: 4
PER: 6
END: 4
CHA: 4
INT: 8
AGI: 8
LCK: 6

Traits:

Parrot Sailor: You have been flying around your entire life on your ship. You start with Pilot +20, but you may not take any ranks of Survivalism and Traps during charecter creation. You also get 500 caps extra when you start, your cut of the treasure. 

Swashbuckling Charisma: You can use your agility instead of your charisma once per day. This can be for intimidation, using a swing of your masterful swordplay, or instead of charisma in a persuasion check as long as you have just done something daring and acrobatic.
> Chapter 2: Lion's Share
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2: Lion's Share

Dagi

I had to steal the bread, I was starving. What ponies sometimes didn't want to admit was the fact that we Sphinxes needed more food then their little pony asses. Of course, I wasn't bigger than ponies, because I was scrawny and young. But the largest of my kind were far larger, and if I had a good food I might have been able to get it. Although, maybe there were other reasons for them to be larger...

But that was a distraction, no, what I had to do was run. Several ponies were on my tail, with their large cutlasses... they had promised to cut off my paw if I was caught again, which meant I had to run. I dodged around market-goers, travelers, and all kinds of ponies and things. This was southern Equestria, and I knew my way around like my paws knew the sand.

I dodged into an ally, and I was about to get away when I heard the clearing of a throat. It was a Parrot, one of the creatures I had only seen once or twice. She asked me about what I was doing, and let me go, telling me to join her on a ship... Glad to be given an excuse to run, I kept going, as she went back and dealt with people.

I had little choice, so I eventually went on the ship. The thing had a magnificent masthead that seemed to take up half the ship, and it was colorful as could be. Those damn birds always had to be 'presenting'. As if they needed a fucking mate, they aught to just fuck the first bird they could find to keep themselves alive.

***

After a few hours, the parrot came back with some supplies and things. "Well, why don't you come with me to eat" she said, waiving her hand and inviting me to the dining hall. "We're a sitting duck, but I have enough gold and caps to keep us in food for a little while... Not as long since your with me, but still not a short time."

"Well, look, I'm glad you got me out of there. But If we're just going to sit around, I'm not going to be able to handle this. I need to leave this city, go out to the sands, and if I have to do that on my own I will." I said, staying polite and sitting at the table, digging into the bread.

"Yeah, and what are you going to do out there? Get caught by the facility? Get eaten by sand worms? The desert is a dangerous place, and the only way south is on my fucking ship." She slammed a knife into the table, as if warning me of something. "No, your going to stick with me. And I'ma teach you how to help me with the riggings. If I can get just one more crew member we can manage to pull this ship down, and that means caps. Once I'm down there I can get a new crew, and you'll get a good cut... if you intend to leave."

"And if I refuse?" I asked, staring at her. My golden fur ruffled under her powerful eyes, and my claws dug into the table slightly. "It's not like I know how to fly this thing. And you can't leave with just me... right?" I asked, staring at her, and she seemed surprisingly calm.

"Take this as your official conscription. I'm taking this ship in one week from here, to the three major trading outposts in the southern deserts. From here, to Kludgetown, to Saddle Arabia, to Abyssinia, and back. It won't be hard to do, and it will make us alot of money. I used most of mine to set up a cargo for us to ship." She said, staring into my eyes.

"If you leave, you will leave me stranded. You will be left in a town that doesn't like you, with no money to your name. You will be stranded in the northern desert, above the equatorial jungle, and never be able to get past it to the source of all our riches. You come with me, you get paid." She said in simple terms, ones that I couldn't refute... or really refuse, since she had gotten me out of that jam.

"Fine, I suppose, but where are you going to find that third crew member? We need more than two people to even have at least one person awake at all times, and I know you must have something for that..." I sighed, giving in to it all. "I mean, what are you going to do, just find a random pony or something to do things?"

"Hmm, that might not be the best idea, Saddle Arabia and Abyssinia are fine, but Kludgetown has a... rocky history with pure ponies. I'd say we should try to find someone else. Maybe if we put up something in a tavern we can get an applicant or two." she said, staring off into the distance. "Go fetch me a peice of parchment from my study."

***

Drafting up the flier took a while, the situation being a bit complicated. We both knew that not many would accept such a long trip, especially one that didn't start with an up front payment, so we had to be persuasive. In the end Electra, who told me her name after bossing me around for several hours, wrote most of the actual thing. It included a partial manifest of our cargo, proving we could deliver with our promises.

Eventually we did get one applicant, but it was really kind of hard to understand what he wanted. But I didn't get any say in weather or not he was accepted, and Electra only had a week. So that was the best that could be done at the time.

Footnote!

Dagi:

STR: 8
PER: 4
END: 6
CHA: 4
INT: 6
AGI: 4
LCK: 8

Traits:

Mysterious Species: No one quite knows where your species comes from, and you aren't entirely sure yourself. This Leads to alot of confusion as to what exactly you can do, and makes it so that no one who meets you for the first time will be familier with your race's skills. You also get a bonus to Intimidation worth 25%.

Dunewalker: While you can survive in other environments, you've lived your entire life In the desert, and it shows. You have +20 resistance to fire and heat, and you are able to move at +10 speed on sand. However, in wooded or jungle environments you have -10 speed, and you loose access to certain skills.
> Prologue: Legends
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"War never changes, but the seas and skies will."

When I was little my mother told me that, an old family saying. We sailed Seven or more Seas, leaving our island homeland. The seas and skies are our home, and war was something for other people. What she said was a lie.

We may never have fought a real war, because we were never recognized as a nation, but we might as well have. Hundreds of years ago we fault beak and claw, sword and steel, to save ourselves. We were the kings of the skies and seas, the Pirate kings. That was the heritage of war we had to live up to.

Two Hundred years ago, back before the Great Pony War began, there was a captain. Captain Aello, the first Pirate King. Aello was born on the archipelago that our people came from, the Canary Islands. She became the Scourge of the Seas quickly, back in the days of legend before firepower increased and tech made those simple acts of swashbuckler obsolete.

Aello had two ships, the Budgie Dream and the Carrion Skull. When she first started out, Aello's first ship was the Dream. It was smaller, couldn't carry as many cannons, and was built as a merchant ship for the run to Zebrica. It was a simple sailing ship at first, a ship that rested on the water, and Aello sailed it across the world.

Her second ship, the Carrion Skull, once belonged to the great pirate Roc. And Aello got it on a mission out of Abyssinia, down near her maternal homeland. The tale of how she got it was long, but it boiled down to this.

***

One day, the young captain Aello decided to visit a small port town in the middle of the Canary Islands. It was a den for piracy, known far and wide at the time, but she was working as a privateer in the Abyssinian army at the time. She didn't care about anything as she stepped off the dream and into the nearest bar.

The Island was a small moon-shaped place, known for a massive Volcano in its center, and was said to have formed when a large meteor fell down and crashed into the mountain side. The Pirates didn't mind though, the constantly flowing lava was as good a protection from Kingsman as anything else. Though the island expended every day, they hid in the shaded bay of the island known as the Ship Boneyard.

Half of the bay was taken up not by sailing ships, but by partially destroyed ships and wrecks. Those ships were used as the residences of the population, and the closest bar was set in one. The bar known as the Drunken Sailor. She wore her tight red coat outfit, and everyone was surprised at her entry, but they made a point of ignoring her all the while.



Time passed and quickly Aello become drunk, popular with the other patrons of the bar. But that's when Roc came in. "What is the Abyssinian cat-toy doing in this bar?" He asked, slamming his hook-wing down into the table before her. "I leave for a month and you start letting in the rabble of the sea? What's her tab?"

"200 bits, but she's already payed half of it up front." The bartender said, staring at Roc steadily.

"Good. I think we need to see about her paying off her debts." Roc grinned, walking up to Aello. She tried to respond that she had the money, but he refused to let her speak. "No, I think I have a better way for you to pay off your debts you hen slut!" He shoved her into a gilded bird-cage in the back of the bar.

He forced her to dance for the other patrons, even ripping off parts of her clothes to make her look more like a woman of the night. She was uncaring about any of it at first, as her drunken state softened the pain of her situation, but sobriety eventually took hold. However, by the time it did, Roc was asleep, and she was able to easily pick the lock with a feather.

Aello became known the next morning, because at that moment she killed Roc dead and stole his flag ship out from under it. She re-named that ship the Carrion Skull, for the brand-new figure head she had 'procured' from the bastard pirate Roc.

The Carrion Skull became her new flagship, and she didn't return to that bay for years and years. She was the captain of two ships, and soon many more. Time passed, and as the Pirate Queen Aello came to her deathbed she walked back into that bay. She had two daughters. And she gave them both a ship.

To her Elder Daughter, Ocypete, she gave the Budgie Dream, who eventually decided to become a Merchant Trader instead of a pirate. And to her younger daughter Celauno, who had spent her whole life fascinated by her mother's exploits, she bequeathed the Carrion Skull. That's how the Skull continued to be the greatest scourge of sea and skies, and the Budgie became one of the only ships that could fly through her teritory and not get destroyed.

***

My mother always told me these stories, but the last time she told me was her last day on earth. She told me about our ancestors, and how I was a direct decedent of Ocypete. She told me how they had continued to be merchants, even after the war ended. But on that day, we were attacked by northern Pegasi Dogs. My mother died, and our cargo was stolen. All that was left was me and a crew full of anger and spite.

I was left, landing in Somnambula, with nothing but being heir to the Budgie Dream to my name. That's where my story started, just after my mother's ended. It was somewhat poetic I suppose.

Who Knows?