Arlo Jade of the Beholder's Eye.
Seven years. Seven happy, healthy, free years. They get seven years of sailing, seven years of piracy, seven years of Captain Crongor and the Deacon and Maren. New faces come aboard and old faces depart, but Captain Crongor, The Deacon, and Maren always remain.
Arlo has a family, a home, a life they would've never dreamt of, but a life they can no longer picture themself without. There are fights, there are scars, there are mysteries and magic and adventure. Arlo earns a slash across the face in ship-to-ship combat with Tymoran sailors, and Lady Charlotte Kettering is further from Arlo than ever before.
No one recognizes them. They are cautious, perhaps overly so, when landing in Umberly ports, but no one has ever put Arlo and Lady Charlotte Kettering in the same sentence, despite the 100,000 gold bounty on the Lady's head.
They steal a Selvirrean treasure galleon two years in. Arlo rips down the flag themself, up on top of the mast of their new home. This is the birth of the ship called the Beholder's Eye. The ship before was much smaller - the Beholder's Eye crews nearly seventy, after Arlo's seven years aboard.
Three years in, they rescue a half-elf wizard from a Selvirrean exploratory ship that had been completely raided by forces of Ilmar. The wizard is the only survivor. He is called Springbound, and he's intrigued by the forces of the Sea. Perhaps too intrigued.
Six and a half years in, after an incident with a privateer led to the theft of Arlo's sword and Arlo giving up well over a thousand pieces of the crew's gold to retrieve it, Arlo informs Captain Crongor of their past. They fear he will abandon them, fear he will look at them differently when he knows they were once the Lady Charlotte Kettering. Captain Crongor looks at them no differently. Captain Crongor calls Arlo his boy, calls them one of his own. Captain Crongor tells Arlo he loves them.
Seven years in, Springbound has discovered the Great Beasts of the Leiran Sea, one per cluster of islands. The nearest beast is referred to as Kraken, and her caretaker, the Wave Child, resides at the eye of a storm that travels the region, a storm thats edges ravaged the Beholder's Eye weeks prior. Springbound wants to sail directly into the storm. Captain Crongor agrees. Arlo thinks it will get every single one of them killed, but in seven years, they have never gone against Captain Crongor's orders. They sail into the storm.
In the eye of the storm, there is a mountain. On that mountain, there is more magic than Arlo has ever felt in a single place before, perhaps even more magic than they've felt in their entire lifetime combined. On that mountain, after hours of sailing through a deadly storm, after hours of climbing, after a sleepless night where the sun never fully set, Springbound reveals that his staff, the magical focus he has had since before they pulled him from the Selvirrean wreckage, has the ability to track him. He reveals that Selvirrea is tracking him. But there is time - it takes up to four weeks to sail to the spot they're in from mainland Selvirrea. They continue up the mountain and happen upon a lake. In the center of the lake there is a creature. A creature that takes the form of lost loves. Captain Crongor says the name Everett. Arlo sees Jade. Arlo, for the first time in eleven years, hears their wife singing to them.
Arlo is nearly drowned by this creature, only surviving because Captain Crongor pulled them from the lake they were being drowned in with his bare hands, rescuing them, forcing water from their lungs and a healing potion into their mouth. It is not the first time Captain Crongor has saved Arlo's life.
When the battle with the creature settles, when there is a moment's peace once again, in the silence, there are cannon blasts. The mountain exists in a demiplanar reality, a place where time moves much, much slower than it does on the outside. This is why there was no sunset, why this plane existed in a constant dawn. Selvirrea has found them. Their ship is under attack.
Arlo and the Captain fly down the mountain as quickly as possible. The biggest ship Arlo has ever seen emerges as they push through a layer of mist on their descent. It is clearly Selvirrean, and it is attacking the Beholder's Eye. Arlo and the Captain continue downwards, but Arlo is shot down by a barrage of Selvirrean rangers' arrows. The last thing Arlo sees before it all goes dark is Captain Hamish Crongor raising his hands in surrender.
When Arlo wakes, they are tied up on the beach, kneeling in the sand, with their captain, their father in everything but blood, the only father to have ever told them he loves them, tied up beside them. The two of them are looking up at Baroness Phylendryth Vonsha, the very woman who controlled the Beholder's Eye prior to their seizure of it. Baroness Vonsha holds Arlo's sword.
Vonsha tells the two of them how House Kettering of Umberland has been looking for the Sentinel Blade that she now wields. The ropes binding Arlo are magical, only getting tighter and tighter around their wrists as they squirm in an attempt to find freedom. She tells them that it was only a matter of time before she found Crongor again. Arlo speaks back to her, but she ignores them, like a dragon would ignore a fly. She tells them that his escape from imprisonment made him a fugitive, but his capture of their ship made him an enemy of Selvirrea. Arlo spits on her boots, blood still dripping from arrow wounds, dizzy from exhaustion, from blood loss, from rage. She tells them that the punishment for an enemy of Selvirrea is death.
Arlo watches as Phylendryth Vonsha decapitates Captain Hamish Crongor with one swing of Arlo's own sword. Arlo screams until their throat is raw. There is nothing they can do. Their father dies beside them on the very day he'd saved their life, shortly after surrendering himself for their sake, and there is nothing they could've ever done. Hamish Crongor was the best of men, Hamish Crongor deserved a fighter, a son, who could've won for him. Vonsha kicks Arlo and the world goes dark again.
Arlo wakes, naked and alone, in a room no bigger than a closet - they can reach all four walls just the extension of a leg. All they have is a pile of hay. There are no windows, there is no light, there is no sound that permeates these walls. Arlo can just barely tell they're onboard a ship. Ten long days pass, the weather getting colder and colder as they do. Arlo is provided no food. Arlo is provided one bowl of dirty water about halfway through the trip. Arlo is numb. Their father is dead.
They are taken to Helia's Junction, the most notorious Selvirrean prison in the Leiran Sea. It is a place where people are worked to death, or frozen to death, or simply left to rot to death. Arlo is worked, Arlo is frozen, Arlo is sent to solitary confinement and starved, Arlo is left to rot. Over a month and a half passes. Arlo meets Sherod Crongor. He has become a husk of a man in the twenty years Selvirrea has imprisoned him in this place. Arlo vows to free him, in honor of their father's legacy. Arlo remains numb. Their father remains dead. Arlo is informed that Umberland is coming to retrieve what is rightfully theirs.
Arlo is escorted into an interrogation room, dirty, grimy, smelling as no human should ever smell. It is there, then, in that state, that Arlo comes face-to-face with their baby brother, now grown. Melston Kettering is an eighteen-year-old man, now, growing into his lanky limbs, as handsome as their mother is beautiful, though not quite filling out his features yet. Melston Kettering carries the Sentinel Blade on his hip. Melston Kettering looks at Arlo and tells them that killing them will simply do in place of a reunion with the sister that abandoned him a decade ago.
Melston Kettering learns that the man who sits in front of him is, in fact, his sister. There is a skirmish between the two of them. Arlo cannot hurt their baby brother. This is the boy they raised, the boy they loved, the boy they, yes, abandoned in running away from Pendlebury. They deserve his wrath, but this is not their time to die. They pry the Sentinel Blade from his hand and escape with their life, Sherod Crongor among the men they've freed, and the only prisoner they take along in their escape.
Arlo Jade steals a Selvirrean ship. Arlo renames this ship The Rose in honor of their father. On The Rose, as Sherod becomes more and more human again in freedom, Arlo talks with the man they would call Uncle in another lifetime, in a better lifetime. The world is not a kind place. Sherod grants them permission to take Crongor as their name. It is too late, he says, for him to pass it on himself. He sees his brother in the man before him now, he says. Hamish would be proud of the legacy he left in his progeny, he says.
They reunite with the Beholder's Eye. Arlo, for the first time since the slaughter of their father, allows themself to cry when they return to his quarters aboard the ship they called home for seven beautiful, perfect years. They break down. They sob. They refuse to scream, refuse to draw attention to themself, but they cry alongside Maren, they cry alongside The Deacon.
When Arlo and The Deacon are left alone, The Deacon shows them a past they were not privy to, a past some decades prior to Arlo's arrival in the Leiran Sea. A young Hamish Crongor, escaping from Selvirrean prison alongside a handsome man. These two young men quickly found themselves in love, two hearts beating as one. The handsome man is shot down by Selvirrean arrows. Hamish, dismayed, driven mad by grief, finds a shaman and begs, pleads, offers every piece of gold, silver, and bronze to his name for the shaman to bring his love back. The shaman abides, and his love is returned to him in spirit, but the body slowly rots away, eventually leaving only the spirit and the skeleton. A name is projected into Arlo's mind; Deacon Everett Riley. When Arlo hugs The Deacon, they are aware they're hugging a skeleton, but the warmth of the hug, and the image in their mind, are both from the man who the skeleton once was - their father's husband, a father to Arlo in his own right, there for every second of Arlo's lifetime as a pirate.
A husband and father lost, there is a battle mounting in the easternmost part of the Sea. Baroness Vonsha will be there. It has been months since she slaughtered Captain Hamish Crongor. The Beholder's Eye will sail into battle, Vonsha will die, or Arlo will die - there will be no quarter given this dawn.
The battle is brutal. The smell of gunpowder and salt fills the air, practically choking the breath from their lungs. The sound is deafening. A storm rages overhead. Vonsha is a better fighter with a sword than Arlo ever would've given her credit for. But Baroness Phylendryth Vonsha always underestimated the son of the Rose of the Eastern Sea; if she had understood Arlo, she would've never let them live.
Arlo Jade Crongor cuts down Phylendryth Vonsha on her own ship, on a battle of her own making, with the very sword she'd used to kill Captain Hamish Crongor, with the very sword Arlo couldn't use to protect him that fateful day in Northern Leira. The battle rages on around Arlo, covered in their own blood, covered in Vonsha's blood. Arlo watches as the Beholder's Eye is sunk into the sea whilst aboard Vonsha's flagship. Arlo finds the locket Captain Crongor used to wear tucked inside a drawer in Vonsha's quarters. Inside of the locket is a portrait of a young Hamish alongside his Everett. Arlo gives the locket up to The Deacon, who immediately gives it back to them - it hangs around their neck to this day.
The Rose survives. Arlo survives. The Deacon and Maren survive. Arlo had seven years with Captain Hamish Crongor. Arlo doesn't know who they are without him, but they will figure it out. Arlo has a ship to captain, a Sea to roam, and a desire to, eventually, kill Redbrook just as they'd killed Vonsha. But, until then, this life will simply have to do.
One could do worse than a stolen Selvirrean ship in the greatest part of the world, the mighty Leiran Sea. Maybe happiness will return to them when they least expect it. They survived their own widowing, they can survive the death of their father, as well.
Hamish Crongor was the greatest man the Leiran Sea will ever know. But Arlo Crongor can do their very best to live the life he would've wanted them to live.
Maybe someday, they will find a young, lost soul. Maybe someday, Arlo will offer this soul a place aboard The Rose. Maybe someday, Arlo will have someone to pass the name Crongor and the Sentinel Blade onto when their own spirit is dispersed.
Today, all they have is their ship, their family, and the open sea.
Captain Arlo Jade Crongor of The Rose.
