Bricteva

The Damned

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  B R I C T E V A
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• The Lady Bricteva was the daughter of a well-to-do family of winemakers who had married into minor nobility. After a blight ruined their entire vineyard, they were facing a great financial strain. Their answer was to marry their oldest daughter to the portly and aging Lord Rothnor. Bricteva was disgusted with him and quickly became enamored with a Pirate who called himself simply 'Whitemane'. She chose to flee with him on his ship, rather than face such a horrible fate, but in doing so left her family to slowly be plunged into poverty.
  
  For a time, she lived a glorious life. She and Whitemane were equal partners over their crew. It turned out that Bricteva was a shrewd and natural leader, and even more bloodthirsty than her mate. However, tragedy struck when they fell into a trap. A merchant ship was secretly loaded with around a hundred of the king's soldiers, and it surrendered, 'allowing' itself to be captured and taken at sea. Too late Whitemane and Bricteva realized their mistake. Over half the crew was slaughtered, and Whitemane grievously wounded before they managed to escape on their badly damaged ship.
  
  Stuck out at sea for several days, after desperately fleeing the soldiers giving chase, Whitemane succumbed to his injuries and died. Although she was stricken with grief and a need for revenge, Bricteva had to think of the lives of the remaining men and women aboard her ship. They dropped anchor on a remote island, and did their best to make their ship seaworthy again, as well as scavenge for some much needed food.
  
  It was while on this island they found a man with white, wild hair, clearly old. He was gaunt and dressed in rags. He begged them to share their meager rations and take him aboard, even offering a pouch of gold in return for allowing him to join. Without hesitation, Bricteva made her decision. She took the man's gold herself, abandoning him on the island when they set sail again, refusing to spare him so much as a piece of their remaining hardtack.
  
  Having only managed to scavenge some turtle eggs, berries and seaweed, the crew was still on the verge of starvation. They were also far off their normal course and rather lost. The past few nights had been overcast, making it more difficult to navigate, and a massive storm was brewing up on the horizon. The day after they left the island, a large albatross began circling the them, and landed on the ship's wheel.
  
  Several of the crew proclaimed it a good omen. The albatross was said to guide lost sailors and bring fair winds in it's wake. Bricteva had never been a superstitious sort. But the bird clearly had about as much meat on it as a good sized roasting hen. It would feed several of the meat eating members of the crew.
  
  With only a few seconds of hesitation she slew the bird. There were some cries of protest and loud cursing, as the bird fell to the deck. She moved toward it and started to pick it up.
  
  It's body shimmered and with a blinding flash what lay there was not a bird at all, but a man, clad in rags, who stood. She realized it was the old man they had left behind, but he looked far less old and frail now. He cast off his rags and wide grey and white wings arched from his back.
  
  He spoke to her in a voice ringing with otherworldly power, and when he pointed a clawed finger her direction, she felt a great weight, sinking into her chest.
  
  Cursed. He told her she was cursed. The crew cowered away from the man as he spoke the nature of the curse.. and when he finished speaking, he vanished. Somehow, despite being caught in the storm, and taking several days to manage to get to a port town, the crew survived, but all save one abandoned her at once. It took some time for her to find enough of a crew to be able to sail again, but no matter how she tried to hide it, whispers and rumors of what had happened would find her again and again. Feeling she had little to lose and moved by the curse's hold on her, over the years her infamy grew. Many called her Bricteva the Bold. Others, although almost never to her face, had another name for her: she was known as Bricteva the Damned.