If there’s one thing all the gods really love, it’s a good loophole. (Unless it’s used against them of course, but if you’re daft enough to try that then you probably deserve everything you’re going to get, and hoo boy will you get it.)

What Briony had been provided with was one hell of a loophole, and one she intended to take full advantage of. You see gods have rules about when they can, and cannot interfere. (They also have a rule that when you do inevitably break those rules, don’t get caught. Hey you live a few thousand years and the words never say never take on an entirely different meaning.) As you probably know, this is why gods have so called heroes. A sort of divine get out of jail free card, and there were rules there too. One of them was that a gods assigned hero cannot be a dragon, or born of a dragon. That way leads to way too much drama. But as for whether the hero had to be human, or indeed humanoid, nobody said anything of the sort.

This had lead to a rather unique situation a few centuries back, when a pair of gods had decided to settle the outcome of a war on which champion would fall first. Then doth gods had decided to be a clever dick about it, not expecting the other to do the same thing. One side had assigned a volcanic island as their champion, the other had assigned the waves. Both countries involved in said war had since then completely collapsed. Then the country that came about due to the collapse of those two had fallen in a coup, and both champions were still there. The gods in question still argued about it too.

Now Briony finally had her hero, and one hell of a loophole to exploit. Question was where to send them, her domain was notoriously turbulent, and there was always trouble of one kind or another. Then an idea hit her, as she pulled out a map, she had an idea.

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Captain Mac Spuggy had been a scoundrel, wastrel, pirate, and general ne’er do well for his entire life, he and his crew had terrorised the high seas for years. Before the gods, weary of his bullshit had decided on a punishment for them all. An eternity on the seas, with no rest, they would wander the seas forever, unable to stay in one place for more than a few days at a time. Shunned by the light of day, that would forever burn their skin. They wouldn’t be able to get close to others, as they would crave their blood, meaning nobody would allow them close. Living such a cursed existence they would soon grow tired of it. That had been over one hundred and fifty years ago now.

Unfortunately for everybody involved, when confronted with the grim reality of a restless eternity sailing from port to port, ever able to dock for more than a night at a time, undying, even by means that would slay most mortals, and craving the blood of man to merely survive. “OH SWEET,” had not been among the expected responses. That day the gods had accidentally unleashed upon the world the most abominable creature, the VAMPIRATE.

That had backfired even further, with the realisation that a certain brand of edge-lord pillocks found the idea quite appealing.

To make matters worse recruiting was apparently a breeze for them, as mopey teenage brats who had never known a days true hardship in their lives were more than happy to re-brand as “the vampirate Lestat” and join a dark legion of equally obnoxious little nuisances to serve the ship as crew, and occasionally emergency rations. Which just led to more Vampirates. The edge-lords practically (and sometimes literally afterwards,) flocked to them. All too happy to be poor, unique, misunderstood souls, cursed to an eternity at sea, so long as they could be poor, unique, misunderstood souls, cursed to an eternity with the possibility of hot girls. Especially ones clad in corsets. Who often quite liked the idea of vampires, and pirates, in theory. Though after a few days on board were usually left wondering if they could swim all the way back to shore. Some of them were so keen to get away faster that they actually pulled it off too.

Nowadays the ship had taken on a distinctly funerary styling, with more gargoyles than any ship had any business having onboard. But Mac didn’t care about that, he had his crew, he had his ship, and for the most part the Gods would rather pretend they didn’t exist, than admit a part in this absolutely screwed up mess of a situation. This made it harder for the churches to deal with the vampirate problem as they would for regular vampires. Hard to get a blessing to deal with things when the gods are doing the divine equivalent to plugging their ears and going “lalalalalalala I can’t hear you” whenever you tried to bring it up.

So they drifted along, occasionally looting a ship, or going ashore to hit on girls, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. In short nobody had a big enough stake in the issue, to result in a stake in the Vampirates, and they knew it, using it to its fullest advantage.

Today was just business as usual, a rousing singalong to “My Alchemical Dalliance,” (which sounded surprisingly good as a shanty,) a little moping, more than one overly dramatic breakup. Followed by a few equally dramatic make ups. A ship to raid. You know? The usual.

Then a fog bank rolled in, practically swallowing the ship. They didn’t mind that though, they’d just drop anchor, and play a few rounds of poker till it cleared up. A good spooky mist really fit their aesthetics anyway.

They didn’t even realise how much trouble they were in, until their reign of mild annoyance ended, with a terrible, tyrannical "QUACK." Nobody ever told what happened to the ship, it wasn’t so much a case of “dead men tell no tales,” as “no dead man wishes to admit that their great adventure was ended at the painted orange beak of a gigantic rubber duck."