The Legend of Red Bramman

[Deeza]

A possible starter for some quests to search for cursed treasure in the marsh, based on some obscure lore references about the distant past of the province.

As told by an old sailor late one night in the drinking dens of Soulrest:

Hah! You think that tale of yours was meant to frighten me? That wouldn't scare the quivering, toothless old grandmother of one of those stinking cat-men! You want a ghost story? I'll tell you about Red Bramman and his big old treasure. Now this is how they used to tell them back when I was a kid your age working sails in the Imperial Navy!

Now, this was way back in the First Era. And that's way, way, before Tiber Septim, the big old wars with the Akaviri, and certainly long before this port was ever built. Back then this rotten marsh wasn't even part of the Empire. Soulrest was a little town of some silver creeps called the Kothringi, Soulrest and Gideon were Wild Elf castles, and the whole of the rest of the land from here to the Padomaic Ocean was just a wasteland of mud where only those lizard things felt at home.

Now Bramman knew all that of course, that's why he set up shop here. He was a pirate, and a damn successful one at that. He knew the waterways of the islets and mangrove swamps of the marsh as well as any lizard or frog, and he knew just where to run and hide after he'd done over a merchant ship. Nobody could catch him. Dozens of times the Navy tried to hunt him down, even got wizards to try to blast him out of the water, but every time he lost them in the maze of creeks and lagoons and mist. Several times the ships ran aground chasing him, and he took them too.

In no time at all he had a fleet of nearly a hundred ships, and a hoard almost as big as the Imperial treasury in those days. Oh, I know the things you hear these days about Cap'n Dugal and the Red Sabre. But he was just an amateur compared to Bramman. Even stole the name off of him. They used to call Bramman "Red", because for him it wasn't about the money. Didn't interest him, you see - he gave it all to his crews. He was in it for the killing. Something was broken in his head, and he enjoyed it just for its own sake.

But his crews, they liked the riches a lot. And they got greedy. Because there's gold hidden out there in the muck and dirt of the swamps. A whole city full of it, if only you can find the Eye of Argonia to open it up. Or that's what they thought anyway. They used to round up whole villages of the lizards and torture them in the hopes of finding out where it was. They even went into those ruins deep in the swamp and cut down those freakish trees the lizards worship, since they were dumb enough to think their sap had jewels in it.

But there's nasty stuff deep in the marshes, things that are older than the world. And they don't care much for people, though they're mighty attached to those lizards. And Bramman's gang had drawn their attention. One day a terrible sickness started spreading through the town they had built in their lagoon hideaway. Rotted people while they were still alive it did, and no matter how much the flesh dropped off them, or their limbs dropped off, they just couldn't die.

Now the crews started to panic, but Bramman was having none of it. He had all the victims buried in a great pit in the swamp, and it's said they cursed him as he filled it in. But that was too much for one ship, and they made a run for it into the open sea. Straight into the arms of the Navy! It didn't take long for the Admiral to make them talk, and find out where Bramman had been hiding all those years.

So they sailed up a little river by Soulrest, long gone now. Nothing ever stays put in this part of the world. They fell upon Bramman's fleet and there was a battle that raged in the lagoon and up and down the waterways for days. The creeks got blocked by burning ships, and the bogs were filled with bodies. But the sickness had got into the water, you see, and none of them died. They're still there now, out in the marsh, fighting on and on forever in the black below the water.

In the end they cornered Bramman, cut him down and chopped off his head. But that didn't finish him, for when they threw his body over the side it carried on clawing at the hull until it sank out of sight. And they say that even now he wanders the world, searching for the head that was sent as a trophy to Cyrodiil.

And nobody ever found his hoard, neither, for it was loaded onto ten ships that were supposed to escape down a secret route. But the lizards got to them first, and it all sank without trace. But don't you go thinking to look for it - all the folk who tried over the years never came back. I think they were dragged down by dead hands to the bottom of the marsh, press-ganged into Red Bramman's rotting crew...

[jucklesjenk]

Very interesting. Nicely written too. :goodjob:

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Good stuff! Rollicking swashbuckling ahoy!