GAIGE: PIIIIRAAATES!

MAYA: Breathe, Gaige.

GAIGE: Okay, ooh-kaay. [deep breath] I'm good. I'm good.

GAIGE: So today, we came to Oasis! Which is, uh, an inaccurately named town on the edge of the sandsea. When we got there, the town was under attack by sand pirates looking for water, led by this brute-type named No-Beard. He...didn't have a beard. Yes.

GAIGE: Anyway, after we saved the town, we...found out the town consists of one guy, Shade. Because when the ocean dried up, so did the water supply, and everyone died of thirst. Except Shade. Except he's gone insane from isolation and probably more than a little dehydration, so he propped up a bunch of corpses with ECHO recorders so he could pretend they were still alive.

GAIGE: But we also heard from Captain Scarlett! Who is this awesome pirate captain girl boss lady who is going to help us track down Captain Blade's Lost Treasure of the Sands! And, you know, betray us the second she thinks she's got a good shot, because she's a PIRATE! That's just all part of the experience! She's waiting for us in Wurmwater.

GAIGE: Before that, we still had to deal with Shade. He confirmed that Scarlett's the best person to ask about Blade's treasure, so he lent us his sandskiff so we could zip off.

SALVADOR: Except it exploded when Axton tried to start it.

GAIGE: [sighs] Yes, I was getting to that! Thank you, Salvador.

GAIGE: But yeah, it went all explody. Well, not all explody, just a few important parts. The engine capacitor, magnetic overthruster, stuff like that. You know how those stupid things are.

AXTON: I thought Shade rigged it to blow up on purpose so we'd have to hang out with him more.

GAIGE: He did? Well, whatever, it's not important! The point is, he sent us to the mummified townsfolk to get the spare parts he "lent" to them.

AXTON: Is it bad that I had fun playing with the corpses?

MAYA: Yes.

GAIGE: Most of the parts took two seconds to find, but the one left with Lionel was a problem because everything on Pandora eats anything!

SALVADOR: She means a sand worm ate it.

GAIGE: Yes, thank you Salvador, a sand worm ate it. A queen, according to the ECHO, but I dunno if that's like an insect queen or just a name or what. Anyway, we had to march out onto the sands, fighting a bunch of sand grubs—each one was like eight feet tall—until we found the queen, killed her, and cut the engine capacitor out of her gut. Ugh, so gross.

GAIGE: Anyway, we went back to the sandskiff, I installed everything—which took a few hours because the stupid pressure regulator had a non-standard port connector, so I had to cobble together an adapter out of gun parts—but we got it to work, then we digiscanned the skiff into the system and digistructed a new one.

ZERO: Stalkers.

GAIGE: Oh yeah, there was apparently a frickin' stalker nest right under the docks. So annoying. Oh, and now some of them can fly! WHAT THE HELL. But we survived that, and Shade was like [click]

SHADE: Before you go off to meet Captain Scarlett, though, you must return to me! [click]

GAIGE: And we thought it was something, you know, important and stuff, but no, he just wanted to hang out more. We were all ready to leave, but Shade had a couple jobs for us—more playing pretend with the poor citizens of Oasis—

AXTON: He had us propose to a chick for him.

MAYA: Propose and get shot down. He voiced her rejection himself. There's crazy, and then there's just sad.

GAIGE: Yeah, but also, the bounty board got updated. This girl named Aubrey—she kinda acted like she lived in Oasis, but I guess she's somewhere else—sent us to blow up her Grandma's pirate ship, you know, so she could put all that behind her and stuff. Salvador was kinda pissed, but we did it anyway. Besides, she was child-trafficking cannibal, so who cares what happens to her ship? Uh, the grandma, not Aubrey.

GAIGE: The point is, we found the ship, planted the explosives, and found the detonator in a nearby PIRATE camp! Which wasn't too interesting, I guess. There were only like ten guys. But still, they were PIRATES with cutlasses and hats and peg legs and—

MAYA: Breathe, Gaige.

GAIGE: [deep breath] After that, Aubrey asked us to go kill her grandma's pet stalker, which she inherited from Captain Blade, and then Aubrey inherited from her grandma. And apparently fed orphans to. The grandma fed it orphans, I mean. She was clearly not a good person—so stop glaring at me, Salvador!

SALVADOR: Yo no dije nada!

GAIGE: I'm just gonna assume that's an insult and move on.

GAIGE: All that was...kinda boring, you know? Okay, it was fun, but it wasn't pirate fun. Shooting pirates is close, but not quite what I was hoping for, you know what I mean? But then Zero—

ZERO: Arr.

GAIGE: ...did you just say "arr?"

ZERO: No.

GAIGE: But...you—anyway! Zero found a message in a bottle! You know, like the kind you'd cast out to sea if you're stranded on a desert island with no hope of rescue, but then just when you've given up hope and the dinosaurs are closing in, your ex-girlfriend shows up with the National Guard!

AXTON: That's not pirates, though.

GAIGE: So there was a treasure map in the bottle. It led us to a garage in Oasis, where we found a treasure chest left by Captain Blade! And one of his ECHO recorders. [click]

BLADE: Blade's log. [sigh] Had to stage another fake execution today. One of the cooks was caught stealing form the treasure hold, so I had to...pretend to kill him to keep the rest of the crew in line. Gave him enough cash to disappear, shot him overboard with a blank... [long sigh] Keepin' up this "fearsome Captain Blade" routine's a hell of a lot of work. [click]

GAIGE: And, I mean, that paints a very different picture from, you know, the common understanding of Blade. He's kind of a folk hero type...thing on Pandora. Like what the bandits aspire to be, I guess? Cool, respected, feared, and super dangerous, known for executing his own crew at the drop of a hat. Or faking it, I guess.

GAIGE: Inside the chest was a weird shotgun that hurts you every time you fire it, but whatever, Marcus is probably going to want it, so we have to keep it for now.

GAIGE: Anyway, that's it for today—fixing the sandskiff took up way too much time—but tomorrow, we're off to Wurmwater, and we're meeting Captain Scarlett, and she's going to help us find the Lost Treasure! Unless she shoots us on sight. But she probably won't! Mechromancer, signing off.