The Scroll

Gentle waves lapped against the crystal blue sea that lay beneath the naked cerulean sky. Dapper gray dolphins chattered and played beneath the crisp waves, swimming through clouds of fish and scattering them in several directions before they reformed into a school again. The scenery was peaceful and pleasant to the eye and it is no wonder why some men have fallen in love with such beauty.

But that beauty was shattered with the bow of the Black Pearl slicing through the pristine water like a knife through butter. The kind and gentle dolphins broke apart their pod and swam away as fast as the schools of fish were darting deeper into the sea's depths. The sky seemed to darken with the passing of the massive ship, but it was only the casting of shadow by its gigantic black sails. The sounds of the crew busily working could be heard; some of them were singing (or humming) an old shanty as they worked.

Inside the grand cabin, a monkey swung from a chandelier that hung over a large and dark mahogany table; while his master was carefully examining the maps and journals they had acquired from the merchant ship. The coin had not been found and Barbossa had spent the last several hours searching every bit of information as to why. Now he sat before those papers, wondering if they had accidentally attacked the wrong ship. He knew that it was possible along the more heavily traveled shipping lanes, but this particular ship had chosen to chart its course along one of the lesser traveled and pirate infested routes in order to cut back on the time it took to reach their destination. A very unwise decision the late merchant captain had quickly come to regret.

But despite his doubts, the maps showed no sightings of other ships; and their course had not deviated to any of the nearby island ports. The journals, themselves had only spoken of activity on board the ship and some of it's passengers, but there were no mentioning of the coin or of any other ships spotted after the date the coin had called to them. The passenger and crew manifest, however, were a slightly different matter entirely. Of all the names written down, one particular one stood out and made Barbossa's blood run cold had he had the ability to feel it. But the despair was still there despite the curse and what he had read would make all of their efforts fruitless.

A one William Turner, age nine, had booked passage from Scotland to the Caribbean Isles. He had no possessions except what he had worn on his back. Flipping through the journal again, Barbossa read a passage describing a young boy who spoke about seeing his father in Tortuga, who was also named William Turner. According to the captain, the boy believed his father to be a sailor for a merchant vessel and had been eager to follow his old man's footsteps.

Quietly, Captain Barbossa leaned back in his chair and weighed what the information had just told him. He knew that the late Bootstrap Bill had a son named after him. The old seadog had spoken often about him and from what little bit of gossip that floated to his ears, nine years was about the right age for this young William Turner to be Bootstraps boy. If that were true, and so far all the evidence was certainly saying it were, then they all had just damned themselves for an eternity.

For William Turner now lay at the bottom of the seabed with his father.

"We've doomed ourselves, Jack," Barbossa said heavily and ran a hand over his face in frustration. The brown and white monkey, still hanging upside, twisted his head to the side, giving his master a questioning look that said:

"What do you mean by that?"

"We need the blood of Bootstrap in order to lift the curse and since we sent him to Davy Jones' Locker," Barbossa explained to the monkey though it was more for him than for Jack. "Then we need the blood of his descendants. But... it turns out that his only son was aboard that cursed ship!"

Jack dropped down from his perch above the table and trotted over to his master, running through the rolled up maps and leaping to his master's shoulder. In doing so he knocked a few of the maps off the table and to the floor. One particular rolled up map caught Barbossa's attention. The material it was made from was different from the others and highly unusual. The cursed captain bent over and picked up the map and examined the paper. He noticed that it was not paper at all but some kind of grass reed dried and pasted together, papyrus.

Curious, Barbossa unrolled the papyrus and raised a surprised eyebrow at the contents written inside it. "Well now, what have ye found here, Jack?" Inside was not a map but paragraphs of words written in a language long since dead. Around the Latin and as a border were ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic images that Barbossa could not understand if his immortal life depended on it. "It seems the captain collected more than just trade goods, wouldn't ye think?"

In response, Jack squeaked softly and leaned forward to get a closer look at what was obviously now a worn papyrus scroll. He looked up at his master curiously before sitting back on his shoulder. "Aye, I am just as curious as to what it says. Me Latin is a bit rusty but I think I can translate it." Quickly the captain stood from his seat and taking the scroll with him, he moved over to a row of bookshelves along the far wall and traced the spines of each of the books until he found one he was looking for. "But at least I'll have some help along the way, eh Jack?" The monkey mimicked a nod in agreement.

Barbossa sat back down and pushed the other maps off the table before he spread out some of the rolled up scroll. He weighed down some of the corners with a smooth, aged skull and a dagger from his boot. Carefully he read over the first line, double-checking a word he could not translate until he understood what was being told in the scroll. "It seems here we have a story, Jack," the monkey squeaked and leapt off of his shoulder to go back to the hanging chandelier as his master read out loud.

"Templum magnum en mare hyrcanii erat..."

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There was once a great temple in the Hyrcanian Ocean, its followers lived up and down the coast in harmony with the land and the sea. The Priest was well loved by the people and through him the Goddess was just as loved. Together they Hyrcanians and the Occult of Angitia lived a golden age. But like with all great things, they must all come to an end.

The end for these people came not from outside or from some cursed plague, but from their Goddess through a gift that had once been their salvation and now had quickly become their bane. For the Amulet of Angitia had the power of the Goddess Herself, the ability to heal the wounded and right what had been wronged by curses. Such power came with great responsibility and to abuse it would bring a curse upon their selves.

For years the Priest welded the power with care but as time passed and more and more desperate people came to him for help, the more he became corrupt. And soon he had turned a peaceful religion into a great empire founded on blood shed by human sacrifice. He had turned his peaceful Goddess into an image of fear so that the entire world came to know Her and Her familiar, the snake, as monstrosities and servants of evil. What the Priest had done to Her was unforgivable, but let it not be said that She had not give him a chance at redemption.

While the army of the Parthian Empire waited just outside of the Hyrcanian borders, the Goddess came to Her stray sheep and asked him to turn back to the ways she had taught them to live. He had refused and so She condemned him and all those who followed the new ways. The Goddess unleashed the terrible army upon the Hyrcanians and the Parthians laid waste to all those they called heathens, showing no mercy to anyone they came across.

The Goddess saw these outsiders slay Her people She had once loved and wept for days on end. Her tears filled the Hyrcanian Ocean, turning its fresh waters into that of a salty sea, staining even its shores with Her dried tears. Then after the seventh day of Her mourning, a voice frail and pleading reached through Her veil of sorrow and asked for Her mercy.

"Why should I show you mercy over the others?" She had asked of the frail acolyte who had been hiding under a clothed table in the temple as the Parthians sacked the place.

"Because I follow the Old Ways, Goddess!" He had shouted over the roar of dying men and women and the clashing of swords and shields. "Whereas others strayed, I chose to stay with you and was shunned for it! Look at me? Look at what they have done to me for my beliefs? Please, I implore you to show me mercy and I will return your people to the right path again!"

"You will only stray and corrupt my teachings!"

"I cannot promise you whether I will become corrupt, for power does that to weak men, but I can promise I will not corrupt your teachings so long as you do not let me!" She considered his words carefully and after much thought, She had spared him of the same fate as his Priest. But doing so was not an easy task for the Parthians surrounded him.

Amidst all the chaos in the great temple, a single and slick, black snake had uncoiled its way from Her statue above the pit and made its way to the frightened and disfigured acolyte. "Follow my servant and He shall bring you to safety," the Goddess had whispered to him. Encouraged by the idea of surviving Her manslaughter, the acolyte did as he was told. But when the snake led him through the great chamber with the deep snake pit in its center, the acolyte stopped upon seeing the slain body of the Priest and the broken pieces of the amulet.

Seeing the snake continuing on without him and upon hearing the footsteps of approaching soldiers, he quickly grabbed the nearest piece and fled after the slithering guide. Where the snake traveled, he began to notice that the Parthians had either already departed or were approaching the area the snake was entering. The acolyte had either credited this miracle to his Goddess or an uncanny ability of the black snake. He did not question it, but was only grateful that when he emerged from the temple, he had not encountered a single invader.

As he followed the snake into the forest, he tightly clutched the amulet piece. Only when the snake had led him to safety deep in the forest, was he certain that it was safe to relax and study the defiled holy piece. He was upset that such a powerful item of his Goddess had been destroyed and he regretted not grabbing the other piece.

When his Goddess appeared to him, She asked of him why he wept and in reply he showed Her the amulet piece. "It is no good now, my Goddess," he had said between sobs. "It is broken and the beauty it once had is now gone."

"It is best that it is destroyed," She answered him tenderly. "For together it only brought destruction upon those who used it." She then told him that each piece still had the power to heal, but to undo the curses caused by the gods or powerful magic, it must be reassembled whole.

"I will not put it back together again," he told Her.

"Nor shall you be able to," She answered. "For the pieces are separating as I speak. The Parthians are taking the one piece you left behind, the other remains at the temple with me and the third you shall keep hidden."

"Hidden?"

"It has only brought misery and distorted my image. I do not want it to influence this world again."

"Then I shall hide it from the world and never use it to heal the sick and dying when your teachings can easily do the same." The Goddess was pleased with this statement and with Her blessings, the acolyte now turned Priest began his journey to hide the broken piece and renew the Occult of Angitia.

The newly instated Priest traveled far and wide, gathering people to him and teaching them Her ways. But never again did he have a temple erected in Her honor. Her religion became nomadic and wherever he went, Her ways were taught. Even as he spread word of Her to the people of the strange dry lands, he always searched for that one piece the Parthians had taken in the hopes of hiding it along with the second piece. The third piece he knew was well guarded, for his Goddess had left a terrible guardian and the island that the temple rested on now lay under the Hyrcanian Ocean never to be seen by man again...