The Three Seas

A power of ArnesseHouse Rourke

The Seaborn live at the whim of the tides. Most of Arnesse knows them as raiders. They think of themselves as the heirs of a drowned kingdom, and they have not forgotten what was taken.

The People of the Sea

House Rourke rules no protectorate. It has no high houses, few soldiers, and little land, yet its High Armada is the most powerful naval force in the kingdom.

This page describes the Seaborn as they stood in 763, when the Annwyn appeared. The last section follows what became of them there.

Most people in Arnesse have never met a Seaborn, and the tales make them glad of it. Crews serve as mercenaries, raiders, smugglers, shipwrights, and fishers. Their real wealth lies in secrets, which they trade to landed lords for leverage. Record keeping is poor among them, so their history lives in stories, ship's logs, and the memories of the keepers called Maelstroms.

The politics of the kingdom touch them lightly. Giles I cracked down on piracy, and Giles II tried to bring the worst of them to justice. Neither ended the Seaborn. Late in Giles II's reign, Seaborn ships began to appear in ports throughout the kingdom as visitors, and no one knew why.

Lord Paragon Tybold Rourke commands the Armada from the flagship Sea Wraith. His peers call him the Lord of the Fish. Age has worn down the pride of his youth, and the house lives on the scraps of the kingdom.

The Great Drowning

Before the Great War the Rourkes were kings on the island of Argos. It lies flooded now, known across Arnesse as the Drowned Isle and surrounded by rotting hulls. No one agrees on what sank it. The Seaborn tell of Eena, the Sea Witch, who swelled the island with water, sent a fog over the city, and killed the sea lord on his throne. She took his crown and the Orb of the Sea and made herself Queen of the Three Seas.

Rourke's nine daughters took to the ships and could never win the island back. Aboard every ship of the High Armada a Maelstrom still stands in their memory, in a place of honor among the crew.

The fleets later divided, for reasons on which the storytellers cannot agree. In the Great War the Rourkes helped destroy House Castellan, and they took the port of Scyld along with crates of abandoned Richter pistols and cannon. After the war the captains scattered. They agreed on the Argosian Canon and founded their hidden ports.

The High Armada

Nine ships have sailed in the High Armada for hundreds of years. Each is a flagship with a story rooted in its Maelstrom. A captain is deemed a lord or lady in the eyes of the realm, yet holds that rank only by the vote of the crew.

Ship	Captain
The Phantom Juggernaut	Lady Eleanor Stormsail
The Tyrant's Woe	Lord Alain Grimtyde
The Nevertide	Lord Jonas Blackwater
The Albatross Doom	Lady Jane Swallowsong
The Halcyon Fury	Lord Germaine Tempest
Scourge of the Depths	Lord Edmund Undine
The Kraken's Maw	Lord Harbad Leviathan
The Far Abyss	Lady Drusilla Fairweather
Ghost of the Deep	Lord Olivar Dreadwind

The Phantom Juggernaut is the largest warship of the fleet. Lord Blackwater of the Nevertide is perhaps the most hated man on the Three Seas. The Albatross Doom has been captained by a woman for as long as anyone can remember.

The Argosian Canon

The Seaborn set the laws of the land aside but kept a law of their own. After the fleet fractured, its captains agreed on these ten articles.

All captains of the fleets of Rourke and of the High Armada have the right to parley, a temporary truce in times of conflict.
A crew obeys its captain in all respects until the captain is relieved by vote.
Should several captains claim a prize, it is apportioned by the marks on their vessels, and ships of the High Armada receive the largest share.
The one who first spots the sail has the first choice of items in their portion.
No member of a crew shall take or conceal any article from a prize. The unfaithful lose their place in the crew.
Each member of the crew has an equal vote and an equal share of provisions, unless short supply requires otherwise.
Deserting one's ship or quarters in battle is punishable by death.
All pistols and blades are to be kept clean and fit for use.
No member of the crew shall be guilty of cowardice in an engagement.
The crews of the High Armada keep their vessels clean and in working order until they are decommissioned.

Traditions and Dress

Marks

A crew is held to be worth only its marks, the number of prizes it has taken at sea. They often take the form of crude white skulls painted along the hull or red stripes on the ship's colors, and a crew may add its count to the name of its ship.

By the Coppers

The Rourkes pay for what they need in copper dragons. The custom is said to have begun as a snub when King Richard I first collected taxes across the kingdom, and it also reflects the commonfolk among their crews.

Legends of the Sea

When one of their own is lost, the crews say that the sailor has been taken by the Blacktyde, a spectral ship that wanders the seas forever. Along the coasts, people fear a fog that carries the Revenge and its dead captain, Edmund Blake. Sailors also speak of a Lighthouse at the End of the Sea.

The Freeports

Scyld lies at the far end of the North Road, where the Dusklands meet the frozen north. Skullport is entered through the giant stone mouth of a sneering skull, which can be closed in time of war. Undertow may be only a sailor's tale. It is said to have begun as a secret haven for those fleeing the occupation of the Thornwood, and the rumors name it the domain of Lady Jane Swallowsong. Blackwatch Bay, on a rocky Tarkathi shore, is a ruined place divided among the descendants of its three founding peoples.

Attire

Fancy, embroidered, and heavily patterned fabrics are almost unknown at sea, because there is no one to impress but the captain. Women wear pants more often than dresses. Long overcoats with collars that turn up against the weather are more common than cloaks.

A crew in long coats and feathered hats stands in a line on a shore, with a figure at the center raising a flintlock pistol toward the camera.

A woman in a black tricorn hat and leather corset, with brass rings on her fingers, stands among people outside a wooden building.

Figures in leather coats and brocade gather around a red table under an awning, one in a jacket of riveted plates with his back to the camera.

In the Annwyn

The captain of a Rourke ship was among the settlers who reached Tamris in the 7th moon of 763. Lady Jane Swallowsong of the Albatross Doom came to the Annwyn as an honored guest in the winter of 764, and persistent rumor held that the Rourkes had set up an enclave somewhere there and were keeping its location to themselves.

The Rourkes kept out of the war that followed the King's death. Their port in the Annwyn fell to Oblivion in 767. The Chronicle gives the full order of events.