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Old Young Benjamin is in the particular patch of Riggaba’s netting that he calls home, looking out over the roughest, wildest, best pirate city there is floating in the Celestine Sea, reminiscing about old days and older Benjamins, and young Benjamins as well, as he’s wont to do when the salty air of Leviathan gets that heavy mood about it in the early mornings, when the ropes he’s balanced on start to shake like a snake on a sugar high, and he looks back over to the closest platform they’re connected to, and sure enough Alistair is shaking the rigging madly, a smile on his face. He catches Old Young Benjamin’s eye and waves.
Old Young Benjamin smiles, and sighs, because that smile on Alistair’s face means he’s got a plan, and Alistair’s plans have a way of getting the both of them camping up in the tangled and knotted and halfway rotted places in the rigging that only Old Young Benjamin can reach, usually for a few weeks, until the people that want them dead get bored or dead themselves.
Not that Old Young Benjamin minds those occasions very much, because Alistair is his best friend, and Old Young Benjamin is a darn good pirate, and you can’t be a darn good pirate if you don’t take the time to appreciate any time spent with your best friend, even if you’re stuck in the rigging, making sure he doesn’t fall and that those pirates with wings don’t get any ideas about trying to brave the salt-crusted, tangled mess at the highest point in Riggaba.
So. He waves at Alistair as he begins to swing his way across Riggaba’s forest of rigging, avoiding the tattered remains of sails, long-dried seaweed that waves in the wind, and the ropes that look strong enough to hold an average-sized vanara looking for a handhold but that quickly reveal themselves to be incapable of supporting a feather in the ways of snapping as soon as you make the mistake of grabbing them, and soon enough he’s hopping down onto one of the old crow’s nests that has a winding, wobbly, hole-filled staircase leading up it.
He raises an eyebrow at Alistair, who claps his hands together and tells Old Young Benjamin a most swashbuckling tale, about the life but mostly the death of the greatest pirate who ever lived, and Old Young Benjamin can admit that it calls to his old young pirate heart, the story of the life but mostly death of one captain Bill Seacaster, and Alistair tells him that the dead man’s still kicking, in a sideways sort of way, and he’s got a proposition he’s sure Old Young Benjamin can’t refuse.
And the short of it is, that’s how Old Young Benjamin joins the Cult of Old Bill, and he’s a darn good pirate but his treasure is less of the good old gold coin variety, and more of the dear and treasured friends variety, which isn’t to say that Old Young Benjamin doesn’t love a gold coin as much as the best of them, but more to say that he’s much better at loving them than acquiring them.
It’s as good a crew to join as any, the Cult of Old Bill, and it really brings him closer to good ol’ Creaky McBarrel, and Chungledown Bim, the crazy bastard, and really he doesn’t even have to give up his soul, what a steal.
When Alistair brings up the idea of bellini parties, Old Young Benjamin isn’t sure, but it’s fun to break out the old champagne crates and go at it, and it’s a great way to bring his friends into his interests, and Alistair, who’s generally better at talking to people, handles most of the pitching, and it’s a pretty darn great life for an old young pirate.
So it goes for a few weeks, bellini parties and increasingly intricate ways to scrounge up the coin for a new spell, until Captain Whitclaw starts hawing about making the streets run with their blood, and Old Young Benjamin isn’t quite as old as old Captain Whitclaw, and he’d like to think he’s been around, but he doesn’t like the tone Captain Whitclaw takes, or the way his tentacles get all wiggly, and maybe it’s a little intimidating.
But once they move the bellini parties to a more secret location, that’s really the same place they were before but they stop putting up the posters for it, everybody feels much safer, if still a little shaken about the whole, bleeding you dry and sucking out your brain implications of the whole thing, and then one day Alistair- who, despite the practice Old Young Benjamin puts in, is really much better at the whole warlock thing than Old Young Benjamin is, what with him having more of a naturally charismatic air, but Old Young Benjamin likes to think he’s got a heck of a darn eldritch blast when he can pull out the coin for it- comes back to Old Young Benjamin’s particular cluster of rigging to tell him the most famous story, Old Young Benjamin, you won’t believe who I met today!
This is how Old Young Benjamin learns that Fabian Aramais Seacaster has landed on Leviathan, with a crew of his own, and he thinks about that most swashbuckling of tales, the tale of the life but mostly the death of Bill Seacaster, and how he’d dueled his son to the death on the roof of a flaming mansion in the dead of night during a lightning storm, and how Bill’d cut the eye right from his boy’s skull, and how his son had run him through with his own blade, and then taken it as a trophy, as ruthless as old Bill’d been in his day, and well.
Old Young Benjamin sends Alistair off with a hearty good luck, in the form of an orange, of course, because nothing to hearten you like a good and pure gesture of friendship that’ll keep the scurvy from you as well, and eagerly awaits the results of his most persuasive friend’s quest.