These last few centuries have been tough for the crew, I have to admit. Finding the key to immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The 20th century was the hardest of them all, with the invention of commercial aircraft. And we thought the 19th-century metal ship renaissance was difficult to adjust to! Now people don’t even travel by boat anymore.
We’ve tried a few different things over the years. First was building our own metal ships, but they were simply too big and required expanding the crew. We tried just raiding towns like the Vikings, only to find that everybody had armed themselves with guns. I was starting to think that the outlaws in the American midwest had it right. Robbing banks, riding horses, having shootouts. Sounded like fun. But I was determined, and maybe a little stubborn.
We tried to fight the big metal birds by raiding on hot air balloons, and that went better than you’d expect. There was always some good loot in the cargo hold. But the fact was that we lost too many good men in the jump from the plane back to the balloon. By then, I was ready to call it quits.
“But Cap’n Large,” said one of my crewmates, “we can’t give up pirating! It’s all we’ve ever known. What if we became land pirates? Got a fleet of cars and drove around robbing trucks? My cousin knows a great mechanic around Underwood. We could set up a new base there.”
I was sceptical. We’d need a whole bunch of cars, and while we certainly had enough gold to buy them, I didn’t want to look like a bit of a bikie gang. But, what the heck, I gave it a shot, and it turns out the man’s a genius. We’ve never done better! The mechanic offered us a deal on fleet servicing, and the cops hate us, but that’s just the way I like it. They haven’t worked out where our base is yet. Life couldn’t be any better!
-Cap’n Large