B'rryt's Privateers

The last chords of The Ballad of the Young Prince died away and St'n R'gyrs waited for the applause to settle down. It was a good crowd tonight at Maeb's Beetle Buffet. Farmers mixing amiably with the Crusader soldiers garrisoned in the area. He'd noticed that the Crusader rhyflers were singing along to the old Royalist ballad just as heartily as the locals. The bar was doing a brisk trade. Young dynas were taking eager rhyflers upstairs to spend their pay on something other than beer and fried grubs, He took a pull of his beer before stepping back to the front of the stage and without strumming a chord he grabbed the microphone and bellowed the opening lines:

Oh the year was 1378

Then his band joined in with the counterpoint 

I wish I was in Spirebok now

Used some soft cap heads from the Coftyran and Crusader sprues to give some variety

And he responded

A letter of marque came from the king
to the scummiest vessel I ever did see

Then the crowd exploded! Joyously singing and shouting and waving their glasses to belt out the chorus

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

Squad leader. You can tell he's in charge because he's pointing

With the crowd whooping and joining in every chorus he sang the sad and sorry tale of the Snegl, a slack rigged, wallowing privateer fitted out by the Ergydwir sea caerten, Elcid B'rryt, who recruited a crew of fisherbucks and lobster hunters, hoping to make easy money preying on Maebwysh shipping during the centuries long feud between the two cities.

Then at length we stood two cable away

I wish I was in Spirebok now

Our cracked four pounders made an awful din

but with one fat ball the Maebwysh stove us in.

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

He's the Captain, because he's wearing a sword and pointing.

The Snegl shook and pitched on her side

How I wish I was in Spirebok now

B'rryt was smashed like a bowl of eggs

And the main truck carried off both me legs.

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

You can hear Canadian folk singing legend, Stan Rogers sing the song here.

You can get the back ground for Ergydwr and Maebwysh here. It's especially silly.

Here they are, Quar army number 8 I believe. And I suppose they could be an addition to number 3, the Partisans. But I immediately took a shine to the roll necked woolly jumpers on the Ergydwr troops that made me think of tough fisher folk used to making a living on the harsh open oceans. I've painted mine much more irregularly than the examples on the store and in the video. I'm viewing mine as more like a maritime militia or partisans even, so I eschewed the helmets and went with all caps.

Alwyd is a big continent surrounded by large expanses of ocean. Ergydwr is on one of the northern islands, nominally part of Easky. I'm guessing the weather is harsh, the waves are large, and no quar wants to be out on the Great Deeps when the storms of Cythwyn come. There are many songs in St'n R'gyrs repertoire about shipwrecks for good reason.

Their trench raiders have big nasty bill hooks, so I decided to add some metal falxes I had in the Bitz Box to a few. These are obviously tools used to cut open the dangerous but tasty and lucrative giant lobsters or other sea creatures that they hunt when not fighting the Maebwysh.

They're rather lightly armed. Just magazine fed rifles and some light machine guns. Plus the brutal choppers for hand to hand. These figures were quite nice to assemble. The LMG gunners had their arms and weapons already attached. The rhyfle arms were printed as one piece, left and right arms alread attached to the rhyfle, so you just had to glue them at the shoulders and add the head. Their packs are already on the body. Which is a bit awkward. I might have made one a Squirrel Handler. I suppose if I'd been thinking I could have cut a pack off and added a squirrel pack.

A bottle in a hand would have been especially thematic, but I'm out of bottle hands. Oh well.