The Drowned

Cylostra Direfin is the vengeful spirit who commands the Lamprey, a cursed ship of rotten wood and tattered sails that oft appears out of the raging tempests of the open sea. Many decades ago, Cylostra was the favourite court singer of Bretonnian royalty, a prima donna of considerable size and with the proverbial ‘artistic temperament’ in spades, who never accepted anything less than having things all her own way. Her great volatility and intimidating demeanour meant that no-one ever dared refuse her demands. Unfortunately for both Cylostra and ultimately the world, she was a passenger aboard the Lamprey during an important diplomatic voyage to perform for the Phoenix King. Amid a gale of truly epic proportions, the Bretonnian galleon went down in a violent electrical storm, drowning everyone on board, but as the legend goes, Cylostra had already usurped the ship’s meek captain before it sank, simply for daring to delay her performance by attempting to circumvent the dangerous weather! In a fit of rage, and demonstrating a near-unnatural physical strength born of her passion for music, she threw him overboard in what was, up to that point in her life, an uncharacteristic act of cold-blooded murder. Ordering the subjugated crew to keep the ship on course directly into the storm, Cylostra’s delusions of grandeur even made her believe that she could demand safe passage from the tempest itself by singing determinedly over the howling gales. Sadly, for her, the elements cannot so easily be tamed. As the Lamprey sank down beneath the waves, her futile, pitch-perfect notes turned to shrill, gurgled screaming. Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been the end for most beings, but Cylostra’s bloated ego refused Morr’s embrace and she rose again in the ultimate act of diva-like defiance. Now, her tortured soul roams the seas, eternally searching for an appreciative audience. Those who know the legend of the ‘Siren of the Storm’ flee in terror at the sight of her ghostly, barnacle-strewn galleon, for it is said that when it appears with Cylostra singing upon its bow like a dreadful, Unliving figurehead, her songs of death paralyse all those unfortunate enough to hear them before her Undead crew – whom she refers to rather theatrically as ‘The Drowned’ – appear to drag them down into a watery grave, before they are raised again to join the Madame-Captain’s ratings for a life of unfettered piracy and murder!