Decades ago, around the time I was a hatchling, the oceans of Vakkert Sedd had another draconic pirate roaming their vast oceans. Commodore Losilvanthius of the Drake's Dive armada was one of few pirates who could claim to have an equal level of power as the good captain Trisha, despite never being seen in his feral form, simply due to being able to hold together the number of crews that he did (The fact that the two never warred makes me wonder about a potential relation, but that's beside that point).

And then one day, Losilvanthius simply vanished, leaving his headless fleet to tear themselves apart into nothingness fighting over his treasure, only for the last man standing to find the treasure had vanished, the only thing left being a sigil of blood drawn into the ground of his last known location.

I recently chanced to learn of the good Commodore's fate, and in the process expanded my view of the cosmos.

It started when, visiting the Circle of Greed on my Reaper duties, I was speaking with the Lord of Greed Zerronas (a fellow dragon) and the topic of Trisha came up, which segued into him, and with a laugh, she told me that the reason he vanished was because of her.

Rather than tell me the entire story, she offered to have me meet him and opened up a portal, and what I saw on the other side I could never have been prepared for.

Standing at a modest (by Seddian standards) 7 feet tall, practicing swordplay with a saber in a ship's cabin, was something that was draconic, but wasn't flesh and blood, rather a different lifeform altogether.

She didn't hesitate to introduce me as a Reaper – her prerogative in this case, and had us introduce ourselves to each other. After my greeting, the “synth” (I used robot at first, only for both of them to correct me, later research showed me that indeed, calling them robots is disingenuous to what Synths truly are) introduced himself as Lo-Sil, and I knew I was talking to the same person from the old stories.

With the connection made and a smile to Lo-Sil, she departed back through her portal, leaving us alone.

When Lo-Sil started speaking, it was in an extremely stereotypical pirate accent, backed by a bit of synthetic tinny-ness to his voice as he gave a bow with a swirl of his hat before placing it back on. He already knew that the reason I was left with him was so I could see how he operated, because after all, why would I seek out a pirate if I didn't want to see how the pirate lives? I conceded his point, but before anything, I wanted to know why he was a synthetic being, when Sedd has never had Synths until Asuki was Called.

With a grin and an animated sway of his tail, he moved to open the shuttered window and my jaw dropped as I realized that we were adrift in the middle of space, on a starship that was styled after a pirate's galleon. With grand aplomb, he revealed to me that the reason he vanished from Sedd was because he wanted, no, he NEEDED to go grander, he needed to see more, to experience a whole universe of adventure and plunder. While I had been offworld and visited other planets in the past, suddenly finding myself thrust into space, from a Seddian demon's portal no less, completely caught me off my guard.

The man had sold his entire treasure hoard and his very soul to the Lord of Greed in return for leaving the oceans of Sedd and becoming a space pirate, to explore the vast universe of endless freedoms until the day he died.

It all turned out favorably though, he assured me, as when he was still a flesh and blood dragon working out the terms of the deal with Zerronas, the two of them became quite fond of each other, and I realized from looking at nearby photos of them being affectionate that this suave synth had charmed his way into becoming one of several of Zerronas' mates. Being the mate of a Sin Lord is, as one might imagine, an extremely spoiled and favorable position to be in as a sinner who hasn't crossed any of the hell's standards of “irredeemable”, especially for the Lord of Greed who mixes love with her greed to treat all of her mates in ways I imagine any dragon in creation would be jealous of.

Not only did she send him to space, but she used (a small part of, keeping the rest) his treasures that he offered to procure the creation of the Drake's Ascent, the starship he now captained, and for the enticement of a group of... men of questionable character to serve as his new crew.

Realizing he dodged my initial point though, I asked about his body and he became a little grim for a moment, before bouncing back with a boisterous laugh. He explain that a few years into his tenure, he was captured and kidnapped by a scientist who hard targeted him due to the fact nobody would miss a pirate.

As he told me, Synths are their own people from the moment of their birth, but the scientist wanted to see if it was possible to upload a pre-existing creature's brain into the body of a Synth who had died, and Lo-Sil was picked because the process was going to be -agonizing- to undergo, so do it to someone wouldn't be missed, and who would “deserve it” to effectively be tortured to death, then MAYBE resurrected in a new body with all the existential horror that entails. The process succeeded, but only because Lo-Sil was from a planet overflowing with magic and his soul followed his mind into the new body, it's likely such a thing is impossible under normal circumstances.

The good captain told me the second Zerronas heard what happened to him, she appeared from a summoning circle in her true feral form, turned the entire facility into a smoking crater, rescued her mate, and dragged the man's soul (which was black enough to deserve damnation, good intentions or no) away to most likely be her personal chew toy and stress relief for eternity for tormenting HER mate (Greed is Greed, after all...)

Despite the existential horror of what had become of him, and Zerronas offering to use her demonic magic to restore his mind and soul to his original body, he actually found his new form quite fascinating and fun, especially with the modularity, being able to switch out body patterns, certain body parts, and gaining the ability to heal wounds by eating, while otherwise only having to recharge himself electronically. All of this led to him deciding to stay a Synth, rechristening himself with his new “More fitting” name.

As for his new career as a space pirate... I decided to downplay my more ethereal aspects and spend a little bit as a tag-along to see what he's done and to get a sense for him better.

It was to my surprise when I learned that he apparently dwells in and around the same galaxy that my friend Chio mostly calls home... which means that his usual victims of his piracy end up being other space pirates and outlaws mostly (he said they're more fun to go against), while in the meantime he occasionally hits ships belonging to the Charybdis or Aegis corporations, or smaller interstellar corpos that he said often draws no sympathy. Occasionally during dry spells, Zerronas will slip him a tip for a mark. Of course, since she's as much his patron as his lover, whatever plunder he makes off with, he offers a chunk of as a tribute to her, with the romantic aplomb as presenting a lover with new jewelry.

He's not a remorseless killer though, to my relief since he'll escape most form of punishments for having a heart that was more black than it was grey. His strategies and raiding mostly focuses on disabling the ships and stealing the supplies, only getting violent or making a point if people try to be heroes. In fact, with his disarming charm and disposition, when I sat in on a raid of a rival pirate ship, he actually talked his way into leaving with a few new crewmates who were very happy to let him into their stores of loot in return for a position on the Drake's Ascent. I don't doubt that he knows how to fight though – Seddian pirates had anything from sea monsters to magi to deal with, so if anything, raiding this sector of space may be easier, as my understanding of it from personal experience is that magic on the level of Sedd is very rare and mostly restricted to a few individuals in that galaxy.

With a few days spent on his ship, the inevitable pull of home began to call me back, so I bid farewell with a better understanding of this man, and a mystery solved.

Most Seddians know that life exists on other planets since Called exist, though the presence of advancement, starships and the like are kept fairly secret, so it's likely this log will only be passed around to close friends within this journal, but that's just how it goes sometimes when I deal with things that take me offworld.

- Veluren Thanazel, the Sights and People of Vakkert Sedd.

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Phew, new upload!

I've had trouble uploading lately because Googledocs (which I used for a long time) basically nuked my Gdrive probably because of my NSFW content and I lost a lot of stories, which as you may imagine made for a crippling blow to my morale and my muse. Well I finally got some art done and found a good program for it, so I think we're back in business!

Anywho!

I've wanted to break into some more sci-fi themes for a while, while still keeping my attachment to Sedd, and hmmmed and hummed for forever before I finally had the idea for this Synth lad, who started as biological, but was uploaded (I know it's not 'canon', but the lore in appreciably flexible), and now wanders space as a space pirate with a stronger emphasis on Romance Dawn than violence and plunder (though there is some of that too). He's also charming, suave, and extremely good at making himself the person that you'll root for even if he's not doing the right thing, using his LITERALLY silver tongue to charm people to the extent they might even hand over their loot willingly to him.

His backstory is a little busy, but that's mostly because I had the time to sit and think about it for long enough, while forming various connections with Sedd that make sense. Plus who doesn't love pirates?

And because I had fun with him, some other misc facts: His accent isn't natural, but he talks like a pirate so fluently you wouldn't know it unless you catch him speaking normal for some reason. He also lets all that battle damage linger around because it makes him look rugged, since Synths can trigger what is described as a healing factor by eating things, he usually only repairs himself when he's expecting a date night. The only exception is the damage to his visor, but since he can still actually SEE out of that side, he doesn't care about repairing the glitchy "eyepatch" scar.

Lo-Sil belongs to me!

The character design was created by the ever awesome to work with  Corganda!

And the Synth species belongs to  Vader-San! I really fell in love with Synths while researching for this guy, thank you for the awesome species.

And for other mentions, the character Zerronas mentioned in his backstory belongs to  ThatRandomLurkingGuy, while the galaxy setting I mentioned that he inhabits, as well as his targets, belong to my friend  Adenosine, who let me use them for this guy!