Pirates of the Coal Sack #25 (CENSORED)

Aug 20, 2023

I uploaded this a week ago, but page 10 required me to tag it "dubcon", which seems to have kept anyone from seeing it. So here it is again with the offending page censored. The uncensored version is in the archive and the original post.

I knew planning out the series that we needed a breather here, but until I did #24 I didn’t know what it would be. It seemed like being made to love for the first time, and then immediately losing his love, should have some lasting impact on Harding, and it gave me a chance to explore his history and relationships. There’s some dark stuff here. Harding is not a nice person, and he has a broken moral compass. But he is trying.

I also felt like it was time to learn some about Harding’s background, and this gave us a window to do that. A few trivial clarifications: The Uruk War was fought 2241-2245, and is sometimes known as the Four Years War. He attended Dartmouth in England, known today as the Britannia Royal Naval College. The Prophet’s War, again against the Uruk, was fought 2256-2257.

The battles of Salamis and Masada are critical battles in Athena’s Greek Jewish heritage. Salamis was a decisive victory by the Athenian fleet against the second Persian invasion that led to Athenian domination of the Delian League. Masada has become a symbol of Jewish identity, a long siege in which less than a thousand Jews held out against four to ten times their number of Romans. Both are can be framed fights for liberty against tyranny.

Trek fans will recognize Alpha Eridani II from the episode “The Cloud Minders.” Fans of other genre fiction may recognize the dark figure in Mother Lovelace’s vision; I’ll be curious what your interpretations are.

This is the first time our verse isn’t from a sea song; it’s “Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson–a favorite of the captain's.