Old Ed

On cold, moonless nights in the New World, a strange sight can be seen. A rickety old frigate, its sails slashed to ribbons, flying no colours, drifts silently through the fog. Those who have seen this ship report ghostly forms in the mist, and a crew of barnacle-covered corpses manning the helm.   Not all whose ships wrecked in the New World are lost at sea forever. Some come back, but different somehow. Changed. They tell rumours of the man who fished them out of the sea after they drowned. A tall, gangly man, his gaunt, rotted face covered in bandages, tufts of red hair sticking out from the withered flesh. A dead man with a dead crew, their guts replaced with coral and molluscs. The captain dances and sings a haunting tune, and offers to return you to port, with a price: join his crew and pledge your soul from now until the sun grows cold.   This figure has many names throughout the world, where he appears in stories as a boogeyman, or the devil himself. His most common epiphet is simply Old Ed, or simply Eddie, captain of The Trooper.