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1.

Late Summer 1579

Eastern Pacific (Off modern-day Astoria, Oregon)

The wind was shrieking through the rigging as the ship fought its way in a northerly direction against the tide. Rain swept the deck which was awash in foam as the bow crashed through waves higher than the forecastle.

The Golden Hind had gone farther north even after being becalmed in fog days earlier. The crew had seen it as an omen but Captain Drake had wanted to proceed in hopes of finding better winds for the Pacific crossing that they were planning. That had been merely the latest of the ill omens that had plagued this voyage since the start. They had lost ships in the Atlantic crossing, then there was the execution of Thomas Doughty and the passage around Cape Horn. Only the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hind had made it into the Pacific.

Things had gone well for a while. They had captured a pair of Spanish treasure ships and with them a staggering wealth but that was when they had the classic privateer’s problem, getting back to port to spend it when port was half a world away. Drake had attempted to find one last Spanish ship but had turned north when it failed to materialize. They had landed on a wild shore somewhere north of the area claimed and controlled by the Spanish where they had been able to careen the ship, do necessary repairs and take care of the provisioning.

Then the good time had ended with the fog. The crew was aware of the nearby coastline, that it was a dark and oppressive with trees growing down nearly to the tideline and the storm which had sprung up nearly without warning and the visibility around the ship vanished.

“Land Ho!” Came a cry a cry from the crow’s nest. The crew became aware of the sound of surf crashing ahead of them where it had been to their right before. The heading had not changed, so that meant that the unknown coastline had played a surprise on them. The helmsman attempted to bring the ship about but the wind and tide perversely pushed her in the direction that she had been attempting to make headway in before. The crew fought a desperate battle to save the ship as it skewed around sickeningly in the troughs between the waves. Inch by inch they worked before rounding a cape as the jagged rocks sent sprays of water skyward just a few hundred yards away.

No sooner than they had breathed a collective sigh of relief then the next danger presented itself. The ship was blasted with the full force of the Pacific gale and they were in irons. The wind and current drove the Golden Hind aground in a place that would one day be called Cape Disappointment with the crash of breaking timber as the hull buckled and the masts snapped.

In the hours and days that followed Captain Drake was able to gether as many of his men as he could and as much as he could salvage from the wreck. The issue was that you cannot eat the tons of silver that the ship had been using for ballast and an eighty-pound golden crucifix was worthless so far from civilization. Ironically their best hope was to make their way south through the land they had attempted to claim as Nova Albion just weeks earlier to the Spanish Colonies far to the south, Nueva España by walking overland. They buried the treasure against the day when they might return. A day that never came.

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It was just one more foot note in history. An expedition that disappeared in the New World that was one of many. The Spanish forgot the man who they had dubbed the pirate El Draque. But still rumors persisted that somewhere in the far north, in the land known as California there was fortune in gold and silver that was just there for the taking. While the treasure was never found, that and the English attempt to claim the land inspired several expeditions north into what would one day become California. Behind them came an unknown number of fortune seekers, hoping to find what Spanish military could not. While none of would find pirate treasure they would find a land with wide fertile valleys and a kind climate. That this would lead to the wholesale slaughter of the natives in the region was the sort of thing that happened, no one ever claimed that these men were saints.

While it looked for a time that the region would remain a sparsely populated backwater with an agrarian economy a chance discovery in a place called Calluma changed everything…
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