The Reapers/Servants Split
While I was sailing on my new brig, Arkay’s Fang, and customizing it to look like a representative of the Reaper’s Bones, I noticed that Bacxaber was running around with his Skeleton curse on. Mostly because we’d done a couple of Sea Forts with the newest Stormcloud recruit, and we didn’t want the new guy to get confused by Bacxaber’s normal Ghost-curse-wearing self. The Skeleton Curse is a reward for reaching rank 100 with the Servants of the Flame, one of the two Hourglass PvP-only factions, the other being the Guardians of Fortune. Now, I don’t do Hourglass PvP because my respawn times are simply too slow due to gaming on a laptop, and in Hourglass, every moment spent dead is just flat out bad, since you can’t just run away in a bid to recover. But the Servants of the Flame are a separate faction. Sure, you need to be rank 75 with the Reaper’s Bones and level 100 with the Servants to access the secret hideout and get the Skeleton Curse, but they are different factions. Still, lore-wise, they’re kinda supposed to be the same thing.
But this doesn’t make much sense.
Okay, before we start, a quick SoT lore recap. The Sea of Thieves is currently maintained by the Pirate Lord, a guy called Ramsey, and he makes sure that the majority of the factions (Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, Merchants Alliance, Bilge Rats/Sea Dogs, Hunter’s Call, Athena’s Fortune and Guilds/the Sovereigns) all live in harmony and peace and shit like that. However, the evil bastard known as Captain Flameheart wants to take over the Sea of Thieves and turn everyone into his own personal army. And, technically, LeChuck from the Monkey Island Tall Tales, also wanted the same thing, but we killed him. But Flameheart was killed and imprisoned or some bullshit like that, and an overarching story point is that people have been trying to bring him back, he’s been successfully resurrected and he’s just waiting for the right moment to strike. In the mean time, the Reaper’s Bones have been a bit of a front for the Servants of the Flame, funneling in resources to keep Captain Flameheart afloat.
The problem is, doing so goes completely against the tenets of the Reaper’s Bones.
The Servants of the Flame are exactly that, the servants of Captain Flameheart. Most Servants are kinda just mindless skeletons, but Flameheart also has a lot of mindless ghosts under his control as well. The reward for reaching rank 100 with the Servants of the Flame is the ability to become a skeleton yourself. Although, weirdly, the Ashen Curse is probably more important, because Flameheart has a fuckton of skeleton servants already, and becoming an Ashen Lord (which the Ashen Curse is a precursor to) is a much bigger feat. Either way, you end up being a servant to Flameheart, and as far as he’s concerned, you’re just a pawn to be used. He doesn’t give two shits about anyone apart from himself and maybe Sarwan, his adopted kid.
But that goes completely against the tenets of the Reaper’s Bones. The whole point of the Reaper’s Bones is that they reject the Pirates’ Code, the Pirate Lord’s little paradise, they want pirates to be cold and ruthless and pirate-y. The Reaper’s Bones’s tenets state that only the best and brightest should survive, that only the strongest, smartest pirates should win, and that absolute freedom is the most important part of being a pirate. They reject Ramsey because he acts like and looks like a king, not a pirate.
That last statement though is completely at odds with Flameheart and his practices. No one is free when it comes to Flameheart. Everyone serves him. Flameheart wishes to be a king, to rule over the Sea of Thieves. You can’t really represent the Reaper’s Bones and be a Servant of the Flame at the same time. Well, in-game, you 100% can, but lore-wise and logically, these are opposing ideas, they shouldn’t be able to co-exist.
Unfortunately, it’s all kinda moot now. Rare have been retconning a lot of their early lore, to the point that the Reapers are now just part of Flameheart. It’s a shame really, because I feel you could do something cool with the whole Reaper’s Bones/Servants of the Flame schism. A pirate civil war perhaps, where those who genuinely want freedom strike out on their own or something.
Until then though, I guess I’ll stick with playing as a Reaper. I just find it the most fun emissary to represent. But at the same time, I’ll be avoiding Hourglass, until I can get a computer that actually allows me to respawn within a reasonable amount of time…