This week for Magic Mondays we give you the must-have array for any pirate and privateer.
This week we give you the Seawalker array.
Notation: (Sustain the) Stop Water of a size ten thousand times the area of the array if the array’s area of effect is completely filled with Water.
Description: To kill two birds with one stone one often needs either a very large stone or two very small birds, with both options being preferable. However, it seems more likely than not that it comes down to pure chance and godly luck whenever one does manage to kill two birds with one stone. And that is precisely what happened with the Seawalker array. Designed by Shae “Seawalker” McGuinness, this array was originally intended only to help pirates, privateers and other naval-ne’er-do-wells board other ships in order to raid and ravage whatever was on board. While it does this admirably, Shae Seawalker’s array also accidentally became one of the most well known and often used arrays for damaging enemy ships. Two birds, one stone, and one legendary pirate.
The Seawalker does all this simply by stopping time for any water it touches. Since time is now stopped for water, and only water, it becomes more solid than rock and tougher than the hardiest diamond. It is not impervious, however, for as soon as the array’s effects wear off, everything that was done to the water (whether it was the boots slapping across it, ships ramming into it, or cannonballs bouncing off it) will have their effects happen instantaneously and simultaneously. That is why stopping time for humans may make it look like your friend is bullet proof, until time starts again and you have an unfortunate mess on your hands.
This time stopping effect is not only grand for creating solid land beneath a pirate’s food to run across to an enemy boat, but under the right circumstances, the array can trap and cage entire ships. A regular cannonball is anything from 10cm to 20cm across which means the volume of water stopped by this array can be 100 cubic metres to 200 cubic metres. If a skilled gunner lands that cannonball right next to a ship, it will freeze time for all the water around it, as if the ship was suddenly trapped inside an iceberg. Even if the gunner has had one rum too many that morning, a 100 cm metre time frozen block of water is stronger than any iceberg and less than half as visible. Many a ship had been sunk by accidentally running into these invisible time-icebergs.
You will find plenty of Seawalker inscribed cannonballs on every pirate and privateer vessel, yet lately the military have taken a keen interest in this array. They care not for the ability board enemy vessels, as they prefer to blast them to merry hell instead, but rather they focus on its ability to trap ships, which they have been using far too regularly on fleeing pirate and privateer vessels; far too regularly, that is, for those pirates and privateers.