Every cannon she fired was on target, every duel she fought wasa victorious, and every course she plotted led unerringly to treasure.

To some, Aranessa is the daughter of the sea god Manann himself, with brine for blood.

To others, she is a mutant who cut off her own fishtail after being cast out of her Norscan tribe as a child.

What cannot be denied, whatever her origins may be, is that her skill at the helm or with a cutlass is such that none can dispute her lethality in battle.

Rumour has it she is the daughter of the sea god Manann himself; that she rose fully grown out of the waves in a froth of gore, and that saltwater flows through her veins instead of blood.

What is known beyond doubt is that Aranessa is as merciless as the ocean.

She has sailed to the ends of the world and back again through the most violent of tempests and emerged unharmed.

There is no warmth in her soul, and she has no love for Man.

Only the open ocean and the glitter of gems can make her scowl melt, but as her scurvy crew maintains, on the occasions she deigns to smile, it is like the coming of a new dawn.

Aranessa was born into the ruling family of Skjold, a coastal settlement of the Norscans.

The chieftain, a proud warrior king in need of a strong successor; was not pleased at all to find that his pregnant wife had delivered him a daughter instead of a son.

Worse still the infant had been borne a mutant - her conjoined legs were scaled and twisted into a grotesque fan of spined flesh below the knee.

Before the sun had set, the mewling babe was hurled from the tallest cliffs to be drowned by the pitiless sea.

Suckled and cared for by these lythe ocean spirits, Aranessa grew strong upon a diet of gymmcrab, algae and cold black kelp.

Before her tenth year Aranessa was spear-fishing for sharks, fanged rays and mermanticores.

Her shell-decorated cave became cluttered with gifts from the sea that washed up with each new dawn.

Bright-eyed, the child Aranessa absorbed every scrap of knowledge to be gleaned from the well-appointed ships that had mysteriously come to her.

Numbed by rum and with teeth gritted, she amputated her strange lower legs with a sharpened cutlass, and cauterized the wounds herself without so much as a whimper.

Aranessa had already fashioned replacement legs from the jagged blades of sawfish, and bound them tight to her ragged leg-stumps with leather belts that she found in the captains quarters of a rich merchant galleon.

Constantly cleansing her wounds with saltwater, it was less than a week before Aranessa was able to walk.

A scowl etched on her beautiful features, she ventured out into the open seas upon an intact rowing boat that had washed up on her beach.

Before three nights had passed she was picked up by a roving pirate galleon, the Swordfysh.

Daily she climbed into the rigging, and thereupon into the crows nest, where over the coming weeks she more than proved her worth as a sharp-eyed lookout.

She absorbed all there was to know about the art of sailing like a sea-sponge, rising through the ranks of the Swordfyshs crew with ease.

Pirates Of Sartosa Miniatures