~~The Ambitious Corsair~~
Part I
Gimilthôr was raised in the ancient port city of Umbar, the haven to Gondor’s enemies. His father was a ruthless corsair who sailed the seas and harrowed Gondorian ships. His mother was not soft-hearted either. She relayed the future of sea-faring men through pyromancy, believing that she could see the future in the flames. Naturally, she was a devoted of Sauron’s temple and did not quail at participating in the dark offerings held there. She had portended the death of her husband many times, and sure enough, he drowned at sea shortly after she gave birth. But her son she loved truly and his future she read not in the flames but in the stars, as a fire fell from the sky when he came into the world. That is why she called him Star-child in her tongue.
From a very early age she filled his head with the idea that he was destined to do great things. Of his father she told him little, save that he died at sea. When Gimilthôr asked whether he had left him anything, she gave him a silver and bejeweled medallion with the token of Castamir.
His mother’s daily portends were a constant reminder that he was no ordinary son of a corsair. She told him of all the places he would see in his lifetime and of all the great feats he would accomplish. But when his mother died to an ill-begotten fever, he was left to fuel his own beliefs. One night he asked questions to the flames, and before him unfolded an image of a port city unlike Umbar and of a throne fit for a king. That would be the cause of his conviction that he was not merely destined to become great among the corsairs, but that his fate lay across the sea, and that he would reign over lands and men.
In the following years, he was left to fend for himself in the great city of Umbar. It was a rough existence, where evil men walked the streets and slavers with keen eyes stood watch for strays and vagabonds. But in all their roughness many of them shared a love for the sea. For while deep into the city burned the blazing fires of Sauron’s temples, the harbour was a place where foam-crested waters churned by the bows of slender ships. Here it was that young Gimilthôr began his journey to greatness, scraping off barnacles and scrubbing decks.
