Tales from the Tavern

Biography

Axel was born unto an impoverished family on the outskirts of a small port town known as Elismere, in the year 1507. When asked of his boyhood, he stated, "When I was a lad, we were so poor, thieves would break into our hovel and leave things. We were so broke we could only afford rickets in one leg." Indeed, life around the hovel was hard, and Axel did not make it any easier by trying to help out. He says, "As a child I was quite useless. I could not do anything right, and fixing the hole in...

Axel was born unto an impoverished family on the outskirts of a small port town known as Elismere, in the year 1507. When asked of his boyhood, he stated, "When I was a lad, we were so poor, thieves would break into our hovel and leave things. We were so broke we could only afford rickets in one leg."

Indeed, life around the hovel was hard, and Axel did not make it any easier by trying to help out. He says, "As a child I was quite useless. I could not do anything right, and fixing the hole in my father's favorite seat was a classic example... it turned out to be the toilet seat! I did try though, but the only thing I ever fixed around the house was the cat.. and that was an accident!"

Axel's story is a woeful one, fraught with misfortune. Because money was tight, food scarce, and good times nonexistent, Axel decided to leave his hovel, family, and friends (actually, it was just one friend, the village idiot, who had multiple personalities and psychotic tendencies). And so with an empty burlap sack and the rags on his back, Axel set off for adventure in the realm of England. Axel knew that his luck would finally change -- and it did. For the worse.

On the very night that Axel ran away from home, whilst wandering by the bay, he was abducted by a band of pirates. Though he fought valiantly, (if you can call crying and begging for mercy valiant) the lad was hopelessly outnumbered. He was knocked unconscious (the pirates were really sick of his crying and begging for mercy), and taken aboard their ship.

For four long and torturous years, the pirates kept Axel as their lackey. They treated him like a dog, and hardly a day would go by that he wasn't flogged. In an exclusive interview, Axel spoke of his time with the pirates. "Aye, these pirates were mean. They were the kind of men that would throw a drowning man both ends of the rope. Why, they would stab you in the back and then have you arrested for carrying a concealed weapon."

Life was hard for Axel, but as the years passed, he discovered that the more he would sing and tell jokes, the more the crew would laugh and stop hitting him so much. They even let him join in on their pirate games, like Axel throw, or bobbing for dorsal fins. And, while Axel was being dangled over the side of the ship for the third round of Dorsalbob, he dreamed of the day he would escape to greater things...


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