Book of Corsair Myths and Legends

[Madvillain]

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How our people regained the ability for space travel, and even built large fleets, is shrouded in mystery. However, many legends about prehistoric flight remain in our culture.

One legend tells of a Corsair named Icarus, son of the well-known dairy farmer and cheese maker, Daedalus. Daedalus, like many Corsairs, had a fondness for gold, which was, and still is, the most common form of currency on Crete. Business was going poorly, as many people fell ill from eating his cheese. Then, one uneventful day, a strange comet fell from the sky onto his herds’ grazing lands.

Glaring at the sky and asking the gods for a solution, Daedalus became firmly convinced that the nearby planet Cella Dor was made entirely out of gold. Because Daedalus had fallen from an olive tree during his youth, he suffered from severe height anxiety. This would not stop him, for he had a son who was just lazing around all day.

Crete, in the centuries after the ancestors of the Hispania made planetfall, was scarce in basic resources. The shuttles they had landed in long ago were now gone, scavenged for building materials. Wars had been fought over these technical relics, and naturally, they were out of reach for poor Daedalus.

If he was going to construct a shuttle to fly all the way to Cella Dor and back with loads of gold, he would carve it out of unsold cheese, symbolizing his dream colliding with harsh reality. He would then drag it to the nearby space elevator. In those times, the space elevator served two functions: ritual sacrifice to please the gods and waste disposal.
Daedalus decided to combine the two. If the gods would truly appreciate his offering of Icarus and his unsold cheese, his son would surely return from space with the gold.

For many months, Daedalus worked on his shuttle, preparing Icarus for the journey ahead. He thought of everything: a cow leather outer hull, a sail made of cow hides to catch the wind, and a rudder made of bone and cheese—the whole deal.

Time flew by, and the moment arrived. It was a bright and sunny day at the space elevator. Behind Daedalus, Icarus, and the cheese shuttle, there was a long line of people with litter and offerings. Some were throwing rocks and yelling at them to hurry up, but Daedalus took his time giving Icarus instructions. “Icarus, son of Daedalus, you will please the gods and bring me all the gold you can carry!” the father yelled, just before an impatient Corsair pushed the launch button.

With astonishing speed, Icarus took flight.

Under the massive air pressure, his shuttle quickly shifted into a leather-coated ball of melted cheese, with bones and Icarus inside. This is how Icarus became the first post-Hispania Corsair to travel in space. He also became the first post-Hispania Corsair to spend roughly a year in space.

Scholars calculated that Icarus’s flight path went straight through the sun’s corona towards Cella Dor, affected by its gravity, and curved back to Crete. It finally crashed down, ironically, near the same space elevator from which it had launched.

This couldn’t have happened at a better time. Another famine had broken out, and the village was hungry. Properly cooked from his space journey, Icarus’s cheesy remains fed the people for months, bringing wealth to Daedalus, who was promptly called upon to be the new village elder.

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