Barnacle Bill's "Legend of The Dragon's Eye"

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AND then there are Other Tales -- darker and more fantastic accounts, which suggest The Eye somehow followed Kidd back across the lonely South Atlantic to the heart of the Caribbean Sea…

'THOUGH its present whereabouts remain unknown, the mysterious Dragon's Eye -- fallen star, treasure of priests and emperors, maker and breaker of kingdoms and dynasties -- has long been sought for its mystic, inscrutable powers. Those who have traced its history, and still search for it to this day, believe The Eye to be foremost among the fabulous spoils of Captain Kidd's legendary hidden treasure ~ waiting to be rediscovered ~ and wielded-anew to build the world's next invincible dynasty…

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ON January 30th, 1698, the QUEDAH MERCHANT was seized off the southwestern coast of India by none other than the notorious 'pirate', Captain William Kidd. The Dragon's Eye, the most priceless prize among the merchant ship's opulent spoils, became part of Kidd's booty, and (some accounts from that time relate), the tyrannical captain's most jealously guarded possession. It was rumored to have been lost not long afterward off Madagascar -- the result of a fatal dispute between Kidd and a powerful native Malagasy Shaman at Pirate's Harbor on Isle St. Marie.

IT may have been stolen by an English trader named Welsh, who showed a great interest in The Eye, and appeared to know something about the local peoples' superstitious fear of the odd stone; he was most eager to acquire the medallion, and was regarded at the time as a pirate in his own right in that infamous den of buccaneers. Whether or not he was actually able to acquire the gem from Kidd no one knows...

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AND so, in the late autumn of 1697, The Dragon's Eye was put aboard the 500-ton galleon QUEDAH MERCHANT, a grant East Indiaman leased to Mulkis Khan (a prominent member of the Indian Imperial Court), to be sent round the Indian peninsula to Surat; there to be taken to 'the Peacock Throne', and presented to the Sixth Mogul Emperor, Aurangzeb, to whom it was supposed to bring long life and a magnificent destiny.

BUT The Eye never reached its intended royal recipient...

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THE aged sorceror was trusted by his long-vanished people to keep the strange rock enshrined with him, within a small temple hewn from the volcanic rock on a tiny archipelago ~ all that remained of a once-mighty island nation. Instead of offering any resistance when the brigands seized the medallion from him, The Eye's decrepit guardian appeared greatly relieved (for it seems he could not himself remove it), and, ~ so the story goes ~ the old witch-doctor promptly transformed into a collapsing pillar of dust!

DURING the following decades the fate of The Dragon's Eye was unknown, until an Armenian merchant named Coji Baba learned of its existence from a Calcuttan Trader in Bengal. The Trader was persuaded to act as an intermediary between Coji Baba and the Bhutanese Warlord who by then possessed the ancient medallion, and enjoyed bragging that long ago he had once slain an entire monastery full of Tibetan monks to capture the beguiling gem. Negotiations intensified over a number of years, until The Eye was finally procured for Coji Baba (shortly after the Warlord's abrupt disappearance) by the interceding Trader, who, it was rumored, was distantly-related to the slain monks, and is said to have asked only to touch the stone as his fee…

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ACCORDING to ancient legend, "The Dragon's Eye" is a large, luminous, enticing gemstone set within a finely-wrought golden medallion resembling the head of an Oriental dragon. Possessed of strange magnetic properties strong enough to deflect a ship's compass and interfere with electronic navigational equipment, The Eye is rumored to bestow occult power upon its owner, and has been sought after for centuries by many who would possess its mystic energy to further their own ends.

IT was said that the stone fell from the sky onto an island in the Western Pacific, in a span of ocean sometimes referred to as "The Dragon's Triangle" (the Bermuda Triangle's equally-mysterious counterpart in the Philippine Sea). Local lore held that the island upon which the fiery rock fell soon sank almost entirely into the sea, its surviving inhabitants fleeing forever across the sunward waters to the great land of Madagasgar, in the far western reaches of the Indian Ocean. Malaysian Pirates took the sole remaining fragment of the fallen star from a lone, mad, island sorcerer, whom the nearby sea-roving nomads claimed was "older even than the waves".

Written by J.V. Curtis

"My 'fee', Sah'b...? As I shall at last bring to you this gem you seek -- I ask only to possess it briefly, before parting with it. Nothing more..."

- The request of a Calcuttan Trader, c.1695