They speak of him in hushed tones, in ports swallowed by fog and taverns clinging to the edge of the map. He's a ghost of scale and shadow, known only as Captain Skarrus.
Before the world knew time, before the continents had names, there was Skarrus. He was a monarch of destruction. His roar split the burning ground, while his shadow scattered the winged titans above. His reign was forged not in strategy, but in brute strength - all fang, tail, and earth-shaking steps. But even the mightiest beast is no match for time. The comets came. Fire rained. Oceans devoured land. And in a final breath of ash, the age of titans was swallowed by silence.
Or so the scholars say.
But sailors - the ones who've seen too much and lived too long - whisper another tale. They say Skarrus did not die. That as the final embers of his world fell into the sea, he vanished into a hidden trench. A hollow deep beneath the sea, abandoned by both clocks and currents. Where time curls in quiet loops, refusing to die.
And when he emerged, it was not in flesh, but in fossil. His skull, now weathered bone, wore a battered pirate hat tilted against the wind. His voice was the crack of thunder over dark waves. He no longer roamed the jungle - he captained a vessel.
They call it the Extinction, a ship cobbled together from the bones of beasts long lost and the wreckage of ships foolish enough to chase him. His crew is just as strange. They are creatures pulled from the dark corners of time - prehistoric souls with barnacled skin, coral limbs, and voices like grinding stone. Some say he plucked them from the ocean floor. Others believe they're echoes of those who drank too deeply from his barrels and were changed.
This is because Captain Skarrus does not hoard gold. He distills secrets. He brews temptation. His treasure is a rum brewed beneath volcanos that no longer exist, aged in barrels sealed with amber and time. A spirit so rich, so dark, so otherworldly - it doesn't just burn the throat, it rewrites the soul.
They call it Lost World Rum.
It never stays long in one port. It arrives with a storm and vanishes leaving a thick fog. The taste? Smoky. Ancient. With a bite that remembers being hunted. It draws you in with warmth, but somewhere deep in the flavor is something feral. Something that doesn't quite belong to this world. To drink was to dream of jungles never charted, of stars no longer in the sky, of a world that once was...and might be again.
But every story has a warning.
No one drinks Lost World Rum twice. Once you've had your taste, the pull begins - a whisper in the blood, a longing in the marrow. Sailors vanish chasing it. Cartographers go mad mapping the tides it follows. And those who survive the bottle say that, at the very bottom, carved into the wood of the cask, lies a single warning:
Last Call Before Extinction.
So if the sea calls to you after a single sip - and you dream of waves older than Earth - don't resist.
You're not being haunted.
You're being returned...to the Lost World.