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Date Posted: 10:14:58 11/14/05 Mon
Author: Celebaelin
Subject: Will that be your new destination or your pre-destination?
In reply to: manwitch 's message, "Wesley's good deed" on 09:10:32 11/14/05 Mon

If what you say is true then Wes is not to blame as the prophesy is self fulfilling even though it has been doctored by Sahjhan. Just being written in the scrolls somehow ensures that the events will come to pass. If you believe that the future described in any prophesy is unavoidable then it follows that there is no free-will and we live in a universe constructed entirely as a kind of Newton's Balls plaything by some power beyond our comprehension.

I don't say Wes wasn't responsible for the way things played out but he did what he did with the best of intensions and we don't know what the consequences might have been had he not done so. Returning to an earlier theme briefly in one interpretation the price he paid on a personal level for attempting to thwart the Nyazian scrolls prediction was quite severe, perhaps the affect he had on the way in which prophesy became history was greater than we know.

Incidentally did you know that Roberts was a historical pirate?

This from http://www.unmuseum.org/pirateg.htm

Black Bart Roberts

Bartholomew Roberts (left) was known even in his own day as the "Great Pyrate Roberts" and was the undisputed king of the "Gentlemen of Fortune." He was a handsome, fearless man who loved elegant clothes. Even during battle, he wore a rich crimson waistcoat with breeches and scarlet plumed hat. On his chest he wore a massive gold chain with a jeweled cross that he had liberated while it was on its way to the King of Portugal, for whom it had been designed.

Born in 1682, he began his pirate career at the rather advanced age of 36 when his ship was captured by the pirate Howell Davis. Davis was looking for recruits and took Roberts on board. Roberts, who had been a 2nd mate before joining Davis, learned quickly and when Davis was killed in action a month and a half later, the crew elected Roberts the new Captain.

Roberts immediately took revenge for Davis's death by leveling the Portuguese settlement where Davis had been ambushed. Seeking to further settle the score, he sailed to Brazil and boldly sailed into a Portuguese treasure fleet at anchor. His approach was so brazen the Portuguese didn't realize what was happening until Roberts had boarded the largest vessel: a vice-admiral's forty-gun ship that was packed with valuable goods and 80,000 pounds in gold coins. He made off with it before the warships assigned to guard the convoy could catch him.

Roberts was an unusual pirate in that he was a teetotaler. He also forbid gambling on board and encouraged prayer. Nobody viewed him as weak, though. He assembled a fleet of pirate ships so formidable that naval squadrons sent out to capture him turned back at the sight of his flotilla.

Even with a single ship, Roberts seemed invincible. In June of 1720 he entered Trepassey Bay in Newfoundland with a small ten-gun sloop and a crew of sixty. There were some twenty-two ships at anchor there with 1,200 sailors on board. A the sight of Roberts flag and the sound of his war drums and trumpets, the terror-stricken crews of each of the vessels piled into long boats and rowed for shore.

Roberts plundered and sank twenty-one of the ships. The twenty-second, a large brigantine, he loaded with all the booty and sailed away. When he encountered a flotilla of French ships on his way out of the harbor he attacked and sank all but another brigantine, which he made his flagship, Royal Fortune.

Later in October of that year, Roberts went on a four-day spree in the Caribbean where, according to one official he, "seized, burned or sunk fifteen French and English vessels and one Dutch interloper of forty-two guns..."

Having emptied the Caribbean of most of the treasure there, Roberts sailed onto Africa where he took eleven French, English and Portuguese ships on a single day.

Finally in February of 1722, "Black Bart's" luck finally ran out. The Swallow, a fifty-gun Royal Navy warship caught Roberts' fleet at Parrot Island off the Guinea coast. Roberts, thinking the Swallow was a merchantman, sent one of his ships out to catch it. The Swallow's captain, Chaloner Ogle, lured the pirate vessel out of sight of Roberts' fleet, then sank it.

Five days later the Swallow returned flying a French flag. One of the pirate crew recognized its' true nature, though, and warned Roberts. Robert's first instinct was to run: his crew was hungover from much drinking the night before and not ready for a fight. But then he made the mistake of turning to attack. One of the Swallow's first broadsides killed the pirate captain. Without their fearless leader, the pirate crew lost their nerve and surrendered. Many were executed. The Swallow's captain was knighted.

"Black Bart's" corpse was never found. Following his wishes, the crew, before they were captured, threw his dead body overboard : finery, jewels and all.

A legend I've heard suggests that Roberts was not in fact killed but that, being master navigator, he jumped ship into a little known current that carried him onto the coast of Africa. After that no-one knows, rumours of a treasure hoarde locally are unsubstantiated.

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