axel's crest publishing

In the year 1692, the Jamaican town of Port Royal shone as both the jewel of the burgeoning English Empire, and as the epicentre of piracy during buccaneering’s Golden Age. On June 7th of that year, at just after 11:40am, the ground beneath Port Royal’s loot-littered dockyards and rum-soaked streets began to tremble. Before the noon bell had struck, the renowned ‘Sodom of the New World’ shook, shattered, and sank beneath the waves.

One week prior, on the evening of June 1st, Lieutenant Robert Glaswen arrives at the port’s notorious northern docks and begins his dogged search for the kidnapped daughter of a powerful English lord, and for the Dutch pirate-captain who seeks to ransom her.

Though more than sure of his own abilities, the brooding lieutenant soon finds that hunting for one particular vermin in the king of all rat’s-nests is no easy task, even after the governor offers him the talents of back-alley informant and aspiring actor, Aleister Twilling.

As the poorly paired duo struggles to survive the port as much as each other, they venture ever deeper into the gunsmoke-filled taverns and bloody back rooms of the devil’s own anchorage. Yet despite their best efforts and the help of some most-unlikely allies, their chances of finding the pirate crew and their young captive only seem to dim by the hour, here, in a town that bets its soul upon the patronage and protection of cutthroats.

And all the while, the rumbling promise of what’s to come grows ever stronger, just beneath their feet . . .