Ahoy once again, my fellow pirates! Newly appointed Pirate Legend Captain Blackeye here with a tale of two lovers torn apart by greed and a terrible, body morphing curse. I'm sure that starting statement may tip off most of those who have been playing Sea of Thieves since at least Cursed Sails, but for those that haven't, allow me to explain. And for those of you who are already calling bogus on any sort of romantic relationship in the game, I'll get to that in a moment.
To start, a quick recap of Cursed Sails: One day on the Sea of Thieves, the Golden Sands weaponsmith, Wanda, and her merchent friend Salty, find a sunken cannon belonging to Captain Flameheart himself. The cannon is cursed, but Wanda and Salty believe they can make themselves rich off of it anyways. Experiments proceed, and Wanda begins to absorb the curse first, but she realizes this and betrays Salty, and redirects the rest of the curse into him, transforming him into a talking, skeleton parrot. The brunt of the curse avoided, Wanda continues working with the cannon, but the bit of the curse that affected her continues to change her mind and body, transforming her into the skeletal Captain Warsmith, devoted follower of Captain Flameheart. She arms the regular skeleton crews with cursed cannonballs, and the skeletons unite and build themselves ship. They take their vessels to attack the outposts, but at the same time decide to test their skills against the various pirates of the Sea of Thieves. Meanwhile, parrot-Salty retreats to Crescent Isle, and Warsmith to one of the numerous skeleton ships fleets. Wanda's sister, Wonda, takes over her skelefied sister's job as Golden Sand's resident weaponsmith, and this is where the Cursed Sails event begins. From here you speak to Wonda and Sharon (the shipwright) to begin the Cursed Sails quest, and from there you hunt down Salty, Wanda's journals, and the secret laboratory that Wanda and Salty worked in together as humans.
Great, now that you're all up to date, it's time to dig into Sea of Thieves very first romantic subplot!... If you don't count Alessia St. Marina and Mele Silvertongue from the comics, that is.
To begin, I shall start with the detail that sent me down this crazy rabbit hole to unravel this particularly heartbreaking love story. One day, long after having discovered it for the first time, I was combing through Wanda's unoccupied laboratory to see if I could find any juicy bits of lore. I had turned the place upside down looking for secrets, big and small, and boy was I closer than I thought. Upon examining Salty's forgotten apron for the one-hundredth time, I realized what it was resting on: A bed. But the reason that this bed stood out to me now was the fact that it was a single bed. A twin bed, for that matter.
Now now, don't click away yet, I promise I'm not crazy. The reason for my interest in a single-person bed was because I was almost certain Wanda and Salty both used the laboratory as a second home. Remembering the dialogue of the other outpost inhabitants spread across the Sea of Thieves, I recalled that almost every mention of Wanda includes Salty, and vice versa. Certainly these two were close, but how close? I wasn't sure. Sitting myself down on the bed, I began thinking about just how closely Salty and Wanda must have been.
Firstly, this was the Sea of Thieves. A world in which almost everyone fought for his or her own personal gain. Of course, people often worked together, but I've seen plenty of solid friendship sink when large amounts of coin are presented. Wanda and Salty had been telling everyone they had hit the big time, as in they were going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Right here, it was clear that Wanda and Salty were extremely close friends to stick together and plan to split the loot they would be receiving for their work with Flameheart's cannon.
Secondly, their base of operations. Wanderer's Refuge is close to Golden Sands, yes, but if they returned their every night then they wouldn't need a bed in their laboratory. And then, wouldn't they need separate beds? Or at least a larger bed, so that they could sleep comfortably? They'd be pre-e-etty close together on that single-person bed. Hmmmm....
Yes, this fact solidifies my belief that Wanda and Salty weren't just close friends, but lovers.
"But Blackeye!" The haters rage, "Wanda turned on Salty! Cursed him into a bloody parrot, she did! Salty wants 'er iced as well!" Yes, but the game itself gives the answer to those points.
Located on Mermaid's Hideaway, Sunken Grove, and Thieves' Haven are Wanda's three lost journals. Within them you can read a grand total of six entries, not unlike Merrick's journals before them. The brief entries show Wanda's slow dive into insanity, and tell how she betrayed Salty and cursed him into his current undead avian form. But it is here that you must pay attention to how the entries themselves are written. While Wanda is sane, she writes normally and clearly, but as she slowly loses her stable mentality her writing becomes much more grammatically incorrect and verbally lacking. This starts at about the time when she first writes about her idea to redirect the curse afflicting her onto Salty. Seeing as how strong curses can be (as shown in "Tales from the Sea of Thieves", poor Flameheart), it's easy to believe that Wanda's mind was remade much sooner than her body. Salty wouldn't have been able to notice the subtle changes, and remained unaware. Her mind tainted by Flameheart's curse, she turned on her partner and doomed him to a life of vocal repetition and incessant parrot-stereotypings.
"But wouldn't Salty have something to say about this?" The doubters scoff. Well... No. You see, Salty doesn't remember a single detail of the event!... Not on his own, anyways. Upon jogging his memories with clues from the journals, you remind him of Wanda's betrayal and... That's about it. He only remembers his ill turn of fate and the discovery of the cannon itself. Nothing before, nothing between, and nothing after. So, with the lone knowledge of somebody nearly killing him, of course he'd want the misled Wanda dead. Anyone would if they only knew bad things about her!
Next up, the apron. Looking through Wanda's shop, this is the only remnant of Salty that you find. No tools, no clothes, nothing else. To explain this, I simply say "Love conquers all".
"That's it, Blackeye's lost it." No, please, stay with me. If the love between Salty and Wanda was true, I don't think a skeleton curse would break it down so easily. While she might have thrown out all of Salty's other belongings, Warsmith may have kept the apron because of its smell. Skeletons in this game can talk, see, hear, and taste, so why in the world shouldn't they be able to smell? For those of you in relationships with a special someone, you may know of that inexplicable attraction to one another's scent. It's a mysterious development, but it certainly means something... For some reason. I'll understand this game's entire lore before I understand love. ^_^'
That said, this alone could be the reason that Wanda/Warsmith kept the apron even after she cursed Salty out of his human form. And where did the apron go after Cursed Sails ended? Salty didn't take it, as he had returned to the lab to retrieve it, only to find it gone. And what else was removed from the lab? The base of Flameheart's cannon, that's what.
Who on all of the seven seas would be gutsy/stupid enough to take the potentially-cursed base of a definitely-cursed cannon? A skeleton captain come to retrieve what she believes is hers, perhaps? If this lines up with what I said in the previous two paragraphs, then that would explain the disappearance of the apron as well: Upon returning to reclaim the base of the cannon, Captain Warsmith spots the apron lying on the bed. A tingle in the back of her undead mine tells her that she needs it just as much as the base of the cannon, so she takes it without really knowing why. And yes, Warsmith is still out there. Wonda mentions that somebody reported spotting Captain Warsmith going down with her ship, so she is most definitely still at large. As for Salty, he currently resides in his and Wanda's laboratory, struggling to maintain what little humanity he has left.
This is where their story ends for now, and I honestly feel incredibly sorry for both of them. Salty, for having been turned on and his memory wiped clean, and Wanda for betraying her lover and unable to comprehend what she had done. If there is a single piece of lore I want confirmation from Rare about, it's this one. Were they truly in love with each other? Is Wanda hanging on to her last shred of humanity by the threads of Salty's apron? Will these two ever reconcile their mistakes and restore their relationship? Perhaps we will receive these answers in the future, but for now... We can only hope.
