In-World Songs & Shanties
Original songs and verse written for the Vitas Nova campaign. Use as in-world flavor, tavern performances, bard repertoire, or ambient storytelling.
The Tale of the White Stag
A sea shanty written by gluthoric (2026-04-04). Pirate/maritime context. Thematically connected to Roland Hartbane’s White Stag mystery.
[Spoken, low and slow]
Come close, you salt stained sinners. I have a tale for empty purses and hungry hearts. For every fool who ever swore, “One more voyage, and I am free.”
Hear now the tale of the White Stag, that ghost of horn and moonlit hide, that runs where no beast should run, and leads desperate men to either fortune or ruin.
[Strike the first chord]
Verse 1
We sailed out lean from a rotten pier, with patched black sails and borrowed cheer, a crew half drunk and wholly damned, with debt marks burned on every hand.
Old Verran owed the harbor crown, Black Toma owed three knives in town, our captain owed a widow gold, and I owed years I never told.
The sea was wide, the hold was bare, the wind was mean, the sky unfair, and every man aboard that night had something dark he meant to right.
Chorus
So sing, boys, sing of the White Stag’s run, with silver horns in the midnight sun, through foam and mist and breaker’s rage, he calls the poor from their cage.
Run, White Stag, run through the spray, lead damned men to their reckoning day, for gold may shine and debts may fade, but the sea still keeps the price it’s paid.
Verse 2
On the seventh night the moon burned pale, like a dead man’s coin through shredded veil, when up ahead through the gale and brine we saw those antlers white as shrine.
Not on the shore and not on stone, but on the waves the beast had flown, his hooves struck light on the blackened tide, and all our fear gave way to pride.
“Follow!” cried the captain then, like every doomed and desperate man, for none who owe can stomach sense when hope comes dressed in providence.
We chased that ghost through teeth of reef, through praying fear and drunken grief, till dawn broke red on a hidden bay where wrecks and bones in silence lay.
Chorus
So sing, boys, sing of the White Stag’s run, with silver horns in the midnight sun, through foam and mist and breaker’s rage, he calls the poor from their cage.
Run, White Stag, run through the spray, lead damned men to their reckoning day, for gold may shine and debts may fade, but the sea still keeps the price it’s paid.
Notes
- The White Stag appears as a ghost creature running on water, leading desperate men to “a hidden bay where wrecks and bones in silence lay.” Thematically ambiguous: is the Stag salvation, or a lure to destruction?
- Roland’s father bore the title “the White Stag” and was one of the Thirteen-Verdant-Lords. Amareses may take the form of a white deer. The shanty’s imagery may resonate as in-world myth around that same figure.
- Suitable for The Drowsy Drow or any coastal tavern. Dale would know this one.