Making of Zeki's Treasure Map
Frank just didn't brew a deck, he built a story that includes a deck, a treasure map and the tale of Zeki, the fearsome reef pirate. On the left you can see the process of making the map that tells the story of the deck.
Step 1 - Make liters of tea and coffee
Step 2 - Burn the edges of the treasure map to be
Step 3 - Soak the paper in a tub full of coffee and tea
Step 4 - Looking for inspiration
Step 5 - Sketch the outline with pencil
Step 6 - Add details with pencil
Step 7 - Trace with fineliner
Step 8 - GET THE RUM!!!
Step 9 - Make and submit the deck picture
Zeki's Revenge
This deck tells the story about Zeki, fearsome reef pirate. Pictured is his desk on his famous ship, the Serafina. How he got to be captain of the ship and it’s undead crew is the stuff of legends.
Afraid of becoming just a minor hero of the Homelands (or worse, becoming fill for flavour text boxes) Zeki decides to stop battling dwarven sea clans, and to set sail for greater glory. He takes his crew on the adventure of a lifetime: the hunt of the Serafina, eaten by the waves decades ago during darker times.
In a shady corner of an inn at the port of An-Havva, he first met captain Soll, who knew about the Serafina, it’s treasure and it’s cursed crew. When he asked what happened to the Serafina, all the captain said was ‘Ships that go down, shouldn't come back up’.
After some persuation and a sip of rum, the captain tells how the ship met its end. ‘The Serafina was famous for its ability to through storms and rocky seas, it was almost as if it navigated itself. It went down due to seasingers – merfolk who lured the crew with their songs to the coral reefs and then the ship to the bottom of the sea.
Captain Soll has the wreck location on an old and dirty map… Intrigued, Zeki decides to buy it and shells out some dimes for the old captain. When walking away, Zeki notes that the captains parrot mumbles an old little rhyme: ‘To take the ship that split the storm, a man should brave the sea like Orm’.
He hires a crew of merfolk assassins and a barge in the port, to navigate through the coral reef. After a long search, they find the wreck but come to a disappointing conclusion: the ship is visible through the azure waters, but too deep to reach. There is something missing…. Then Zeki remembers the parrot, it’s rhyme and the fate of Orm who lost his schooner, drowned and whose skull became a magical artifact. Zeki decides that the only way to reach the Serafina is to do the unthinkable… to shipwreck himself!
The rest is history. When Zeki touched the water while his barge went down, the old wreck of the Serafina came to life to serve its new master. With his phantom prow and undead crew, he became the scourge of the seven seas and merrily looted and plundered ever after.