It's a tough life being a pirate. While lucrative, it's a dangerous and highly illegal life. But there's other hardships that are less talked about. In society's eyes, you are truly the lowest of the low. Any connections you may have had before are severed. For all but the most grizzled of cutthroats, a new terror dawns. As a pirate you come to know loneliness as you've never known it before.

Now, you meet plenty of people, but a vast proportion are only there to be captured and sold. So it leads many to close themselves off, which might make the problem better or worse. Some turn to the crew for companionship. But for Vurga? He's a Lopp. His kind are naturally sociable and rarely fully criminal. He rarely meets another of his kind in the underworld, so it's difficult for him to find a meaningful relationship with someone who understands his natural cheer.

But there are plenty of Lopp slaves! It may seem unlikely that a slave would ever want to be friends with someone who stripped them of their freedom and likely plans to sell them. And that's because it is unlikely. In fact, it's near impossible that any slave would want to do more than cower or run. But on the other hand, they don't have a choice. When faced with the promises of gentle treatment if they behave, Vurga's daunting strength if they don't and cuffs to keep them from running, there's not much a captive Lopp can do when Vurga decides that he wants a new friend.

But just look at that face! And Vurga even got him a balloon. Who knows, maybe there's a bit of decency left in Vurga and all he needs is someone there for him.

Art by  jerberjer