Elwin McGhee/IF-1667
Rumor / Community LoreThis article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community. It is just one of many Rumors that we've found in the Interdimensional Rumor Mill. You can find more Rumors about Elwin McGhee at their Rumor Registry.
The waters beyond this point are uncharted, tales from distant shores echoed back into our reality.
Background
The following accounts can be traced to a single leather-bound journal originally found in a locked wooden chest alongside a sextant-like device of indeterminate origin and a shell that matches no known species of mollusc. The chest was located in a storage room in the Legscraper’s lower levels that was described as “smelling faintly of the sea”. Subsequent attempts to locate and navigate to said room have been unsuccessful thus far. The journal details the exploits of the crew of a large sailing vessel, The Tokyo Adrift, descriptions of which are largely consistent with mid-17th century galleons.
With The Tokyo Adrift
Elwin McGhee is the nickname given by the crew of The Tokyo Adrift to a collection of assorted pests found aboard the vessel. McGhee was first discovered after the ship suffered heavy damage over several weeks due to infestations of shipworms and wood-boring beetles. The ship’s quartermaster first discovered heavy damage to the masts and ration storage of the ship, followed by Immateria flooding in the lower decks. Over the weeks, various methods were employed to deal with the pests but to no avail. Captain Strongbody, exasperated, said that he had yet to encounter a problem he could not reason with and headed down to the lower decks calling for a parley. Hours later, Strongbody emerged from the lower decks accompanied by a bipedal insectoid individual who was subsequently named Elwin by the crew.
McGhee and Captain Strongbody came to some form of agreement, the terms of which the journal’s writer was not privy to. However, following the parley, Elwin had been seen to join the crew during meal times where they were provided scrap timber and driftwood. Elwin was also described as helping the crew with the exploration of shipwrecks, utilising their shipworm colonies to bore through the hulls of sunken ships.
Visual descriptions of the exoskeleton are similar to modern day descriptions of ship-timber beetles of the Lymexylidae family, albeit an unusually large specimen. Housed within the external shell were colonies of beetles and shipworms. The writer was unable to get a clear answer from Elwin as to where they obtained the unnaturally large outer husk, though they did report amused chittering echoing from within the shell.
The final pages of the journal mention the discovery of McGhee's empty husk, the hivemind of organisms within having scattered. Whether this change was a natural migration or a side effect of the anomalous weather patterns leading up to the [REDACTED] of 1667 is unclear as the pages are heavily damaged, likely having been chewed through by the larvae of some species of insect.
