🍺⚓ Mason the Chatty – The sailor from Red Bay no one believes

In every port, there is someone capable of telling a story.

In Red Bay, there is someone capable of telling fifty.

His name is Mason.

To his friends, he is simply Mason.

To the inhabitants of the port, he is:

Mason the Chatterbox.

The problem is not that Mason tells lies.

The problem is knowing when he is telling the truth.

 

⚓ Who is Mason?

Mason is a young sailor from Red Bay and one of the characters we meet in the second adventure of Instinctive Platypus.

When Platypus enters the port bar, it is Mason who is telling the others the story of the Kraken.

He does it so well that Platypus thinks he really believes it.

Instead, as soon as he finishes...

Mason bursts out laughing.

For him, the Kraken is by now just an old story.

 

😂 The joker of Red Bay

Mason has become famous above all for his tales.

Once, he supposedly told of catching a fish so big that...

the fish had caught him.

Another time, he swore he had found an island that only appeared on Tuesdays.

The problem?

It was Wednesday.

He told of seeing a seagull steal a boat.

Of playing cards with a crab.

And of meeting a sailor capable of breathing underwater.

When they asked him for the sailor's name, Mason replied:

“I don't know. We were underwater, we couldn't talk.”

Since then, practically no one takes his stories seriously.

 

🐙 But Mason knows the legend very well

The curious thing is that Mason knows the legend of the Kraken better than almost anyone else.

He knows where it was supposedly spotted.

He knows the old stories.

He even knows Jeff, the only fisherman who claims to have actually seen the creature.

It is Mason who explains to Platypus that Jeff has practically abandoned his job to dedicate himself to searching for the Kraken.

Yet Mason doesn't believe him.

Or at least...

he says he doesn't believe him.

 

👀 Mason's little secret

Here arises one of our favorite legends about Red Bay.

It is said that as a child, Mason saw something in the sea.

One evening he was sitting on the pier when he saw a gigantic shadow slowly crossing the water.

Then something red appeared.

Mason ran home.

The next day he told everything.

Naturally, no one believed him.

So Mason did what he did best:

he turned fear into a joke.

Since then, he tells the legend of the Kraken while laughing.

Perhaps because he really doesn't believe in it anymore.

Or because admitting he believes in it would mean remembering what he saw that night.

 

🦷 The day Mason stopped laughing

When Platypus and Jeff return from their expedition, however, everything changes.

They don't just return with a story.

They bring proof, photographs, and even a tooth of the Kraken.

And Mason, along with the other inhabitants, apologizes to Jeff.

We imagine Mason completely motionless in front of that tooth.

For once...

with nothing to say.

It seems it lasted about eleven seconds.

Absolute record for Red Bay.

Then he supposedly asked:

“Can I say that I was with you?”

Jeff supposedly replied:

“No.”

 

🍺 Mason will keep telling stories

Probably yes.

In fact, after Platypus’s arrival, his stories will have become even more incredible.

Only now, the inhabitants of Red Bay have a problem.

Before, they could simply say:

“Mason, that is impossible.”

But after discovering that the Kraken really exists...

they aren't so sure anymore.