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This article contains spoilers from The Lost Stories
This article contains spoilers



Moondarkers are a type of criminal wrecker who set out to try and sink ships and steal their cargo. A organised group of Moondarkers simply known as "The Moondarkers" appear in the story 'Purple Prose' in Ranger's Apprentice: The Lost Stories under the leadership of an unnamed leader, but were later brought to justice by Will Treaty, Halt O'Carrick and the town watch of Hambley. Moondarkers usually raid on the night of the new moon, hence the name 'Moondarkers'.

Methods[]

Their method of sinking ships is to wait till the darkness of the new moon, then light a false beacon and fires before a rising landscape which can successfully imitate a town with a harbour, on a dangerous stretch of beach, normally close enough to a town that passing ships will mistake it for their destination

The ships subsequently will come sail unknowingly onto the hull-spearing rocks the Moondarkers near-always position themselves behind, finding themselves beached or sunk. In the case of the former, the Moondarkers promptly rush onboard and most often massacre any survivors that remain onboard and steal the cargo before escaping into the night. Should the ship break and sink, the Moondarkers will instead simply wait for the tide to sweep the contents onto the stretch of beach they are occupying, though if such an even happen, the wreckers run the risk of some of the plunder being swept out to see. Any shipwrecked survivors who sprawl panting upon the sand after striking out for the dark shore are finished off by the remorseless moondarkers, who dispose of the bodies and any exidence of a intended wrecking before disappearing.

The kinds of poor villages where Moondarkers normally work usually are to terrified to report their presences to any of authority or even welcome it, for Moondarker gangs only take anything portable and valuable to sell in the criminal market, leaving resources useless to them but greatly welcomed as invaluable by the poor villagers who have very little, such as timber, cordage, fishing nets, casks of dried food, canvas, metal fittings and oil, to the tender mercies of the locals. Subsequently, Moondarkers, who change location after one or two operations, are near-impossible to locate.

In Purple Prose, when Will and Halt receive word that a group of organised Moondarkers are operating in Araluen in an area near Celtica, working their way down the coastline, the two Rangers set out to stop them, knowing that the Moondarker's next target is a small town named Hambley. They are foiled by the two rangers who use a dye which can be thrown into the fire to alert the people aboard the ship.

History[]

Before the Ranger Corps were reformed by Halt and Crowley, Moondarkers were a scourge upon Araluen, but once Crowley and Halt appeared on the scene they experienced the consequent wrath of not only the law but the two Rangers. As Halt said to Will: "You can still find their graves along the coast here".

After the Corps were reformed, most Moondarkers moved away from Araluen and focused their attention on Gallica and Sonderland instead, seeing easier pickings in those countries.

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