A Thousand Ships

23rd of the moon umber

We’ve refitted the ship and named it the “Good Hope”. We sail off, and near sunset we’re passed at undoubted speed by a small black painted black sailed courier ship, flying strazi military courier flags.

A few days later, it gets very stormy. The sky turns green. Something’s funny. Wind and waves say the storm’s coming from the north, but the glowering dark green sky says it’s directly ahead. We start scanning the horizons for an island. Jess spots one to the south. We run ahead of the wind toward it quickly. It’s minute, but it’s land. There’s a chimney visible somewhere on it. We take the sails down and anchor. Rannon stays to mind the ship while the rest of us explore. The beach has a fair amount of driftwood, mostly bits of planking. He steps into the trees to light his lantern. Lots of bones. Small animals and birds, mostly, but lots of them. The sky starts to get much much darker in the west, which is not where we’d seen the storm coming from before. A huge black cloud moving across the wind. We go back to the ship. It’s hundreds upon thousands of seabirds all coming in to roost on the island. Nanda reckons they just need somewhere to stop and this is the nearest island in the open sea. Rannon says that works for some of them, but not the albatrosses.

The wind picks up another two levels in seconds. The rocking proceeds to get more violent inside the ship. Then something goes “thunk” against the hull outside. Vasco checks it out. A pair of rats are making their sodden way across the deck. There are 30 rats scaling the ship, crossing the deck and hopping onto the island. They just keep coming. Nanda goes to a railing. The sea is full of animals. The rats are the only ones well equipped enough to climb. The others are swimming around the ship, and the thump on the hull was a full sized sheep. Vasco tries to lassoo it but it’s eventually swept around. Then another thunk is a stag, which succeeds in swimming around the hull.

Nanda comes back down and tells the rest of us. We stare in disbelief. Jess goes to check himself. It’s still going on, though starting to die down. Vasco opens a window and grabs a rat, which struggles and tries to get to the door (not back out the window.) He drops it and it scuttles for the door, eventually squeezing itself into the corner. Nanda lets it out.

Lightning, and thunder crashes almost immediately. There’s lightning every few seconds for some minutes, and the thunder is constant - until it just stops. The wind is starting to die away as well. Vasco goes back on top, where the rain is now a light drizzle, and stares at the island. Eventually the clouds break, and it’s still daytime - just before sunset. On the island is no sign of any animals.

We can see the edge of a grey stone chimney between the trees. Well, let’s go check it out, that’s a sensible thing to do.

We approach the building. In the inner part of the building is a shaft that goes straight down into the floor. Vasco reckons there’s a very faint breath of air coming form it, it’s a touch warmer, and there’s a very faint smell of decay. Nagan uses bullseye mode on his lantern to see the depth. It’s beyond 80 feet when he can’t tell anymore.

Jess goes outside again to try to identify whether there are any human bones. He identifies what could be a very old thigh bone. Vasco wants to be lowered down the shaft in the morning, Jess is not at all convinced that this is a good idea. We decide to spend the night on the boat by the island.

Morning dawns clear. In the east though are still great big black clouds. The shaft looks slightly less ominous, though still with the faint smell of decay. Vasco lowers a piece of driftwood on a rope. It goes down around 120 or 130 feet before going slack. On pulling it back up, the underside is coated in treacle. Er, no. Black brown sludge, smells horrible. Nagan snips off some rope and lets the driftwood drop.

We flee.

Oh look, we’re headed east toward Kalmadiz, and the big black clouds.

Half a day’s sailing, we see that there’s a wall of clouds across the Tajidarian coast. We stop for the night to sleep before pressing on in the morning. We’re by the charts a day from Kalmadiz, but if we sail in we’ll travel at speed - with all the concomitant risks. Khalid speculates that the courier ship was headed here. Arcvanin says we’re six or eight miles south of the main sea routes into Khalmadiz, so if there’s passing traffic we’d expect it to be north of here.

So, we sail north and reach a point that ought to be within sight, and two hours after dropping anchor there’s nothing. Shortly after that we see a single sail on the horizon out to the west coming in toward us. Resolves into a three mast galleon, flying an unfamiliar flag. Some nation from a long way north in the archipelago. As it approaches it runs up neutral merchant flags, no indication of arms. We have pilgrimage flags up. They approach and hail us in horribly accented isles. Nagan responds.

“Ship ho!”
“Ahoy!”
“What the hell is that?”
“We don’t know, probably something to do with the war”
“Can we approach?”

They swing around showing eight gun ports on one side, lower a longboat and someone in rather outlandish gear heads our way.

“My apologies for the intrusion, but we are looking to trade into Kalmadiz and that is, uh…”
“Good luck”
“What has happened?”
“As you see it. We don’t know. We’ve been sitting here overnight.”
“There was storm night before last? Brought us three four days ahead of schedule down. We have cargo for the mage princes in Kalmadiz.”
“You do know that it’s been taken over? By Elbenstraz?”
“They have taken Kalmadiz? In which case there is very little point in our carrying in cargo for the mage princes. Very well. Thank you, we shall in that case best be bound elsewhere. Is there anything that we can render to you? Are you well for supplies?”
“Fresh water, rum?”
“We have both for a price.”
“Do your people need healing? We have priests.”
“We are in good health”
“What were you bringing to the mage princes?”
“I would prefer not to say. If Elbenstraz are winning perhaps we can sell it to Ecra or somewhere. That is for the captain to say.”

We go into the storm. We’re some way in when Jess, Arcvanin, Khalid and Rannon all suddenly collapse. Nagan: “We’re coming about.” Nanda and Vasco both insist we continue. “This is Strazi. They’re deterring the Taji magic users.”

Khalid looks like he’s just asleep. The other three are unconscious.

Ten minutes into the storm, only option is to go where we’re blown. The rain seems saltyish, but not full on seawater salty, so Vasco waters the three sleepers whenever he can. After three hours, Khalid starts to snore, so Vasco robs some smelling salts from Jess’s stash and wakes him up.

Khalid has a splitting full body headache. He does some mystic nomad shit to work out what’s going on. He helps Rannon to try to wake up, who snaps from unconscious to awake in a matter of seconds.

Rannon, in something close to Khalid’s own tongue: “What in the holy fuck was that?” Khalid: “I’m not sure exactly what happened but it would appear we passed through the thing that is not us. Some sort of barrier akin to what Oakenshield said.” “Indeed, same thing, but much closer now to Kalmadiz.”

Jess and Arcvanin begin to stir, and Rannon tends to them. Khalid goes upstairs to help, eventually followed by the rest.

We can now see the shore. We’re coming through parallel channels of wind blowing north and south. It’s pretty dark. We come shrieking into the harbour borne in on the top of waves, and practically dropping onto the calmer water beyond. There are other also battered ships in here - but while we can see the shape of the buildings in the darkness, we can’t see any lights. Some of the doors and some of the shutters are flying wide, and there is absolutely nobody in Kalmadiz.