Waters Wild and Wicked – Part 1

Snizzek Spark-Light

Somewhere in Sartosa, a rickety tavern sits upon the muddy cobblestones. Drunken corsairs and buxom wenches wander to and from the seedy establishment. A lone sign hangs horizontally from the entryway with a wooden creek, displaying the image of an ale mug for the illiterate population of Sartosa. Inside, two privateers chat... sharing stories of blood and battle, riches and adventure and all the things a pirate is wanton to exaggerate.

"And after that, the leviathan fell apart! Piece by piece!" The first privateer exclaimed through a dirty moustached lip. "You're fulla trash Sissico, you've never ever seen a leviathan, you'd be dead long before ye could load the cannon." The second commented, his long hair and feathered cap marking him out in a crowd. "Oh so you've seen a leviathan? With their great pincers and horrible, crabby maws? You can't prove what I'm sayin' isn't true!"

"I most certainly can" the feathered pirate claimed. "Everyone knows what leviathans look like, we've heard the stories, granted most of them came gibbering from the lips of half-mad cabin boys and surgeons"

"Aye Seacur, so ye don't know what yer talkin' about. Don't go claimin' ye know more than a man whose survived a battle with the beast!"
"Is that so?" Seacur remarks incredulously.

"Aye!" Sissico continued. "We killed the beast with this!" From underneath his brown, tattered coat, the pirate lifts the strangest looking flintlock pistol Seacur had ever seen out from his pocket. It is recognizable as a firearm, but has serious modifications. A small looking glass appears to have been haphazardly bolted to the barrel, with greenish glass used as the optics. The wood is rotted and grey, and has speckles of a green substance throughout its form. It sparks occasionally, much to Seacur's alarm. Jagged bits of black metal stick out from various parts of the pistol, with one long sharpened blade jutting out from the pistol's barrel. It smells peculiar, like a sewer that was passed through the bowels of a troll and then scorched.

"What in Manaan's name is that!?" Seacur gets up from the oaken table they sit on and backs away a few inches.

"Kraken-Bane" Sissico says in a deadpan manner

"No you moron, what is it? It looks like a hand cannon that somebody has violated with arcane trickery!"

"Haha! That's the secret! Its empowered by the seagod himself! I bought from this arms dealer in the slums. Smelly man, looked terrified of something but wouldn't say what, not that I cared neither. Anyway, he offered me the pistol and then said he could outfit me entire ship with similar weaponry! Our lookout got a handgun longer than two men! Needs two men to fire as well but punches holes right through ship hulls! Once saw the bosun and the lookout decapitate two men and mutilate several others with one shot! And that's not the best part, you can fire this from many, many leagues away and they didn't even know they were getting shot at until it was too late!"

Seacur looks on with fascinated horror at the new-fangled weapon... "Interesting..."

"We bought some other things too, one of them was, and I swear upon me mum's grave when I say this, a cannon that shoots lightning. LIGHTNING" Sissico makes lightning sounds with his mouth and gesticulates in a wild, erratic pattern. "It worked a few times against ships, burned their sails to cinders in just one shot and the second shot blew entire pieces of the hull off. Easiest battle we've ever fought."

Seacur looks on and asks "Why a 'few times'?"

"It exploded the last time we tried to use it. Incinerated half our ship, along with most of the crew." Sissico gesticulates an explosion between his hands. "It was a mighty disaster, had to spend most of the money we got using the weapon to repair the ship and we have no idea how to fix the cannon."

"I see..." Seacur looks on, half believing this wild story.

"Then there was one more piece of techno-witchcraft we purchased. This one was by far the deadliest. It was a handgun, but with multiple barrels that spun very fast and fired continuously! I remember a battle against some of them zombie corsairs from the south. The lads were terrified but then we remembered our death wheel handgun. It shredded an entire horde. Unfortunately, this wonder gun went tits-up even more spectacularly than the previous contraption. The crew we had controlling it, one to load the ammunition and the other to fire, had lost control of the handgun and it flailed through the air spraying bullets like a waterspout." Sissico gesticulates a hoselike device with his arm and flails it back and fourth. "It killed the rest of the zombies but then killed a few of our men as well, then it overheated and the firing mechanism melted."

Seacur continues to listen "I see. These arms sound as dangerous to the man the using them as they are to the enemy."

"Aye, without a doubt, but highly effective! We went back to the same spot in the slums to buy more, but the smelly man was gone, and in his place was this symbol..."

Falk Graufer

From the smallest child to the sagest crone, Sartosans define the landscape of their brine smeared city with rumor and legend. Relics of the halcyon days of yore, when tall ships cut the azure horizon in twine at the edge of their white sails, circle from hand to filthy hand. Trinkets and whisper drenched words flow from the bleak alleys and darkly corners of the city. Yet among these umbral theaters is one more terrible than all others. There is a place, an old place, betwixt the hulking ghosts of two lost shanties who’s bars no longer sing with draconian choir, nor beds thud with carnal mischief.

There even the doughtiest fighters turn their tricorns aside and hustle like flower pickers back to their dens of inequity. On cool nights when the flotsam and jetsam coat the sandy shores, and mist seems to erupt from every nail and board, the old alley of Ligeia’s Row seems to ebb with malice. There the careful ear might hear the dull plodding of peg legs, or the odious clap of bootheels unseen upon ancient stones. One night, a gaggle of bastard children run along Sartosa’s abandoned streets. There is no liquor, no bawdy maid, no raucous gathering that can stand before the bright white intensity of child revelry. No Satyr every leapt higher, nor nymph teased better, nor giant stand taller than lost children among their peers. These boys, children of Nipon, Araby, Tilea and the Reik all howled and cooed like wolves upon an empty moor. Theirs were the streets, their shadow spawned enemies of sleepless nights fled before their tenacity.

“Ha ha Marcus slow down” cried a young Tilean boy. “Thengl can’t see so well in the dark!”

“MINE EYES UUR FINE!” retorted a Nordland boy “ITS YUR G’IANT ARSE SLOWIN ME DUUN. D’EREs NO ROOM FOR ME -cough, heave- to…RUN …’round….ITTT”

“You watch Ponazili’s arse while you run, Thengl?” cooly replied a Niponese child
The boys laughed and soared with each back bite and jibe. They balanced off inn signs and bounded from wallsides. They took up sticks with the finesse of Tilean duelists and launched stones with Elven accuracy . The troubles of the world were lost before their merriment, that is until they reached a corner they’d never been before.

“Oi, I fink ..we’re…” Marcus couldn’t summon the word. The word lost, to children is akin to doom. Lost is a slow thumping doom the creeps from the depths of one’s heart and clenches the throat till the eyes fill with salty despair. “I…I KNOW WHERE WE ARE!” Marcus feigned arrogance “this way’s the way that auld shipwright tol’ me I could find his treasure”.

“Oh come off it now Marcus. Not another tale” replied Ponazili

“No its true! This is where he hid the casket of a dead king. He says that his coffin lid was made a’ full gold and twinkled wif gems”.

Marcus, gifted with speech, could sooth the hardest boy’s woe with tales of far flung kingdoms and the wealth therein. He sowed his friend’s a tapestry of bright white pyramids and ancient lords with crested crowns and marbled courts. In him was the imagination of ten poets, and his boyish eloquence made Lizardmen leap from barrels and filling his friends’ pockets with gems. His gab flung he and his friends forth, charging and singing like Knights of the Blazing Sun, into the bosom of eldritch gloom.

TO SNIZZEK: FIRST REPLY

A startled hush fell over the streets as an all-too-familiar presence marched gracefully over the roughshod cobblestones, almost goosestepping like some filigreed, decorated navy admiral. Toothless blackguards and half-dressed wenches gasped and hissed as he passed, withdrawing from his shadow instinctively as though it held the weight of some burdensome destiny or ancient maritime curse. And as he left their vicinity, gossip exploded amongst them, as it always did when he was in port, no matter how many times he had made berth previously.

“There he goes again...” whispered a pirate to his comrade in the process of prying into a stolen coffer with a knife. “Off to fill his crew up with more damned souls, no doubt. That's what he is, a captain of the damned. Only comes in to port to drag more poor sods out to sea, there to lay forever!”

His companion spat indignantly. “Don't be bloody stupid,” he snarled, backhanding the littler man across his gnarled and knobbly face.

“Gah! What was that for?”

“Tellin' tales, ye feckless imbecile. Old Sangrio's nothin' but a relic. Obsessed with legends, he is. And he only ever nabs the stupidest swabs, eh? Folk who don't know his reputation proper-like. Who needs 'em? And who needs him?”

“Don't speak ill of him, Sam,” the smaller pirate mumbled, “He's an agent of evil powers. You'll draw his gaze and he'll conscript you for his crew.”

“I told you not to tell ta—GAH!” Just then the blade of his knife snapped inside the lock of the coffer and a ricocheting shard embedded itself in his eye. Sam bellowed like a daemon, clawing at the bloody wound, feeling desperately around for help, but none came; his subordinate had fled at the first sign of trouble, fearing that it was the work of Sangrio's Curse. Sam sat in a tuft of mud groping at the red hot gorge of agony seared into his eye socket. Perhaps he would make it to a physician who could clear the wound and save him from infection. Perhaps he would die. No one in Sartosa cared.

Meanwhile, Sangrio, who had long left them behind in his wake, was drawing near to an inn marked only by the crude symbol of a frothy drink. Pictograms were the only written language common to all seafaring scoundrels, thus he was accustomed to such crass emblems. A man of great refinement, Iago Sangrio sated his need for intellectual stimulation not in the company of men but in utter solitude, glutting himself upon the written word from all corners of the human world – and even a few pieces of very rare literature penned by far more ancient creatures.

He was flanked by only two individuals. The first was a gargantuan brute, two and a half times the size of a powerful man at the very least, and many dozens of times more powerful. It was an ogre, his left hand severed and replaced by a rusty fish hook of titanic proportions, easily large enough to skewer a fully grown man in one lazy blow. The other was a more enigmatic entity. A man of the far east, by the look of him, but not a denizen of Cathay. By the look of his garb and the eight-pointed star pendant he wore beneath his fur-limned vestments, he was a Hung warrior of the steppe.

“Wait outside, Blugg,” Sangrio sighed melodically. His voice had an innately silky quality to it that was difficult to separate from his intended tone of voice; he could berate, insult and condescend to you with as much cavalier warmth as he could invite you to his bed for the evening. And, being such a capricious man, it was well-known that he could pivot in either direction very easily.

The ogre obeyed, positioning himself by the door like a massive bouncer and glaring at any strangers passing through behind Sangrio. The Hung, on the other hand, stayed glued to his captain unwaveringly.

Inside, Sangrio paused. He did not spend more than a moment surveying the room before his gaze fell upon the boisterous fool demonstrating a peculiar article of weaponry. Little did the boastful fellow know that it was precisely this which had lured him personally from his ship in the first place.

“Is that it?” the Hung growled, not bothering to whisper.

“Yes...” Sangrio breathed huskily, his eyes dilating, his heart fluttering with excitement.

“You are sure it is what you seek?”

“The elf described this artifice in exquisite detail. We must find this creature.”

The Hung nodded in silent assent. Sangrio approached the raucous group of human caricatures, grooming the fine follicles of his elegant black beard with a slender finger, tipping his vast and profound hat with the other. The dark plumage upon it ruffled like the disturbed feathers of an unearthly seabird, the sort that spell ill omens and impending disaster.

“Gentlemen,” he intoned pleasantly as a silence fell over the room, “Felicitations. Introductions, all around, of course. I am Captain Sangrio – perhaps you have heard of me? No, no, please, do not say. I like to think of myself as somewhat infamous, and I would not wish to have the sad truth shatter that pleasant delusion. In truth, I am merely curious... where is it, my good fellow, that you encountered this most unusual and uncanny purveyor of unusual and uncanny things?”

Snizzek Spark-Light

The haggard sea cur rose to his feet at Sangrio's address. "Wot's it ta yoo?" The pirate's lip twitched with unease at the utterance of "yoo" well aware of Sangrio's reputation for ill omen and misfortune following where he strides. "I founds it all fairlike, yoo just go lookin' yerself and don' bovver me!" The other mangy excuses for seamen looked upon Sangrio and studied him. None moved a muscle on their dark oaken bar stools. One heavy set sailor's forehead was adorned with two brown, caterpillar like eyebrows, set above a pair of unblinking, glassy spheres that stared coldly at the Estalian captain.

His expression like was set like carved stone. A mixture of anger, curiosity, and a healthy dose of fear. Two great brushes of brown hair hung from either side of his lip in a handlebar moustache, contrasting the pathetic stubble of his chin. He sat still, either waiting for his companions to speak or until forcing himself to bumble out whatever half-insults or idle threats he could muster. A lantern creaked and groaned as it hung gingerly above the bar table. The other three men seated around their boisterous cohort shifted uncomfortably in the malodorous half-light. Barely perceptible energies radiated from the flintlock.

A lithe pirate with curly hair trailing past his ears and a goatee broke the silence. "Ah, Capitano Sangrio. Please ignore my unsubtle associate here as he is not well versed in the fine art of conversation." The handgun wielding pirate barked in response. "Shut yer gob!" and waved the firearm in his general direction. The lithe pirate rolled his eyes and continued to speak. "I rest my case. At any rate, we are but humble privateers. I am unaware of the place where my associate procured this strange device he wields. However my interest in the subject may heighten with some compensation?"

The last fragment of his words rung with arrogance. He cared little for Sangrio's reputation nor the fearsome steppe warrior by his side. This man suffered from a dangerously inflated ego or an equally dangerous lack of common sense.

TO THE REAVER:

Rethondil's cruel grey stare was like a lance of ice. He paid the emphatic manservant no regard whatsoever, reserving his unblinking stare for the eccentric Pirate Lord, Robasto. There was something insufferably reminiscent of Captain Sangrio in this 'colorful' individual, and if there was something the elf could not abide, it was a colorful personality. Robasto's words tickled a sneer from Rethondil's lips as if against his will, and for a moment he said nothing, letting the Lord's words linger awkwardly, dangerously upon the air. It was, of course, a gesture of dominance, a kind of assertion; instead, Rethondil let his one functioning icy eye wander around the pitiful courtyard and the motley assembly, disdain saturating his measured expression. At last he offered a monotone reply, devoid of any great meaning, "Indeed."

He strode forward, thumbing a letter bound tightly into a scroll and tucked away beneath his sash, withdrawing it and opening it at the broken seal of Captain Izaccharius. He gave it one last cursory glance, and with the pomp and posturing of the gesture it seemed as though he were about to read from it to confirm its contents but then, unceremoniously, he tossed it aside. A few of his entourage scrambled clumsily to catch it.

"I presume you have not been keeping a simple blade prisoner," he chided coldly, gesturing to the specious artifact which the captain's steward had presented with such prideful flair.

TO FALK:

As the scene in the tavern unfolded, the enigmatic silhouette of a lone, itinerant figure drew nearer and nearer. As the grey-swaddled wanderer appeared suddenly at the doors of the establishment, the ogre whom Sangrio had left outside stared him down viciously. Serving as a kind of de facto bouncer, Blugg felt it his duty to prevent any unsavory individuals from interrupting his employer's bid for information -- and considering the sound of things as they were transpiring within, the Hung might have soon been tasked with killing a lot of people, and Blugg was not keen on adding yet another stranger to that tally.

"Keep movin'," the ogre growled, stomping his huge foot so hard the flagstoned pavement actually shook. "No more admittance today, little fishy."

The ogre did not see the shift in the figure's posture, the subtle, flicking gesture of his hand, the twisting fingers, the pursed lips, the incantations whispered by rote... and then, by extension, Blugg no longer saw the figure at all. In fact, he'd never seen the figure in his life. Why was he standing there at all, for that matter? Just a moment ago he was on the ship...

"Wot da hell..."

Within the tavern, the scene was transforming into a picture of the tense precursor to one of the all-too-common brawls that thin out the population of Sartosa's underbelly every now and then. Knife, sword and pistol had already been drawn, yet Sangrio's foreign bodyguard had not yet slid his curved blade from its scabbard and, rather than glare down the denizens of the room, his eyes were now fixed upon the captain of the Matron, waiting patiently for the signal to fill the room with corpses. But Sangrio was pleasantly relaxed, almost demure as he sat back, one leg crossed over the other, on a high-backed chair. He had seized a goblet of wine from someone else's table nearby and was casually draining it without consent. He still cradled a copious satchel of coin, jostling it so its contents rattled.