And so you faced down the theist barbarian Wolf Pirate crew of the longship Alf, which barrelled down upon you. Your crews exchanged missiles and spells to modest effects at first. Fraud Shaven took a nasty head wound from a javelin, then a sylph summoned by a crew member rushed in and tore the fan out of his hands in a violent wind gust, but this dismissal of the Foestopper-fan's winds cost it its own existence. The fan skidded across the Shadow's deck, which now was growing dangerously icy, and Fraud dove after it.
Meanwhile, Maugis threw one of his massive Palsy spells and several pirate raiders dropped before the ramming happened. Likewise, Ahappi menaced them with his Dark Foreboding spell and even the Alf's first mate quivered in fear, holding back from boarding once that began. The numbers were much fairer now; indeed, the situation looked poor for the pirates at the start, and some of them were realizing this. However, some of the crew had gone berserk, including the swarthy captain Broosta the Best, who was the first on board the Shadow, covered in rimy ice crystals and roaring an enraged battle cry while he swung his deadly great axe, Broobiter. He faced off with Captain Ahappi. Boamund was close at hand, especially after slaying another berserk pirate that dared to board by his captain's side.
Miguel had set the Alf's sails slowly smouldering with fire-arrows but the icy squalls that filled the ship's sails made this slow. The Shadow itself ripped through the Alf's hull with relish, unravelling its dark tentacles to tear boards from the hull and throw crewmen into the bleak waters or bash them against the hull itself. Ahappi and Broosta squared off, but Ahappi was having trouble on the icy deck of his ship whereas Broosta handled it nimbled. It seemed dire for Ahappi, with that huge axe missing him by centimetres several times, until Boamund joined the duel and Maugis knocked the pirate captain down with a Palsy spell to his abdomen. A few more blows later, Boamund dealt the mortal strike that felled the berserk and you were swiftly victorious after that!
The Alf was swarmed, looted and very soon sunk; Ahappi made sigils on its hull to ensure that Magasta got his due, and Boamund threw the dying captain into the depths to drown, fulfilling his geas, as did Fraud. (It is Dark Season 1622; you now just have Storm Season at the year's end to satisfy your geas for this final year of Omen's gifts' blessings) From the longship's treasure chest you drew out a respectable sum of loot to distribute throughout the Shadow's crew. Everything else went to the ocean's abyss; no survivors and nothing worth keeping, even the snarling Wolf Pirate prow of the vessel. These pirates had made a very, very bad choice of which ship to raid, and none of them would tell the tale; their souls would scream back on the north winds to Valind's frigid underworld.
Amur hailed you as heroically proving yourselves and the crew celebrated. Amur also, at Ahappi's request, released the hull's ghosts into the briny deep so they could rest, free from Bar'ran's cruel plans to use them as questing “fuel”. Onward you sailed, into a stiff northerly gale that grew as you travelled back toward Genertela. It was a 2 week voyage and so some of you spent time in private contemplation. Fraud was in the dark hold doing some weird Stygian thing. Maugis was vomiting a lot. He gave the crystal wand back to Ahappi, saying it was not the right thing for him, and Ahappi passed it on to Miguel, urging him to use it to document Ahappi's victories. Miguel got to work playing with it and figured out its properties fairly well (e.g. it lasts 30 minutes as an image, stays put, can image anything it faces back toward, is transparent, and might seem real from a distance).
Ahappi's dreams were filled with visions of the oceanid Ouwashilombiss, whom he'd not seen for several seasons. She beckoned him to her, calling that she had more kisses in store for him now that he'd slain her enemy and deserved to woo her at Serpent Harbour. Although the voyage was difficult, Ahappi was determined and sailed the ship well, making good time-and soon, veering away from Giraine to the northwest, headed for the Nolos islands and his lover-to-be's lair.
As this dawned on you one day, you were distracted by a great shape surfacing next to the Shadow. It was the huge sea monster Pellinoresbane; beyond description and horrible! One maw opened in its bulk and the ship was deluged with brine, bile, and wreckage. All of you stayed on board except a few crew (which it hungrily snapped up in jaws or tendrils) and Ahappi, who went off the far side of the deck. Feeling himself lose his breath, even though Miguel was tracking him with Mark and Sense Life spells, he evoked Bar'ran's Become Sea Monster spell and took the form of an immense sea turtle-thing. Surfacing to challenge his family enemy, the Shadow's crew needed Miguel to warn them that this turtle was indeed Ahappi. In the great beak of the turtle was the large curved metallic-organic section of the odd “nautiloid” vessel's hull/body, which matched some other debris on your deck. Pellinoresbane had swam off, leaving Ahappi to angrily transform back into himself and board the ship again.
You looked over the wreckage that it had vomited. Maugis furiously refused to do any more studies until he was on familiar dry land “with good Malkioni folk” again, and returned to the hold to vomit more. So it was up to Fraud to look into this matter and he stepped up with some insights, after poring over some runes he saw carved into the structure-shell. These were Jrusteli formulae, invoking powers of Law, Magic and Chaos to deflect chaos itself from the ship, enabling it to voyage through the Chaos Void and thus pass across time (i.e. into the Third Age from the Second). This matched the sage Evakranem's speculations that the very obscure sorcerors called the Outer Atomic Explorers were involved here, maybe even as crew within the vessel? If so, he may be right that Pellinoresbane represented nature (“the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods”) rebelling against them at the end of the Second Age to destroy traces of the Godlearners, and now hunting them down to eliminate them and their violations of space-time and the Great Compromise. Naughty, naughty wizards! This disturbed Fraud greatly; while the magics acted as anti-chaos, they were effectively chaotic as well. It was nothing a good Arkati could tolerate dabbling with. You stored them away in the hold as trophies of this victory and sailed on.
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