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First Post
An excerpt from "The Unscholarly Journals of Darren the Senalline" (guest post)
It is perhaps a touch too bold to claim that I am the first captain to have piloted a ship having never been to sea before in his life. Knowing the arrogances of nobles and the privileges they claim for themselves, I don't doubt that more than a few of them have taken charge of a ship with a seasoned first mate as a loincloth to cover their nakedness. But I have little doubt that I am the first in this world to have captained many voyages before first getting his sea legs. I doubt the Path of Horizons would approve (let alone the rank I have claimed since then), but my membership in that order has been somewhat complicated, to say the least.
I suppose it is fitting, then, to note that I come from a land where there are no working ships and am hence utterly unqualified for a life at sea, especially when you consider I have far too many reasons to never, ever want to go there. Not that that sort of thing has ever stopped me from biting off more than I can chew. In any event, luck has played at least as great a role as audacity in placing me where I am now.
My first real taste of sea-tang came in the air of Lynar. In the wake of the first assassination attempt on General Marcor d'Syrnon, I sought along with Ash and Meeshak to find out who had paid Patriarch's gold to ensure such a murder. As the assassin had confessed to being hired at the "Dastard's Dregs" tavern, we headed to that part of Lynar to see if anyone else had seen or heard of his "stammering, hooded man".
Meeshak and Ash went to the tavern itself while my newfound dwarrow friends accompanied me to the disused shipyards nearby, a likely place to look for rumors of strange persons seen entering and leaving the tavern. After having impressed Mullod so at my skill with a club, I would have been embarrassed to admit that I was glad also to have the company of dwarrow protection as we passed through the dingy alleys of the lower city. The docks of Lynar are one of the more squalid and dangerous parts of that city, given their disuse and unsuitability for commerce of any but the most sordid kind.
For all I'd heard, I was unprepared for what I saw. My home of Rim Square, of course, was a farming community on the edge of the mountains, well enough inland that I had never been to the ocean, nor seen its vastness. So I froze in place rounding a corner as I saw a great pillar of wood rising at an angle. It was the mast of a ship. Out beyond the quay were piers of wood that once would have risen and fallen evenly with the tides but had long since become treacherous with disrepair. And all along the piers were rotting hulks and many more masts, some floating at crazy angles, many full of holes or mostly below water but all dead and useless.
Not to me, though. I saw what was, or perhaps what might have been: magnificent contraptions the size of great houses, all for the purpose of carrying people across this great ocean that I could scarcely comprehend. I could just imagine the work, the planning, the skill involved in crafting and using such a thing, compared to which my noisemakers and locks were the merest of toys for all their complexity. I inched forward to the edge of the quay and nearly fell in for not paying enough attention to my feet. I saw how they could be if only they were repaired or created anew, if only I had any idea how. Little did I know, whenever lowest tide hit, those same boats would be beached on the sand below, the piers half-dangling between the sand and the quay, and I would not have had the water below to catch me if I fell.
(The next few pages of text are interspersed with rough diagrams of the ships of Lynar that in the original copy appear to have been delicately pasted in and written over in the same ink and language as the main text. Some sketches are half-finished, others sketched out several times with ships' holes or missing masts replaced with several iterations of design. Most are accompanied by cryptic notes, such as "broad and flat... the Floating Gardens? Olosso." or "probably beaches gracefully... suitable for the Storm Sea text?")
A sweet and curious female voice snapped me out of my trance, "Have you been here before?" I turned and saw apretty young woman, blonde of hair and blue-eyed, with a gentle smile. Her coloration was perhaps not as exotic to me as it may be to many of my readers, but even the men of Senallin hold such things of account. (scribbled in the margins: Rest assured that to me she was utterly plain and could never compare to, say, the beauty of a woman who whose dagger would gleam effulgently in the light of the moons before plunging silently into the neck of a perceived rival, were it not for the fact that such a dagger would also likely be too thick with lampblack or okordo to gleam properly.)
"No", I said. "I didn't even know such things were possible."
"They haven't sailed in many, many years. The last shipwrights and sailors who could make them sail died when our great-grandparents were children. And they were never easy to maintain even before they were abandoned." She said this with the sort of half-felt sadness reserved for the long-lost dreams of others. And I as she gazed out into the harbor, I found I could not took my eyes off of hers.
"They're amazing", I quietly responded. And then I remembered myself, "But who are you?"
She smiled again at my awkwardness, "I'm Calla. I come here from time to time. I like to watch the ships and think of the way they were. What's your name?"
"I'm Darren. I'm from Rim Square, but I'm here in Lynar for the muster. I'm with the army as a tinker, at least since the Haraks came."
Calla sat down, dangling her feet off the edge of the quay, and I sat down beside her and listened in awe as she pointed from ship to ship and told me what she could of what each one was and how they had worked at one time, or at least how she supposed they did. I asked question after question and she was happy to oblige. I told her a little about Rim Square, but also about the dwarrow, to which she responded with curiosity and amusement. After some time, it had become clear that I was smitten with Calla, though I scarcely had the courage or the presence of mind to do anything about it. But then almost in non sequitur she asked, "Will you be at the Grand Ball the day after tomorrow?"
"I wasn't sure. I'm hardly a dancer. Though I could learn."
"Come and look for me. I'll be there, and maybe we could steal a dance from under those nose of my guardian. He'll want to chaperone me, but he'll be so busy with everything else that I doubt he'd notice us."
I smiled. "I'd like that", I said with the startled enthusiasm of someone for the first time brought near speechless by a girl almost as shy as himself. (again, in the margins: Utter infatuation, of course. The blatherings of a boy who knew nothing of women at the time or what the future would bring.)
"Speaking of my guardian", she said unhappily, seeing how far the tide had dropped during our conversation, "I need to be off now. He's not likely to approve of my little walks in this part of town".
We said our goodbyes and I waved her off, too shy to dare a kiss with a girl I'd just met.
A moment later I startled at a gruff, bemused voice behind me, then wheeled to catch a glimpse of a diminutive figure standing in the alley from whence I'd just come. "Y'know lad, if you've just found our stammering man, that's quite a disguise he was wearing."
"Mullod, were you watching this whole time?" I choked out with some embarrassment.
Mullod grinned, "Mostly. But as we didn't want to interrupt, we've started asking around without ye. And there'll be time enough for us to meet the lass later. Come on, lad, we've work to do."
And by the time we met up with Ash and Meeshak again, we were no closer to unraveling the mystery of the attempt on General Marcor's life.
It is perhaps a touch too bold to claim that I am the first captain to have piloted a ship having never been to sea before in his life. Knowing the arrogances of nobles and the privileges they claim for themselves, I don't doubt that more than a few of them have taken charge of a ship with a seasoned first mate as a loincloth to cover their nakedness. But I have little doubt that I am the first in this world to have captained many voyages before first getting his sea legs. I doubt the Path of Horizons would approve (let alone the rank I have claimed since then), but my membership in that order has been somewhat complicated, to say the least.
I suppose it is fitting, then, to note that I come from a land where there are no working ships and am hence utterly unqualified for a life at sea, especially when you consider I have far too many reasons to never, ever want to go there. Not that that sort of thing has ever stopped me from biting off more than I can chew. In any event, luck has played at least as great a role as audacity in placing me where I am now.
My first real taste of sea-tang came in the air of Lynar. In the wake of the first assassination attempt on General Marcor d'Syrnon, I sought along with Ash and Meeshak to find out who had paid Patriarch's gold to ensure such a murder. As the assassin had confessed to being hired at the "Dastard's Dregs" tavern, we headed to that part of Lynar to see if anyone else had seen or heard of his "stammering, hooded man".
Meeshak and Ash went to the tavern itself while my newfound dwarrow friends accompanied me to the disused shipyards nearby, a likely place to look for rumors of strange persons seen entering and leaving the tavern. After having impressed Mullod so at my skill with a club, I would have been embarrassed to admit that I was glad also to have the company of dwarrow protection as we passed through the dingy alleys of the lower city. The docks of Lynar are one of the more squalid and dangerous parts of that city, given their disuse and unsuitability for commerce of any but the most sordid kind.
For all I'd heard, I was unprepared for what I saw. My home of Rim Square, of course, was a farming community on the edge of the mountains, well enough inland that I had never been to the ocean, nor seen its vastness. So I froze in place rounding a corner as I saw a great pillar of wood rising at an angle. It was the mast of a ship. Out beyond the quay were piers of wood that once would have risen and fallen evenly with the tides but had long since become treacherous with disrepair. And all along the piers were rotting hulks and many more masts, some floating at crazy angles, many full of holes or mostly below water but all dead and useless.
Not to me, though. I saw what was, or perhaps what might have been: magnificent contraptions the size of great houses, all for the purpose of carrying people across this great ocean that I could scarcely comprehend. I could just imagine the work, the planning, the skill involved in crafting and using such a thing, compared to which my noisemakers and locks were the merest of toys for all their complexity. I inched forward to the edge of the quay and nearly fell in for not paying enough attention to my feet. I saw how they could be if only they were repaired or created anew, if only I had any idea how. Little did I know, whenever lowest tide hit, those same boats would be beached on the sand below, the piers half-dangling between the sand and the quay, and I would not have had the water below to catch me if I fell.
(The next few pages of text are interspersed with rough diagrams of the ships of Lynar that in the original copy appear to have been delicately pasted in and written over in the same ink and language as the main text. Some sketches are half-finished, others sketched out several times with ships' holes or missing masts replaced with several iterations of design. Most are accompanied by cryptic notes, such as "broad and flat... the Floating Gardens? Olosso." or "probably beaches gracefully... suitable for the Storm Sea text?")
A sweet and curious female voice snapped me out of my trance, "Have you been here before?" I turned and saw a
"No", I said. "I didn't even know such things were possible."
"They haven't sailed in many, many years. The last shipwrights and sailors who could make them sail died when our great-grandparents were children. And they were never easy to maintain even before they were abandoned." She said this with the sort of half-felt sadness reserved for the long-lost dreams of others. And I as she gazed out into the harbor, I found I could not took my eyes off of hers.
"They're amazing", I quietly responded. And then I remembered myself, "But who are you?"
She smiled again at my awkwardness, "I'm Calla. I come here from time to time. I like to watch the ships and think of the way they were. What's your name?"
"I'm Darren. I'm from Rim Square, but I'm here in Lynar for the muster. I'm with the army as a tinker, at least since the Haraks came."
Calla sat down, dangling her feet off the edge of the quay, and I sat down beside her and listened in awe as she pointed from ship to ship and told me what she could of what each one was and how they had worked at one time, or at least how she supposed they did. I asked question after question and she was happy to oblige. I told her a little about Rim Square, but also about the dwarrow, to which she responded with curiosity and amusement. After some time, it had become clear that I was smitten with Calla, though I scarcely had the courage or the presence of mind to do anything about it. But then almost in non sequitur she asked, "Will you be at the Grand Ball the day after tomorrow?"
"I wasn't sure. I'm hardly a dancer. Though I could learn."
"Come and look for me. I'll be there, and maybe we could steal a dance from under those nose of my guardian. He'll want to chaperone me, but he'll be so busy with everything else that I doubt he'd notice us."
I smiled. "I'd like that", I said with the startled enthusiasm of someone for the first time brought near speechless by a girl almost as shy as himself. (again, in the margins: Utter infatuation, of course. The blatherings of a boy who knew nothing of women at the time or what the future would bring.)
"Speaking of my guardian", she said unhappily, seeing how far the tide had dropped during our conversation, "I need to be off now. He's not likely to approve of my little walks in this part of town".
We said our goodbyes and I waved her off, too shy to dare a kiss with a girl I'd just met.
A moment later I startled at a gruff, bemused voice behind me, then wheeled to catch a glimpse of a diminutive figure standing in the alley from whence I'd just come. "Y'know lad, if you've just found our stammering man, that's quite a disguise he was wearing."
"Mullod, were you watching this whole time?" I choked out with some embarrassment.
Mullod grinned, "Mostly. But as we didn't want to interrupt, we've started asking around without ye. And there'll be time enough for us to meet the lass later. Come on, lad, we've work to do."
And by the time we met up with Ash and Meeshak again, we were no closer to unraveling the mystery of the attempt on General Marcor's life.
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