Compelling Darkness (pt 1)
It was their first day out at sea and there, in the distance, was an island. An island, the Captain Mildred Fairweather was saying to the group of squabbling rogues and outcasts that made up their small mercenary band, that appeared on no chart. It was a great concern, of course. What wonders would await? What treasures could be uncovered? What were the chances of their good smuggler Captain marooning them at the slightest opportunity?
Delphie had stretched all three feet of her lithe little self out along the decks of the forecastle, enjoying the midday sun and the steady wind. She had but to turn her head slightly to look out over the sea to the dot of land off to port, her view only slightly hindered by the gunwale. As the wind tousled her mop of raven black hair, she breathed a sigh of grattitude that she was no longer shut up in the small room that had been apportioned for them belowdecks. It had smelled of sweat, old straw and dried bile, and they had been packed in so tightly that even the few short hours within had been unbearable. Continue reading →
Something’s Gotta Give
Cracadoom Island wasn’t really the kind of place where one could take it easy. Filled to the brim with smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, cutthroats, cutpurses, and crafty sword merchants (who made a killing off of daggers alone, but who rarely slept easy at night), it was the kind of place where you kept an eye in the back of your head, lest you lose it.
That being said, on that day the sun shone bright on the tropical island, and the ramshackle wharf’s many smokehouses and ale shacks were crowded with lazy nogoodnicks too busy fighting off the mid-day heat to bother fighting one-another. Toothless old crooks sat in the shade and stared out at the sea – forgetting their spiderwebs of puppeted contacts and bootlicking and bribes that had kept them alive so far and remembering instead their glory days out on the blue, the salt in their bones calling them back. Continue reading →
Intercontinental Adventures 