The Doom that fell upon Blaustein
“Only a fool calls a wind good or ill. The greatest fortune can be brought by the most terrible storm, and the most lethal thunderbolt can fall from the clearest of skies.”-Blaustein aphorism"SHE'S HUNGRY!" Roared the Captain, the Grey Lass rode the Sea of Sorrow with a winter gale at her back, her white sails stretched to their limit and the slate-grey sea hissing along her sharply-raked hull--she was a "borrowed" officers' ship from the Port. Her crew knew their trade well, gliding effortlessly along the pitching deck like hungry shades at the sibilant orders of their captain. They wore heavy robes and thick leathers to keep out the icy wind, and their dark eyes glittered like onyx between the folds of dark woolen scarves. They were racing before the storm with a full load of cargo chained below, with the craggy southern coastline and the mouth of Arden Bay behind them, it would be only a few miles along the coast. The wind howled hungrily in the black rigging, singing an eerie counterpoint to the muffled cries rising from the hold, and the sailors laughed in quiet, sepulchral tones, thinking back to the revels of a few nights before. The girl was a pretty, foolish little thing, vain and easily befooled, else she had never maintained the low-scum tigans she was hanging with. Some now dead Barovians, loaded caravan near Teufeldorf and what a load it was; too easy. The booty came from a plunder from some abandoned Zeklos Keep the girl said,---they kept the girl as booty; boxes filled with gold, artifacts; statues, valuables those intellectual fops consider as 'antique of high value' in Quartier Savant. From Gundar River, till the mouth of Arden Bay, the woman kept them warm, and the bastards took their turns.
"ARRR ARR YARR HARHA!"This is the smell of victory, the Captain thought, his lips twisting into a mirthless smile. The raiding cruise had been a gamble from the outset. He’d pushed his luck every step of the way along the narrow streaming rivers--they said it wouldn't be possible. With only one small ship, an equally small crew and a pressing winter hindering his efforts, it wasn’t enough to merely succeed; nothing short of a rousing triumph would impress his reluctant, daring allies back at the Mutined Sailor. So they had lingered along river banks of western, uncivilized world for two months, pillaging, looting.
The captain had complained bitterly about the turning weather and the damnable cartographer, that scallywag scum, some Blaustenian fool with little years ahead and lots of debts behind. He seemed like a fortuitous tag along at the time, until rum wormed greed into the front of his mind, daring to take command of the Grey Lass for himself; thankfully, Pierre had jabbed a knife to his throat and tossed him overboard. Scum he thought, as if he was going to let the incredible prize slip away from his hands when they were this close. When a gale blew up in the dead of night off the shores of Arden Bay all had seemed lost, and three sailors had vanished into the black waves while fighting to keep the wind and the sea from dashing the corsair against the rocks. Straying off course, till she was swallowed by the Mists...engulfed in darkness.
In swift succession, the raiders had struck three villages along the Mordentish banks of the Arden River. It ended by the sacking of the luxurious Waterford manor in what were four days of pillage and slaughter before escaping out to Sea with a hold full of loot and two chests brimming with gold and silver coin and that unexpected Barovian plunder. Capitaine Jacques Rousseau would see that his backers were well paid for their efforts; to risk the ire of Black Pieter and his 'family' by borrowing the funds he needed for the voyage had been a risky gambit--and while the recent loss of three crew members meant not having to worry about their cut, he wasn't out of worries, Pierre made him feel unease, after all, he could see him like just another of Pieter's lackeys, seeing to his interests, and waiting for the right time to strike him out of a cut.
"CAPITAINE! SHE'S TAKIN' US DEEP!"From high in the corsair’s rigging, the sailor blew his horn, its long, eerie wail echoing across the surface of the water. There came no reply, but Rousseau’s skin prickled as he considered the prospect of being lost; worse, that they would be closer than he thought; dreading having to grease a bribe to another whoreson official from Port-ŕ-Lucine---Pieter was a greedy man, he would surely not suffer sharing. And so they were carried, vanishing into the icy depths of Sorrow as silently as ghosts, cold mists, shifting and swirling in the wind...The shambling stench of decay, the rotten smell of carcass lingering in the air like a pestilence crawling from the hold...
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"Tis time."Young Edric found his father sullen, leaning against the side of their hut, staring down the narrow lane that made up the village of Blaustein. It was nothing much as villagers went. A scattered mass of simple shacks, perhaps two score in total; a large meeting hall where the village men would spend long summer nights drinking and carousing; a mass of ramshackle boat houses closer to the rocky edges of shore; a small tavern, some warehouse where food would be stored, kept in a community trust; and a coach house where the village's only four horses, all owned by the ruler himself, were scattered under the brimming shadow of brooding Castle Bluebeard. Arnaud looked up at as his boy joined him, gripping Edric firmly by the shoulder.
"Tonight you officially become a man". Arnaud said smiling into his son's face, his tobacco-stained teeth broken and pitted. He stared at his son, reading the youth's features. He thumped him on the back and began to walk slowly down the lane.
"Everyone's nervous their first time" Arnaud explained.
"You'll do just fine, why, when I was your age, I was probably even more anxious than you are now".Arnaud punctuated his remark with a short, cough-like laugh. Edric looked hard at his father, considering his words. He seemed older now than he had been only this morning, helping his son pull empty lobster pots back into their boat. Edric wondered why his father had also been unable to sleep, if he was having problems adjusting to the new nocturnal habit demanded by the long autumn nights. He would have thought that after these many years, his father would have adjusted to the yearly pattern. Perhaps it was something besides the alteration in routine that had upset his father.
Suddenly, the shadows in the narrow lane danced away from them, retreating away from the beach. A bright light glared from the shore, dazzling in its brilliance, far more wondrous than the pale, feeble light of the tiny sliver of Moon hanging in Old night's sky. Edric shut his eyes and flinched away from the sudden brightness, but Arnaud had already gripped the youth by the shoulder and pulled him into sharing the accelerated trot the old man had adopted.
"The Beacon fire has been lit!"Arnaud exclaimed as the two made their way toward the shore.
"Our place is on the beach." Arnaud paused as they passed the last of the thatch-roofed shacks. He removed a heavy boat hook from his belt and pressed it into Edric's hands.
"Keep this ready". Arnaud ordered, his voice heavy with concern.
"Stay close to me. Perhaps nothing will happen tonight, but as your grandfather always used to warn expect every storm to be a hurricane ".The small group of men of Blaustein were gathered around a roaring, blazing fire. The mound of wood rose several feet above the rocks, promising to spend hours before burning out. Men were feeding the fire, stacking empty kegs of oil they had use to douse the wood with into an orderly file some distance from the advancing surf.
Do you think we'll catch anything tonight?""No." Said one of the men.
"It is too late in the season, the fog is starting to become thick, the wind too strong. We must let the indolence of summer be forgotten" The man turned away from father and son, warming his hands in front of the roaring fire.
"Come along boy. He has the right idea and it could be a long night and we might as well be warm.".
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"LIGHTS ON THE WATER!"A keen-eyed villager said. Edric was immediately roused from his napping by the sudden activity around him. He looked away toward the roaring bonfire for a moment, then turned his face to the man previously addressing him and his father.
"Fortune smiles upon us on our first Night"! He laughed, replacing the looking glass within his coat.
"She looks to be a merchantman, a fine prize for so late in the season"! Arnaud and the other men gathered stared at the distant lights expectantly, even Edric becoming caught up in the excitement. The men watched and waited. When the lonely bellow of an answering horn sounded from the ship, the men of Blaustein turned to one another, their wide, cruel smiles bespeaking their silent glee. Edric watched as the lights of the ship came closer towards the shore. The youth understood what was happening, and his excitement abated as his mind made the leap from the scene he was witnessing and that which must surely follow. Emil blasted the horn once again as the ship drew still closer, drawn through the night and the fog toward the promising light of the beacon. Light a moth to the flame.
A captain wise in the ways of navigation and accustomed to the Sea of Sorrow's depths would never have fallen for the trick. But Rousseau had been a better thief than a good pirate. The wisest pirates, those accustomed to the region shun it for its established reputation, they know the cragging stretch of that shore as "Wrecker's Point." It is a place riddled with sharp fangs of rock, submerged shoals and razor-sharp coral reefs. The refuge promised by dozens of tiny harbors is like the call of the siren, luring ships to their doom and no practiced captain would accept their lethal charms. An experienced mariner would take his chances with the sea's doubtful mercy in even the most vicious storm than accept the certain destruction of a landing on the treacherous coastline of Wrecker's Point.
But the evils of geography are not the only dangers to menace the ships sailing the Sea of Sorrow's wicked shores. A desolate place will often find wicked men all too willing to put to use such a blighted site. Pirates and scavengers, waiting with their small fleet near the craggy rocks when the Season boosts with trade between Mordent, Dementlieu and Martira Bay, summer heralding more profitable catches to their shores. The ship continued, Emil and his counterpart on the vessel, sounding their horns above the soft roar of the tide. It drew so close that Edric fancied that he could see the bonfire reflecting off the white canvas of the ship's sails. A part of him wanted to look away, but he could not. It was not the fear that his elders would think him not ready to become a man that prevented him. It was because the drama was too compelling, too ugly for Edric to turn from.
The sound of the ship striking the jagged fangs of rock that lurked just below the waters of the inlet tore the night asunder. It was like the bellow of some bestial god betrayed, a cry of pain and wrath. The cracking snap of the wooden hull as it split upon the rocks was the most horrible sound Edric had ever heard in his life, more terrible even than the cries and screams of the men on board the ship that followed death cry of their vessel. Edric focused upon the lights of the ship, trying again to pierce the veil, trying to see the conclusion of this terrible drama he was a part of. He could hear the screams; the cries of terror as the black waters flooded the ruptured hull, as the sea reached up with its amorphous claws to pull the dying ship down to its watery grave. Long minutes passed, the screams faded away. The men upon the shore watched as the last of the ship's lingering lights was extinguished by the devouring waters and all sign of their victim was lost to their view. Arnaud handed Edric a torch, pressing the boy's fingers tightly about the firebrand's grip.
"You come along with me and Emil" Arnaud did not wait to see if his son would obey, but nodded to the grizzled, weather-beaten Emil and the two men made their way away from the bonfire, holding their torches high to illuminate the incoming tide and the sandy beach..
Edric walked several paces behind the two older men, his face pale and bloodless. He had heard the terrible shouts of discovery echoing from other searchers, only their glazing torches visible to his sight. He had heard the terrible screams that followed upon their findings, sometimes preceded by desperate blabbed pleas for mercy. Edric did his best to shut out the sounds of the drama's murderous epilogue, but try as he might, he could not block out the terrible sounds.
Ahead of him, Edric could see a dark object floating upon the white foam, gliding along its side was the lid of what used to be a coffin. Only when it was deposited upon the sand and rolled onto its back did he recognize the object as being a man. The youth ran toward the body that had come ashore. The ragged figure was tangled in a mass of weeds. Indeed, he had not seen the body wash ashore, Edric might have never noticed the object for what it was. The boy hurried over to the brown mass of vegetation and found himself staring down at a disheveled shape that had lately been Jacques Rousseau. Who he was, what he had done, Edric had no way of knowing. Certainly, he wasn't no simple merchant sailor, given Rousseau's leathers strapped by rows of knives and that fine cutlass to his belt. By his side atop the lid, floating, was a leather-bound tome. Edric opened the book, holding it upside down to allow some of the excess water to drool away. The ink had smeared and run in many places, but there was still enough that was intact for the boy to be astounded. Amidst the incoherent writings, intricate drawings of the Legions of the Night. A sketchbook, it appeared, pages crammed with drawings of strange, apocalyptic creatures and impossible, twisted landscapes, he gasped as he saw some ugly brutish-hairy creature resembling half-man, half-wolf. He saw weird things that were like bats with the beads and tails of rats. He saw many pages missing, lost to the violence of the wreck, denying him the pleasure of whatever sights were depicted upon them.
"Ezra" he read:
The First!
And the Third!
The Fourth!
And the Fifth!
The Place!
The Whip!
The Sin all over again!