Meredith
of Fiendish Intent
As you crept across the creaking boards of the commercial docks of the shores of Rovelight, a city of dubious reputation where the Inquisition is highly represented and yet struggles to retain meaningful control against the waves of arcane refugees attempting to flee the state, you were struck by the infinity of the sea in front of you. The journey had been arduous and there was no way of knowing how much of it yet remained. There was a specific spot, here, that you felt drawn to between your bouts of avoiding authority and finding a safe place to speak – it was not constant, but it was knowledge, and as you had come to the city itself it would make more sense than it ever had before that you were to move through its many docks. At the end of the dock beyond massive steel crates and fishnets, you caught your first glimpse of a worn wooden-hulled tugboat with a deadened motor – the T.B. Respite.
The boat was dark. If it wasn’t for the faint sound of acoustic strings, unfamiliar in a way you couldn’t immediately identify, you would have thought that its cockpit was empty. But you carefully made your way onto its deck, and the cabin door opened cautiously to beckon you forth, swallowed by the darkness inside and crowded by few bodies that could fit in such a small space. The plinking of the strings stopped; the largest in the room facing the helm raised his hand from the instrument lain across the console before the windshield emitted a kind of vague light about his covered face. As you shared space with them, you knew that they were not made of flesh and blood as you were, but wood and iron enchanted – perhaps even for this purpose. Another made the leap to the boat close behind you. When they crowded in close with the rest, four or five in all in a cockpit meant for two, the Captain stirred to life.
“The bravest of you have emerged. Be silent.”
He moved through the crowd, gently displacing those that were still awake, and routing around one creature asleep in the corner of the room to start the engine. The boat roared to life with a noise that made you sure that any cover was blown which seemed shared by the nervous people around you; there was no explanation and perhaps none needed as he came back and began to steer the boat from the dock. “Gasoline,” he informed the lot of you briefly, “is in storage below us.” His voice crackled, worn with age like a portrait of a creased fisherman from Mirall Bay, but it felt unnaturally clipped.
There was no more conversation for a long time as the boat drifted too-slowly from the mainland. The tide was in their favor, of course. It did not prevent the motor from whining against the weight of its passengers. The Captain was confident, quietly focused, but he did not share his conviction until the shoreline had disappeared far behind him and he pulled the hood down from about his face to use his facial light and read the compass. The white light (not unlike a spotlight) sat in the centre of his apparent face surrounded by an intricacy or iron and steel. Sight came from some place amid those carved runic grooves, but where exactly was hard to tell. “You’re all so young,” he mentioned to those of you still awake - “are you headed to the university?”
And, well, that was only the first thing you heard about that.
The boat was dark. If it wasn’t for the faint sound of acoustic strings, unfamiliar in a way you couldn’t immediately identify, you would have thought that its cockpit was empty. But you carefully made your way onto its deck, and the cabin door opened cautiously to beckon you forth, swallowed by the darkness inside and crowded by few bodies that could fit in such a small space. The plinking of the strings stopped; the largest in the room facing the helm raised his hand from the instrument lain across the console before the windshield emitted a kind of vague light about his covered face. As you shared space with them, you knew that they were not made of flesh and blood as you were, but wood and iron enchanted – perhaps even for this purpose. Another made the leap to the boat close behind you. When they crowded in close with the rest, four or five in all in a cockpit meant for two, the Captain stirred to life.
“The bravest of you have emerged. Be silent.”
He moved through the crowd, gently displacing those that were still awake, and routing around one creature asleep in the corner of the room to start the engine. The boat roared to life with a noise that made you sure that any cover was blown which seemed shared by the nervous people around you; there was no explanation and perhaps none needed as he came back and began to steer the boat from the dock. “Gasoline,” he informed the lot of you briefly, “is in storage below us.” His voice crackled, worn with age like a portrait of a creased fisherman from Mirall Bay, but it felt unnaturally clipped.
There was no more conversation for a long time as the boat drifted too-slowly from the mainland. The tide was in their favor, of course. It did not prevent the motor from whining against the weight of its passengers. The Captain was confident, quietly focused, but he did not share his conviction until the shoreline had disappeared far behind him and he pulled the hood down from about his face to use his facial light and read the compass. The white light (not unlike a spotlight) sat in the centre of his apparent face surrounded by an intricacy or iron and steel. Sight came from some place amid those carved runic grooves, but where exactly was hard to tell. “You’re all so young,” he mentioned to those of you still awake - “are you headed to the university?”
And, well, that was only the first thing you heard about that.
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