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At Sea: A Mother's Wrath


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Eight souls upon a vessel with crimson sails milled about the deck of the Red Dawn. The wood beneath their feet, a too-pale color for the work they sought to carry through, but bright enough that the blistering heat of the sunlight was less agonizing for those with bare feet. Out here, hours away from any shore, the craft was a bright and red spot in the open sea: a target.

 

These elves were here not for fishing, but revenge, and hunting. It was but a year ago they had been assailed on a meager fishing trip. A small boat, made bent and broken by the mother-serpent they had offended. The crew, six then, had assaulted its child and drew its mother out. The beasts returned to sea as quickly as they had come, though not without damage to the small boat and to one crew member, Leyne. The crew returned to the Isles, and now they were at sea, with a vessel thrice as large and bearing small ballistae, and a larger crew.

 

Hours away from land and their bait was warmed and soon ready to spoil. The captain of the vessel took note of this, and hailed the crewman who secured their bait: Annil. The proud hunter had secured a most vile bin of wolf’s innards, primarily the gut. Out at sea, this was a scent rank enough to cause the weakest of constitutions sickness over the side of the craft.

 

"Annil, have you chummed waters before?" Fëanor Sylvaeri hails. By now, the elf was much a portrait of his ancestor Eleron, once a shipwright. It was a plain thing to see for elves who knew the fallen prince, but to the crew of the vessel, this was no new thing. Always, those elves of Sylvaeri blood took well to the sea.

 

“Oh, uh, don't you just chuck it over?” Annil, the hunter of the wolf’s guts. An elf older than half the crew, but whose appearance suggested elsewise.

 

“You just chuck a **** ton of meat and blood over the surface.” Elros of the Silma, here to accompany young elf Damien and in part oversee the success of the trialing elf Annil. One of the veteran crewman, too.

 

“Aye, pick a side,” the Sylvaeri called again.

 

The gore was prepared, and Annil took to the port-side railing of the vessel, just beside the center mast. Annil rose his voice, urging the crew to be prepared. The elves assumed the wait would be short, for they were likely to attract the ire of their prey. Be it the heat of the sun, the impatience of Annil or the weight of the wolf-guts, the elf delivered the chum out across the railing and into the sea, bloodying the waters.

 

They would wait. At first a few minutes, but the heat soon boiled their tempers. One of the crewmen nearly sparked a fight, insisting the youngest of the elves, a lad of fifteen years take to smoke from his pipe. The crew and captain’s attention were set upon the argument, and this they would regret, for they had forgotten the speed of the creature.

 

A great fin broke the surface of the water some fifty meters out. The elves were quick to notice, but less so to act. Before the crew and captain had fully prepared, the mother-serpent had struck the starboard-side of the Red Dawn, and revealed her unpleasant visage.

 

Spoiler

sea_serpent_by_huntere15-d55yu8r.png

 

She was met, not with tears and meager arrows, but harpoons carved with runes, carrying upon their speartips the wrath of the elements. Yet the serpent-mother’s wrath was great and terrible, for these elves had attacked her child and invited her to these waters with a bloody promise of food. She would have her fill, a way or another.

 

A harpoon struck her flank, and sent the large beast wailing, thrashing between the rigging and railing. The vessel tipped with her great weight, tossing the elves who sought to take aim upon her. Bloodied sea water stained and filled the deck from starboard side. The sun, blinding as the glimmering scales reflected light upon the crew only served to contribute to the bolts and arrows which flung off course, deflecting off the thick scales of the beast.

 

She would not avoid the clerical light of Delmira which exposed flesh on her neck, blasting scales free. Bloody desperation, attempts to gouge the young elf Damien and too Turge and Elros sent the thrashing serpent-mother to the deck of the Red Dawn, further towards the port-side of the boat. Any elf within her path was certain to be felled or torn apart by horns or teeth. For her thrashing, Elros had gouged the sea-mother’s left eye, thus hurrying her escape towards the sea, Elros certain to tumble over.

 

Leyne, narrowly avoiding the hungry beast’s wrathful maw, was sent to the deck of the ship, certain to be dragged off after the beast, for her rope was still leading to it. Already her vigor for sea-serpent blood had dazed her. It would take the efforts of the cleric to free her from the rope, which soon was scooped up by the captain.

 

In the chaos, Damien narrowly avoided the wrathful mother’s horns and for it received a long gash, though not without wounding the creature in her escape, where scales had been torn apart by Delmira. Damien was saved then by Turge, but as for Elros, he and Fëanor tumbled into the rigging of the boat. A great snap was heard, the mast and rigging soon beginning to tumble seawards. Gore and scales littered the deck in the beast’s death-throes.

 

A bolt from Annil upon a port-side ballista struck true into the beast. The crew and Elros, safe upon the deck, reeled back as the boat flung back to starboard side. The serpent-mother tumbled over, gravely wounded, and after her followed the elf captain. Fëanor arced one arm above, a mace with four hooked flanges in one hand and delivered the mortal blow to the serpent-mother in their descent to the waters.

 

He would not recount his fight with death to the crew just yet, but this he said later to a denizen of the Isle.

 

"I tumbled o'er into the sea and plunged my mace into its flank. I felt and saw it bled and die, and I tumbled, over and over into the bloody froth and foam beside the boat. Dark, corrosive, bloody. Pain in my lungs from lack of air, in my side from the lightning that struck me... I live, yet. The taste does not come out yet. I can still smell the blood."

 

Leyne took it upon herself to tear the captain free of the rigging as the crew panicked in their bloodied state. Annil, against his own fear of the sea, experienced bravery if only to save this elf. It was difficult to spot the elf beneath the corpse of the serpent-mother, and he had not counted upon Leyne’s assistance. Either way, the crew and captain were whole, and ever quickly tiring.

 

Just as swiftly as it had come, the creature now would float dead beside the craft. It would take hours to be prepared for a return trip home, in large part to Kharris’s devotion to the steering, but ultimately they were victorious: the lubba mother was dead, and its child an orphan at sea.

 

Spoiler

Thank you to Original_Potato and the other assisting ET and GMs who aided him with the event! We had a lot of fun. Good luck to all future events.

 

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