The Land Beyond the Ocean

I once heard a noteworthy tale from one of the sailors in the City of Aur that work the raging seas just off the coast for a livelihood.  They are a very superstitious bunch and rightly so too, as in ages past when the Old Ones fought against those that came before them in the celestial battlefield of the skies all the divine blood that fell to earth pooled together to form the Blood Ocean.  All the anger and loss cast within those raging waters that smash against the Imperial Kingdom's cliffs as they attempt to wash away the lands that they all died over.

I have seen it with my own cursed eyes, when the dark moon tides reveal the very nature of the Blood Ocean to be that of its namesake; the clouds part and the northern star's silver light touches waters redder than wine at sunset and darker than a blood drenched battlefield.  And deep within the waters there still move things that were born in those ancient age of carnage that survived...or partly survived with fragments of memories motivating their hatred of all things and of all existence.  These are creatures that have names that exist in no books nor mortal language and speaks in tongues older than the waves under which they lurk.

Many a dark magick has been performed in the old caves that wind through the lattice like cliff walls and in and below the ancient City of Aur.  Some worship these strange beings, some draw power from them, and I have even spoken to some lunatics that wish to bring these beings back from the void into the mortal world again.  Demonic contracts with blood magick that always cost more than they give to the ones that enter into them; I pray--as much as I know how to--that this unholy folly does not succeed in and plunge these realms back into the nightmarish past that predates even my earliest memories.

But, enough of these fools, I speak here of the brooding Blood Oceans and the land that lies over and beyond their murderous waters.  Although I have spoken to many seafarers that tell tales of a land that lies across the red waves that they all call 'Zion' I have only ever met one soul that claimed to have spoken to a man who had survived the journey across and back and had set foot in that exotic land.  Having such a rotten character I am an excellent judge of others rotten character, but for all that I could tell about this old man's tayle was what he believed to be the truth or a version of it.

He was an old man telling a tale of man he met when he was a young sailor still looking for a boat to make his own.  The man was a merchant that risked the ocean's waters to trade between the various port cities along the Imperial coast and sometimes even venture into the Karak Jungles to barter with the savages there.  It was on one such trip when trading Imperial steel with one of the Tribes of Midnight for their exotic furs, hides, herbs, spices, and poisons when he was forced to leave the Karak savages' port in a hurry due to hostilities and his ship pulled out into a sudden storm of such intensity that their sails where shredded, mast was broken, and their sea bearings cast out.

The storm raged for days and days with the eerie shriek and laughter of those whose blood forms those murderous waters.  When the storm finally blew it self out and subsided the ship was dead in the water; more than half the crew had been lost over board or to the wraithes of those winds, the remaining few were miles from even the view of a coast and with no sense of direction...even the stars were different in that night sky and the sunlight seemed more fragile.

With the sails shredded and the masts broken the ship drifted aimlessly for days until a strong current caught them and began to guide them away....out of the red waters of the Blood Ocean and into new unknown waters.  Soft gentle emerald waves lapped against the disabled ships as it picked up speed in the strange current...only to be dragged onto a coral reef splitting the hull.  As most sailors wish for quick deaths at sea they never learn the art of swimming: so most of the merchant's crew drowned as the bruised ship broke apart on the reef.  All the lifeboats had been lost in the storm so there was nothing to be done, save to grasp a part of the dying ship and cast oneself into the strange emerald waters.

The merchant spoke about his men disappearing below the waves one at a time when weariness took them or the marauding yellow-striped sharks plucked them from the surface.  And in this mist of weariness with constant terror the merchant floated until he was the last soul alive in those strange emerald waters.  Eventually weariness took him and, as he slipped below those emerald waves to the demon caves of old gods below he dreamt of the soft green skinned woman with wild golden hair, eyes of the ocean, and a fishtail were her feet should be.  She swam around him and in a graceful dance encircled him in a cold clammy embrace while whispering strange words in a tongue of waves, currents, and sunken treasure.

The next memories the merchant recalls is awakening on a beach of pearl white sand with the point of a strange curved sword at his throat held by a strange-eyed warrior dressed in foreign garbs.  His eyes were red, small horns protruded from his forehead, a flicking tale swished the air behind him, and hooves appeared below his armor where his feet should be.

Here the tale grows fantastical and I can no longer tell the lies from the truth from the fantasy from the dazed mind of a stranded sailor that has lost everything.  The old man says that merchant spoke till late in the night of the lizards that speak ruling armies of demons in constant battle against each other.  He tells of houses of animals that walk like men and the witches that command them to lay their lives down for a cause that the merchant could not understand.  He spoke of seductresses that stalk the lands in appearances of the most desirable guise pulled from the minds of those around them, and of monstrous reptiles so hideous that they kill with their mere gaze.

And then he spoke of the Coresys Dot-exec, a disembodied voice that wanders the rolling lands there counting, studying, collecting, computing, and feeding upon the thoughts of those around it.  Pulling images from the sky and guarding a third Passage that has remained open for centuries with the help of strange flying crafts filled with equestrienne men that talk without speaking and cannot walk on land without the help of strange amour filled with lights.

Of the above account I can not vouch, but the beauty of the tayle should not be lost...even if it was told by a drunk old man.  The old man admits that the tayle was told to him by a vagabond from the streets in return for a drink of firewater and a place to sleep and that late at night he was not in a sober mind to ask the obvious question: how did the merchant came to return to the Imperial Kingdom?

Truth or lie; the one advantage of my curse that I may live to see this Emerald Land for myself.

--Anonymous Monk