Topic: Althalos Fatrel

Isabela deGrey

Date: 2011-11-09 21:50 EST
Came The Ships Part 1

=The tale pieced together by Scribe Thae Tuprin from his and others? accounts of how those of the tri-torque crown family first came to Althalos Fatrel. = 7th Scribe of Havraet, Thae Tuprin in the 1167th year of the Halgurian calendar.

Bitter winds and surf pounded against the rocky crags that jutted up out of the seas. But their warning in the tempest went unseen. Men were too busy aboard the six, great ships to take that dangerous climb up and try to lower the sails.

Salty, icy waves rushed over the sides and onto the deck. Cries and wails tossed up among the roar of the angry ocean as some of the men went overboard to be immediately lost to the churning ebb and flow.

Raw hands of the men up in the rigging and sails were yanking knives from their belts and boots to cut at the lines out of sheer desperation. Their eyes were wild and the stone of fear was in their stomachs. Some could see better than others from where they were precariously perched that everything being done was in vain and useless. The ships were too close and pikes of the rocks were too easily seen no matter how much water was being tossed up and about.

Below the main deck, the bottom most level that usually had a few inches of standing water suddenly buckled and splintered with the first impact of The Gapinok against unyielding reef stone. New cries loosed from the crew and its passengers. More scrambled up from the lower levels, fearing they would have no way out and drown.

While The Gapinok and another, The Palitoran, were being torn apart, its sister ships The Shiffe and The Bohre were behind them with more time to get at least small boat downs on ropes with dozens of people and precious cargo in them. But even they were having a rough time of it.

Further back on the torrent horizon in the haze of the spray of waves and wind, the other two ships had the time to split their efforts; The Kintle to the north and The Vetrinor to the south.

Isabela deGrey

Date: 2011-11-09 23:36 EST
Came The Ships Part 2

It would be months before The Vetrinor, most of its crew and cargo would be found on one of the southernmost pieces of the string of islands that would later be come to be called The Shattered Blade Isles. The son of the regal House of Vanseur, rival to the Great House of deGrey, survived and put stake and claim on the island they found. It was called Baelmor.

Many would speak of The Gapinok in respectful, mournful whispers for decades and more to come. Out of the six great ships to wreck at the isles, it was the one with total lost and destruction. All hands and lives aboard were lost and all of its cargo of cloth, metals and woods lay as scattered wreckage along the ocean floor. The Kintle spurred for the north where crew and voyagers found the second-largest of islands in the string. There, it is said that they settled in within the first week to call it home and hearth with numbers of people nearly at one hundred.

The Palitoran nearly met the same fate as its sister ship, but as it went down a single boat was used to save the lives of almost a dozen lives. They kept on the rough waters and made it to the rocky shores of Durit Malthe along with those of The Shiffe.

But it was The Kintle that carried the noble family of the House of deGrey south to the largest of the isles that would come to be called Althalos Fatrel.

The Kintle had been a beautiful, stout ship when the fleet had left Aemal Kime to the extreme north of the known world. It was painted such a lacquer that her wood looked wet as if with honey. Sails, all thirteen of them for the massive flag-ship, were the color of sandstone. On the largest of its sails was ablaze with the tri-torque crest of the deGreys.

Pennants flew and fluttered from the mast, starting with the one bearing the crew of the deGreys, then the Vanseurs, and followed by four others. But by the time the fleet had reached the string of islands, those sails were tattered and fluttered strips of its turgid material on the brutal and chaotic winds. Sailors and captain were manning the rigging, wheel, sails and more as best they could. At the side of the captain was the head of the House and leader of all that had sailed with him: His Majesty, Baruc deGrey.

Isabela deGrey

Date: 2011-11-14 21:34 EST
Came The Ships Part 3

Baruc was neither ignoring the yells and screams of men and women around him, nor was he oblivious of the dangers. He simply couldn't hear most of it. The man of moderate height was dressed in a leather doublet with a double-vest of red and black swirl design. One sleeve was gone and he was yanking at the other that was itching at him. When he tossed the ruined sleeve aside, he felt the ship lurch beneath his boots again. As he leaned over at the waist and gripped the rail near the captain and ship's wheel, blood dripped from the side of his head onto his grey britches.

He blinked, not from the shock, but to keep the blood out of his green gaze. Black hair, blood, and sweat were shoved at and swiped away but it did little good with the continuous spray of saltwater and the wound running far too well.

"Get Her to the shore as best you can, Captain. But for the love of the gods, keep Her off that crag!" Baruc cursed through clenched teeth when the next lurch of the ship came.

The captain needed no telling to keep away from the twenty-foot high reef. Even through the wild wind and spray, he could see the horrific sight that lay before them. One of the smaller points of the reef would tear the vessel apart without trouble at all.

Another scream dully reached Baruc's hearing. It seemed even farther than it should have, but decidedly female and young. With a palm tight in against his head and ear, he turned to search the chaotic scene of the deck. Men, young to old, that he knew to be part of the crew were swiftly looked over and then ignored.

He staggered away from the captain, hobble-stepping over fallen rigging, ropes, splinters of crates and nets. "Idora!" The edge of the net was grabbed a hold of and yanked aside to reveal more water, more pieces of crate. The ache in the side of his head was ignored while he searched until he found the small form among the debris. "Idora!" The child was pulled up to him and cradled in close and protectively. Her sobs were distantly heard and he felt her shudder against him. "Not much longer, my dear." As gruff a man and wild as he and all things were at the time, he tried to calm her from weeping and screams.

"Captain, beach this whale!" Baruc covered the girl's head and ears, then roared it above all. It was not just the child in his arms he worried for.

But he would let them all think that his rage knew no boundaries and that harm by him might come to any who did not move fast enough. An arm around and about the girl protectively, he held to what he could to keep himself on his feet.

There were other precious things to find and he had little time left to do so.