03 - Hidden Sands Cove
A NATURALLY SHELTERED PLACE
Pharm gripped the rain-soaked rope for her life as powerful gusts of wind tried to push her from the deck of the ship. The captain and look-out were both blind-sided by the massive storm that literally spun itself into existence without reason; an odd and sudden drop in temperature followed by the shifting of the waters as though the tides themselves had somehow changed. There was no warning and the sky grew dark in a matter of seconds. Heavy sheets of rain started hitting the ship before the crier could reach the alarm bell and within seconds of the storm hitting the ship Pharm watched two other deckhands swept from the deck by a tidal-wall of water that pushed both men and an entire stack of sandbags into the turbulent ocean.
Against the raging waters from sea and sky, Pharm pulled herself towards the mast hand-over-hand in what seemed to take every ounce of her strength to cover the twenty paces from the port-side railing to the 3-foot diameter mast in the center of the deck. As she began to tie herself to the most central part of the ship, two other sailors came into view with the same thought for survival. In the downpour it was impossible to see the crows nest far above their heads and the noise of the storm and the whipping sail was deafening. She could see that the two sailors, men she knew, were yelling and trying to communicate over the storm but it seemed neither could hear the other regardless.
The ship lurched under their feet and the entire vessel was roughly lifted by an enormous swell, a giant wave of turbulent water rising from the ocean and raising the ship high above normal sea-level. As the ship settled atop the forming wave the three sailors were again tossed, this time into the air as the ship ended it's upward movement and began the inevitable descent that all things experience. Just as the deck began fall out from under their feet there was a crack of lightning and although none of the three were looking, they heard from the look-out for the first time since the storm begain.
"Brace for impact!"
After the storm seemed to subside, the surviving crew assessed the situation and realized there were no stars in the sky. They soon learned that they were in a massive underground cavern and their entire ship had been pushed under the surface of the water and between the powerful storm and their momentum, resurfaced INSIDE an underground cove!
What began as a common sea cave formed from eons of erosion as the ocean tides beat against the coast, this hidden cavern now connects to massive underground caverns and networks of tunnels that remain unexplored.
All along the beaten west coast of Allegri there are constant raging lightning storms and brutal hurricanes that pummel the shorelines. This well-known and little explored phenomena has caused most of the coast to remain entirely unexplored by the humans currently claiming the continent. The basics of the coast have been mapped but the underground caves and tunnels carved over the centuries by the daily tides, and the deeper mysteries of the coast, including the aptly named Hidden Sands Cove, remain unknown to the wider human populations, even to the relatively nearby capital city, Clavier.
The coast wasn't always a swirling vortex of lightning and wind.
Location under
Included Locations
Included Organizations
Related Ethnicities
Related Tradition (Primary)
Comments