Karavas

As the sea squall crept back toward the red dawning at the edge of the world, a castaway floated in frigid and frothing currents near the coast of Zer Zim. Mercy is anything but common in the many lands of Karavas, and so we are left with the near-certainty that the miraculous survival of Estav Silva was no mercy, but the malevolent tampering of fate's impish hand. For while Estav, a rather brazen sailor of a spice trader, was found alone, half-mad and half-dead, he clutched in his blistering fingers a crystal no smaller than his own stubborn heart. And from sun-blasted and shriveled lips, he feebly sputtered with the last of his strength, the fable of a distant land, a lost world, a new frontier.   "I could hear but nought from his island drawl," said the crabber. "At first that is, but he claimed he just found it lying there, 'like a common pebble' he said, if you can believe that raucous," the crabber continued as he twisted and wrenched his cap in calloused and leathery hands.   "Then something came over the wretch and was like talking to another man entire. Ramblings about a great horror or some such tall tale these Skageraki are so fond of. No such thing, there's no such thing," he said with a chuckle that echoed flatly in the Great Keep. He winced as the sound of his own trepidation reached his ears and his tired eyes resolved again his whereabouts. The simple crabber straightened his slouched shoulders, conscience of his lowly manner in this hall of Lords and all the while the imperious man seated like an immovable gargoyle on the dais fixed him in a discerning, silent gaze. Long dark hair tumbled about his robed shoulders as he spun the Ora crystal in his hands, the movement of his tongue across his teeth evident behind his thin, closed lips. The facets of the gemstone glimmered blood red, shining from some hidden recess within the prism. The crabber had found it just as mesmerizing in the light of dawn when he had thought for a fleeting moment that it might solve all of his life's problems if simply stole away into the desert with the scarlet secret. Now, the soft glow became alien and almost repugnant to him in the grey hall of the Keep. Its innate vibrance seemed to undulate, to ebb and flow with the sound of crashing waves heard far below the high towers of the Spire.   "I'll admit," the crabber continued nervously looking not at the Archon but at the crystal, "his eyes were wilder and more craven than a gull in the deserts of Zerude, he must have seen something to spook him so…" His voice trailed off as the Archon leaned back in the tall stone chair causing the predatory Osprey perched on the seats parapets to fidget restlessly.   "Do not waste the lord's time with your speculation, out with it!" barked a voice from the side parlor where the Archon's retinue observed the account. The wizened Mystic stepped from the parlor to stand nearer the dais. He was garbed in slate-grey silk finery of the highest quality and the black and white sigil of Zer Zim emblazoned over his heart. From beneath a shallow hood, he wrinkled his protruding, hooked nose as the plumes of his plumed mustache twitched, leering at the man so very beneath him.   "Err, what I mean to say, Archon-Lord is that he seemed a shell of a man. Too long exposure in the open seas I'd wager. Strange that the Deep Ones found him unappetizing is all, but perhaps his madness turned him a touch too rancid for a feast."   "My lord, let us dismiss this as the crude fabrication that it is, there is no world beyond the horizon, the Boiling Sea is endless. There is no question."   The Archon stood, his presence silencing the Mystic while his eyes never drifted from the paling countenance of the crabber. "What is your name, master-crabber?" the Archon said in a voice like stone, but without any hint of the condescension that was so generously dripping from the Mystic's words.   "Urich, sire," the crabber intoned as though he had nearly forgotten it himself. "Urich Fulmar," he said louder and with more resolve. Realizing yet again that his posture had slipped a third time and chiding himself a fool, he straightened to a feeble imitation of a military pose, despite his meager upbringing.   "Tell me Silva's words precisely as he said them to you upon the dawning." As he spoke, he snapped his left hand once as though casting a spell, summoning a scribe to his side.   The crabber began anew his account of the castaway's fable word for maddening word while the scribe swept an Albatross quill, long and white across a sheet of parchment. Illustrious flourishes immortalized Estav Silva's final moments in ink as black as the fate he had set in motion for the world.   The words of the spice trader rode swift winds in wax-sealed envelopes to the distant corners of Karavas.