Pirate Raids

Throughout the Autumn of 803, minor settlements along the Salt Coast were ravaged by a series of pirate raids. Shipping lanes had always been a target for piracy, but these raids on coastal settlements were unprecedented in recent memory. Rumors stirred among the local peasantry of a "Pirate King" who had unified the unsavory corsairs and formed an armada of destruction. They claimed the ships were impervious to flame, and the sailors thereon incapable of pain or human emotion.

After much consideration, on the second day of Ready'reat 803, a coalition led by Duke Ricordea of House Hallow Evanescence, Master of the Iron Hills, swayed the small council of King Harold I to vote in favor of commissioning an Inquistion by the Church of the Celestial Flame. The Realm Priest of King Harold's court immediately sent word of the decision by sparrow, and within the day, an experienced Inquisitor was dispatched from Magdeburg by boat to the Port City of Newham in Kedwin where refugees from the most recent raids had been sheltered.

The dissent within the council, led by Lord Carolan, Duke of Vrelect and Protector of the Seas, advocated for the mustering of a small fleet under the royal banner to conduct defensive reconnaissance of the coast, thereby showing force to the pirates and the affected locals alike while simultaneously gathering information to determine if further action was required. Though support for this course of action was considerable in the council's debate, the duke's allies failed to lend him the political support necessary to win the vote. The master of House Carolan stormed from the council chambers and returned to Vrelect to see to the defense of his own coastal territories, feeling betrayed by his peers and the crown alike.

The Church of the Celestial Flame, always invested in reports of heretical activity, enthusiastically seized upon the situation to promote its places of worship as bastions of safety from the supernatural threat and offered food and shelter to refugees of the raids, while ordering knights of the Order of the Flame to patrol coastal roads and guard the hallowed grounds of religious holdings. Marshal Raithar, Lord Commander of the Valerian Military, on the other hand was quite alarmed by the ceding of military authority to the Church, and the subsequent loss of faith in his ability to keep safe the realm.

On the 5th of Ready'reat 803, Inquisitor Godhard Almaric arrived in Newham and began his investigation. Interviews with survivors and witnesses quickly led Godhard to believe that the rumors of ships impervious to flame were not exaggerated. Dozens of lowborn citizens and minor nobles alike described the guards of their small holdings bravely facing the foe, firing volleys of flaming projectiles only to see them extinguished upon contact with the hulls of the corsair ships, and spoke of wild eyed men leaping to shore, overcome with inhuman bloodlust. The "wild men" or "ótambær stór-menni", as they were called in the old tongue by one particularly disturbed merchant from Vrelect, ravaged the villages they raided with an unspeakable savagery: murdering, raping, and burning from the moment they landed.

left Newham for the small nearby fishing village of Meerstadt, arriving on the 6th of Ready'reat, to investigate the aftermath of the most recently reported raid. There, he initially discovered little beyond ruin... desiccated homes stripped bare of valuables, the corpses of the town guard heaped about the roads, and (most disturbing of all) signs of a ritual sacrifice on the desecrated alter of the ruined local parish. Surprisingly, however, the Inquisitor was able to locate a survivor hidden amongst the ruins beneath the parish, a young girl of fifteen. After interrogating the poor soul, he determined that she had not been party to the raid and learned that the corsairs had sailed east following their heretical rituals. The survivor described unspeakable acts of dishonor exacted upon the women folk of Meerstadt upon the alter of the Flame, the torture and murder of the local priest, and odd ritualistic chants "uttered from the throats of the heathens". The bloodied young woman was sure that the fiends had seen her as she watched them take their leave from the North transept of the sanctuary before she realized the the structure was engulfed in flames, and was just barely able to escape to the cellars after seeing the corsair ships depart to the east.

In the mean time, the still vulnerable trade routes of Valeria fell victim to continued piracy in the absence of increased naval security, and small coastal villages near Porthcawl, Magdeburg were subjected to the horrors of the dreaded corsairs. The people of the northern coasts felt betrayed by their new monarch, and the traders of all of Valeria suffered financial blows from the loss of goods bound for lucrative markets abroad. Additionally, the ruthlessness with which the Church conducts its investigations was felt by the locals, who retreated from the ancient cultural customs of their ancestors in fear that they may be misinterpreted as pagan or heretical. However, the Church believed it was poised to discover the truth behind the issue, and the samples collected by Inquisitor Almaric had been sent to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Skallgrim, much to the delight of the academics who study there.

On the 9th of Ready'reat, Inquisitor Almaric arrived in Magdeburg and began interrogations of the merchant captains who were docked in the city. After many interviews, he spoke with a Cordovan sailor who claimed that some weeks prior, as the convoy of ships he was part of rounded the horn of the Antuil Mountains from the West, they had been attacked by a fleet of ships, larger in size than any class of vessel he had ever seen, which glowed a ghostly white in the light of the moon. The ghost ships attacked the front of the convoy in a violent ambush. The rearmost vessels attempted to wheel about and flee the onslaught only to find that more of the ghostly ships had suddenly appeared behind them. The captain claimed that his crew had jettisoned their cargo of grain and sailed swiftly for the cover of the rocky coast where the mountains met the sea, choosing to brave the treacherous waters instead of the corsairs. The pirates failed to pursue them there and days later, the ship had arrived in Magdeburg where they were stranded with no goods to sell and no means of purchasing provisions.

Inquisitor Almaric, erring on the side of caution, rounded up the rest of the crew and turned them over to Church officials for more in depth questioning. He then made for Porthcawl.

On the 15th of Ready'reat, Inquisitor Almaric spoke with a number of refugees who had been taken in at the City of Porthcawl. The selfless sacrifice of a regiment of Order Knights, who through themselves against the pirate hordes when they landed in the nearby village of Alaric allowed a surprising number of the locals to escape, and they carried with them valuable information. They confirmed the rumors of ghastly white ships, larger than any merchant vessel and boasting three masts, but more importantly, they estimated the fleet to consist of at least two dozen ships. The Inquisitor reported his findings and continued his investigation.

On the 21st of Ready'reat, Inquisitor Almaric had the good fortune of encountering a lone corsair, badly wounded, who had drug himself into the forest outside of Alaric. The man, for a man he was, confessed after a long interrogation that he was in fact a heretic, though not from Valeria. The corsair, using his final moments on the mortal coil and between sobs and pleas for his own merciful death, revealed that he and his comrades were mercenaries and privateers from the Free Cities far to the west. He claimed to have no knowledge of who had hired them to conduct the raids upon the Salt Coast, but was able to articulate that whoever their mysterious benefactor was had provided them with the ghostly white ships that were impervious to flame, and explicitly instructed them to defile churches and engage in pagan rituals worshipping the flase gods of yore.

This situation is active and unfolding. The council need not consider additional action for the time being. Discoveries:

• A mysterious mineral has been found in areas where the pirates made landfall. Samples have been sent to the Royal Academy of Sciences for study.
• Witnesses to the corsair raids claim the men are "wild" and overcome with an unnatural bloodlust, that they engage in ritualistic sacrifices while chanting in foreign tongues, and they seem to target churches explicitly to defile them.
• A Cordovan merchant captain claimed the corsairs sail in great white ships which appear to glow in the light of the moons, and that they seem to appear as if from nowhere in stunning ambushes.
• Survivors from Alaric, Magdeburg estimated the size of the corsair fleet at twenty-four great white ships.
• The pirates appear to be humans, though foreigners, from the Free Cities. A recent confession elicited by the Inquisitor revealed them to be heretics, worshippers of false gods, who specifically targeted poor villages and religious sites. The prisoner further alleged that the fleet of corsairs was hired by some unidentified third party to raid the Salt Coast, and that the mysterious ships were provided by the same patron.

Conflict Type

Military Campaign