Tanis
The Lands of the Fulmen Nati
Mount Limen
Fulmen Vigra
Seven Days AgoLugal Aigen sat cross-legged at the edge of the summit, facing East, staring blindly into the darkness. His eyes were white, his pupils clouded. His body skeletal in form; the Lugal lived a harsh life of fasting and idle meditation atop one of the tallest mountains in the land where the air itself gave way to the Aether. It was little wonder that, despite being a mere twoscore years in age, he bore the look of an elder approaching their final days. Such was the burden of the Lugal. Serving as a conduit for the will of a God taxed the body. Even supping upon Divine essence daily to sustain the body, it was still eroded away by the raw potency of the force connected to it. No Lugal lasted for more than a year. It had been two months, and already Aigen found that he could no longer sleep. Every ache and pain of his body had faded away, and his every waking moment was filled with glorious visions and whispers of prophetic portent.
The priest in him revered the signs and gestures of a God. The learned scholar in him recognized the signs of Delirium. The truth of the matter was something more and something less than what men could know. Perhaps both were one and the same.
The throne of the Fulmen lands was a humble arrangement. The Lugal had a stone shelter carved into the recess of the summit overhang, where he kept a private library, a slab of rock generously called a bed, a stone table and altar, and several racks and hangers for the requisite collection of religious paraphernalia. Each of the fifteen receptacles was barren, the artifacts they had once held having long ago been stolen or bestowed as gifts. Lost so long ago, what the relics had even been was lost to the ages. Just beyond it, a small garden of Verum Flowers was kept. Something of a botanical mystery, the silvery orchids flourished in the horrid conditions of the summit. Nowhere was there food. This high up, the summit should have been crested by pure-fallen snow for a source of water, as many of the other mountains in the Fulmen chain were, but Mount Limen had purportedly never harbored snow in any measure upon its peak. Not even in the deepest and most bitter of winters.
Thankfully, the agony of thirst and hunger had been supplanted by the yearning need for a new kind of sustenance, which saw the Lugal sitting at the edge of the Summit now, in total darkness, waiting.
His patience was rewarded. The sky grew brighter with an orange glow by measures, and then Tafari broke across the horizon and began to ascend into the sky. Aigen looked head on into its brilliance, his blinded eyes unflinching as divine light speared into his mind through the two organs. In the light of dawn, Aigen rose.
After staring into Tafari for several minutes, he turned to the South-east, away from the Fulmen mountain chains. Though his vision was obscured by distance, a layer of clouds, and blindness besides, he looked out to the foreign lands beyond his own and saw them as they were in the light of day. For thousands of years they had been apart from the Fulmen Nati, which was the way of things. They had their own gods, their own ways and arrangements, and this was as it should have been. The pantheon of the Fulmen Nati harbored no delusions that they were anything but (relative) newcomers to this world. They had taken places within it, but they would hardly presume to dictate the terms of their visitation.
That was about to change. It was the Will of God. The heathens in their
civilized lands could keep their gods. So long as they bowed lowest and foremost to the new Pantheon, in the Dawn of a new Age.
Aigen spoke to the wind and intoned. Nobody was present to hear his decree, but nonetheless it would reach its intended recipients.
~The gathering of the high priests of the Effulgent Order is convened.~
He then turned away from Tafari and retreated to the overhang to meditate and read the stone tablets of his library. Many things would need to be done in the coming days, and Lugal Aigen intended to be prepared to execute them before the high priests arrived at Fulperlitt for the convocation.
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Mount Limen
The Seat of Legacy
Present DayThe round stone room, allegedly the site of the first Effulgent temple, stank of corpses. Eleven Demihumans sat uncomfortably upon their ceremonial seats, surrounding a central fire pit where empyrean incense smoldered. Unfortunately, the smoke released by the burning essence was nearly odorless, and did nothing to mask the scent of charnel emanating from the vacant twelfth seat.
High Priest Iimah'lutah, head of the Effulgent Order at Apricor, solemnly waited in stern silence nonetheless. He preferred to let the convocation of high priests take in the fetid air here, as a reminder of what had transpired that had so cursed the empty seat. He glanced about the room, and seeing that the junior-most of their number had turned an unfavorable pallid coloration out of sheer nausea, decided he had let them stew for long enough.
"As senior-most priest of the Effulgent Order, I declare this Convocation of the High Priests at the behest of the Lugal to be assembled. I call upon each of us in turn to deliver their portents for consideration by this gathering."
The junior priest from Otium, a mere score and eight years in age, spoke first with a look of immense relief. "The flow of wind now sweeps in a great vortex between the Waning Gulf and the Revenant Bight, encompassing Otium in its breadth. Flocks of birds attempt to migrate, but follow the thermals in circles. Some manage to escape either to the Northeast or the Southwest, flying to foreign lands. The number of birds that return are the same, but the newest amongst their number are of species foreign to our lands."
The priest from Satus - a somewhat obese man adorned in fine jewels none of the others bore - spoke next. "Foreigners have come to Satus. Mostly Orcs and Elves, armed and armored, skilled in traversing the jungles. They die fighting rather than surrender. Songbirds have flown beyond the Draw Veil without prompting by their masters."
The priestess from Ungdet, with vines of carmine hair, was next. "The flow of the rivers, from the mountains to the Northern estuaries, has reversed." There was a collective take between the assembled priests - short breaths, blinking eyes, turned heads.
"Reversed. The streams flowing uphill?" The Baleosus priest inquired.
"Uphill." The priestess affirmed. "The water appears to sink into the Earth at each of the river sources, and is brackish and salty. Furthermore, with the changing of the flow, strangler figs have been found along the riverbanks, fully grown, where a moon earlier they were absent. They choke and slay the trees around those streams, and at their bases, Verum orchids grow."
"Fascinating." Iimah'lutah said. "These portents are rather telling so far. We must proceed."
"The Warlord Charis attempted to recreate foreign siege weapons." The priestess from Ecsigent went next. "They succeeded, but proved unable to move the weapon effectively through the jungle or the swamps. In an uncharacteristic gesture of piety, they had the construct chopped into kindling and sent to the temple of Mannet as an offering."
"Children have been seen throwing clay bottles into the Tiam causeway, containing slips of parchment inscribed with profoundly upsetting insults." The priest of Fulperlitt said simply.
"Clay bottles containing slips of parchment inscribed with profoundly upsetting insults have been found washed up on the riverbanks of the Tiam river." The priest of Mollis Latus said, their tone of voice reproachful. One of the eleven figures hurriedly turned a bout of snickering into a disturbed cough. "Foreign bodies have been found in the maws of the Devouring Earth of the Protrero. Domodets have been sighted south across the Tiam river, carrying tools stolen from nearby villages."
"A small plot of cleared land in the jungle was found, where some force of peoples had been constructing a ziggurat with unfamiliar signs. Construction appeared to have been abandoned halfway through. Masons say construction might have begun a decade or more before. The structure was torn down and the materials made an offering to Mannet." The priest of Respecit Fulmen stated.
"Foreigners head to Iugulum Mot, ignoring our warnings. Their flayed skins are found draped across clotheslines, the image of a crown carved upon their brows." The priest from Dakat'fium spoke more with embarrassment than with concern. Their village was the first line of defense against the Revenants and Wraiths of Iugulum Mot. That the agents of Mot could so freely move in and out of the village to leave their 'laundry' to dry without being detected was a sign of lax vigilance. "One foreign ship,
The Azrac Sun sailed North, hugging the coastline. It passed through the Waning Gulf, and was spared by the forces of Iugulum Mot."
"Have there been any other ships recently?" Iimah'lutah asked expectantly.
"No other ships have passed that way for the last year." The priest said flatly.
"Curious. What else?"
"There was a disturbance of the blood of the earth in one of the shaft mines just this week." The priest from Baleosus, Eimli, the third oldest in the room, who bore a steel scepter with a tip of diamond - likely a token gift from the warlord Balefor. "A great plume of flame erupted from one of the tunnels, filled the air of the shaft, surged upwards, and spread across the basin like a dome. There was no damage, save for a single shipment of empyrean incense which combusted and was carried by spread across the village by the event. An unscheduled holy day was declared in order to keep peace. The fumes formed a cloud which rose from the Metfall basin, and blew to the Southeast with the wind."
Everyone strained to hear the priestess from Radix Arx as she whispered a faint report. "Somebody left the village to plant a verum orchid by the main gates two months ago. They now blossom freely about the road." The flowers were interesting, but the simple statement that even one of the almost religiously solitary natives of Radix Arx had left the confines of the village was unheard of. The population there was called 'The Last Family' with good reason. Only high priests had regularly been in and out of the village for thousands of years, and its inner routines were almost a complete unknown to those outside. Their population amongst the Fulmen Nati, which was a distinct subgroup of the Human Species, was in itself a distinct subgroup of that population.
"The Twelve Prophets declared that a New Era would soon dawn." Iimah'lutah stated. "They said that the Wind would carry on or carry off the Cadence of Freedom, that the eight Instruments would be unearthed in great turmoil, and that the Third Lament of Tafari would either made or averted by the actions of man."
A new voice spoke last from the twelfth seat.
"The dead rise to walk the steps of those who never were."
The twelfth seat, from which the stench of death and rot emanated, which was in perpetuity stained with the blood of the lives lost from the collapse of the sunken village, which had been empty but mere moments ago - now seated the exiled High Priest of Iugulum Mot.
Tien'camot, High Priest of Tafari, High Priest of Mot, Kinslayer, Traitor, Deceiver, Heretic. Reaper of Tens of Thousands. Disciple of Centipedes. Keeper of the Carmot Tablet.
Necromancer.Iimah'lutah and the High Priests of Mollis Latus and Baleosus rose as one, gesturing with their right hands and reaching for divine icons with their left. The other priests either recoiled in their seats or else sat in stunned shock.
Tien'camot waved a hand, lazily and errantly, as the series of curses and invocations surged through his body. His eyes flared, shone, and dissolve before starting to dribble from their sockets like molten gold. Blood began to seep from his arms and chest. His head twisted a complete 360 degrees, the flesh tearing and exposed vertabrae growing brittle and snapping into pieces under the forces acting upon them. The dead body slumped in the seat, but the head just laughed, even as boiling and steaming cerebrospinal fluid and meningeal tissue began to pour out from the stump of their neck to stain and burn the body below. The already horrid stench coming from the chair descended to new depths.
"Such a harsh greeting. Has time not eased the ill condition of your humors for me?"
"This is a dream." The spluttering priest from Satus moaned. "This isn't real. Too much of the smoke. Too much of the incense."
"Even if this was not real,
you would not be spared of me." The disembodied head hissed. "I received the same summons you all did."
"And you have said all that we will hear." Iimah'lutah said through bared teeth. "Your words will be taken into consideration. But you
will leave, least we render this vessel of yours into scorched pulp."
"Very well. Heed these final words: The ancient enemy of our people has returned. I have deciphered such from reading the Carmot Tablet. They will be the perpetrators of the Third Lament. If you do not take action, they will enthrall Providence itself."
The head lifelessly fell from the air and bounced into the fire pit, rolling to a gentle stop amidst the smoldering ashes.
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"His first portent cannot be trusted. Even if true, we have no way of verifying it. The second portent is...worrisome."
It was now late into the night, most of the High Priests had retreated to private cells for rest. Iimah'lutah and the priests from Baleosus and Fulperlitt had stayed up to discuss what was to be done.
"Regardless of what he said, we must act all the same in regards to the remaining portents." The priest from Fulperlitt declared. "All of them are clear and consistent. Either foreigners will come to our lands to destroy our way of life, or we will venture out to their lands to ruin theirs. The lament of Tafari must be tied up in this matter. I propose that our action to avert the Third Lament will be our carriage of our faith to the desolate lands beyond the Tiam and Mata rivers."
"The Apricor Prophets warned that the Third Lament would be either
made or averted by the actions of man. What if such an effort on our part inadvertently contributes to the inception of the Lament?" Eimli pressed. "It may be that we must merely act to defend ourself from outside influence and interference by foreign powers. I am convinced of this due to his warning of our 'ancient enemy.' Iimah, what enemy did Tien'camot speak of?"
Iimah'lutah remained silent for some time, appearing to weigh his words carefully before responding. "The Fulmen Nati have no ancient enemy, save perhaps for the First Lugal himself. Though I would be hesitant to ascribe them as an enemy of our peoples so hastily. Even Mot and his servants are not truly our enemies such in the way Tien'camot has framed his warning."
"I almost wish we had not banished him so quickly. He might have said more on this matter had we let him." The priest from Fulperlitt said, frustration in his voice. "He may be treacherous, but he swore by the Carmot tablet and indicated this enemy - enemies - would be responsible for the Third Lament."
"If the Third Lament is made manifest, does that not benefit Mot? The Whole of Existence would be his to consume." Eimli argued. "And mentioning the Carmot Tablet is probably the only way he could have made us listen to him at all. Any fool would have known they would have to use it in order to make us consider their words seriously, true or not. He is proven to be treacherous, I say he may be playing us."
"Excellent points, Priest Eimli." Iimah'lutah said. "Once the gathering has ended, I would like you to personally investigate the possibility that the Cult of Mot may be rising within the echelons of society, and possibly the Effulgent Order itself. If Tien'camot spoke the truth, then there will be no harm in doing so. If he lied, we may potentially unroot the cult and their conspiracy before they can do any damage."
"And what of our response to the portents? Shall we prepare to wage glorious and bloody war upon the desolate nations? Or shall we close the thresholds of our house, that none might enter?" The priest from Fulperlitt asked.
"Until we see more conclusive evidence of foreign interference in our affairs, stirring up the Warlords against the foreign nations would prove detrimental to our long-term stability." Iimah'lutah thought aloud. "Either for purposes of invasion or defense, I would think." He turned his head down to the floor for several moments, clearly thinking, before turning to face the other two once more.
"Perhaps we might merely send members of the Effulgent Order and Questors to the Desolate Nations, to spread the Glory of our pantheon? If we use only peaceful measures, none would dare attack us for such. We are too isolated, our lands too inhospitable to invade effectively.
"I do have some difficulty envisioning the spread of our beliefs to foreign lands contributing to the Third Lament." The Fulperlitt Priest said slowly. "This seems a safe enough momentary action."
"Then let it be. On the morn, I shall announce our intention to the others."
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Terus Azraca
Dhirim
The Great Foundries
Five Days Ago. . .Brine was in the air, mixed with the smell of soot. The nearby refineries belched black smoke from burning coal as they heated the ore, which the great foundries then cast into ingots. Within the plain, rectangular buildings of roughly hewn stone blocks, there were hundreds of smiths. The foundry was like a beating heart, or maybe that was simply the impression one got from the constant thrumming in the air as the smiths beat weapon after weapon into shape, working side by side in almost complete unison.
Into the briny water fresh from the sea were the searing hot blades thrown. Once cooled, they were taken out and loaded into crates. Some dozen or so crates found their way to the docks, along with crates of everything else from ale to pottery.
The dockyard was rather quiet, as Dhirim did not ship so many goods as it once had. Alaba was now the wealthiest city and the center of all trade, while Dhirim was in the back of the merchants' minds, continuing to be the source of near all Azraca's metalworks just as it had been for the past five centuries. Still, there were a fair few orcs that helped the lankier Azracs to heft the crates onto the ships. No doubt the orcs stared at such crates with envy; a month of hauling the crates back and forth would yield enough pay for a worker to keep maybe one or two such crates full of goods for himself.
By early in the morn, the last of the goods had been loaded into the belly of The Azrac Sun, a tiny little trade vessel that was the pride of Azraca and the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Still, steered by such a skilled captain it had a good chance of making it to Ryuku, where the strange people would pay handsomely for the weapons and other assorted goods. The Captain of this ship had made many a successful venture such as this, and so his word carried with it the weight of experience. The younger lads looking to make their fortune did exactly as he said, as soon as he said it. That was precisely how the Captain liked it.
The ship left at the sun's first appearance over the cliffs to the east. A trade wind was stirring, but the ship was able to steer straight in the shallows, hugging the coastline. The sailing was uneventful and monotonous for several days, the sailors passing their time gambling and occasionally fishing, while the aging Captain slept in his cabin. It would seem that Selijuk intended to grant his faithful with an easy voyage and easy gold.
The only thing amiss with the voyage was the absence of a single sailor, who had failed to return from their shoreleave once they had learned in which direction the ship would be sailing. The rest of the crew did not let the memory of his drunken, slurred warnings and ramblings dampen their spirits. If the man believed what the Demihuman primitives in the Nati lands said about the savage coast to the Northwest, it was his loss when the ship pulled in to port in a week and half.
Sailors were a superstitious lot, but only a fool would believe in the tales of Iugulum Mot and its vengeful revenants attacking ships. The Blind Prophet himself could see that Iugulum Mot was no more than a pile of rocks in a marsh.
The Lands of the Fulmen Nati
The Revenant Bights
Coastal Waters
The Present DayAfter having traversed the coastal waters surrounding Iugulum Mot, a few of them had broken across a change of heart. Others were merely ambivalent. Even those who steadfastly refused to believe in the restless dead were still forced to admit there was something queer about the waters around the bleak estuaries and marshes of the peninsula. As they had entered the Waning Gulf, an eerie green sky had swept out from the shoreline - in complete contradiction of what Nautical science said about how storms should form - and loomed over the vessel for days as it traversed the Gulf's coast. The horizon was filled with lightning constantly, preventing any of the sailors from resting with its frequency, but no rain accompanied it, and the waters were still and dead. In the night, sailors swore they saw dark shapes moving in the water, and strange bumps and keening hisses in the dark seemed to invade the hull.
All of this was but a paltry prelude to the passage past the accursed site of Iugulum Mot itself. The tales and rumors said none could lay eyes on it and live. The moment the broken spires and sunken visages of the sunken city came into view, a keening, eerie, alien roar filled the air, chasing after the ship. The sea had churned and boiled as they sailed by, and every shadow seemed to have a mind of its own, cast in the shapes of men and beasts alike.
But it had passed. The Captain had personally taken stock and seen the ship past that dreaded port. Once they had left the waning gulf, all had returned to normal. The remainder of the trip around the Sterile Peinsula was as boring as the approach to the gulf had been, and now the enduring Azrac Sun was halfway across the Revenant Bight. Iugulum Mot had once again come into sight from the crow's nest, but none of the fearsome omens had manifested. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, and the waves were gentle.
The Captain continued to stare with distrust at the dreary spires. In his heart he had been sure of his own doom and the foolishness of choosing this route rather than the tried and true eastern one, but it seemed that his original sentiments had been right. Of course they had been; he was wiser and his beard was whiter than half the fools in the Terus dynasty. As the Captain stumbled onto the deck, his daily skin of palm wine in hand, he spotted the Quartermaster on break.
"I told yeh, son!" he slurred. "Those Demihumans were dumb enough to build a city on a swamp, so they're dumb enough to think the ruins are cursed. This," he said, gesturing at the serene waters, "is what I said it'd be. Ne'er doubt yer Captain!" he spat, his spiel at last over.
"Aye Captain. You can be sure once we're back home, every seadog worth their piss is going to hear what a joke you made of their tall tales." The Quartermaster affirmed. "Will we be takin' the same route for the return trip?"
The Captain shrugged. "I've been thinkin' about that. Might just sail our way over to Vathcras and take the eastern route, bring back a few slaves. Word has it that Khazard is running out."
Suddenly, there was a fearsome shout from above as the lookout cried out from the Crow's Nest. "MAN OVERBOARD TO STARBOARD!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs, loud enough to wake the dead spirits that had failed to appear thus far.
"What fool?" the Captain shouted, dropping his wine in alarm. The wineskin tumbled overboard. "Go save the wretch's hide and bring me back that wineskin!" the Captain slurred, grabbing the Quartermaster and throwing him overboard. The Captain moved to turn the ship around, circling so as to not sail away from the two in the water.
The Quartermaster shouted several indignant curses as they fell through the air into the water below, but they nonetheless began to swim out from the ship once he surfaced. In the distance, perhaps two dozen meters or so, was the bobbing form of a man adrift at sea, their body floating limply on the waves. It took them the better part of fifteen minutes to drag the pale form back to the ship, struggling to swim through the water with just one hand. Thankfully for the both of them, the water in this part of the sea was warm rather than chill. The Quartermaster was met alongside the hull by two sailors with ropes, who helped him and his passenger back aboard.
"The wineskin was irretrievable sir." The Quartermaster reported primly as he dumped the man's body onto the deck. "And this dreck isn't part of the crew."
The Captain spat. Soon he'd drink the last drop of the palm wine that they had brought to sell.
The stranger appeared to be dressed in the Azrac fashion, albeit waterlogged to the point of ruination. Their skin though, was a pale and deathly ivory shade. Their eyes were glossy and gray. One of the crew knelt down and pressed their head to his chest. "No heartbeat." They grunted. "This dreck is dead as driftwood."
The dead man proceeded to vomit out the contents of their stomach along with two lungfulls of seawater out from their mouth, all over the sailor's head and the deck. They jolted upright, then fell to the side and continued to heave onto the deck, bent over on all fours as they violently wretched.
At this point, the Captain was contemplating throwing the man off the boat before he made even more of a mess. He was a godly man, though, so instead he would force his idiot of a Quartermaster to clean the mess.
"Well, son, ye brought this man onto the boat, and he made this mess. And ye didn't bring the wineskin. So I reckon it's ye who ought to clean this...this..." the Captain growled, at a loss for words.
"Aye sir. What do we do with him though?" The Quartermaster gestured at the stranger, gasping and panting for air on the deck before them.
"Does it look like we have a Mazman? There are no healers here. He's a dead man. May as well let him hang over the side 'til his belly's empty. We'll wait 'til he's dead before we push 'im over, that way we won't be no murderers."
"Aye aye. You louts heard the Captain, get him tied and secured!" The Quartermaster relayed. "And somebody get me a mop!"
And so the man was lashed to the rail of the ship, head bent over the side, and they continued on their voyage. Hours later he had started to murmur and growl feverishly. A day later he started muttering almost coherent speech.
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Ryuku
Off the coast of Ritang
Present DayBy the time they reached port almost five days later, he had started complaining.
"For Selijuk's sake, somebody untie me at once!" He cried out. "What is wrong with you people, tying up a dying man fresh from being adrift at sea?"
The Captain, drowning his sorrows in ale now that the palm wine had all "leaked out of its barrel", looked over at the man.
"Eh, I figure someone's been givin' you food an' drink, else you'd be stiff by now. Pah, fine," he slobbered. He pulled out a small dagger from its sheathe on his side and began to clumsily saw at the rope tying the man to the side of the ship. A few grunts and a few shallow, oddly bloodless cuts in his skin later, the man was freed. The Captain looked at the man, still as pale as the when they had pulled him from the sea, and once again thought about throwing the ungrateful sot overboard.
"About time. If a Mazman were here, you can be sure they'd be upbraiding you about now!" The man grumbled as he got up, stretching his arms and back as he turned to face the captain. As their eyes met, the captain saw that his eyes were dull and gray, his pupils milky and blind. "Where in Tanis are we?"
The groggy Captain stared at the man for several moments. He looked a bit queer, didn't he? The drunken man blinked a few times before second guessing himself. "Ryuku, home of a bunch of fools that willin'ly give us gold for crates of bronze garbage that we might as well use for anchors. Say, I should be asking, what were ye doin' out in the water when we found ye?"
"I was a passenger aboard the
Mountebank, sailing back to the homeland. We sailed too close to the coast. I was below deck when it happened, so all I heard was the roar of the damned as they tore the entire ship to pieces. Last thing I remember is blacking out a half dozen fathoms underwater." He paused for a moment. "So, Ryuku? You mean the place where they worship bushes and sticks and every damn thing under the sun? The same Ryuku with the turnips and radishes?"
"Aye. The one and only..." the Captain mockingly slurred, outstretching his hand towards the approaching city, "Empire of the Sun! Say, the sun is where Selijuk dwells. Ye think they call themselves holy?" the Captain guffawed.
"Well, the damn fools are certainly wanting enough for people calling themselves an empire. I'd like to disembark at port, but I reckon I do probably owe you something for rescuing me. Did you find any trace of the ship, or any other survivors? I'm guessing not, considering I was the only one lashed to the rail." His voice was only mildly reproachful as he broached the question.
"Nah. Else we'd be sellin' heaps of timber from yer 'Mountebank' and we'd be turning around for Khazard with a shipload of fresh slaves," the Captain choked out as he continued to laugh at Ryuku, his seriousness hard to tell.
"Well, if you want to make a bit of coin - the Captain of the
Mountebank was this fellow from Khumer, if you can believe it. Said he was moving a shipment to one of their nutter cultist priests. Thing is though, they told me when they were a bit deep in the cups that most of their shipment was already being stored at port, ready to be sold. The Captain's name was Werrill. If you happen to stop by Khumer on the way back home, you can maybe stop in and attend to his affairs for a tidy sum."
A gleam shined in the Captain's eyes at the mention of gold, and the seasoned sailor listened intently to the man's tale. "Aye, I'm growin' too old for this...might be nice to finally hoard enough gold to buy myself a palace to die in," the Captain said, looking down in thought. However, his distrusting nature got the better of him. He had fallen for scams and ruses his fair few times over the years. "But, ye just as well may be leadin' me whole crew into chains or graves. Khumer isn't a friendly place. The Sultan doesn't guarantee our protection when we go to such lands. Why risk going to that crazed hellhole of a kingdom?"
The castaway shrugged. "That's your decision to make. I just thought I'd pass on the information. Not like I can make use of it without a ship. As far as I'm concerned, we're even. If you change your mind though, Captain Werrill said that there was a code phrase to validate his identity. When he passed out I went through his records, thinkin' maybe I could make do for the shipment instead of him. It goes like this, 'The Drum of Thunder stirs the Blood of the Blistered Earth.' If you relay that to any authority under the Flayed King at the port, you should be able to claim his dues.
The Captain thought for some time. At last, he gave an apathetic shrug. "Well, stranger, I s'pose I'll ask your name out of curiosity's sake before I let you do your "business" here. I'll sell these goods, let the boys go on land for a few days, then head back to Azraca. Maybe see about getting that payment on the way," the Captain said just as his first mate steered the boat into port. Several of the Ryuku dockhands saw about tying the ship in place and putting down a plank.
"You may call me Mote. Permission to disembark now, Captain?" The strange man said as the customs officers boarded the deck, asking for the captain of the ship.
The Captain smirked at how quickly this 'Mote' was catching on. He nodded his permission to Mote before turning to deal with the Ryukuan officials and their ridiculous regulations. When he turned to try and catch one last glimpse of Mote, the man had seemingly vanished.
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tl;dr
-Nothing happened.
-The Azrac Sun rescued man found adrift in the Revenant Bights, and delivered him to Ryuku.
