The Ice-Ship sails
Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 12:53 am
Cheerless and grim are the dusks near the pole
Dark are the nights that there fall
Pale and wan are the people who see the sun rise
And some never see it at all...
It was the Day of Grapes and Lightning in the month of Icebound, andthe sun had reached polar midnight. Now it never rose above the horizon at all, save in the southernmost tip of Valsi, and it would not be seen again until springtime.
But today the city of Taekar was bright and cheerful. It was the last day of the week-long Festival of Elith, when everything was illuminated. Candles, bonfires, lanterns, electric lights - anything people could light up, they did. The outsides of homes and government buildings were covered with pinpoints of brightness, and from a rope suspended over the harbor dangled hundreds of little lanterns, as if the stars had all arranaged themselves in a row.
The illuminations were made doubly dazzling by their reflection from the massive chunk of ice in the harbor. That was The Queen of Night's Repentant Children, one of the two great iceberg-ships of Raikoth. The iceberg-ships were slow, expensive, unmanueverable, and completely useless south of about 60 degrees latitude. But they were perfect for the task they served - patrolling and protecting the straits that separated Raikoth from Elwynn to the west and Treesia to the east.
The ships had been made long ago, during the last of Shireroth's great golden ages, when the island of Treesia had been a military base for the sinister Grand Commonwealth. The Kaiser's navy had been well-prepared for any conflict, of course, but the Hyperboreans, located closest to the border, had decided to make defenses of their own. Two of the largest icebergs in the Halberd Strait had been towed to Taekan. There in the harbor, engineers had drilled a complicated system of tunnels and chambers into the ice, fitted them with powerful engines and artillery, and transformed them, invisibly, into warships.
[OOC: There was an article in the old ShireWiki about these, but it seems to be lost. Does anyone have a copy of it? And does anyone remember what the name of the ship class was?]
Every season, one of the great ships would patrol the straits, while the other remained in Taekan, ready to defend the home islands if danger was spotted. Today, One Hundred Eight Concentric Circles would return from its patrol mission, and the Queen of Night's Repentant Children, docked here since early Stardance, would set out for the icy seas.
But this time was different. The Queen of Night's Repentant Children was full of Paladins, supplies, materiel, artillery, and other weapons of war. Huge new cargo bays had been hollowed into its depths, one of which even contained a special miniaturized Opal and the supplies needed to launch it. The Nine had been following reports of the disturbances around Shirekeep, and although they were not yet ready to commit to action, they felt it best to be ready to move on a moment's notice.
The iceship had orders to head to a point thirty nautical miles out from the border of Elwynn and Brookshire, just north of the city of Tephar. Its commanders hoped that there, if discovered, it would not be seen as a direct threat to either the Elwynnese or the Brookshirerithian forces.
There was another reason the Nine hoped that no one would object to the iceship's presence, that being that they had no intention of telling anyone about it. To anyone who spotted it sailing by, it would seem like just another rogue iceberg, drifting on strange currents no one else could feel...
Dark are the nights that there fall
Pale and wan are the people who see the sun rise
And some never see it at all...
It was the Day of Grapes and Lightning in the month of Icebound, andthe sun had reached polar midnight. Now it never rose above the horizon at all, save in the southernmost tip of Valsi, and it would not be seen again until springtime.
But today the city of Taekar was bright and cheerful. It was the last day of the week-long Festival of Elith, when everything was illuminated. Candles, bonfires, lanterns, electric lights - anything people could light up, they did. The outsides of homes and government buildings were covered with pinpoints of brightness, and from a rope suspended over the harbor dangled hundreds of little lanterns, as if the stars had all arranaged themselves in a row.
The illuminations were made doubly dazzling by their reflection from the massive chunk of ice in the harbor. That was The Queen of Night's Repentant Children, one of the two great iceberg-ships of Raikoth. The iceberg-ships were slow, expensive, unmanueverable, and completely useless south of about 60 degrees latitude. But they were perfect for the task they served - patrolling and protecting the straits that separated Raikoth from Elwynn to the west and Treesia to the east.
The ships had been made long ago, during the last of Shireroth's great golden ages, when the island of Treesia had been a military base for the sinister Grand Commonwealth. The Kaiser's navy had been well-prepared for any conflict, of course, but the Hyperboreans, located closest to the border, had decided to make defenses of their own. Two of the largest icebergs in the Halberd Strait had been towed to Taekan. There in the harbor, engineers had drilled a complicated system of tunnels and chambers into the ice, fitted them with powerful engines and artillery, and transformed them, invisibly, into warships.
[OOC: There was an article in the old ShireWiki about these, but it seems to be lost. Does anyone have a copy of it? And does anyone remember what the name of the ship class was?]
Every season, one of the great ships would patrol the straits, while the other remained in Taekan, ready to defend the home islands if danger was spotted. Today, One Hundred Eight Concentric Circles would return from its patrol mission, and the Queen of Night's Repentant Children, docked here since early Stardance, would set out for the icy seas.
But this time was different. The Queen of Night's Repentant Children was full of Paladins, supplies, materiel, artillery, and other weapons of war. Huge new cargo bays had been hollowed into its depths, one of which even contained a special miniaturized Opal and the supplies needed to launch it. The Nine had been following reports of the disturbances around Shirekeep, and although they were not yet ready to commit to action, they felt it best to be ready to move on a moment's notice.
The iceship had orders to head to a point thirty nautical miles out from the border of Elwynn and Brookshire, just north of the city of Tephar. Its commanders hoped that there, if discovered, it would not be seen as a direct threat to either the Elwynnese or the Brookshirerithian forces.
There was another reason the Nine hoped that no one would object to the iceship's presence, that being that they had no intention of telling anyone about it. To anyone who spotted it sailing by, it would seem like just another rogue iceberg, drifting on strange currents no one else could feel...