The Ice-Ship sails

[Scott of Hyperborea]

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...

[Andreas the Wise]

Just read the war post and the description - both absolutely beautifully done.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Thank you. While I'm thinking about it (and have my notebook handy), here's the origin of the name "Queen of Night's Repentant Children":

In Raikothlin symbolism, the god Elith (Truth) is associated with the moon, silver, winter, and nighttime. The goddess Ainai (Beauty) is associated with the sun, gold, summer, and daytime. However, both of these gods have several "aspects", which can have different or even opposite symbolism from the standard deity.

The aspect of Ainai associated with the nighttime is Ainai Muirionrhasa, Ainai Queen of Night. Muirionrhasa is associated with night as used in the phrase "things that go bump in the night" - the sort of primordial evil power of the nighttime. The Raikothlin worship Ainai Murionrhasa in the same way the Hindus worship Kali - to keep her away.

According to mythology, Ainai Muirionrhasa had 6561 (9^4) children by Elith Ephirion (the terrestrial form of the moon). These children were born during the New Moon, and they took on their mother's attributes, becoming demons of darkness and the like. However, as the moon grew, they became more and more attracted to it and to the light. Finally, at the Full Moon, they repented of their evil ways, approached the Moon, and told him they wanted to shine as he did.

Elith Ephirion accepted them, and he created a great celestial river of silver light. He told each of them to bathe in the river and wash their sins away. As they bathed, they became covered with its light, and took on the moon's silver luminescence.

Elith then charged the children with seeking the rai mek, the ultimate light. He raised high pedestals for them above the polar region of the world, and each climbed a pedestal and entered into ceaseless meditation, looking for the rai mek within themselves.

The river of silver light is the Milky Way, and the Queen of Night's repentant children are the stars, who sit on their high pedestals above the earth and glisten with its water. According to legend, as reparations for their time as demons, they protect the people of Raikoth from the creatures of the night, and whenever Raikothlin are scared or in danger, they pray to the stars for help.

According to other legends, somewhere between 1 and 729 of the Queen of Night's children did not repent, and they are the darkstars, who continue to be dangerous demons (there was a Darkstar who was a Baron in Kildare once, but he was nice enough, so maybe that was something different )If confronted by a darkstar, the proper solution is to pray to the stars for help; one of them will come to Earth as a falling star and drive its sibling away.

[Linguistic note: rai mek = ultimate/final light, the light that the sun and moon have attained but the stars have not. Raikoth = rai koth = ultimate/final land, the last land before the northern edge of the world]

[Andreas the Wise]

Now that is really cool ...

[Jacobus Loki]

Exceptional.

[hypatias mom]

Your fertile imagination is such that one can actually see what you describe, as if they are real. Thank you again for a wonderful story about your world.