An Account of the County of Sunderspray

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Shyriath
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An Account of the County of Sunderspray

Post by Shyriath »

Part One: On the History of the People
Written at Musica by the hand of Sarran who is called Landwalker,
Of the Lineage of Lirdu called Sightland, Captain of the Silver Tear

Tonight is the last night I spend upon land, and for the first time in twenty years I am to return to the sea - to return Home. It is a strange feeling, for perhaps better than any of the People I have come to understand and accept the ways of the mainlanders, and even become acclimated to them.

Perhaps I should've gone back long ago, eh?

You mainlanders, you know, are very steady. You've been shaped by your environment, I suppose; the land beneath you is firm and unmoving (except under very unfortunate circumstances), and thus also are your ways, your customs, and your government. And this is not necessarily a bad thing, because such a solid foundation supports the vast weight of great works; a great military, advancements in science, and a rule that stretches from continent to continent. In short, it allows the very greatness of the Imperial Republictself.

But this is not to say, however, that nothing has been lost. Anyone in the world can see that organization brings its own difficulties. Bureaucracy, for example, allows for efficient administration, but anyone who has ever had to fill out three different forms knows of its downsides. Command structure, such as in the military, allows the wielding of power with breathtaking precision, but at the cost of dampening initiative in favor of authority. The very ties that bind people into something greater than themselves, by definition, restrict what they are able to do as individuals; and when improperly managed, they restrict the higher organization as well. The tendency is toward stabilization and predictability, rather than flexibility; and many a government has found itself in desperate straits when faced with an emergency that its policies prevent it from solving effectively.

The key to understanding the People, on the other hand, is to see things from the point of view of those who live in an ever-shifting environment. I say this for the benefit of you for whom I write - the people of Shireroth, many of whom might have difficulty understanding. For those who live at the mercy of the waves, who move around constantly, who come in contact with each other, with outsiders, and with the dangers of the world at unexpected times, flexibility is key. The greatness that better structure might provide must be traded for the robustness and resilience of looser forms.

This has, in many ways, been a characteristic mark of the People - the Pennà, those who were once called Benacians - since we fled our beloved Isle. Once upon a time, we too were an organized people, a settled people; but all that we had been was torn apart and left behind in the chaotic aftermath of the violent destruction of the Sky Pillar. The known survivors, nearly all of them coastal people with access to boats - fishing boats, merchant vessels, yachts - fled the destruction. It has been some time since we heard news of the Islle now go there, but many of us still hope and pray that other survivors fled into the marshes on the western end of the island.

As for our ancestors, most of them made for the greatest center of civilization they knew: Port Benacia, whose ancient marketplace surrounded a deep harbor on the eastern end of the Isle. There, they found each other, as well as a mass of ruins; those few people still surviving within the city itself were taken in. Realizing that civilization on the island had been virtually annihilated, the ragtag fleet set sail towards the east, to the nearest parts of the Shirerithian mainland.

Aboard the ships, people found themselves forced into new roles. Rich and poor no longer meant anything, and neither did social class or clan lineage; the survivors were mixed together almost randomly with other survivors, and all of them threw themselves into work, or else they died. Most of the vessels gathered for the journey were small, cramped, and eminently unsuited for traveling out of sight of land; many of them, too, were in poor repair, having been commandeered out of desperation. Leadership came to whomever could lead best, whether by skill, by charm, or by force of personality; and just as quickly, it was lost, whether by lack of skill, by arrogance, or by weakness. As for the direction of the fleet, that was not set by any captain or admiral, but by the nearest safe haven, and the straightest route to it; the vessels moved not as a unit, but as objects that all happened to be going the same direction.

The strange flotilla began to arrive on the shores of Amarr some months after the flight, especially the coast near to the Shirerithian border. The welcome they received was, at first, cautiously friendly, and the word that reached the other survivors was good; but as more of them landed, the People found that, as tiny a percentage as it was of the former total, was quite large enough for the locals to perceive them as a threat. The western frontiers of Shireroth are only sparsely settled, and the Amarrians feared that they would quickly become outnumbered in their own land. Refugee camps set up along the shore were soon forcibly dismantled, and those People that had landed were driven back into the sea, whether the ships there could hold them or not.

It was, perhaps, an unfortunate time for such desperation. Need and unplenty stalked the land everywhere in those days, and although the more violent periods of civil war had cooled, the effects were still felt everywhere. Resources were stretched thin, and there was precious little to spare, even for the desperate. As history teaches, however, the desperate are rarely in a mood to see things in that light.

So it was that the hungry survivors sailed further down the coast, followed by those of their kindred that had not yet put ashore, and descended upon the beautiful port city of Fatehpur Sikri, to beg assistance from the Count of Amarr. A motley arrangement of thrown-together rafts, patched-up fishing vessels, and aging cargo ships filled the harbor and spilled out across the nearby sea, although barely half remained from the initial flight from the Isle, many ships having sunk or fallen to hunger or plague along the way.

But the Count, concerned first for his own people and unnerved by the presence of a strange fleet occupying the waters of his city, refused them supplies or asylum, and commanded them to leave at once. The People, already desperate, went into a panic as the word spread among the fleet, and many of them began to land on the shore, intending at first to protest; but the protest quickly turned to fighting, and to looting. People abandoned their rafts and took control of newer merchant vessels; shops and groceries were plundered; protesters and police battled in the streets, and their struggles, joined by locals, became riots within hours. The graceful architecture of the city itself came under attack, as fires began to spread.

The mayhem lasted throughout the night and into the next day; by noon most of the People had left, absconding with their stolen goods, and the rest were being driven back toward the harbor by the infuriated mobs of citizens. The ships departed in ones and twos, heading back out to sea. They left behind them a city with nearly half its buildings turned to charcoal; and a dead Count, caught by surprise while trying to evade a vengeful mob of refugees.

If before they had been merely a nuisance to the mainlanders, the People were soon branded as pirates by those who heard the tale of the sack of Fatehpur Sikri. Though long-distance communications in those days had begun to break down, cities all along the southern coast of Brookshire soon knew of the flotilla and rushed to counter them wherever they tried to land. As the months of exile turned into years, the People became more accustomed to shipboard life, and learned to survive through fishing, secretive forays onto the mainland, and an unsettling amount of raiding on shipping. Children began to be born onboard, and grew up knowing only a life upon the sea.

But an increasing population demands increasing resources, and the People, their sources of food and materiel too limited to construct more ships or feed more children, began to turn to other options. As the ships drifted south and east into the Khaz Modan archipelago, taking shelter among the innumerable islets and cays, the fleet lost what little cohesion it had had. Some, wishing to sail to lands where they were not so notorious, sailed southeast along the Yardistani island chain; stories tell that some of them settled among the people of Yardistan, Amity, and Mirioth, taking up the life of coastal traders; and that some of them, more adventurous, continued on toward Istvanistan.

A second group, consisting mainly of those with the strongest religious fervor, had come to believe that a Promised Land, far from their enemies, awaited them far across the wide oceans to the south; and making their way through the Khaz Modan Isles, set forth across the sea with all their hopes, and the People have never heard from them since. Another group of the same alignment but, perhaps, of less foolhardiness, decided to return west, and seek to establish themselves in the glorious ruins of Port Benacia and rebuild. They, too, were lost to the People from that point on.

The remainder of the People, however, making up between a third and a half of the functioning ships, remained for a while in the northern Khaz Modan Isles. As many know, the islands in this area, north of Sara-Nyl and Thanidor and south of the Thanatos coast, are generally small and sparsely inhabited. Many of them are mere spits of land, flat and sandy; while others, becoming more frequent as one goes further south, are rockier and somewhat mountainous. Almost all of them are unsuited for agriculture, and few of them have readily available fresh water. The People, therefore, valued them not as targets for permanent settlement, but as supply dumps and base camps. Far from prying eyes, the islets offered safe harbors; and a few were home to trees useful for shipbuilding. The flotilla, now devoted to piracy almost full-time, returned to them between voyages to store their loot and conduct repairs. The only permanent populations on the islands consisted mainly of mothers with children too young to walk, and those very few people who avoided death in battle long enough to reach an age of infirmity. As the People adjusted to seafaring life, their forms of governance also began to settle slightly on a single-ship basis, with simple processes being laid down for choosing ships' officers

For nearly twenty years, the People operated out of the Khaz Modan Islands, preying upon the Brookshirian and Yardistani shipping that passed through. But as economic decline set in, long-distance trade began to shrink, and ripe targets became fewer and fewer in number. Desperate once again, the flotilla continued to expand its horizons further and further afield; and the attention of the People became drawn toward Brookshire Hamlet, as the attention of the Hamlet became drawn toward them.

Now, even in those declining times, Brookshire Hamlet remained the local administrative center of Brookshire; and although it was not nearly as large some other cities in the Duchy, the presence of the Ducal residence and of the offices of both Ducal and Imperial officials made it a center of communications, of influence, of trade, and above all, of wealth; and it was near enough to the coast to make an alluring target for piracy in troubled times. As the People began to land raiding parties on shore once again, probing the coast of Modan-Lach, the Ducal government, henceforth preoccupied with inland matters, began to take notice of the incursions, and of the reports of pirate activity that had filtered in from Amarr and the other western counties over the years. Quietly, Brookshire began collecting together what ships it could find in preparation for a showdown.

The People, confident after a devastating raid at Eriksburg, and drawing on memories of the spoils of Fatehpur Sikri, began to consider an attack on Brookshire Hamlet. Shadan Clawfinger, recently elected captain of the Dream of Rana, hosted a great meeting of the captains and quartermasters of the ships of the flotilla, invoking the favor of B'caw and the long history of the People in his argument; while Lirdu Sightland, captain of the Silver Tear, warned of the dangers of an attack on such a visible target, and the wrath of the Imperial Republic. But the People, eager for wealth and glory, chose in the end to proceed with the attack, leaving Lirdu and scarce few others to remain behind.

The fleet led by Shadan sailed on Brookshire Hamlet, and it is said that the sight was fearsome to behold. Sails and banners filled the inlets between the barrier isles that protected the bay near to the Hamlet, and sea traffic to the city was cut off. The captains cast lots to determine who would remain behind to guard the inlets and who would raid the town, and as the chosen group approached the port that served Brookshire Hamlet, they noted gleefully that the defensive fleet was not quite as large as their own. Believing themselves to be in a superior position, Shadan's raiders bore down on the defending fleet, some engaging the ships, some smashing through to shore and landing men to take the Hamlet.

But the raiders found themselves deceived, for many ships of the defending fleet were only lightly manned, and their hulls packed with explosives. Set alight by their crews and then hastily abandoned, explosions began to tear holes through the over-hasty attackers, and sudden confusion and apprehension drove some of the fleet to distance themselves from enemy ships. Meanwhile, land-based units armed with torches and flamethrowers freed the port from the raiders' control, seized the landing boats, and under the guise of returning raiders, got close enough to the ships off the shore to set fire to them.

Meanwhile, the attackers assaulting the Hamlet itself found a stiffer resistance from the Ducal militia than they had expected, and withdrew in an orderly fashion to the shore, only to find that their nearest ships were burned. The militia cornered them in the buildings of the port, and a bloody struggle erupted as they holed up in the warehouses.

Meanwhile, ships badly damaged from explosions sailed back out to the inlets, bringing news to the patrolling ships there of the confusion in the battle in the bay, and of the failure of the inland raid. Some ships began to sail into the bay to join the fray; others, suddenly eager to be far away, began to sail out, and the strength of the patrols suddenly diminished. And it was at this point that the Imperial Navy, having remained away from the battle until its time had come, arrived at the south inlet to destroy the scattering ships there and enter the bay.

The scale of the destruction there is a matter of both legend and record. Empty hulls littered the bay floor; hundreds of men drowned, or slaughtered, and many hundreds more captured. Some number of ships managed to escape through the west inlet, but for most of the raiding fleet, doom was all that faced them. Though the decline that had eaten away at most of Shireroth had robbed much of the country of technological prowess, the Imperial Navy remained well-funded, well-trained, and well-equipped; with hulls of metal and advanced plastics instead of wood, and far-firing artillery, even a single ship was a dangerous foe for the fleet, and the squadron that had come annihilated them.

When the first survivors of the raid returned to the Khaz Modan Islands, warning of the disaster and of the Imperial scout ships following behind, Captain Lirdu called to all the other ships still remaining to take their families on board with all the supplies they could carry, and they set sail; other survivors evacuated who they could as they came. Within a week, a detachment of the Navy began scouring the Isles in order to root out piracy there once and for all, and all those of the People who were there either left or were taken prisoner.

The remaining flotilla sailed east with all the speed it could muster, pausing only to replenish what supplies they could on the islands between Mirioth and Modan-Lach. But they could not remain as far from land as they wished, and as other units of the Navy took up pursuit, the People realized that they could not run forever. So it was that under a flag of truce, Lirdu Sightland met with the commanding officer of the force following behind them from the west, and asked for terms of surrender. The officer, though not a man predisposed to leniency, was good and honorable, and having learned from other captors that there were families on board the vessels he was chasing, agreed to be flexible in his dealings with the People.

And so several ships of the Imperial Navy sailed back with the Silver Tear as it rejoined the flotilla, and anchoring in the shallows off the mouth of the Elwynn, the People were herded into a temporary settlement on the muddy islands there as negotiations continued. Other prisoners of past conflicts were sent there as well, and they were joined freely by some of those that had sailed to Yardistan in years past, and Captain Lirdu represented them all before the judgement of the Imperial Navy, who acted as representatives of the Kaiser. And over many months it was agreed that the remainder of the People, being indeed the children of the Isle of Benacia and rightful subjects of the Crown, were subject both to his law and his mercy; and that many of their misdeeds had been done to protect their own livelihoods, but that they could not go unpunished.

Lirdu Sightland thus asked that, in return for their further abstention from raiding and their pledge of loyalty to the Kaiser, the People be forgiven, and provided with a place to settle themselves. This the commander would not do, because there were few livable places to settle them where they could be watched, and which was not already inhabited by people who were likely to be unfriendly to the idea. He countered that, instead of a guarantee of settlement, there would instead be a guarantee of access; the ships of the People would be allowed to enter port like any other vessel under the flag of Shireroth, provided that they identified themselves with an insignia, so that they could be documented. He added that the People could found a settlement wherever they wished, provided they could gain the permission of the local nobles and residents.

Knowing that this was the best offer a beaten people were likely to get, Lirdu called together the remaining captains and quarter of the ships to discuss their likeliest course of action. The leaders of the People dared not risk losing the chance of amnesty, but they were embittered by the terms, knowing that no one nearby would take them in, and that sailing north to strange coasts would bring them to cold and unfriendly lands. Many had grown up on the decks of their ships, among only others of the People, and mistrusted outsiders, and did not wish to bow down overly to them. Therefore, they swore a solemn oath that fulfilled the terms of amnesty without bowing to the humiliation of begging for a new home, by declaring themselves bound only to the endless realm of the Ocean Sea, and forbidding any of the People to make their home upon dry land, unless it was at a place that was already theirs: the Isle of Benacia, and that the oath must be honored and upheld on pain of death. The People, eager to be freed, all swore the same oath, and its terms were made into the famous Pact of Abjuration to be signed by the captains of the Great Flotilla of the People of the Isle, and by the representatives of the Navy, to make it further binding.

The Abjuration marked the end of the People's dream to settle themselves in a single place. Until the day came that they returned to their ancient home, their houses were their ships, and their homeland was the sea. Forbidden to steal or raid for a living, the People took to acquiring large merchant vessels and relying solely on transport and commerce to make their way in the world. Many vessels came to resemble villages on the inside, complete with their own marketplaces; and although the lean years made this way of life difficult, the consolidation into fewer, larger communities helped them to eke out a living. The People also came to rely more strongly on each other; as ships could generally rely on other members of the Flotilla to provide them with aid and reasonable trades on good for use or sale, they formed a low-risk network for trade and charity among themselves, and were able to provide many land-dwellers with goods from great distances, otherwise not easily obtained locally. Though never trusting and rarely trusted, the banner of the People, bearing the mark of the Silver Tear in honor of Lirdu Sightland, came to mean market day for many villages along the coasts of Brookshire and Yardistan, and occasionally into Goldshire.

So it continued for many years, and the People grew again, and did their best to stay apart from troubles on the mainland; and when at last prosperity returned to Shireroth and trade flourished once more and technological advance restarted, they were able to look forward at last to a bright future. The People diversified into many ways of life, some remaining with small and medium wooden ships with sails and motors, others purchasing larger, modern merchant vessels for themselves. The construction of the first sancts drew them further afield, into waters that they would not have gone before, and saw in their inhabitants kindred spirits, and a way of life that forsook the land even as theirs did.

As a civilization grew upon the waves, the People began to join it, in their own cautious manner.
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Ari Rahikkala
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Re: An Account of the County of Sunderspray

Post by Ari Rahikkala »

* reads about what you did to Fatehpur Sikri *

Tervetuloa reilukerhoon!
No-one should be without a parasol, Sirocco.

Shyriath
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Re: An Account of the County of Sunderspray

Post by Shyriath »

Yay, I've had a curse placed upon me in Finnish! *Expects to be attacked by... er... snow-covered mummies... or something... any time now*
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