Part MMMCDXLXVII: Where Stars Are Born
Where Stars Are Born
Thirty First Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Dawnstar and Duskrunner, the ships are named. Bright streaks of light in the night sky at first, then ever brighter, ever closer to the excited crowds below. They had seen the Moonchaser, indeed they see her now for Moonsong would not bear her ship being absent from the pageantry of the day, but the sister ships have their own mannerisms already even so fresh from the artisans' and enchanters' hands.
The Dawnstar shines gold so soft you might think it a trick of the fading evening light, but it is not. Her captain is Tirael the Tireless, an archon who had come to Yrael's call in the early days of Mantarys' existence, proving himself a skilled administrator but somewhat to his own surprise an even better pirate hunter upon the Summer Sea, able to secure the vital trade routes of Tolos to keep the city alive until its first harvest could bear fruit. For this and many other valorous deeds, as well as his wider knowledge of the cosmos and magic, he had been grated captainship to which he had taken with an almost frightening passion. The fact that his commander of the ship's marines was an erinyes who had served on the Hunter's Moon only added to the suspicion of other archons that he might Fall one day soon as he embraced ever darker means to see his duty done. For yourself you cannot say for certain, as spirits may Fall through the Spheres so too may they Rise and only time will tell where that dance ends.
By contrast the Duskrunner earned itself a mortal captain, one of the oldest in your service, who had sworn himself to you when you had half-a-dozen ships and a ruined pirate anchorage to your name, though it was surely not seniority that lead Sepet the Sharp, supposedly late of the Red Waste, to his lofty command. The man had taken Scholarium courses among the first classes, and though his talent for actual sorcery proved meager, barely enough for Low Magic, he absorbed knowledge like the parched sands of his supposed home did water. He had also shown a sharp eye for delegation, able to keep just the right balance of daring and caution to see his mission done and as many of his crew crew alive as possible. His sailors unsurprisingly love him for it, though supposedly he has quite a sharp tongue with magisters and other nobles so you made certain to keep any easily offended officials from his command deck for the flight.
Well your mother had seen to that to be precise, not that she did not have much to chose from. Far more than the traditional sort of court your keep plays host to countless merchants, artists, scholars and other folk with no great name to call their own yet, though you have little doubt that those of them who survive the tumultuous days to come will have one to call to their kin. If anything the court was growing a touch too large for the keep you had inherited from the former lords of the Deep and then improved with fey magic and newly made gold in the early days of the realm. It was of course convenient that the larger court events could take place outside so long as someone sent word to Zathir, but one could hardly expect the god to always keep an eye out on such things. The new palace would greatly simplify administration of all sorts, not to mention other more arcane benefits.
Just as the Moonchaser and now her sisters have grown beyond ships of wood plying their trade on the sea, so too would your palace compared to Dragon's Roost. You wounder briefly what those long dead pirate lords who had resisted Prince Daemon's claim as king of these islands would think of what they had become.
"They would notice it doesn't have walls and think they could plunder it," Varys points out irreverently.
"I trust we have much better protections than that," you reply, motioning to the trio of sky ships making themselves known to Sorcerer's Deep and soon all the Stepstones.
What do you do next?
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OOC: Sorry this took so long guys, just when I was getting into writing my internet went out, though thankfully not for long.
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