To Sail Betwixt Pale Stars
Sixteenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
After delivering your boisterous passengers to the Deep to filter out among the polished granite houses and waving kelp of the shallows, you direct the
Moonchaser to head for deeper waters, a fact her captain is only too happy to oblige in. The threefold fey is wearing an intricate gossamer dress, alike to the one you first saw her wearing three years ago in the halls of the Orphne Court. That had been the craft of spiders toiling away in the secret places below the earth. This dress is spun from the craft of a dozen realms, lace from Myr and silk from Zabhad, dyed with Tolosi saffron, and adorned with pearls plucked by tritons glinting at her wrists. Accompanying the finery is her sword of adamantine, mined in the Endless Depths. More than a dweller at the boundaries is Captain Moonsong, but rather one who pushes them into the unknown.
"Helm, set course for Mardja," she commands grandly, motioning ahead.
Arcane symbols flicker before the navigator's eyes and the ship once more hums into action with the relentless push of its quicksilver engines. Soon Vialesk fades from the sight of the ship's mirrored eye, and even the light of its star becomes nothing more than a point of silver among the deep blue of the Boundless Sea.
There are other lights, of course, other points to anchor the sailor's eye. This is not the deep abyss, where the waters can crush hardened steel as easily as parchment in a man's fist, but even the trade routes are not wholly safe. With the retreat of the Deep Ones, many of their beasts were said to have been let loose to prey upon the trade currents. To tell the truth, you suspect the 'savage' beasts are still working the will of their masters upon those foolish enough to think the danger had passed with the defeated armies of skum and sharkmen. Part of you almost wishes to encounter any that might be bold enough to tangle with the
Moonchaser, to test out the ship's weapons and the mettle of its crew in battle.
The journey proves quiet, however, seemingly to Moonsong's faint disappointment. The ship passes by lesser lights, be they great arcane crystals kindled with the light of some far off place or vast leviathans of flesh that emit their own light like worlds onto themselves, around which creatures without count play out the dance of life and death. You cross paths with other ships, from genie-forged vessels that would not look out of place plying the Endless Sky to strange spindly contraptions that seem more spider than fish, and float by the paddling of translucent fans upon the end of each appendage.
Most hail in passing, cautious of a ship unlike any they have ever seen before with many captains only growing more so upon hearing that there are two dragons aboard, though Moonsong sets them at ease soon enough with japes and tall tales. Were you in less of a hurry to reach the Emirate of Mardja, you might have stopped and accepted the many courtesy visits. Alas that time, like the currents, waits for neither man nor dragon.
***
Eighteenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
The waters ahead brighten, but not as they might from the sight of any single point, be it leviathan, crystal, or the sunken star of Vialesk. Rather, it seems more like a curtain of light shimmering and rippling with the currents. At first you suspect sorcery, some great light ward inked somehow upon the ever shifting tides of the plane, but that seems strange, for there does not appear to be anything anchoring it in place.
It is Dany who guesses the answer first. "There's these really tiny fish in the water, smaller than a grain of sand, you can feel them with magic if you try. I wonder what's keeping them here?"
She does not have to wonder long. The Coral Emirate of Mardja reveals itself before your eyes in all its vibrant splendor, with fish in every color of the rainbow, and a few that would be impossible without magic darting between coral islands upon which are wrought the works of marid hands. Towers of pearl, citadels of pale bone, and finally the amethyst domes of the emir's palace, bright with magic and life in equal measure, become visible as you close the distance. They had not been hewn with tools or carved with sorcery, you know, but grown from the living coral.
The marid guards near the palace are a great deal more thorough than the border guards in scrutinizing the letters of introduction, much to Relath's annoyance, though that might have been the fact that the white-bearded captain of the guards bears a dragon-slayer trident. For your part, you count that a sensible precaution. You doubt he would have much luck testing that against the
Moonchaser's hull.
At last you are permitted to pass through, though the ship is to keep its distance from the palace, a far greater distance than even the range of her weapons, in a case of erring on the side of caution.
Who do you bring to meet the Emir, and what do you speak of?
[] Write in
OOC: Some more world-building, but no action this time around, the dice were decidedly middle of the road. 
