This is the play thread for Port Hope. While you are in Hope, this is the thread to play in. Missions will typically happen in a separate mission thread. For sign-ups and OOC, visit the OOC Thread.The Iron Coast is a frigid hellscape to the far north of Art. Drakes, trolls, werebears (arktothropes) and constant murderous snow threaten to kill you at any given time, food is scarce, shelter is scarcer and for half the year the sea freezes enough that almost no ships can reach you from the outside world. No one in their right mind would come here voluntarily.
Except Temzin Arthrus, noted explorer and madman, an Udanese noble who had an obsession with travelling to the arse end of nowhere for no other reason than saying that he had been there. While on his travels to the Iron Coast, as well as losing two toes he discovered that the coast was not only rich in iron (and diamonds, surprisingly enough) but contained natural sources of kyrite, the most valuable mineral in the world for its magical properties.
Ten years later, the Udanese had the bright idea of setting up a colony to work their intended mines along the coast. Since nobody would come voluntarily, they made it a prison colony. Other nations from across the world, seeking the wealth of the Iron Coast, set up trade companies staffed by prisoner labour that would establish their own mines, using the Udanese colony as a port. In exchange for the appropriate tarriffs, the Udanese agreed.
It is late in the year 783a, thirty years on, and you have been shipped off to the town of Port Hope, the only stable settlement on the Iron Coast. Even now, in the depths of winter, prison ships still come to Hope. Prisoners like yourself are dropped off on the edge of the ice field, given some basic supplies and told what direction to walk - and that's exactly what just happened to you.
The hull of the prison ship grinds against the ice as it drops anchor. In dribs and drabs, prisoners are forced at gunpoint down the gangplank onto the ice field, some with equipment, some with none. One man resists - he is shot and his body dumped into the icy waters. The rest fall in line after that. You are sent out in groups of no more than eight, lest you catch the attention of the 'wildlife'. Those of you who were able to bribe the quartermaster even carry a little equipment with you on your trek. Once you are in your apportioned groups, each of you is given papers to present to the harbourmaster at Hope, you are pointed in a direction and told to move. Some, fearing the cold and other dangers of the field, are reticent. One of the two warships accompanying the prison ship fires a cannon shot into the field, shattering the ice and drowning two of the prisoners. You take the hint and head off.
Two hours of walking through ice and snow later, you catch sight of a light through the snowfall and trudge towards it.
The first thing you see is the lighthouse. It does not inspire confidence. Rather than the stone towers you have seen before along more civilised coasts, this appears to be a wooden shack on tall poles where someone has set fire to the roof. You are amazed that it hasn't fallen down in a stiff breeze and set fire to the rest of the town.
The town itself mostly consists of rough wooden shacks clustered around a handful of large stone manors and official buildings, flanked by row after row of warehouses by the docks. The docks are the only truly respectable part of town, consisting of six large piers and a dozen smaller ones. Several wooden cranes are visible all over the dockyard and you can see huge wooden racks where fishing boats have been stacked to prevent damage from the ice. With said ice reaching all the way up to shore it is no surprise that what would otherwise be a hive of activity on the docks instead resembles a ghost town.
As you get closer, you catch sight of a large wooden sign by the docks. The first four words have been painted on in black, well-rounded and clearly official and faded to a dull grey from years of exposure. The part added on was clearly scratched on after. Nevertheless...
Welcome to
Port Hopeless
Egil, you were saved from the frying pan by the fire. Due for execution, your fishing village was raided by the notorious pirate Erikssen and you were thrown into slavery. You were forced to work as a deckhand during the trip, until you were sold to the Udanese at Port Ishtar. You were then given chains and a 'crime' and put on the prison ship. Now you are here, having swapped one master for another. You are technically a prisoner of House Ival, whom you will have to work off your sentence with. As you were friendly with the quartermaster, a fellow Weylander, he made sure that you were well provisioned with weaponry and armour for your trip. You also got to know the archer, Tadisill, who was captured while you were aboard Erikssen's ship.
Sinimis Valentibus, you recently took a sabbatical from your studies at Oritzteten, where you had just completed your grounding in theoretical Mentalism, with a mind to broaden your focus to theoretical study of all fields of magic (you considered yourself a pure theorist, none of this applied nonsense), during which you decided to tour the Storm Coast as your great uncle Locanil once did. All was going well until you fell in with a less reputable scholarly crowd in the Confederacy, who alerted you to the presence of a store of kyrite belonging to the Confederacy's college of magic. You got rather drunk one night and attempted to steal it, during which you were soundly caught. Since the Confederacy did not wish to provoke a diplomatic incident with Hatcur by having you executed, you were consigned to the CTC on a charge of grand larceny and shipped north to the Iron Coast. It is downright frigid here, and the robes you were imprisoned in do little to negate the cold. All you were able to save was a leather-bound journal and several sticks of charcoal with which to write.
Sonja Cadmilsious, you were born and apprenticed in the Blessed Lands as a smith. You grew up in the city of Adrenalis, where you learnt your craft until your apprenticeship came to an end. Bereft of employment in the city, you heard tales of the great metalworkers of the far-off Golden Reaches. You spent your meagre savings on a ship to the distant west and worked there for a time, intending to work as a journeyman and perhaps gain the patronage of one of the master smiths of that realm. Unfortunately, you made a poor deal buying some cheap iron which turned out to have been stolen from the stockpiles of House Chan. Branded a receiver of stolen goods you were sentenced to transportation in House Chan's care, which is how you ended up on the prison ship. You bartered with the quartermaster during the voyage and, with a little luck at dice, you ended up with some serviceable armour, a huge sword of Weylander design and a bit of coin to start you off in this new land. These lands are cold, but not so different from home; you might do well here.
Tadisill Coerpus, you were born into a Korlanese enclave in amongst the Ralkarian city-states in the south of the Blessed Lands. You learnt to be a huntsman like your mother and spent several years in Windheath, in the north of Eldania near the tundra, where your skills were further honed. Hearing of opportunities on the Storm Coast for a capable archer in that place's many wars, you signed up with a ship on the intent of travelling there. Unfortunately, your ship was captured by pirates under the command of Captain Erikssen, a Weylander pirate, and you were pressed into slavery and sold to the Udanese. You are now technically a prisoner of House Ival, serving an indeterminate sentence of 'criminal vagrancy', and were shipped off to the Iron Coast on these pretences. During your voyage you got to know Egil, who was a fellow slave aboard the pirate ship. When you were transferred to the Udanese, you were able to hide your bow, arrows and armour from the slavers and stash it aboard the prison ship. With a few bribes to the quartermaster, you were able to bring them with you.
The four of you set off with two others, a Mirish fellow by the name of Roderick and a Samakhet woman called Elaria, both clad in winter clothes with a handful of provisions they were able to bribe. Roderick acquired a cudgel from somewhere, and you are aware that Elaria has a knife. The journey continues on through the ice field for hours, as this deep in winter the ice stretches for miles away from the port. You begin to wonder if you might be lost, and the cold is taking its toll on each of you.
[Survival Checks: Egil 4, Sinimis 9, Sonja 10+1, Tadisill 6+1.]
Sinimis manages to shrug off the cold, mostly by walking lee-ward of the rest of the party. Sonja's thick clothing bears her well through the cold, and she is used to this kind of hardship. Tadisill struggles, but years of hunting in Windheath have taught him well. Only Egil truly suffers, and the cold saps both spirit and strength from him. [Egil is at 5/6 hitpoints.]
Just as the cold begins to get truly murderous and you think you might be walking in circles, you spot a be-robed figure clambering across the snow in your general direction. You move to get a closer look, and it appears to be an Udanese figure. He seems unaware of you at first, but when he spots you he holds up his hands and waves them at you. You think you can hear him shout something along the lines of '...ay! ...way!', but the wind cuts away much of his speech. What do you do?
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Topic: Hopeless: Port Hope (Read 8467 times)