Lo, here mine tale, mine tale of misery and doom, that of the first of the unamed, the coldest of the uncaring, the hottest of the strife-fueled fires that are the twelve bays of the new world.
In 1054, Sir Forktongue the navigator, previously known as Sir Forktongue the mad, didst land upon distant shores to the far east. He did fill his hold with strange plants, and the heads of many a strange beast, and returned to the land of civilization. Here he did tell tales of vast forests, of towering mountains, virgin land, waiting for the seed of civilization. And so every nation of the world didst send their most skilled sailors in their fastest ships to map this new world. They mapped the new world's shore, named its mountains, named it's beaches, and named its bays. Mostly. For 12 bays, 12 of them went unnamed. The first of the unnamed, Bay1, lay in the far north. When word of the natural harbour Bay1 provided reached the ears of the peoples of the old world, they didst make haste to set sail for it, and to settle it. The enterprising captain Copperblood, an enterprising human merchant, did gather a crew of men of every race, shunned by their own. They sailed for many days and nights, finally reaching Bay1 starving and ill. As the bay finally came into sight, all cheered. But their cheers dimmed when they saw what awaited them on the shore. For grazing on the frigid tundra, a host of un-dead beasts roamed. The trees in the area were bare, and fishing caught naught but skeletal fish, who snapped angrily at the catcher, and did not die out of water. But they had come too far to turn back, and so they disembarked their boats, and turned the dead trees into a palisade, to protect from the marauding beasts, and their boats into houses to shelter them. Within a year, a trading ship would come to supply them, but they did not know how to survive till then. The supplies that remained from the crossing were swiftly eaten, and local wildlife was to a plant dead, animated by foul magics into a cruel mirror of life. Surely they would starve? Yet, somehow, one day a trading vessel appeared on the horizon, and sailed into a bay lined by cheering people. Yet no one came from the boat; though men were sighted. Angered, the colonists went forth to the boat, boarded it, and killed the crew. Yet the men they killed did not die, nay, they got up once more, and fought back. The colonists stared in horror, realising the curse of Bay1; all that died here would be reanimated. They would never find sustenance, for the crew of the vessel would defend it for ever more. Yet they fought, for they needed the food in the hold. They fought and fought, until the flesh was stripped of their opponents bones. "Foul undead!", one colonist did cry. "That's rich, coming from you!", a sailor replied.
And then the colonists did look at each other; and realised that they too were skinless skeletons, who had starved to death months ago. "No!", they cried. "We're just skinny, a little food is all we need!". The sailors did not stop them from raiding the boat then, and they ate and ate, but no food would give them flesh. Yet they, and soon, the sailors too, and indeed, anyone who died in the bay, believed that sufficient food would bring them to life.
And so you must shun Bay1, for undead pirates roam near it, seeking to raid ships, and bring their crews back to the bay to bolster their numbers.
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Topic: Build a city! (Read 17488 times)