Vinnie
In the hoary skies and ruffled waters of the South Eutectic, a storm is brewing. Ships have been avoiding this region for days, wary that each mild squall could be the one that transforms without a moment’s notice into a swirling monster, ripping at their sails and tearing men from their decks. Fortunately for the highly paid meteorological philosophers who had predicted that today would be the day that such a storm would arrive, the waters were blessedly empty of human life. Until that is, as lightning cracks down and waves as tall as houses do their best to bury themselves back in the depths, a small boat appears, seemingly (and actually) from nowhere. A sodden and half-drowned young man, clad in ruffled white shirt and high waisted canvas trousers, clings to the prow, attempting to pull himself to relative safety. Another crash of the waves rips one of the oars from the boat, and threatens to do the same to the man, but he summons some new reserve of energy and holds on, his fingers near blue from the cold.
An hour later the storm subsides, and he is able to climb back aboard his vessel, finding nought but the remaining oar and a small leather satchel remaining to his name, all else having been tithed to the sea. Brushing soaking shoulder length hair out of his eyes, he looks to the south, and spies the lights of his destination, the place he was told to visit.
With exhausted eagerness, he approaches, but as he does his expression changes rapidly from determination, to confusion, and finally to awe, as while he was told to expect a small fishing village at the tip of a narrow peninsula, with no more than two dozen structures to its name, he instead finds himself looking up at a vast city, scores of angular towers jutting into the darkening sky like a hedgehog’s quills, and at the very top of the hill, where there should be a small ruined temple to a long forgotten goddess, instead a regal cluster of parliamentary buildings squat like toads, lights at the windows burning long into the evening.
A lighthouse built upon a rock in the artificial harbour proclaims the name of this metropolis to the man, and he frantically pulls a small notebook from his waterproof satchel to write it down. On the first page of the empty journal, at the very top, he scratches the word “ENDYMION”.