Pictures of our event “Baybound” https://imgur.com/a/UTTjREz
The Tiden Raven crew made landfall after a short voyage across the shallows. Though exhaustion still bled deep in their bones, a sense of renewed whim and vigour kept them close to determination as they braved Stranglethorn Vale’s barbed and snaring embrace. Bootsteps fell heavily upon the dense jungle-floor, vines cracked and bent like a slither of snakes, as if the undergrowth were alive.
Cutlasses were blunted as they swung and struck at the jungle’s lively greenery, hacking and severing, and like thick limbs, they fell in a violent spill, and soon their eyes could clap on something else besides a swollen forest wall. Torches flecked the darkness, a once umbrage shroud now peeling, shadows fled and scattered before sizzling lights, and amidst it-- a road.
The crew, with a breath of kindling fervor and heave-to, took to the downtrodden road, and soon paved way through the jungle’s deeps. Nothing to impede them, nothing to ensnare them, nothing to-- A glint. Fiery red and sharp, it pierced the darkling distance like a baleful ember. They hesitated, yet soon pressed their advance, slow stalking and predatory for whichever this hellish eye belonged to.
And soon they stood beneath an ancient statue’s loom. Tall and earthy, hewn from a bygone cliffside, now etched by winds and weather; eroded and rooted, yet amidst a face of cold graven stone, shone a ruby’s glare. A single eye, as red as blood and dripping with value. At least worth a few fistfulls of coin, at least–
The Captain thought and brooded. His greed were a covetous thing and once inflamed, it wasn’t easily doused. The crew talked in hushes, though soon agreed to clap their thieving mitts upon the sighted treasure. They worked together, a heave and a huff, and soon the ruby were freed from its socketed cinch. Crook, a Captain’s houndguard, were now charged to lug the large head-sized ruby.
Their quick leave were only hastened by a echoing voice. Trollish in nature, rumbling from every high-perched canopy, and even the leaves shirked from its bellow:
“Thieves–! You’ve befouled da great Serpent’s red Eye, an’ blood will be da price!”
Silence followed, yet treachery seeded in the air. The crew quickened their retreat further. Fleet-footed and panicked, across a haggard, wind-worn bridge, and past any would-be campsites. They couldn’t huddle now, not when the whole jungle awoke simply to eat away at their heels.
Their startled rush suddenly slowed with dead-weights, as they were met with the sight of a perilous crossing. Narrow as fishbone and just as slippery, cresting the center of the Vale-sundering whirlpool; abyssal and relentless in its tidal surge. They couldn’t return nor did they have the time to find another route across, they would be bloated and washed-up dead before then.
The crew braced themselves and soon reefed their hold upon the crumbling ridge. Slow and shuffling, backs against the steep rock face as they crept across. Their eyes sprung wide with quick-spirited gusto at the sudden sight of a brutish troll, having leapt from its cliffside perch and landed with a blood-baying warcry, heralding the troll savages’ attack. Above the crew, upon a ledge, towered a spear and axe-thrower, flinging their sharpened cutting instruments; whetted hails and skull-cleaving strikes rained down upon the thieving pirates.
Scalderdog, the ship’s cold-blooded Bosun, made short work of the closest troll. In his struggle uphill, he had lagged behind and now lurked at the savage’s back. He lunged forth and the blade’s steely whim bled the troll in a fierce spray of blood and gore, a purchase of valuable time to call their retreat. The crew hurried as spears and far-flung hatchets fell upon them in a salvo of bloodletting and murderous intent.
Quick across and winded, they continued with a horde of grim-tusked and ruthless jungle brutes hot on their heels. They leapt, swerved and kept their sprint until they rounded a massive gateway, far towering above mortal height and dawned with an ominous air and long-lit torches.
They stopped. Even if fatigue strained every muscle and nipped coolly at the bones, they had continued, but they were trapped. The gateway’s portcullis jangled heavily as it fell upon the road below with an earth-shattering slam, and before they had the chance to brandish steel and prime their pistols they were roped into a bloody skirmish with the jungle’s wild tribes.
The trolls stormed from both sides. Blood-curdling warcries filled the air and sharp brutal instruments meant for shredding of flesh, swung from left to right in a cutting path. The first of the trolls, a spear-thrower were quickly felled by sonorous crack of gunfire, having charged headlong into Keira’s levelled aim, the troll’s grim-tusked grin were ended in red ruin and a billow of ghastly smoke.
Crook stood at a distinct disadvantage with the chunky ruby clutched between his clawed mitts, a refusal to surrender only steeled further by the Captain’s barking shout.
“Crook! Pox and rot take us all-- BEFORE we hand over our damned prize-- fight the lot of you, FIGHT!”
One of the trolls, a headhunter, swung its groudy hatchet for Crook and in a bloody spatter, the ruby were dropped from the worgen’s once tightly-wound grasp. His arm struck and bleeding, yet it didn’t spoil Crook’s thirst for vengeance and so the bestial houndguard bounded with a mind for murder. His umbral claws struck with an animal’s speed, quick and rending, and soon the troll met the jungle floor in a gruesome and bleeding mess.
The Captain slashed open another troll, a swift and wet -shilck- as the hex-weaving savage spelled its last breath with a gurgling wheeze. The Bosun had kept the last of them staved, the scatter of sizzling embers and hissing flames, enough to hold the troll on a creeping back-foot, yet it lurched now. The horrible sight of his butchered brothers had the troll feverish and uproiled. He spun the spike-weighted mace, a final bid to tear the limbs of the torch-wielding Scalderdog, yet the snare of anguish met the troll first as steel speared his chest.
The troll shrieked in finality, yet words laced the dying scream. Nothing to beckon alert from the injured crew or usher on their retreat. They lingered, bled to the bone and freshly beaten, and the single word echoed and were borne upon a foreboding wind:
“Bon’go-- !”
The Raven crew gathered their bearings and the hefty, now blood-speckled, ruby were found anew. They continued, past another titanic gateway, its portcullis lofted and held rigidly in place. Their steps, crippled and slow, curbed to a halt as a tremendous quake shuddered through the earth. The whole jungle shirked, ancient stonework quivered and all wildlife silenced. And as if bred from a witch doctor’s own nightmare, forth stepped a behemoth, a grotesque thing. Chain-warped and twisted by hateful spells of old.
“Bon’gooo!”
Came the bellow, as thunder and lightning from clear skies, it cleaved the air with its horrifying words. The crew were chilled by fright, frozen and motionless, till the fearful cook’s flintlock roared with another funnel of smoke and lead, yet the shot hit the monstrous troll like a pellet upon sinewy bark and glanced off.
“-RUN-! Pull the lead of yer boots and RUN, you dawdling louts! RUN!”
The whole jungle shook and the road trembled beneath the crew’s scurrying feet, urged only further by the Captain’s sharp and tottering command. Yet they ran, ran and ran, till their bones betrayed and knees buckled, and till the heart-stopping ache in their chests were relieved by the sight of the Bay’s ramshackled shanty town and a shark’s maw, fashioned for an entrance. Gaping and gluttonous, swallowing the last lights of the night as the crew passed through.
They had made it through the jungle’s depths and now the sheer prospect of rest and respite were savoured by them all, until the next venture were charted and ready.
