"One can smell Bilgewater sooner than one sees it." The Captain told me. He never said what smell though. One of decay, yes, but the decay of the Sea Gods that man had defied was not one mere brochures could summarize in the phrase "ominous mucoid stench".
I recognized a different smell though, one that I woke up to in fear of my booked transport having been set ablaze by pirates. I surfaced from my cabin to a wide open calm sea, save dark, smog-ridden rain clouds and the speckled juttings of islands on the horizon.
"Welcome to New Bilgewater, Mister Ardjen." Captain Eurik jeered as he passed me on his way up to the helm.
The ship didn't dock at Bilgewater Harbor, rather a small island an afternoons sail away by the name of Ingram's Landing. Here I definitely caught wind of that mucoid stench, but the other smell still dominated me once I moved a few streets away from the local Slaughterdocks. The question of not docking in Bilgewater plagued me even more as every local simply chuckled at me, disparagingly dismissing me as "landlubber" before I finally got an answer out of a drunkard.
"It's being burnt down. All of it!" He grogged as I passed a Serpent over to the Barkeep.
"Huh, ain't seen a Serpent in a while." The Barkeep opened his mouth for the first time in what might've been two hours of me poking around the inn.
"Aye, that's 'cause it be the coin of Gangplank! The Queen and that Ill-ow-who'sit want rid everything he's ever laid his hands on!"
"Kem, conspiracies don't suit you." The Barkeep said dismissively.
"So have they minted new ones yet?" I asked. Frankly I didn't expect these two commons to know what minting was, so I expanded. "Might there be new coins around here?"
"Hmm…. 'side the new Noxian Triad, I ain't seen any me'self." The Barkeep replied after a decent length of thought.
"Pff… dumb wenches just wanted us to bow to them. They wanted revenge and they got it. Now they got every Isle on the horizon and just shoo them along to figure everything out for 'emselves. Like dumping chum in the water and not 'specting razorsharks." Kem expressed through deep gulps of ale.
"So, if we might return to the subject, what is it like in Bilgewater Harbor?"
Every conversation fell silent. I could only respond with respectful silence.
"Death," Kem replied, his groggy voice instantly turning sober and somber. "There's only death there now. No exceptions."
"You're not getting a better answer than that, lad. Better keep it at that."
My silence continued, only broken by the clacking of Serpents on lacquered wood for their time.
