"Now's the time, lads! Now's the time to honor our ancestors, to prove our might, and to prove who the true masters of Osprem's seas are!"
His Exalted Highness, Prince Latmac Ranold of the Lordship of the Isles, was in rare form. The fire in his eyes reflected the shine on the cutlass in his right hand and the falchion in his left, and his colorful clothes and bandana reflected his brash, outgoing personality. Both his and his ship, the Seatalon, loomed large over their minions. The men around him, both the crew of the Seatalon and the crews of the other vessels accompanying his battle fleet, answered his boisterous cries with loud, eager cheers.
Today was a long time coming for Ranold. Under his leadership, the Lordship became increasingly aggressive towards the Sea Barons, their most hated enemies. The result had been several bloody clashes across the Azure, Oljatt and Aerdi Seas, and tensions between the rivals had reached a boiling point. The Lordship was now sending a fleet of some of its finest ships to meet a similar fleet from the Sea Barons for a final showdown off the coast of the See of Medegia.
Ranold knew that today, Flocktime 9, 572 CY, would go down in history. The Sea Barons were the maritime power of the Great Kingdom of Aerdy, while the Lordship were their equivalent for the Iron League, Aerdy's old enemies. He'd deliberately provoked this conflict to convince the leaders of the other Iron League states that direct confrontation was a better approach to dealing with Aerdy than the subterfuge the other states' rulers preferred. The Lordship and the Barons were proxies for the League and the Great Kingdom, and Ranold's victory would pay handsomely in both plunder and political gain among the rest of the League.
It was only a few scant hours before the lookouts from Ranold's most forward ships sighted the Barons' sea serpent banners rapidly approaching. Ranold looked to the north, towards distant Pontylver-were some of its nobles gathering to watch the battle, whether with spells or spyglasses?
He smiled eagerly.
When the battle started, it started violently. Ballistae were fired, flaming pitch was catapulted, arrows and bolts both magic and mundane filled the air. Ranold smiled as the battle raged, congratulation himself on the tactics he'd prepared for the battle.
He had no doubt that the crews of the Sea Barons' ptich catapults, especially, had both magical and mundane protections against magical attacks. But that hardly mattered when, instead of conventional spells like fireballs and lightning bolts, he'd ordered his casters to prepare spells that would enchant mundane arrows with flame, and would terrify the Barons' crews into chaos. Invulnerability globes were no protection against ordinary missiles, and bunkers of wood or steel could only offer so much protection. The fiery arrows didn't need to hit the catapult crews to do damage-hitting barrels of oil or pitch would cause explosions to devastate the ships.
Magical resources were strictly limited in any military conflict. As such, they needed to be carefully used, and Ranold congratulated himself on creating a strategy that did just that.
The explosions of the pitch and oil barrels flashed in his eyes, as the screams of the terrified and injured Baron men filled his ears. The battle was his, and Ranold had his heart set on the greatest prize of all.
The Sunrise was the Sea Barons' flagship, putting up the greatest fight. It sank one of Ranold's warships as the Seatalon closed in on it, but he expected such losses. Finally, as the Seatalon came alongside the Sunrise, he and several of his elite guards leaped aboard the enemy vessel. Ranold cut a bloody swathe through the Sunrise's crew as he sought out his prey.
That prey wasn't difficult to find. His Noble Prominence Sencho Foy, Commander of the Sea Barons and Ranold's archenemy, was fighting like a madman against several of Ranold's troops. He was nearly as tall as Ranold, if not as muscled, looking every inch a pirate from his greasy black hair and beard to the hook on the end of his left arm and the peg below his right knee. He was nearly as skilled as Ranold himself, and blood seemed to flow like the ocean itself around him as he cut down Ranold's guards.
"You're so brave against barracudas!" Ranold shouted, as Foy turned to look at him. "Perhaps you'd care to try your fortune against a great white?"
"A glorified hermit crab, more like," Foy said with a sneer, brandishing a wicked-looking falchion in his right hand as he raised his bloody hook. "You'll rue this day, Ranold."
"You say that, and with how much magic on you?" Ranold said, as one of his jeweled rings sparkled with a life of its own. "Let's see how you do with no sorcery to aid you," he continued, as the magic-blocking spell he cast from his ring engulfed them both.
Foy showed no fear, swinging both his hook and his falchion at Ranold from opposite directions. Ranold easily caught them both with his cutlass, before he lashed out with his falchion and gashed Foy down the right hip and thigh. Blood dripped down Foy's peg leg, and he hissed in pain before lunging in as if to bite at Ranold. Ranold pulled back as Foy's jaws snapped shut in front of him, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the stink of Foy's grog-ridden breath.
Ranold pushed forward with his cutlass, forcing Foy back, before he slashed Foy across the shoulder with his cutlass and forced Foy to duck a slash from his falchion. Foy was forced back on his heels, and while he was a fine swordsman it was clear that Ranold was his better.
Ranold felt joy at his victory...
...before he started to feel nothing at all.
Numbness started to flow through Ranold's body as he was forced to let up his attack. Soon, he was the one on the defensive, barely able to move his limbs to react to Foy's relentless attacks. Joy soon gave way to horror and rage in Ranold's heart as Foy gouged him across the ribs with his hook. Ranold's numbness was such that he barely felt the pain from that, but when Foy severed his left hand the agony overcame it.
The battle was suddenly over as Ranold fell shrieking to his knees. With a smile to make a demon prince proud, Foy dropped his falchion and grabbed Ranold by the neck, holding his hook up to Ranold's eyes.
"You think you're clever," Foy said, his eyes staring hatefully into Ranold's. "You assumed everything was perfect. Well, look at your perfection," he said, turning Ranold around to look at the battlefield.
A scream tried to force its way out of Ranold's nearly paralyzed throat. No less than three of the Lordship's cogs had been seized, the Lordship's crown and anchor flag replaced with the Barons' sea serpent banner. Four more of his warships were either sinking or simply gone, while many of his vessels were fleeing.
"How...how..." Ranold said.
"Magical resources are precious, are they not?" Foy said, his smile turning into a sadistic leer. "Divinations, for one. A proper casting by one of Mistress Osprem's servants that revealed your plans goes quite a way. So too do illusions of exploding pitch barrels and terrified, fleeing Baron mariners, not to mention the priestly blessings that help the real sailors stand their ground."
"Illusions...too powerful..." Ranold said.
"Yes, the few mages I brought could only cast images," Foy said, "but being in the Overking's service I've seen the value of theatrical training. Feigning terror and a collapse of morale was quite the thing. And no magic can dispel that."
"You...you..." Ranold said, gesturing with his head towards Foy's mouth.
"Toxins are a wonderful thing, are they not?" Foy said, his smile now resembling that of a shark's. "Especially paralytic gases concealed in a false tooth that breaks so easily. Who says humans can't have breath weapons? Of course, if you plan to use it you should build up an immunity to it first as I did. A pity you didn't have time to do it."
"Finish..." Ranold said, his eyes turning defiant.
"Finish you?" Foy said. "Now, why would I do that when I could let you wallow in your own humiliation? I don't need to kill you, Ranold-you'll be as good as dead to your own kin. I'll put you back on your stinking tub...but I suppose I should give you something to remember me by."
Ranold screamed as Foy plunged his hook into Ranold's eye.
Ranold was in a daze as his surviving crewmen took him back aboard the Seatalon and set sail for Pontylver, joining the rest of the Lordship vessels that had survived the slaughter. Many of them were badly damaged, their crews depleted with so many Lordship sailors now food for the sahuagin and koalinth.
The Seatalon's chaplain worked diligently to treat his wounded prince, but Ranold hardly felt or heard him or any of the other crewmen.
If his body was numb, his soul was a hundred times more. In his mind, he could hear the angry, despairing curses and insults of his kin on the rest of the Lordship's fleet. He could hear the screams and laments of his citizens when word of the fiasco reached them, as they felt the shame of their prince's defeat. Most of all, he could hear the denunciations of his ancestors, who'd borne the proud heritage he was now supposed to embody, for dishonoring his family line.
Ranold was still alive in body as the Seatalon docked in Pontylver, but in spirit he was a dead man.