Chapter 7 - Part 8

It was quiet by Sharn’s standards. The eighth bell rang down at the main harbor in the City of Towers. Like many areas of Sharn it was busy even late at night. Ships were loading and unloading, sailors were staggering out of bars, brothels and gambling houses were doing a brisk business, and the watch were cracking heads and hauling people in.

The deputy harbormaster was a serious young man, a half-elf from a nice middle-class family that was proud of their scion for his important, if unglamorous, job. He walked back and forth along the path atop the harbor wall, holding his lantern aloft as he checked the buoys and markers. It was the twentieth of Olarune, and this young man’s first wedding anniversary. His wife had a special dinner prepared for when he got off-shift in an hour.

He noted the calls of the gulls first, which were circling something coming into the harbor. He flicked open the shuttered lantern and moved it about.

“Ahoy the harbor!” came a cry.

The deputy harbormaster trained the light onto the source of the cry, a figure waving from a battered vessel. The deputy’s eyes grew big as the ship approached.
It was badly damaged, with large scorch marks all over it. The front of the forecastle was mostly shattered, and as the ship got closer he could see bloodstains. A ragged pennant with the House Lyrandar sigil waved from atop the crow’s nest, and a weak and shivery-looking water elemental of great height if not magnificent appearance was pushing the damaged craft forward. A halfling with thick bandages around his neck lay feebly on the deck, and a single human manned the rigging. As the ship grew closer the deputy could see a weak-looking half-elven male in a battered hat sitting by the copper ring that held the water elemental’s dragonshard. A half-orc of prodigious muscle sat behind the half-elf, his arm wrapped around that worthy as if to keep him from falling over. A bird of some kind was sitting on the half-orc’s shoulder. Not far from the half-orc was a filthy hobgoblin in a cage.

In all of this motley, battered crew, the one that held the deputy’s attention was a large warforged standing at the prow who had been calling him. “Ahoy the harbor,” it cried again. It was tall, and covered with bumpy, colored crystals. “I am Equilibrium, a psiforged, from Stormreach. I am a refugee from Riedran pirates who have attacked this vessel, the Small Potatoes, murdered the captain and most of the crew, leaving only the six of us alive.”

The deputy blinked, wondering if he was hallucinating. Gradually it dawned on him that if he wanted to get home as soon as possible he had best find a berth for the ship, and request emergency aid. He blew the proper pattern of whistle blasts and began waving the ship into the harbor.