Opealon Vignettes (NPC) (Open)

[Kopaka]

This thread is an open series of posts where any writer is welcome to post short, atmospheric snapshots of ideas and people they'd like to explore on this World. It could serve as a notepad or muse for longer story threads, but such inspirations should be pursued in their own threads, if they will be more than one or two posts.

A large horned puffin flits rapidly across rolling breakers towards its perch, where a mate awaits expectantly. Flying this low to the endless waves risks being snapped up by some unspeakable creature of the deep blue, but, better to risk that than to have any of the circling cormorants steal the fish out of his mouth. It's a clear, blue skied day, with just a few stacking nimbus clouds crashing up majestically against the windward side of a particularly large earthberg.

The floating island looms about three thousand feet overhead, casting a solid shadow across nearly ten square miles of ocean. It's a welcome reprieve for the nesting puffins, certainly, as the father regurgitates mucus-covered sardine bits down the gullets of his children.

The shade is also a reprieve for the salt-spattered man laying face up on the deckboards of the shattered vessel on which the puffins have made their home. How long has it been now, since he was adrift? It's hard to even form a coherent thought amid the salt fever and sunstroke. He stares up at the puffins, hooting and crooning in their small way, and a smile cracks his chapped lips. He wonders if these adorable little birds will enjoy pecking open his belly when he finally succumbs to exposure.

Tired, forlorn eyes turn to regard the looming, drifting bulk of the earthberg as it begins to eclipse the entire sky. Is there perhaps a settlement up there? Should he try to do something?

The castaway vainly lifts his hand towards the shadowed, granite underbelly so far overhead and mimed a grasping motion, as if to seize...something. Who was he kidding. The sailor let the arm drop back to the deck with a dull 'thud', which sent both of the pudgy birds squawking away with indignant fear. A horrible, angry laugh escaped his parched throat. There goes the neighborhood.

Another day passed.

The sailor became aware of himself again and stared down at his swollen, broken legs with a yearning boredom. If only, if only...

The earth island was still overhead. The entire capsized vessel must be caught in its gravity tide -- the zones of intra-ocean tidal pulling that the drifting landmasses formed. Hell, some earthbergs were so massive and close to sealevel that they could pull a boat's draft up out of the waves by a good two or three feet. Dangerous business to be sure, but that's not what had done his boat in.

His mind drifted back to that fateful night.

Storm clouds, lightning and storms like they were inside your very head...the whole sea writhing with thirty foot swells. And here was their little freighter, trying vaguely to make good speed back to Kirden. Powerful storms were not uncommon on Opealon, no sir, but most vessels were more than seaworthy to navigate them. But there had been something different about this storm. It had brewed up a maelstrom, a whirlpool of massive size, and Born Lucky, well, she just hadn't had the steam to cut across the current.

The sailor stared vacantly up at the softly rumbling landmass overhead as the scene painted itself over his vacant corneas. Something had come up out of the water...sharp, and jagged. Dozens of them, all around the whirlpool, like a giant lamprey's maw right below the waves. He'd heard the captain shout a single word over the foam before the Born Lucky ran aground on one of the fangs, and everything had been pain and thunder.

"Charybdis!"

The sailor kept staring, up and up, at that giant island paradise in the sky. At some point, maybe a few hours later, he realized that he had finally died.

No one can say what became of him after that point, but I'm sure you can still find that capsized hull out there somewhere among the waves, along with hundreds more just like it, circling beneath the low hanging earthbergs til the seas of Opealon run dry.

That is...

Unless Charybdis swallows them down first.

 

[King Ghidorah]

The deep-ocean research-vessel Calico was an impressive feat of nautical engineering. She was a converted frigate, with the armor and weapons-systems stripped out and replaced with advanced sonar and radar, geiger counters, atmospheric analysis and oceanic sampling gear, as well as fully outfitted oceanographic and bio-acoustics laboratories. She boasted hydrofoil capability, hydrojet, traditional, and electromagnetic propulsion, a minisub, and even a light helicopter, resting on a landing pad atop the rear decks. Even atop the rolling swells of Opealon’s miles-deep oceans, a thousand kilometers from anywhere, her advanced gyrostabilizers and next-gen inertial dampeners kept her decks steady.

Unfortunately, she was also very, very expensive.

“What the hell do you mean we’re broke, Quinn?!” demanded Captain Carl Majors. Fit, tanned, and bearded in flannel and jeans, he could have been a lumberjack as easily as a seaman. Usually bold and friendly, at the moment his temperament rested somewhere between baffled and livid.

The crew, all four of them, were crowded around a folding table in the little room that served as both mess and lounge area. There was a microwave, a cooking range, a walk-in freezer, a pinball machine, and a single potted ficus in the corner.

Dr. Quinn Darien was having a difficult time keeping her composure. Her brown hair was unkempt, she had ditched her customary yellow coat and slacks in favor of a green wool turtleneck and sweatpants, and she obviously hadn’t slept.

“I mean the University’s pulled our grant, Carl,” she said, throwing a rumpled sheaf of papers down on the table. “More than that, they’ve invoked a penalty clause.The whole thing stinks. The data we’ve been collecting on Opealon’s indigenous gigafauna is unprecedented. No less than eight previously uncatalogued species of gojiramorph amphibious therapod discovered, a genetically divergent adult specimen tamed using an acoustic lure and a developmentally aberrant juvenile captured alive, and the moment I tell them I’m ready to publish they ask for their money back! All of it. ”

She leaned her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands.

“Someone is deliberately ruining us. This is political, but I have no idea who or why.”

Her research assistant, and the de-facto ship’s mate, Brock Borden, spoke up. “It’ll be alright, Doctor Darien. You’re the smartest lady I know. We’ll think of something.”

The captain sat down, heavily, staring into the middle distance. “How much do we owe the university?” Even as he asked he was crunching the numbers in his head. Carl was a very good captain. He knew how much his ship cost.

“For the ship, and the rebuild, and everything we billed to the trust... Seven-pont-eight million coin. Plus four percent interest, recalculated biannually.”

“...Oh,” said Brock.

Brock Borden was not a stupid man; For all that he had spent much of the last three years running from monsters or saving other crew-members from themselves, he had a masters degree in bio-acoustic resonance phenomena. What the doctor was telling them was that she and the captain could never go back to the City of Hope as anything other than work-visa day-laborer debt-slaves.

“Aunt Quinn,” asked the youngest and final member of the crew. “What does this mean?” The doctors blond-haired moppet of a nephew, Pete, looked genuinely terrified.

With great and deliberate care, the doctor’s dainty, calloused hands curled into fists. “It means we’re not going home, Pete.” she said, gritting her teeth. “ It means we’re pirates now.”

“What?” said Brock.

“Neptunes beard, Quinn, where did that come from?!” asked the captain.

“Awesome!” said Pete, his fear replaced by sinister enthusiasm with worrying speed.

The doctor stood up, leaned forward with her hands on the table and a mad glint in her eye. “ Come on guys. Think about it: We can’t go back to Hope, and we owe enough money that the University is probably going to hire people to come after us. We’re not equipped for hauling cargo, or fishing, or water-purification, or anything but research science.”

Her voice began to take on a manic edge. “But we’re fast enough to run a blockade. And we may not be armed, but Carl, you’ve got a button that instantly summons an inbred nuclear behemoth clipped to your belt!”

It was true. Quinn and Brock had designed an built the sonic lure, but if anyone on Carl Major's ship was going to have the power to summon a sea-monster it was going to be him.

Brock frowned. The captain stroked his beard, his brow furrowing in thought.

“What’s inbred mean?” asked Pete.

Nobody answered him.

Now Brock stood up, pacing around the little room. “We’re not seriously thinking about this are we? This is a joke, right? Doctor? Captain Majors?”

The captain leaned back in his seat, producing a pipe from the pocket of his flannel shirt and lighting up.

“Now, let’s be too hasty here, Brock,” he said. “I’ve sunk every last cent I had into this boat, and I don’t much care for the idea of some ivory-tower bean-counter taking her away from me. Not to mention that I’ve been a seafarer all my life - forget working off the debt, they’d probably just toss me into the drink and call it a day.”

The Doctor turned and grasped Brock companionably by the shoulders. “I’m serious Brock. Think about it. Think of all the work we’ve put in. And they just throw us away? They ruin us? I won’t have it, Brock. We have a monster in our back pocket and I won’t have it.”

Her grip had grown uncomfortably tight. Brock felt cold. This was happening. Gently, he removed her hands.

“Look. I get it, Doc. I get that you and the Captain feel like you don’t have a choice here, and I respect that. But, with respect, I’ve got options. I’ve got a career… I could just go home. And what about Pete?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” said. Pete, who was busily and with surprising expertise constructing a jolly roger out of several old blankets. “My parents think I died four years ago.”

Everybody froze. Everybody looked at Pete. Everybody decided, simultaneously, that they’d pursue that later.

Doctor Darien picked up the sheaf of papers from the table and pushed it against Brock’s chest.

“Page six,” she said. “You’re personally on the hook for four-hundred thousand. Twenty percent interest rate.”

Brock snatched the papers, stared at the fine print. He adjusted his glasses. He felt his entire life crumble away beneath his feet.

“... well. Yo-fucking-ho then.”