Post by brian333 on Jul 3, 2008 14:08:25 GMT -5
In a seaside brothel in the port city of Pros on the Dragon Coast a child was born. His mother, a young Damarran woman captured as a child by Zhentarim slavers, was as surprised as any of the other slave-whores when her twelve month pregnancy resulted in a living child. Even more surprising was the pointed tips of his ears and his startlingly brilliant blue-green eyes.
His first years were unremarkable as is true for most children. The creche in which the children of the slaves were raised, under the watchful eye of older slaves, served mainly to keep them alive until old enough to sell or impress into service in the brothel, but he didn't know he lived anything but an ordinary life. He knew his mother; she was allowed to spend some time with him each day, but she was young, pretty, and much in demand in spite of her tendancy to rage violently against the customers and brothel's staff, and even against her sister slave-prostitutes.
By his eighth year it was obvious he wasn't growing at the same pace as his peers. Tormented and bullied, he nevertheless was a beautiful child. Thus he came to the attention of a man called only 'Uncle' by the slaves of the house. He inspected the boy and decided he was the perfect choice for a certain customer: a wealthy pederast known for his cruelty to the victims of his demented perversions.
But in the dark of the early morning his mother came to him. She bundled him into rags and slipped out into the predawn streets of Pros. Seeking along the unfamiliar docks of the city for a ship headed north, she was refused passage again and again by the captains who preferred to avoid angering the powerful slave-owning merchants of the city. At least one warned the guards.
Hounded by the guards she sought refuge in a warehouse, where she hid the boy. Desperate, she left him alone to continue her escape, saying, "Hide from the guards, if I don't come back, find a ship and get away from here."
Three nights later the boy emerged alone from his hiding place thirsty and starving. With the cunning of a child he snuck down the docks and onto the first ship he could find, hiding inside a rope-locker in the bow of a trading vessel. Exhausted from his exertion and almost delerious from his physical deprivation, he fell asleep.
He woke on a heaving deck wet, cold, and surrounded by strange, bearded, mostly toothless men with skin darkened and wrinkled from the sun and wind. A second bucket of seawater was sloshed on him, and he greedily tried to suck the salty water from his dry lips as the men around him laughed. One of the largest picked him up by the collar of his ragged tunic and carried him up a ladder to, "Meet the Old Man."
An angry, grey-bearded, richly dressed man looked him up and down then spit over the rail of the ship. "Stowaway." he said. "Know what we do to stowaways?"
The dripping of seawater from his ragged clothes was the only thing that saved him from public humiliation as he voided his bladder in fear. Then he wailed as the hand on his tunic lifted him in the air and carried him towards the rail.
"Wait!" called the Old Man. The hand released him , but his legs would no longer support even his miniscule weight; the boy collapsed to the deck crying.
The Old Man stood over him, looking down on the pathetic blubering child. "You get one chance, Stowaway. You blow it and you go over the side. On this ship, nobody rides free. You will work for your passage, and if you don't work hard enough you go over the side. Understand?"
Unable to speak, the boy nodded his agreement and he was carried below by the man with the powerful hand. "Cookie, see what you can do with this one, and if he gives you any trouble, let me know."
Cookie was an old sailor, fatter than most, and kind in a rough sort of way. He found tasks for the small hands, and the boy worked. Dishwashing, sweeping, polishing brightwork, carrying the grog-flagon forward to the crew's quarters of an evening and the brandy flask aft to the captain's cabin. Teased and made the butt of every seaman's prank ever known, he nevertheless felt more at home aboard the ship than he had ever felt in the house of his birth, and every night he fell asleep exhausted, to be woken by Cookie before the sun's rise and set to work again.
But for all his hard work, when the ship made port in Alaghon the man with the strong hand took him to an orphanage. Though the people there were kind, the other orphans well fed and toutored, the boy nevertheless felt like he was back in the creche awaiting some uncertain, but fearful, fate. His stay was only a matter of weeks before he escaped into the night and found a way onto another ship.
In the next years he gained an education in life at sea as he stowed onto one ship after another, only to be put ashore again and again. Usually at the earliest opportunity. Thus he found himself in Hlammach, only a few hundred miles from his mother's homeland, though at the age of ten his knowledge of geography was non-existent. He knew only that he wanted to be the only place he had ever known any kind of happiness: at sea.
In the port-city a forest of masts offered many opportunities, but the sailors were wary and watchful, and a child was not wanted aboard merchant ships. Slinking from his hiding place to seek out a ship whose crew was just careless enough to allow him to slip aboard, he passed by a sailor playing a strange stringed instrument to a crowd of dancing sailors and tavern wenches. The music and the lively crowd drew him into the light, while the songs of life at sea stirred his soul. He danced with the rest, annonymous in the crowd.
When the dancing ended he followed the musician who carried his instrument in a ramskin bag slung over his shoulder. He noted the ship the man boarded and waited his chance in the dark of the night. Under the nodding nose of the watch posted at the gangplank he boarded a ship called 'Merry Kay.'
By dawn he was discovered; the ship was still docked. Dismayed and desperate, he grabbed the tunic of the musician in the crowd of sailors on the deck. "I want to stay!" he cried. "I can work, I can! I can do anything, please!"
"Boy, there's a right way and a wrong way to crew, and you're doing it the wrong way," the minstrel answered. He removed the hand of the ship's bosun from the boy's ragged collar, then took him by the arm towards the rear of the ship, to the captain's cabin.
Knocking on the door, the musician said, "If you want to stay, you'll have to sign on. To sign on, you have to speak to the captain." The door opened and the pair went inside.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," said the musician. "This scamp wants to crew. He's scrawny, but he's determined."
"Too small, too young." answered the captain. "I need crewmen with experience at sea."
Fearing he was loosing his chance, the boy said, "Sir, I have experience. I've sailed for two years, and I can work. I can clean and polish, I can tar rope and run messages..."
"Can you handle sails and rigging? Can you turn a hand at the tiller? Can you tell a pirate from a merchant on the horizon?" the captain demanded gruffly, and the boy looked at his bare feet a moment before admitting in a mumble, "Nosir."
"He'll learn sir," said the musician with a grin. "We both were as young and foolish once upon a time, weren't we sir?"
The captain chewed the end of his greying moustache a moment, then blew out a long breath. "Okay, Wavesinger. He gets paid out of your share. If you're so set on taking the boy along, then whatever happens to him is your responsibility. Got it?"
"Aye, sir," the musician answered.
"What's your name boy?" the captain asked.
"Unien, sir." the boy replied.
"Full name," the captain demanded.
"Sir? That's the only name I have."
The captain stared at the boy a moment, then opened a locker and drew from it a large black book, an inkwell with a broad bottom, and a tattered quill. Opening the book on his table, the captain spent a moment silently writing into the tome which the boy recognised as the ship's logbook. He then turned the book towards the boy, dipped the quill and offered it to the boy. His hand shaking with excitement, the boy carefully scribed an x into the logbook.
"You're crew now, boy. You obey me without question, and you obey the orders of my officers. My bosun will deal with you just like any other member of this crew if you step out of line, and if you whine too much, don't work hard enough, or cause any trouble your ass goes over the side. Understand?"
"Yessir," He replied.
"That's 'Aye, sir,'" the captain said.
"Aye, sir," the boy repsponded.
"Wavesinger, get him settled then set him to work. We'll see if he lives up to his promise before we shove off."
For the next few days, as the crew of Merry Kay enjoyed the rich entertainments of the port, Unien worked. Occasionally he saw the squinting eyes of the captain upon him, and always the grimacing face of the bosun, but nothing more was said about putting him ashore.
For the next fifteen years he sailed with Wavesinger, whose power over music was such that he could calm the seas in a storm or call a wind to fill the sails on a windless day. Often the musician would sit on the bowsprit singing to the porpoises who dove under and before the keel of the speeding ship, or leapt from the bow-wakes in play and, astonishingly, they sometimes sang back.
They served together on several ships as the years slipped by, the musician growing ever older, and the boy growing into his manhood. Among the highlights of their life together was the day Wavesinger pierced Unien's ear with a gold ring, a symbol among the brotherhood who sailed the inner sea that he had sailed in each of the seven seas from the Dragon Coast to Mulhorand, from the southern arm of the Vilhon Reach to Moonsea.
On a later visit to Pros, Unien, after seeking out the former brothel-slaves who knew his mother, learned she had escaped. She had supposedly sailed to northern ports from which she could make her way to her childhood home, but that information was at least a decade old. Unien had no idea where she had lived as a child: Damarra was a large country. He wished her well and seldom ever thought of her again.
Then, some years later, Wavesinger fell and broke several bones. Laid up in Proskur, the pair lived in a portside inn for several weeks before the coughing fits began, and from that point onward Wavesinger declined, becomming ever feebler and more frail as his unmended bones refused to heal. Unien took to plucking notes on the old worn yarting, sitting in the window of his adopted father's room as the old sailor slowly died.
Unien spent the last coins they had hoarded on a funeral for his adopted father, then signed aboard Gullwing. It was a small coaster, but it was the only ship that would take him on. Unien had lived so long in the shadow of the well known sailor that it came as a shock to him that, for all his years at sea, the larger merchant ships didn't want him without Wavesinger.
So, bearing Wavesinger's yarting and his own determination, he crewed the coaster. When it plied it's way past Redmist and up the River Tun to it's homeport in the village of Isinhold, Unien stepped onto the docks on his own for the first time.
His first years were unremarkable as is true for most children. The creche in which the children of the slaves were raised, under the watchful eye of older slaves, served mainly to keep them alive until old enough to sell or impress into service in the brothel, but he didn't know he lived anything but an ordinary life. He knew his mother; she was allowed to spend some time with him each day, but she was young, pretty, and much in demand in spite of her tendancy to rage violently against the customers and brothel's staff, and even against her sister slave-prostitutes.
By his eighth year it was obvious he wasn't growing at the same pace as his peers. Tormented and bullied, he nevertheless was a beautiful child. Thus he came to the attention of a man called only 'Uncle' by the slaves of the house. He inspected the boy and decided he was the perfect choice for a certain customer: a wealthy pederast known for his cruelty to the victims of his demented perversions.
But in the dark of the early morning his mother came to him. She bundled him into rags and slipped out into the predawn streets of Pros. Seeking along the unfamiliar docks of the city for a ship headed north, she was refused passage again and again by the captains who preferred to avoid angering the powerful slave-owning merchants of the city. At least one warned the guards.
Hounded by the guards she sought refuge in a warehouse, where she hid the boy. Desperate, she left him alone to continue her escape, saying, "Hide from the guards, if I don't come back, find a ship and get away from here."
Three nights later the boy emerged alone from his hiding place thirsty and starving. With the cunning of a child he snuck down the docks and onto the first ship he could find, hiding inside a rope-locker in the bow of a trading vessel. Exhausted from his exertion and almost delerious from his physical deprivation, he fell asleep.
He woke on a heaving deck wet, cold, and surrounded by strange, bearded, mostly toothless men with skin darkened and wrinkled from the sun and wind. A second bucket of seawater was sloshed on him, and he greedily tried to suck the salty water from his dry lips as the men around him laughed. One of the largest picked him up by the collar of his ragged tunic and carried him up a ladder to, "Meet the Old Man."
An angry, grey-bearded, richly dressed man looked him up and down then spit over the rail of the ship. "Stowaway." he said. "Know what we do to stowaways?"
The dripping of seawater from his ragged clothes was the only thing that saved him from public humiliation as he voided his bladder in fear. Then he wailed as the hand on his tunic lifted him in the air and carried him towards the rail.
"Wait!" called the Old Man. The hand released him , but his legs would no longer support even his miniscule weight; the boy collapsed to the deck crying.
The Old Man stood over him, looking down on the pathetic blubering child. "You get one chance, Stowaway. You blow it and you go over the side. On this ship, nobody rides free. You will work for your passage, and if you don't work hard enough you go over the side. Understand?"
Unable to speak, the boy nodded his agreement and he was carried below by the man with the powerful hand. "Cookie, see what you can do with this one, and if he gives you any trouble, let me know."
Cookie was an old sailor, fatter than most, and kind in a rough sort of way. He found tasks for the small hands, and the boy worked. Dishwashing, sweeping, polishing brightwork, carrying the grog-flagon forward to the crew's quarters of an evening and the brandy flask aft to the captain's cabin. Teased and made the butt of every seaman's prank ever known, he nevertheless felt more at home aboard the ship than he had ever felt in the house of his birth, and every night he fell asleep exhausted, to be woken by Cookie before the sun's rise and set to work again.
But for all his hard work, when the ship made port in Alaghon the man with the strong hand took him to an orphanage. Though the people there were kind, the other orphans well fed and toutored, the boy nevertheless felt like he was back in the creche awaiting some uncertain, but fearful, fate. His stay was only a matter of weeks before he escaped into the night and found a way onto another ship.
In the next years he gained an education in life at sea as he stowed onto one ship after another, only to be put ashore again and again. Usually at the earliest opportunity. Thus he found himself in Hlammach, only a few hundred miles from his mother's homeland, though at the age of ten his knowledge of geography was non-existent. He knew only that he wanted to be the only place he had ever known any kind of happiness: at sea.
In the port-city a forest of masts offered many opportunities, but the sailors were wary and watchful, and a child was not wanted aboard merchant ships. Slinking from his hiding place to seek out a ship whose crew was just careless enough to allow him to slip aboard, he passed by a sailor playing a strange stringed instrument to a crowd of dancing sailors and tavern wenches. The music and the lively crowd drew him into the light, while the songs of life at sea stirred his soul. He danced with the rest, annonymous in the crowd.
When the dancing ended he followed the musician who carried his instrument in a ramskin bag slung over his shoulder. He noted the ship the man boarded and waited his chance in the dark of the night. Under the nodding nose of the watch posted at the gangplank he boarded a ship called 'Merry Kay.'
By dawn he was discovered; the ship was still docked. Dismayed and desperate, he grabbed the tunic of the musician in the crowd of sailors on the deck. "I want to stay!" he cried. "I can work, I can! I can do anything, please!"
"Boy, there's a right way and a wrong way to crew, and you're doing it the wrong way," the minstrel answered. He removed the hand of the ship's bosun from the boy's ragged collar, then took him by the arm towards the rear of the ship, to the captain's cabin.
Knocking on the door, the musician said, "If you want to stay, you'll have to sign on. To sign on, you have to speak to the captain." The door opened and the pair went inside.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," said the musician. "This scamp wants to crew. He's scrawny, but he's determined."
"Too small, too young." answered the captain. "I need crewmen with experience at sea."
Fearing he was loosing his chance, the boy said, "Sir, I have experience. I've sailed for two years, and I can work. I can clean and polish, I can tar rope and run messages..."
"Can you handle sails and rigging? Can you turn a hand at the tiller? Can you tell a pirate from a merchant on the horizon?" the captain demanded gruffly, and the boy looked at his bare feet a moment before admitting in a mumble, "Nosir."
"He'll learn sir," said the musician with a grin. "We both were as young and foolish once upon a time, weren't we sir?"
The captain chewed the end of his greying moustache a moment, then blew out a long breath. "Okay, Wavesinger. He gets paid out of your share. If you're so set on taking the boy along, then whatever happens to him is your responsibility. Got it?"
"Aye, sir," the musician answered.
"What's your name boy?" the captain asked.
"Unien, sir." the boy replied.
"Full name," the captain demanded.
"Sir? That's the only name I have."
The captain stared at the boy a moment, then opened a locker and drew from it a large black book, an inkwell with a broad bottom, and a tattered quill. Opening the book on his table, the captain spent a moment silently writing into the tome which the boy recognised as the ship's logbook. He then turned the book towards the boy, dipped the quill and offered it to the boy. His hand shaking with excitement, the boy carefully scribed an x into the logbook.
"You're crew now, boy. You obey me without question, and you obey the orders of my officers. My bosun will deal with you just like any other member of this crew if you step out of line, and if you whine too much, don't work hard enough, or cause any trouble your ass goes over the side. Understand?"
"Yessir," He replied.
"That's 'Aye, sir,'" the captain said.
"Aye, sir," the boy repsponded.
"Wavesinger, get him settled then set him to work. We'll see if he lives up to his promise before we shove off."
For the next few days, as the crew of Merry Kay enjoyed the rich entertainments of the port, Unien worked. Occasionally he saw the squinting eyes of the captain upon him, and always the grimacing face of the bosun, but nothing more was said about putting him ashore.
For the next fifteen years he sailed with Wavesinger, whose power over music was such that he could calm the seas in a storm or call a wind to fill the sails on a windless day. Often the musician would sit on the bowsprit singing to the porpoises who dove under and before the keel of the speeding ship, or leapt from the bow-wakes in play and, astonishingly, they sometimes sang back.
They served together on several ships as the years slipped by, the musician growing ever older, and the boy growing into his manhood. Among the highlights of their life together was the day Wavesinger pierced Unien's ear with a gold ring, a symbol among the brotherhood who sailed the inner sea that he had sailed in each of the seven seas from the Dragon Coast to Mulhorand, from the southern arm of the Vilhon Reach to Moonsea.
On a later visit to Pros, Unien, after seeking out the former brothel-slaves who knew his mother, learned she had escaped. She had supposedly sailed to northern ports from which she could make her way to her childhood home, but that information was at least a decade old. Unien had no idea where she had lived as a child: Damarra was a large country. He wished her well and seldom ever thought of her again.
Then, some years later, Wavesinger fell and broke several bones. Laid up in Proskur, the pair lived in a portside inn for several weeks before the coughing fits began, and from that point onward Wavesinger declined, becomming ever feebler and more frail as his unmended bones refused to heal. Unien took to plucking notes on the old worn yarting, sitting in the window of his adopted father's room as the old sailor slowly died.
Unien spent the last coins they had hoarded on a funeral for his adopted father, then signed aboard Gullwing. It was a small coaster, but it was the only ship that would take him on. Unien had lived so long in the shadow of the well known sailor that it came as a shock to him that, for all his years at sea, the larger merchant ships didn't want him without Wavesinger.
So, bearing Wavesinger's yarting and his own determination, he crewed the coaster. When it plied it's way past Redmist and up the River Tun to it's homeport in the village of Isinhold, Unien stepped onto the docks on his own for the first time.