by Isaac Stone
The mission of the ship is to circle the waters of the city just barely within range of the city’s mage’s magical sight. This way the Fist can protect merchant ships in the surrounding seas as well as the city proper. It prowls the waters like a shark, occasionally bullying corsair ships that get too aggressive, breaks up merchant conflicts at sea, scaring away unidentified and unresponsive ships out at sea, and recently skirmishing with ships of the privateer fleet that sometimes threaten the merchant ships. So its sees its share of action. Which such a heavy load of duties the ship stays out for weeks at a time. It is considered an unspoken requirement of most corsairs from the west and greatly encouraged of others who frequent New Mooring in more than a tourist or trader capacity to volunteer for duty on the Fist. It doesn’t pay very well considering the duty, but it is considered civil service to man the Fist, and it is a reputable way to gain experience in all manner of seamanship in addition to the occasional skirmish with a sea opponent too foolish to run. The Ogre’s Fist has a reputation for throwing its weight around and is at times a point of contention between merchants and government officials alike. The crew at full compliment usually consists of about four hundred sailors, one hundred assault troops and archers, and a handful of clerics and one to three magic-users. The captain and captain’s bodyguard are elected from New Mooring’s list of candidates, usually local seaman or prominent adventurers with a knack for the sea.
The Government
New Mooring is technically ruled by a monarch, be it king or queen. This monarch is elected once every ten years by a counsel of elected officials, who themselves are elected. Candidates for the counsel are elected from the populace on the City, and serve a term of 20 years and live in the palace. There are no other requirements for candidates other than their validation of residence in the city. Candidates for monarch are expected to have at one time been the captain of a ship and able to verify that command. Candidates are also required to have had military experience and have been involved in commerce. There is also the criterion that the candidate not be a devout member of any one exclusive faith. These requirements exist so that the city is guaranteed to have a monarch with knowledge of commerce, war, and the sea. The religion requirement follows with the longstanding ban on organized religion in the city. While meetings and religions are not banned here, temples are not allowed to be built in the city. The official reason is the wish to keep tolerance of differences up and that conflicting faiths is bad for business. Many whisper that there are darker, more sinister reasons.
The Sea Lords
Many years ago, when the floating city was first emerging onto the field of world power, there were several dozen merchant empires that dominated trade worldwide. When New Mooring first opened its gates to the travelers of the sea-lanes it wasn’t much more than a trading post and pit stop. As the city grew the trend of selling in the city as opposed to finishing the full trip became the common practice of an increasing number of individual ships. These ships and their captains were heavily taxed and controlled by the merchant empires and saw in the city a way to break the monopoly. Many of the cargo ships went rouge, and started shipping cargo from suppliers previously kept out of business by the empires. These new suppliers grew wealthy as did the rouge ships. Several skirmishes were fought at the beginning as the merchant empires tried to halt the progress of these rouge entrepreneurs. But these rouges prevailed. Most formed small trading kingdoms of their own, others were either swallowed up by the empires or became corsairs or smugglers.
As things calmed down the Sea Lords emerged. They were the original rouge captains who had founded their own merchant regimes. With skill and luck they had broken away from the old merchant empires and had formed their own. New Mooring became a major world power within a few short years. The Sea Lords mostly use the city’s ports and no others. They set up dynasties, financed many of the city’s building projects, making themselves the lifeblood of the city. The benefit was mutual. At first the harassment of corsairs was a problem, but overtime the various Sea Lords and their heirs have bribed and counter bribed enough of the crews that the corsairs that frequent the city usually only raid coastlines and in foreign waters, activities that tend to keep the corsair ships at sea for months at a time. Skirmishes with raiders and the old merchant empires were a problem in the past, but now that the Ogre’s Fist lurks about, it handles most problems on the open sea.
The Laws of the Sea and the Lash
Though a city full of outlaws, New Mooring is not without rules or punishment for breaking those few rules.
#1 - Don’t commit murder.
Duels and self-defense are acceptable so long as there are witnesses enough to leave no doubt that it wasn’t murder.
#2 - Don’t get caught stealing.
Nobody cares what you have or where you got it, stealing is just fine unless someone catches you doing it.
Law 3 - Bring no harm to the city.
Don’t vandalize or mutiny. Don’t bring disease or famine.
The city guard’s duties are simple in theory, but not always such in execution. Their primary duties are to patrol their assigned sections of the city in pairs, breaking up street brawls, witnessing sanctioned duels, catching thieves, and keeping an eye out for structural damage or maintenance issues in the city itself. Most city guards will not hesitate to help someone who is hurt, chase off bullies or drunks, break up small fights, or give a thief a few lumps on the head. Though larger street fights involving weapons are usually just contained instead of broken up. The city guardsmen present will blow a horn tied around their neck that summons other guards to their position, then they will try to prevent the battle from spreading and move in to deal with the survivors. For the most part the city guards protect the city from everyday sorts of crime, they are not paid, trained, or skilled enough to deal with threats like extensive riots, professional soldiers, or crime syndicates.
City guards are usually average citizens who receive a small stipend, comfortable communal living quarters, and one full meal a day. All one has to do to become a city guard is prove that one has kept primary residence in the city for at least 2 years and is healthy enough to do the job (walking and standing for many hours a day, running down petty thieves, the occasional brawl). The standard equipment is a city guard tunic, either a spear or cudgel, and the guard’s horn when help is sorely needed. The low pay and ease of getting the job has resulted in a very diverse guard cadre.
Bribery is common, though mostly for petty oversights. Most guards are honest and loyal to the city, though it being outlaw city does color the definition of honest and loyal. There is occasional tension between the guard and the various crime syndicates, but usually things are smoothed over quickly.
The Brig
In most ships and naval communities the brig is a jailhouse located in the bowls of a city or a ship, housing the community’s criminals. In New Mooring the city follows the law of the sea, where punishment means the lash. There are no prisons or jailhouses in New Mooring, every issue not solved on the street by city guards is brought to the Brig. It is a small public square that holds a large whipping post and a small shaded seating area for the city official who presides over the Brig and any witnesses who choose to be present. The city guards present the crime, discuss the guilt of the criminal, and decide how many lashes the criminal is to receive. Then the city official has the criminal tied to the post and lashed. Depending upon the mood of the city official the criminal may be forced to be conscious for each lash, and the official will wait for the criminal to awaken from unconsciousness before finishing the punishment. Rarely is there a necessity to execute criminals, most heinous crimes either go unsolved or the perpetrator is killed by the city guards while trying to escape or fight free.
Weapons & Tactics
Most projectile weapons used by corsairs are carved out of coral mined by hand off the various coasts of the world. It is cheap, light weight, easy to carve, but will still smash wood and shred crewm
en with jagged shrapnel. Some corsairs have projectile weapons made from a pink coral (which is reduced to a ball of dust upon impact, causing extreme nausea), blue (causes extreme itching), and white (nothing spectacular beyond shrapnel and crushing damage). Needless to say the most common coral ammunition used is white, with each ship carrying only a handful of the other types of coral ammunition. Carved stone or smelted metal projectiles is much more damaging to the ships themselves and is more widespread among the standard naval vessels around the rest of the world. Nations and merchant houses can afford the potent ship sinking ammunition, though the occasional coral shot is used to clear a deck of enemy crew. Most corsairs are chiefly interested in capturing enemy ships instead of destroying them, so the additional expense and weight of stone ammunition is of little use to the raiders.
Bastilla are also very common weapons, and widely used amongst the smaller and faster corsair cutters and naval skirmishing vessels. They are fired from either sling engines or giant crossbows, which launch a very thick 12-18ft wooden shaft. They have pointed metal tips used for punching holes in enemy ships, with stout ropes tied to the end so that the gunners can pull their projectile back towards them, opening the hole so that the enemy ship will take on water and to fire the shaft again. These bastilla are also used to attack the crews of a ship on the broadside while the catapults pulverize the upper decks. The bastilla harrow the lower decks of the ships, punching holes in the hull and often spearing enemy crewmembers as they seek shelter from the carnage above deck.
Terrors of the Deep
IX: A many tentacled thing that looks like an octopus without a head. They like act like barnacles, clinging to the bottoms/sides of ships and the city itself. They are also prevalent in the undercity. By being on the bottoms of most ships, they prey upon the detritus, living and dead, that collects or flows by the ship, their presence at once keeping the ship’s hull free of more troublesome hangers on, and also making an assault from submersed enemies a risky move on the part of the attacker. Though if they get too big they have to be cleaned off, which is also a nasty, if infrequent, business. Most are sized like normal octopi, but some are big enough to be very nasty. The barbed proboscis of most will knock a man unconscious, and during sea combat this is a major concern for those who fall overboard. The largest and most rare Ix will kill a man and drag him down. They are very agile & quick under water, but they are able to move above water for a short time if needed, usually no more than an hour or so.
Orisis and the Caustic Tide: Big fish, much like whales in that they dwell close to the surface, feeding on the black algae, and are the favorite prey of both fishermen (who spear them from the deck & rigging), and the hammerhead sharks, who are also bigger and smarter than most other sharks. If not enough of the black algae is eaten by the Orisis, it matures into Caustic Tide. It is an extremely corrosive patch of ocean almost like an oil slick. If creatures or ships get caught up in it, the corrupted algae dissolves and digests them. The best way to clean it off is a salt rub and fish oil harvested from an egg-bearing Orisis. Caustic Tide eventually dissolves and blooms into more black algae after a few weeks.
Vissicids: They are little orange crabs, about 1.5 inches long, with small pincers and feeler stalks about twice the length of their bodies. Their natural habitat or land of origin is unknown, as the only time anyone has seen them is when their young have hatched and are boiling out of the mouth of a berserk madman. Vissicids will crawl down the throat of their victim and lay many hundreds of eggs in the host’s stomach. Over the next several weeks the host will not be able to keep very much food or water down, until the vissicid young hatch, on that day they go mad. When the madman is hatching the vissicid young he becomes a spree killer, lashing out violently at anyone within his reach, killing and wounding some outright, others he vomits masses of the vissicid young into his victim’s mouth, thus propagating the infestation. Oddly enough the best way to kill them is to throw the host into the water. Apparently the crabs are not sea dwelling creatures. Drinking a gallon of sea water will expel the crabs if the victim drinks the water within a few hours of infestation, though is a risky solution at best, as too much sea water is also lethal.
Known History
Over 200 years ago a ship captain named Finius Isregard was fleeing from the chaos of the Wormwood apocalypse and discovered a small island near the center of the sea-lanes. He supposed no one hand found it since it was a mile or two off the usual course. He beached the ship and turned it into a series of buildings he and his crew built a small village on the island as well as one small dock. As time went of a few of the smaller ships would pass the island on a regular basis, the village became a small town and the docks extended further out to sea to support more ships. After about 30 years of the gradual growth out to sea, the first platforms were erected using pylons and giant rafters to hold everything up. As the ground level of the city grew above the island Finius suddenly ordered the sublevels sealed. When pressed for reasons he hinted at plague, and that was enough to keep everyone out of the lower levels. No one has seen the island or the lower levels of the city since.
Another ten years went by and as the mental condition of Finius worsened the City prospered, ever growing. After another five years Finius was on his deathbed and the City expanded still. His dying act was to hire a mage, Cyrus Thornbill, to magically seal every possible way into the lower levels. Finius died in a freak fire later that night in his quarters, just as New Mooring was becoming a world power. With the founder dead and gone there was a considerable power vacuum. The city was in turmoil and factions cropped up everywhere. It was then that the Sea Lords stepped in. They held elections amongst the populace for 10 counsel members to serve as advisers for the new monarch. The counsel then elected Merec Arbleyon, a captain friend of Finius himself as the first king of New Mooring. The new king made it an official decree that none were to venture into the lower levels and secularism as the way of the City, temples were politely dismantled and commerce became the law of the land. New Mooring carried on as usual until the Battle of Northgate some years later. From then on there have been whisperings of war. Whispering which has now become open talk of violence. What with the rash of assassinations, disappearances, and the privateering fleet circling.
The Truth of the Floating City
There is a great deal of goings on in the City, most of which the general population doesn’t know. These are the secrets of the New Mooring, everyone has a piece of the puzzle, but it can only be solved when everyone works together. There is a great evil at work under the streets of the city. When Finius first arrived on the island he knew that it had been inside of his mind. In his dreams he could see it, so he sought it out, and it was found. As life continued on the island Finius was approached in dreams by a monstrous being, some fish demon carrying wicked weapons. In his dream it told him to swim to the bottom of the spring at the center of the island, and there he would find wealth and glory unimaginable. When he awoke he was afraid, and for days would not approach the springs. Until one day he finally broke and ran, leaping into the pool. He swam so far down that he ran out of light. His foot hit a stone once he reached the bottom and he picked it up. When he did it glowed with a vibrant green light, illuminating the area around him.
To his absolute terror he was surrounded and seized by a group of the fish demons. They told him a fantastic story. Many centuries ago one of their kind entered this world through the spring and raped a woman on the mainland. That woman’s bloodline was tainted forever. Finius was the first descendant to come close enough to the island for them to reach in dreams. He was to build for them a city upon the island. Once it was large enough the fish demons, who collectively called themselves the Daath, would ascend from their spring and breed with the inhabitants of the city, creating an empire of their spawn and spreading over the entire world. Fearing for his life Finius did as he was commanded, and New Mooring flourished. As time past he began to change, his mind and body manifesting his tru
e heritage.
In a desperate attempt to save the city he ordered the sublevels sealed and magically warded by Cyrus. In the final moments the unstable Finius set himself on fire in an insane attempt at suicide. Merec Arbleyon and Cyrus tried to save him, but to no avail. Cyrus fled the city and returned to his home on the mainland. Cyrus died a long time ago, though recently agents of the southern kingdoms discovered his journal and learned the City’s deadly secret. Agent from the south have traveled incognito to the city in search of these fish demons and to destroy them before they break Cyrus’s magic seals and overtake the city. Also, agents from the western kingdoms are in the city, gathering information and launching an attack from within. They seek so sow discord between the corsairs and the merchants. They have already assassinated one corsair captain and two other prominent merchants over the last few weeks. Yet another coalition fleet is being massed in the south and it will attack the city within the next few months. The fleet is massive, even with the defenses of the city and the Ogre’s Fist the fleet will crush the city if the merchant’s and corsairs do not join forces to meet the onslaught.
