The small ship glided through the water, a shallow thing not much larger than a fishing boat, with a large sail bearing a rich design on richer royal blue silk. Its (for want of a better word) 'captain' surveyed the shoreline through a spyglass crafted from coral. The ship bore one oar with two paddles, for use if the large sail was lost. It was otherwise driven by a single man manipulating the rigging that tied the sail to the mast and the mast to the bottom of the ship. By constantly moving the sail to and fro, the ship caught the wind, even the slightest breeze, and moved along the water leaving barely a ripple.
The shoreline was a tangle of tropical trees and frond-covered undergrowth, forming a barrier that even the strongest sunlight couldn't break through. The captain looked through the spyglass, searching the shoreline diligently. He barked an order to the man controlling the sail, who heaved on the ropes and brought the small ship about to make another pass. The island they were watching was hundreds of miles long, but composed of cliffs stretching nearly the whole length of the island, leaving a scant few miles of beach to land on.
The island's position marked the start of a stretch of ocean that was routinely sailed by the Shipwrights. The Shipwrights were a sea-faring people, literally so. They were possibly the only known people on the planet who got landsick. They were born on water, on their great floating towns and villages built out of fleets of older ships retired from active service, that were tied together with ropes, seaweed and vines, and straddled by gangplanks and bridges. The entire town or village could move among calmer waters as one vessel, and in rougher waters, the ships were untied and sailed separately until the storm abated. The towns and villages were usually docked to nearby islands that served for providing fresh food, for when the Shipwrights were fed up of fish or aquatic plants. They had great distilleries aboard their floating communities that provided them with fresh water, and the salt gathered from this process was used as spice or traded to other nations, when the Shipwrights encountered them.
The 'captain' of the little vessel, one Mata-I Otaw, was really a fisherman from one of the Shipwright's floating villages who had volunteered into naval service when the island his village was docked to was attacked by an army from the north. The army bore the same colours as those worn by the Luciferi, the blond-haired, green-eyed people from the lands north of the Open Ocean, who had recently established a colony on some of the islands that bordered the Shipwright’s waters.
The Luciferi colony had been met with warm welcome from Otaw's town when it was first established. They leant help to the fledgling colony and provided food and trade to bolster the community. However, it was later proved that the intentions of the Luciferi had not been as benign.
A village hunting party had disappeared on the island, and their village attacked by the Luciferi, using devices which spewed fire that could burn along water and was seemingly unquenchable. A small ship, commandeered by the Luciferi colonists, had been seen landing on the island currently watched by 'Captain' Otaw and his son, Mata-I Kara, who was being forcefully employed by his father as the ship’s single crew member. Otaw believed that the colonists had designs on the other islands in the archipelago.
His job was to watch the island and bring word to the town if he saw anything suspicious. He reasoned that as the island in question was sheer cliff-face for most of its length, then the only place they could land a ship for supplies or transport would be the few miles of beach that stretched along the island’s southern coast. However, his prolonged vigil of these few miles of sandy beach had so far proved fruitless. All he had to report was that there was a track burnt through the forest where the colonists had landed, and the ship they had stolen had been left abandoned and empty.
Crewman Mata-I Kara looked around at the empty and lifeless beach, and up at his father, staring through his coral spyglass as if he could force the dense forest apart with just his gaze.
Tying down the ropes that held the sail in position, he looked again at the beach. Sighing, he turned to his father.
"Dad." He said, breaking the silence that they had maintained for hours.
His father remained silent, staring straight ahead. Kara sighed again, and rolled his eyes.
"Captain." He said, through gritted teeth. This time his father lowered the spyglass and looked down at him.
"Will you shut it!? You'll bring the 'ole shipload of 'em down on us!" Otaw shouted at Kara, certainly louder than his son had been.
"But we've been tacking up and down this stretch of beach since sun-up! They're not here anymore!" Kara replied, hissing under his breath.
"D'you see that ship!? D'you see it!?" His father blared back at him, gesturing furiously towards the scuttled ship that lay on the beach. Kara forced himself to nod. "They couldn't get off the island without that ship, so they must still be 'ere! An' I'm gonna catch 'em at it, mark my words! If one of those eel-ridden land-dwellers sets one foot on that sand, they're gettin' a dart straight in the neck, let me tell you!" To emphasize his point, he picked up his weapon of choice, a blowpipe and quiver of darts crafted from stingray spines. For added potency they were also tipped in venom from sea snakes that the Shipwrights reared on their floating farms. One dart was enough to kill, and Otaw was a deadly aim. He practised by shooting at flying fish as they passed by his fishing vessel.
Mata-I Kara sighed again and, untying the ropes, wrapped them around his wrist to take full control of the sail. He brought the little ship about once more, to make yet another pass of the beach.
~~~
Quite a few years ago now, I was part of a forum called Golden Sun: Alchemy's Legacy, which, in fact, I was introduced to shortly after I joined GSR's forums. It was the first experience I'd had with roleplay and creative writing in that manner, and whilst at first, looking back, I was pretty dire, I got better at it. A couple of years passed and eventually the storyline fell through, and while I was on holiday, the administrator re-vamped the story with a new setting he called "Aftermath: Gaia's Renewal".
This was set in the year 8000 on our own planet, after a unspecified war had brought the human race to near extinction, and now they had seperated into racial groups and founded new civilizations and empires. Their level of technology was on par with that of Golden Sun, but with some differences, such as advanced rail travel and communications in certain areas.
At first I was a bit dubious about the setting, but in time I grew to love it, and when the administrator abandoned the concept, Saki and I took over and made it our own. We tried to reinstate both A:GR and GS:AL, but both projects died. However, I remembered all the ideas I'd had for A:GR, and I wrote down information about the setting, creating new bits, cutting out old bits, mapping the world, naming the races...
... Until about a month ago I decided I ought to take it back out of my head and put it on paper. This is the result. There's a -lot- more to come, but I don't want to swamp everyone with it at once, so, if it proves to be interesting to at least a few people around here, I'll post more as it's written.
As for the name, I spent a long time trying to think of what I could call it, before chancing upon the word "Advent". Taken from Latin, its roots lie in 'ad veni', or 'to come', such as we call the time leading up to Christmas the 'Advent' as it looks to the coming of Christ. So, this isn't the Aftermath of Gaia's Renewal. This is its Advent.
Enjoy.
=D
