Battle of Strand

When the Kalkorae arrived, only one of the usual six shadelshifs patrolled the waters of the bay. The Totanbeni usually only maintained a small fleet in the harbor, for while the Totanbeni engaged in all manner of piracy, they had little reason to fear an attack at the center of their empire, because none of the civilizations they had encountered possessed ocean-faring vessels. On this particular occasion, most of the shadelshifs had left temporarily to provide support to a larger fleet.

While the Kalkorae did not intend to immediately initiate a war with the native inhabitants of this new continent, it is clear from the journals they wrote that the grim decor of the Totanbeni shadelshif was more than a little off-putting. Thinking (not completely in error) they had stumbled upon a civilization of xenophobic, death-worshiping cannibals, the Kalkorae determined it would be unwise to face these savages without a clear show of strength. They ran up a flag of truce but readied everyone on board the twelve speculators for battle. The Totanbeni did not recognize the flag of truce, but they certainly knew a foreign fleet of armed mariners when they saw one and reacted accordingly.

The shadelshif sounded the alarm to alert the outpost of the approach of an enemy fleet, but at odds of twelve-to-one, its captain opted not to commit suicide by attacking the speculators. Instead, the shadelshif produced a heavy fog through which it attempted to escape, probably to bring reinforcements. Feros Fedlog — the Kalkoraen admiral — recognized magic when he saw it and accurately guessed at the lone shadelshif's destination. The speculators blockaded the mouth of the harbor, using magical navigation devices to track and follow the shadelshif's movement.

As the Totanbeni vessel neared the edge of the fog, it found itself sailing between two speculators, with a third speculator riding in its wake. The battle that followed was desperate but short. The shadelshif's crew fought to the last man and inflicted a fair share of the battle's casualties, but against a trio of larger ships whose magical armaments were not hindered by such close quarters, there was no real hope of victory.

The Kalkoraen ships briefly tested the defenses of the Totanbeni outpost. They nearly lost one of their speculators when one of the flaming skulls that floated in orbit around the fortress intercepted the lead ship and proceeded to wreak fiery havoc on the ship and its crew before they could flee beyond its limited range. The Kalkorae determined from this encounter that a swift ground assault would be suicidal.

The range of the defenses exceeded that of all the magical weapons on the speculators, because the Kalkorae had equipped their ships for exploration, not conquest. After a considerable brainstorming session, the Kalkorae found one device with a greater range that could, with some effort, be used as a weapon — kendon (meaning "fire starters"). Kendon concentrated sunlight into a coherent beam of heat that could ignite combustible materials from up to a mile away in a matter of minutes. They were practical devices usually used to ignite watch, signal, and cooking fires, and so there were nearly a hundred of them between the twelve speculators. A single kend was no threat to a fortress — even a wooden one — but a dozen kendon pointing at the same target could scorch wood (or human flesh) almost instantly and start a sizeable fire in a matter of minutes.

Not satisfied, however, the Kalkorae equipped the kendon arrays with crude relays so they could store up to an hour of sunlight instead of merely focusing it constantly. While the resulting device was too bulky to carry and lost some energy to the inefficiencies of the relays, it could release enough heat energy at the same time to transform combustible materials (and enemy personnel) into a mass of flames as large as a bonfire. The Kalkorae called these new devices herfunon (meaning "sun slings").

While the sun slings held promise as weapons of bombardment, they would not provide a swift victory. They could not, in fact, store any energy after dark. Furthermore, the Kalkorae suspected more shadelshifs would eventually come to the bay, and likely long before they could secure the shore. A second sea battle seemed a foregone conclusion, and the Kalkorae did not want to be trapped between an enemy fleet and the outpost's defenses. Three speculators remained in the harbor and began bombarding the Totanbeni outpost with the sun slings. The other nine set up a perimeter outside the mouth of the bay and waited for the inevitable arrival of the shadelshifs.

The Kalkoraen bombardment seemed futile, as the Totanbeni defenses would immediately extinguish every fire within seconds after a sun sling had ignited it. After the first three volleys failed to cause any measurable damage to the outpost, most of the crew were ready to give up the attack entirely. Only Captain Imen Konat of the Ludyfik ("gull") refused to break off the ridiculous attack. Eventually, he even convinced some of those on the other two speculators to resume the bombardment, largely because even a lone operator could fire all the sun slings on a ship with only a few minutes of effort. Some even made a game of trying to ignite small or partially hidden targets, or of aiming several sun slings at the same target to see how large a fire they could create or how long they could maintain the flames by firing several sun slings in succession. No one seriously believed that the Totanbeni defenses would fail, since most large mede devices had an unlimited supply of power, so long as their source of energy was not disrupted. After eight days of bombardment, however, the fires stopped going out by themselves.

Before the Totanbeni outpost's defenders had stopped fighting the fires the sun slings set, the other shadelshifs returned to the bay. The Totanbeni mariners recognized a blockade when they saw one, and the combined might of the shadelshifs soon attracted a terrible storm to the area — a storm powerful enough to shatter hulls and drag the lifeboats to the bottom of the sea.

For their part, the Kalkorae could not quite believe their good fortune. Because the ships' defenses and weapons were almost all powered by wind-harvesting devices, the storm actually gave the speculators a distinct advantage over the shadelshifs in every way that mattered. First, the engineers who had designed the speculators had installed devices that would lift them several feet off even the highest waves, allowing them to remain as steady as a rock even in a turbulent sea. Second, this vertical propulsion device was complimented by a wind engine that could drive and steer the ship in the event that sails were a hindrance, which in this case, they most certainly would have been. Most importantly, each speculator was equipped with two wind hammers — one at the fore and aft of each ship.

Wind hammers were magical devices that channeled wind energy gathered by the many wind harvesters on the ship into concentrated bursts of concussive force that could be directed at targets within a hundred yards of the ship. A single operator stood in a small room just below the front and rear deck, aiming a wooden rod that stuck out a few feet through a porthole cut through the hull. These wind hammers had about a 120 degree arc of fire — vertical and horizontal — meaning that they were useless against broadsiding targets. The amount of force they could unleash ranged from thrown pebbles that could, at best, bruise exposed skin to devastating bolts that could drive a hole through a wooden plank or human body. Unlike the sun slings, the wind hammers allowed but did not require a significant delay between strikes. A single operator could let the ship gather energy for minutes or hours at a time, but he could also fire the wind hammer almost continually, spitting out a burst of force several times every second.

The swirling winds of the storm provided plenty of energy for the wind hammers. The result must certainly have taken the Totanbeni completely by surprise. As if seeing nine large ships flying through the air — unheeding of the direction of the winds — was not intimidating enough, the wind hammers reduced three of the shadelshifs to flotsam before they could close with the speculators. The two remaining shadelshifs fled into the furious heart of the storm, preserved from destruction, as always, by Totanbeni magic. The Kalkorae, eager to prevent word of their arrival from spreading to the other Totanbeni before they could gain a foothold on the beach, gave chase.

During the long pursuit, the Kalkorae lost three speculators — the Serul ("sea blue") and the Trahes ("sleigh") to lightning damage and the Pena ("feather") to the failure of its vertical propulsion device after too many wind harvesters had been destroyed by the storm winds. The Vagor ("prowler") survived the battle in spite of the large hole burned in its hull by a bolt of lightning, though its crew was forced to abandon it as the storm faded, since there soon would not be enough wind to power its vertical propulsion device. The shadelshifs would have weathered the storm but for the Kalkoraen wind hammers. Instead, they sank with all hands.

By the time the five remaining speculators reached the bay, their allies had neutralized the outpost's defenses. The walls were ablaze. The defenders had fled. The flaming skulls had proven vulnerable to wind hammer pulses and no longer posed any threat to the ships. One speculator took its place at the mouth of the harbor to keep watch for reinforcements. The others destroyed any enemy vessels remaining — fishing boats and dinghies — to prevent any thought of boarding the speculators after dark. They then sailed as close to shore as possible and dropped anchor.

(Contributed by Weard Oda Kalidus)

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
This site has features best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Download today!