Thread: Another Life {Cheshire Smirk & Blinkk}

Crimson sails gorged on the winds and adorned with snow white bears swiftly carried a fleet of five massive galleons towards the coast. The ships were both wondrous and terrible to behold, each well over eighty feet in length and thirty feet in width. heavy planks of stained black wood were expertly machined and worked together to form what would appear to all but the keenest eye to be a single, solid frame. These ships had been built for one blatantly obvious purpose raiding. There were stories of the Baarskorr ships stories that were half mindless terror and half complete and utter awe. It was hard to imagine such masterful craftsman ship could come from a people that had shown themselves capable of raw, animalistic violence The hulls of those five ships were strangely serpentine with a steel clad bow shaped into the likeness of a massive winged snake and their sterns tapering off to iron tails. Platforms branched off from the starboard side of each ship and each platform held what could only be described as a stationary trebuchet. Throngs of massive oars stuck out from either side of those ships and worked in an almost mechanical unison, working in tandem with the wind to grant the vessels disturbing swiftness. What had been a fair spring morning was swiftly darkening with the promise of a dire storm. Thunderclaps, or what seemed to be thunderclaps echoed out from the now angry, frothing swells of the sea. Billowing black clouds stretched and sprawled out from the horizon, creeping across the sky and bringing darkness to rival night where there had once been shining sunlight. Even so far away the moaning, shrieking of wicked winds could be heard and the wails grew louder every second. Harder and harder the seas raged, waves as tall as three men standing atop each other and broad as the horizon rose and crashed into each other while lightning danced and streaked across the skies and then raked across the water. Yet somehow those ships pressed onwards, completely untroubled by the churning maelstrom that raged around them. In fact it almost seemed as if those ships were the source of the sudden storm. Storms did always seem to accompany Baarskor raids... Those unfortunate few who had survived a Baarskorr raid would surely be able to feel the oncoming doom in their bones. The unchanging, deliberate thrum of those wardrums was a sound that could never be forgotten. Those chants and that beat continued uninterrupted through every raid, each warrior effortlessly keeping the time as their numbers tore through countless towns with the same ease that a stray wind blew leaves around the forest. The blood, the fire, the pain...The fear. It would all come rushing back as if those past raids had happened only yesterday. Eventually the ships drew close enough for a vigilant spyglass to properly discern their presence and nature...And the sight that awaited whatever unfortunate soul was looking through the glass would chill to the very bone. The decks of those warships were full to the brim with hardened barbarians, all in full battle regalia and thirsty for blood. Drums with bonework frame and what could only be human flesh for heads were being beaten by batons made of femur and skull, pounding out a rhythm that matched those ominous thunder claps. Every man on board the ship stood shoulder to shoulder with a woman, their left and right arms linked at the elbow. There was something ceremonious in the way their lips moved in unison to vicious warcries of a strange, guttural, primal tongue. It was as if the coming atrocity was nothing but ritual and necessity to these people. Worst of all, pitch-soaked masses of steel and death were being loaded into those trebuchets and torches were being lit. The Baarskor were coming, and they rode upon the storm as confidently as Death astride his pale steed.