In honor of Columbus Day, I offer up a prologue that I quite recently wrote. It is by all accounts a rough draft, but it outlines the events leading up to a story that I haven't even begun to write yet. Some day, I might finish one of these stories that are set in my mythological world. As my ambition often outpaces my abilities, it might take me twenty years, so don't hold your breath.
Did I mention that I want to include dwarven-engineered steam-punk deforestation-mecha? It could become a train wreck of hyphenation!
By the most careful of my estimations, little more than 200 years have passed since the most courageous men in the country found the other world. on the first day of the first year of what has come to be known as the Century of the World, Captain Benjamin Bruford set out with a fleet of 6 vessels in hopes of finding the fabled land far to the west, marking the very precipice of the world's edge.
The great Captain Bruford, however, was by no means a young man when he embarked on this journey. After a decade of conducting business at sea, or what the royal families called piracy in the highest degree, Captain Bruford was captured by the Royal Armada of the Bretting Empire. All of his treasure that they could find was confiscated, and he was imprisoned for a number of years, during which time he began to compose a series of essays based on his observations at sea. This included notes on everything from sea life to the patterns of the winds and stars to his own conclusion that the Empire's lands made up only a small part of the ring of a great bowl that held the oceans together.
It was with this in particular that the royal families became enamored. They agreed to put an end to the search for his remaining treasure and pardon his crime if he would claim the western edge of the world on behalf of the Bretting Empire. Over the next six months, Captain Bruford assembled a small fleet of 3 ships, only to have the Empire insist on an escort of matching size in avoidance of potential betrayal.
During the voyage, the fleet was waylaid by a violent storm, during which two of the six ships were destroyed. Captain Bruford fought the wind and waves for three sleepless nights, which left his right arm crippled. When the storm finally cleared, the fleet had found land. The wreckage of the two lost ships had run aground, and most of the crew had survived to the shore.
This grand new world that they had discovered was heavily occupied by forests, which in turn were heavily occupied by an odd old race of people, made most notable by their fair countenances and acutely angled ears. Captain Bruford began compiling notes on the new land over a period of two months, deciphering what he could from the local tribes. His reports were then to be conveyed back to the Empire by the escorting vessels, as the return journey would be impossible given the Captain's injuries. However, Captain secretly prepared a lock box containing copies of Bruford's completed memoirs, which included the locations of his remaining treasures. Coded instructions were engraved into the box itself, which was itself to be conveyed to Bruford's sons by his first mate.
And thus, the remaining four ships departed with as much of the crew as desired to return home. Those who returned to the home in the Empire did so as heroes. All that remained was for the Empire to extend their power to this new found land, and no one anticipated it to be as bloody and hard-fought a conflict as it was.
This I know all too well.
