08/26/2026: The Bright Lady

Rain comes, a few drips at first and then all at once, hammering the deck of the Bright Lady in gray sheets. The small keelboat groans against the swells. Her captain, a weathered man named Keeler stands fixed at the bow beside a mounted ballista-like device he adjusts with a large wrench. Water sluices from his braided beard onto his waxed cloak.

The only other crew member, Jeeter Beeching, is a younger man, tanned and clean-shaven. He directs the party up the gangplank to drop down onto the deck. Down either side of the hull, benches wait for the newcomers to sit in the rain while the Bright Lady carries them down the coast to Saltmarsh.

Bob — the only sailor among them — has been recruited by First Mate Jeeter and has already slipped a thick rope from the moorings. He is an elf: lithe and dexterous, and he's been granted the run of the ship. It isn't long before Jeeter pulls him aside for a quiet word. The Bright Lady, as it turns out, only carries three life vests, stored aft. "You might keep it from the other passengers, if you know what I mean."

Bob does.

The captain tosses Bob a waxed cloak, and he alone among his companions stays dry. The others are not so lucky.

Timmy the owlin monk fidgets in his seat, shivering in the damp cold. Jeremiah, a broad-shouldered black dragonborn rogue, watches the horizon, concerned about the weather as rain drips off his snout. There is a second dragonborn, this one blue, called Turtle. He chooses a bench close to the mast. He is followed by Nesquo, who is a slight, increasingly damp elvish druid. He mutters as rain finds its way down his neck to wet beneath his leather armor. Nearby, Lux, a shifter who can take on the appearance of any beast, pulls his soaking cloak around himself, the heavy wool already sodden.

The captain spins the wheel out toward open water. Within an hour, the ship is pitching. Stomachs pitch with it.

Bob barely notices, snug in his borrowed cloak, and shrugs off the nausea entirely. Jeremiah's scales shrug off most of the rain. Timmy feels his gut twist but holds his composure. Nesquo does not. He doubles over the rail, and for the rest of the trip his stomach will object to every moment on the Bright Lady. To add to his woes, his fur is soaked through. He shivers, cursing the sea travel and its inconveniences.

⚔️

Then, far from sight of the mainland, the taller waves come. A particularly enormous one surges toward the Bright Lady, and the captain spins his wheel, crying, "Quarter around, throw out the drag lines!" Bob and Jeeter fling sea anchors toward the stern and rush to secure themselves.

The whitecap rises taller than the mast, a wall of black water lit gold by a crack of lightning. It crashes over the Bright Lady all at once. The deck lurches. Everyone claws for a handhold — everyone but Jeremiah, who loses his handholds entirely and slides toward the starboard rail, toward the churning dark beyond it. He flips, and is drawn from the ship in an instant.

"Man overboard!" the captain roars, but he cannot leave the wheel.

Bob moves without thinking, closing the distance in a leap. As the ship rolls again, he gets a hand on Jeremiah's arm just before he is sucked into the sea. The Bright Lady lays over so far that she nearly capsizes. For a heartbeat it looks like it might. It doesn't — but the deck betrays Bob and Jeremiah both and two shapes vanish over the side together, swallowed by the storm.

Nesquo, rain streaming down his face, tracks them. He shouts the words to Control Water through chattering teeth. His idea? To freeze the seawater beneath and around his friends into something that will float. The spell catches, and a five-foot slab of ice erupts between Jeremiah and Bob, locking them at the torso in a frozen cradle meant to keep their heads above water.

It doesn't quite work as planned. The weight is wrong — too much bulk on one end — and the ice block flips. The much lighter Bob rolls upward, and Jeremiah is plunged head down, the ocean closing over him in an instant. Water floods his lungs, and he begins to drown.

On deck, Timmy launches himself into the stormy sky. Though his wings are sodden, he cuts through the rain toward the pair, a coil of rope tossed by Lux gripped tight in his talons.

⚔️

Above the waves, Timmy beats sodden wings and dives for the ice. He drops one end of the rope to Bob, who catches it. Timmy banks, plowing back toward the Bright Lady, his end of the rope clenched in his claws with all his strength.

Feathers heavy with rain, Timmy strains against the drag of two grown men and a block of ice that together weigh more than a small carriage. He makes it back, wings burning. With the help of Lux, Nesquo, and Turtle, the block is hauled over the rail and lands with an enormous crash on the deck of the Bright Lady. At last, Bob and the gasping Jeremiah are safe.

The rain begins to melt the ice almost as soon as it lands. Bob breaks free first. Sputtering, Jeremiah coughs up seawater, gasping and grateful to be alive, peels himself out of the bonds of ice.

He says nothing until he catches his breath. Then he shares something that chills everyone on the Bright Lady: he saw something beneath him, in the water. A shadow moving sharklike beneath the ship, long and finned, carrying something like a spear.

No one has time to dwell on it. The captain is already calling orders, and Bob — soaked, exhausted, victorious — returns to his post as if nothing happened at all.

⚔️

It's Nesquo who hears it first: a low, rhythmic sawing sound coming from beneath his very feet. He can't place it. When he leans over the rail to look, the sea gives him an answer he didn't want — a black shape gliding just beneath the surface, too large and too deliberate to be a fish. A pale face glares upward, distorted by the waves, at Nesquo. Merrow: massive merfolk with evil hearts and a taste for sailors' flesh, the kind of creature coastal townsfolk invoke to make children stop misbehaving.

Lux sees it too, sharp-eyed even through the blinding rain. Jeremiah's read is less certain, but he reads the dread in his two companions' posture as confirmation enough.

The captain doesn't wait. Weapons are drawn. Jeeter Beeching nocks an arrow. The storm rocks the ship, slopping water over the gunwales.

The first shot is Jeeter's, loosed clean and sure, into the water. It is a solid hit that draws first blood, blooming dark in the churning water. Whatever's coming toward them is now injured.

Lux is positioned with Turtle at the bow. As the enormous creature breaks the surface, the dragonborn opens his jaws and unleashes a torrent of lightning down the length of the ship's rail and into the sea, enveloping the enormous scaly head. The bolt does devastating damage, crackling white-blue through the waves, and for a moment the whole ocean around the Bright Lady is lit up.

⚔️

The battle does not stay simple. A second creature surfaces — uninjured, faster, a harpoon glinting in its clawed grip. Jeremiah answers with a spray of his acid breath, a cone of hissing corrosion that the creature mostly shrugs off, diving clear before the worst of it lands.

Nesquo, weighing his options and very aware of how flammable a wooden ship is, resists the urge to unleash something bigger. Instead, he conjures a shard of enchanted ice and hurls it into the fray. It strikes true, biting deep, and shatters into a burst of frost that catches everyone nearby — friend included. Jeremiah takes the worst of the cold, wincing, and Nesquo winces right along with him, muttering an apology no one has time to accept.

Jeeter's blade again finds its mark. Turtle's lightning breath rakes the water a second time, the jagged bolt arcing and doubling with each pass.

Timmy, still recovering his footing after the ice, misses his strike and repositions himself instead, circling behind the enemy for better ground.

Then the tide of the fight turns.

The larger merrow lunges at Nesquo with a snapping bite that finds flesh, followed by a raking claw that finishes what the bite started. Nesquo drops where he stands, blood mixing with rain on the deck, and the creature hauls itself fully onto the ship.

As Nesquo lies dying, the gigantic merrow faces the rest of the Bright Lady's passengers, as if daring them to engage.