Earth's Edge
Alfred actually wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, he intends to prove that there is an end to the world, where the sea flows downwards and the place where his father supposedly died. His father left his family to go on a journey when Alfred was 4 and Anise was 12. His mother died in a tragic wagon accident barely six months after his father’s departure and his mother’s sister, Bella takes over the inn (Earth’s Edge). Their aunt Bella took good care of the two kids until the Earth’s Edge Inn burned down a year before Alfred ends up leaving for his journey. Anise marries a nice boy from the village named Mickael and at 20 she has a daughter who she names for their mother, Dove. When Alfred is 21 he leaves his aunt, sister, brother-in-law, and niece to continue his father’s search for the edge of the earth. (The inn was started by Anton and Dove when they married and moved to the small village they lived in. Anton was a sailor who had spent 10 years on a ship starting out as a deckhand at the age of 12 and working his way up to first mate before retiring and taking his wife and the money he made to start an inn. He then spends 8 years with his family and leaves for the sea again at 29.)
Alfred leaves his family for the port city of Domar (so named for the man who founded it two hundred years before, and who’s family had become a minor member of the cardinalship, thus the Duke of Domar lived in the city) he meets a girl a year older than him who is claiming to be running away. She takes him out to eat in a tavern where they get to know each other a bit, he explains his plans to her and she insists that she be allowed to accompany him. They are overheard by a dark haired man two or so tables over who mocks Al’s quest and asks certain questions like ‘where will you get the ship?’ and ‘do you even know how to navigate?’. Alfred gets angry, throws a punch at the 24 year old man, which gets all three of them thrown out of the tavern. The man sticks to the two, claiming they owe him a lunch and a beer for getting him thrown out. Alfred protests, of course, and another fight ensues in which another man interferes to break them up. This man recognizes Alfred after a few moments and it is revealed that he is the old captain turned shipwright that his father sailed under. The trio is invited to his home for dinner and Al explains his plans to the old man who offers to provide them with a ship, but that it will take two weeks to finish. Al uses this time to slowly recruit six other people to his cause, just enough to man the small vessel that he names Earth’s Edge, in honor of his family and his father’s dream. A pair of twins, one female and one male, both of them 15 and strangely good with machinery of any kind. Another man who is friends with the one they meet initially in the tavern (a navigator, though Al is no slouch.). Someone tires to mug Al, but quickly finds that it is not the most intelligent idea and somehow ends up going with them too. A couple days before the Earth’s Edge is set to be finished, a woman shows up claiming that the girl Al first met is the daughter of the Duke of the city and that she was trying to run away from her father who was trying to marry her off to some old Lord two hundred miles away. There is a confrontation during which the woman ends up agreeing that she doesn’t want to see her charge be married off to some ugly man she’d never even met, and so goes with them instead. The last person meets them at the ship the day they are supposed to leave, or rather, is found sleeping in the supply room a few hours after they leave. Al throws a fit, because the girl in the supply room is actually his 9 year old niece who apparently follows him to Domar and snuck onto his ship. He wants to turn back, until a huge storm blows up and pushes them all super far out to sea. He tries to turn back again, but they realize that it would take a week of good winds to get them back to the harbor, the storm was really quite strong and blew them a few hundred miles east of where they started. (it was a very strong storm…)
They spend about three months sailing, making a stop at the occasional island. Probably, three or four. One of them is an island of cannibals, and they kidnap Dove. Al and the crew storm the village to save her, but she escapes on her own and returns to the ship shortly after they leave. She steals a magical voodoo-esque staff from the hut she was kept in, she spends her time waiting for everyone to come back playing with the ‘cool stick’ and making the sand build itself into sandcastles after the first couple times she waves the stick and the sand jumps. Al and the crew think that the cannibals killed Dove, so there is much angst until they return to the ship to see her sitting atop a huge slightly scaled down but mostly live size rampart of a giant castle.
The next island they visit is full of women, sirens to be exact. The crew doesn’t realize it until the men are being drowned to death in the ‘sacred pool’ at the center of the island. The so-called sirens aren’t really sirens, just an island full of some crazy women that are kept young by ritual sacrifice to some crazy demon that lives in the pool they drown people in. The crew eventually escapes, but not without several injuries.
The third, is just a normal island, though the Duke’s daughter gets a disease from some fruit (she’s allergic to plantains, but has never eaten one before they arrive on this particular island…or maybe there’s some sort of rot/fungus in the one she eats and she gets sick that way…whatev.) The woman who insisted on coming with them to stay with her charge, is really her nursemaid/body guard and is really good at herbal remedies. She sends the crew out to find a plant that she is pretty sure grows on the island. The twins find the plant but don’t realize it and start eating it because it has berries on it. They start throwing up, and the tavern guy shows up, scolds them for eating strange plants, and then recognizes the plant they were eating from as the one they need. Luckily, they don’t need the berries for the remedy and Domar girl is better.
They set sail from the third island, and almost immediately some ship-ly malfunction happens and they have to stop at the sister island that is only a couple miles away from the third island. (actually, there are a series of five islands in this chain, but they only stop at the first two) They get some stuff from the island to repair their ship and the twins redeem themselves of eating on the job by being the amazing little engineer kids that they are and fix the ship better than last time. They take a few wood pieces with them incase they need to fix the ship again, and then are on their way.
A giant squid tries to attack the ship at some point, and there is an epic battle, in which the crew is glad they brought extra wood with them because the ship needs much fixing. One of the twins falls off the mast and break his/her arm.
Finally, they reach the ‘edge of the earth’, and there is some dilemma where they get caught in the current of the sea flowing over the edge and nearly fall themselves. While Al is curious to know what is beyond, he’s not so curious to fall off the edge and find out what is at the bottom. The twins and the tavern guy’s friend pull some engineering wonder out of their asses, and the ship is given flying capabilities. During a private moment, Al wonders if the shipwright didn’t purposely have the ship built to make it easier to make it fly, as he has previously noted the lightness of the wood and the somewhat aero-dynamic-ness of the ship itself. It helps their endeavor when they remember some of the magical trinkets they have collected from the cannibals and from the false sirens. (from the island of deranged women, tavern guy’s friend finds a fan that when waved creates a considerably stronger gust than one would expect)
The ship then turns around again (they had docked at yet another island not far enough from the Edge that they couldn’t see it) and heads boldly over the edge of the world. It flies, there is much rejoicing in the continued living of the crew and ship, and then they fly for a couple hours. Eventually, they land on another ‘continent’ that is suspended in random space, and at a tiny island just after the new edge, they find a shipwreck and a logbook that they find belonged to Al’s father. There is a melancholy moment where they give the skeletons of the sailors a proper burial and Al angsts over his father’s fate. The crew ponders why, if Al’s father made it across the edge, did the ship end up crashed on the island, and this is some foreshadowing right here.
Some water demon-creature appears in the night and attacks the crew, and they barely make it out with their lives, in fact, tavern guy dies. There is much sadness, and the death of the guy who becomes Al’s best friend over the course of the journey triggers some strange hidden power within the young man. The water demon-thing is ‘wtf-pwnt’ and the sadness then continues on through tavern guy’s burial.
The story ends with some tripe about a new beginning in a new world, and there may or may not be a sequel.
Perhaps if there is, it will be the exploration of this odd new continent for a little while, in which the crew gets caught up in some strange war between two countries that make up the majority of the lands in the new place. Possible prologue is Al and Dove returning to their home village and to Anise and Mickael who have two more children. Probably, Dove will be 15 or so and the two children will be 14 and 10. There will likely be much rejoicing, and the Domar Duke’s daughter will likely marry Al.
Alfred leaves his family for the port city of Domar (so named for the man who founded it two hundred years before, and who’s family had become a minor member of the cardinalship, thus the Duke of Domar lived in the city) he meets a girl a year older than him who is claiming to be running away. She takes him out to eat in a tavern where they get to know each other a bit, he explains his plans to her and she insists that she be allowed to accompany him. They are overheard by a dark haired man two or so tables over who mocks Al’s quest and asks certain questions like ‘where will you get the ship?’ and ‘do you even know how to navigate?’. Alfred gets angry, throws a punch at the 24 year old man, which gets all three of them thrown out of the tavern. The man sticks to the two, claiming they owe him a lunch and a beer for getting him thrown out. Alfred protests, of course, and another fight ensues in which another man interferes to break them up. This man recognizes Alfred after a few moments and it is revealed that he is the old captain turned shipwright that his father sailed under. The trio is invited to his home for dinner and Al explains his plans to the old man who offers to provide them with a ship, but that it will take two weeks to finish. Al uses this time to slowly recruit six other people to his cause, just enough to man the small vessel that he names Earth’s Edge, in honor of his family and his father’s dream. A pair of twins, one female and one male, both of them 15 and strangely good with machinery of any kind. Another man who is friends with the one they meet initially in the tavern (a navigator, though Al is no slouch.). Someone tires to mug Al, but quickly finds that it is not the most intelligent idea and somehow ends up going with them too. A couple days before the Earth’s Edge is set to be finished, a woman shows up claiming that the girl Al first met is the daughter of the Duke of the city and that she was trying to run away from her father who was trying to marry her off to some old Lord two hundred miles away. There is a confrontation during which the woman ends up agreeing that she doesn’t want to see her charge be married off to some ugly man she’d never even met, and so goes with them instead. The last person meets them at the ship the day they are supposed to leave, or rather, is found sleeping in the supply room a few hours after they leave. Al throws a fit, because the girl in the supply room is actually his 9 year old niece who apparently follows him to Domar and snuck onto his ship. He wants to turn back, until a huge storm blows up and pushes them all super far out to sea. He tries to turn back again, but they realize that it would take a week of good winds to get them back to the harbor, the storm was really quite strong and blew them a few hundred miles east of where they started. (it was a very strong storm…)
They spend about three months sailing, making a stop at the occasional island. Probably, three or four. One of them is an island of cannibals, and they kidnap Dove. Al and the crew storm the village to save her, but she escapes on her own and returns to the ship shortly after they leave. She steals a magical voodoo-esque staff from the hut she was kept in, she spends her time waiting for everyone to come back playing with the ‘cool stick’ and making the sand build itself into sandcastles after the first couple times she waves the stick and the sand jumps. Al and the crew think that the cannibals killed Dove, so there is much angst until they return to the ship to see her sitting atop a huge slightly scaled down but mostly live size rampart of a giant castle.
The next island they visit is full of women, sirens to be exact. The crew doesn’t realize it until the men are being drowned to death in the ‘sacred pool’ at the center of the island. The so-called sirens aren’t really sirens, just an island full of some crazy women that are kept young by ritual sacrifice to some crazy demon that lives in the pool they drown people in. The crew eventually escapes, but not without several injuries.
The third, is just a normal island, though the Duke’s daughter gets a disease from some fruit (she’s allergic to plantains, but has never eaten one before they arrive on this particular island…or maybe there’s some sort of rot/fungus in the one she eats and she gets sick that way…whatev.) The woman who insisted on coming with them to stay with her charge, is really her nursemaid/body guard and is really good at herbal remedies. She sends the crew out to find a plant that she is pretty sure grows on the island. The twins find the plant but don’t realize it and start eating it because it has berries on it. They start throwing up, and the tavern guy shows up, scolds them for eating strange plants, and then recognizes the plant they were eating from as the one they need. Luckily, they don’t need the berries for the remedy and Domar girl is better.
They set sail from the third island, and almost immediately some ship-ly malfunction happens and they have to stop at the sister island that is only a couple miles away from the third island. (actually, there are a series of five islands in this chain, but they only stop at the first two) They get some stuff from the island to repair their ship and the twins redeem themselves of eating on the job by being the amazing little engineer kids that they are and fix the ship better than last time. They take a few wood pieces with them incase they need to fix the ship again, and then are on their way.
A giant squid tries to attack the ship at some point, and there is an epic battle, in which the crew is glad they brought extra wood with them because the ship needs much fixing. One of the twins falls off the mast and break his/her arm.
Finally, they reach the ‘edge of the earth’, and there is some dilemma where they get caught in the current of the sea flowing over the edge and nearly fall themselves. While Al is curious to know what is beyond, he’s not so curious to fall off the edge and find out what is at the bottom. The twins and the tavern guy’s friend pull some engineering wonder out of their asses, and the ship is given flying capabilities. During a private moment, Al wonders if the shipwright didn’t purposely have the ship built to make it easier to make it fly, as he has previously noted the lightness of the wood and the somewhat aero-dynamic-ness of the ship itself. It helps their endeavor when they remember some of the magical trinkets they have collected from the cannibals and from the false sirens. (from the island of deranged women, tavern guy’s friend finds a fan that when waved creates a considerably stronger gust than one would expect)
The ship then turns around again (they had docked at yet another island not far enough from the Edge that they couldn’t see it) and heads boldly over the edge of the world. It flies, there is much rejoicing in the continued living of the crew and ship, and then they fly for a couple hours. Eventually, they land on another ‘continent’ that is suspended in random space, and at a tiny island just after the new edge, they find a shipwreck and a logbook that they find belonged to Al’s father. There is a melancholy moment where they give the skeletons of the sailors a proper burial and Al angsts over his father’s fate. The crew ponders why, if Al’s father made it across the edge, did the ship end up crashed on the island, and this is some foreshadowing right here.
Some water demon-creature appears in the night and attacks the crew, and they barely make it out with their lives, in fact, tavern guy dies. There is much sadness, and the death of the guy who becomes Al’s best friend over the course of the journey triggers some strange hidden power within the young man. The water demon-thing is ‘wtf-pwnt’ and the sadness then continues on through tavern guy’s burial.
The story ends with some tripe about a new beginning in a new world, and there may or may not be a sequel.
Perhaps if there is, it will be the exploration of this odd new continent for a little while, in which the crew gets caught up in some strange war between two countries that make up the majority of the lands in the new place. Possible prologue is Al and Dove returning to their home village and to Anise and Mickael who have two more children. Probably, Dove will be 15 or so and the two children will be 14 and 10. There will likely be much rejoicing, and the Domar Duke’s daughter will likely marry Al.
