The Sceptre of Samnos

The Emerald Oracle - Part 1

      They reached the independent city of Mala two days later, after having battled against an unexpected headwind, and they anchored half a mile from the shore. They spent the next five hours waiting for a pilot boat to came out and guide them in past the treacherous, ever shifting sandbanks of the Tew estuary so that they could dock in the city's harbour.

      Mala was an independent city, belonging to no nation or kingdom, and subsisted almost entirely on traffic passing along the great river, between the coastal Kingdoms and those situated upriver, deep within the continent. The river was too shallow along most of its length for the deep keeled ocean vessels, and the shallow hulled river barges could not survive the rough weather of the open ocean, so all traffic passing from ocean to river or vice versa had to be transferred to the appropriate type of vessel. Mala provided this service, for a price, and so lucrative had this trade become that it had grown from a relatively minor seaport to a major city in only a couple of hundred years.

      On the farther shore of the estuary, so many miles away across the turgid, muddy waters that it was visible only as a dark line on the horizon, stood the ruins of an even larger city, Old Mala, that had grown during the days of the Agglemonian Empire. In those days a canal had run from the Tew to the Great Lake, connecting it to the Western Sea, and the river itself had been dredged to a much greater depth. This had allowed the great sailing ships to sail directly from Arnor itself to every port along the Western and Southern Seas, and it had all had to pass through Mala, which had become one of the largest, richest and most glorious cities in the Empire.

      When the Empire had fallen, however, trade through the city had all but ceased and its main source of income had dried up. Within a few short years it had become a virtual ghost town, a mere shadow of its former self, which had survived for about a century longer as the capital of a small bandit empire that controlled an area of a few thousand square miles between the Tzeentra Marshes and Fengalla Forest. Even this hadn't lasted long, however, as evil creatures had moved into the vast, deserted outer regions of the city, warring with its remaining inhabitants and eventually driving them out.

      Most of the city's wealth was reputed to still be there, though, carefully hidden by the city fathers in the last days before their departure, and every so often someone would go in there in search of it, but the city's new inhabitants, still lurking in the ruins, made sure that they rarely left alive. Even an entire army, sent by the nearby Kingdom of Kenestra, had failed to clear the city out, and the ill fated expedition of 6188 had served only to give the city such an evil reputation that the river's entire southern shore was now shunned for a hundred miles along its length. There were cities like Old Mala all over the continent, the largest being the ruins of Arnor itself. Relics of the glorious age of Imperial splendour, now dark and dangerous and avoided by all sensible people.

      The six travelers decided to spend a couple of days in Mala before looking for a ship to take them on to Greenwing Island. They were all thoroughly fed up with sea travel, with the awful food and the seasickness, and the women were feeling even worse than the men from having been confined to their cabin for most of the voyage. They decided to take a day or two to see the sights and visit some of the city's major landmarks, therefore, and Thomas went to visit the local library, as he always did, on the off chance that it had some information they could use. From his past disappointments he had little hope that it would, and he told the others so as he left, so they were surprised to see him bursting with excitement upon his return that evening, clutching a sheaf of handwritten notes as he burst into the boarding house's common room.