A sombre mood hung over the deck of the TLS Inexorable as the hulking Seastrider entered the Cnidian Gates. Obeying an urgent charge from the Baarian Apothacery, Yabbahar, their destination hung upon the distant northern horizon - the Isle of Umbrin, the first harbour to become infected with the plague which had ravaged the seas over the past year. Yabbahar's expectations had been bleak, as had his predictions of trouble on the route.

True to Yabbahar's assessment, the mighty ship clashed with a Caspiite war citadel before long, trading volleys of ammunition for merciless battering assaults from the enraged behemoth towing the citadel. Finally eluding the creature after fighting it to a standstill on more than one occasion, TLS Inexorable converged on Umbrin, patrolling east and west as the sailors decided on their approach. Eventually docking at the harbour, they disembarked briskly, eager to purge the harbour of the contagion. As Watchman lit the vat which Yabbahar had entrusted to him, the seafarers struck up conversation with a quarantine official, learning that the quarantine would be lifted as soon as curative had taken hold at the harbour.

Finally gaining access to Umbrin, the fortitude of the intrepid Mhaldorians was sorely tested as they encountered a mass grave on the ordered, regular streets of Umbrin. The island was a grisly tableau of misery and contagion. As Saeva stepped into the highest room of the Grand Academy, General Boracin spat out a reproach, lamenting the callous ignorance showed by the inhabitants of the mainland in quarantining the island: a sentence of agony, pestilence, and death for his people. This done, he expired, and his towering form, haggard and ravaged by the disease, slumped to the ground. Elsewhere, the explorers discovered Umbrinites who had opted to escape the pain of the plague, and others who had drawn their weapons in defiant scorn of their impending demise.

Returning to the continent, Watchman relayed the grave news to Yabbahar. It was rapidly agreed that the corpses would need to be burned, and Yabbahar next produced the product of his months studying the plague: four globes full of concentrated sargassum. Handing these over to Watchman, Sunny, Ginovianna, and Valkyn, he directed the captains to gather the plague corpses into pyres, and to immolate them along with the globes. Danger attended the ships as they made the crossing to Umbrin, as intense battles broke out with Caspiite war citadels.

Some of those from the first mission to Umbrin applied themselves to the task at hand, and slung the plague corpses unceremoniously onto towering pyres across the island of Umbrin. As the first pyre was finally lit, with Watchman casting his globe into the burgeoning flames, a virulent plume of black smoke began to rise, forming a thick, miasmic smog overhead. As the other pyres were lit, the acrid cloud began to take its toll, prolonged exposure causing great pain and affliction among those on the island. With the fourth pyre lit, vicious tongues of fire searing the rigid Umbrinite corpses, the island quickly emptied once more.

After perhaps a month, the black smoke from the pyres abruptly turned to white as Yabbahar's globes were penetrated by the flames. The rising cloud, now a milky white, swiftly began to neutralise the black miasma girdling Umbrin. As the sky cleared, the pyres finally exhausted their supply of fuel and burned down, leaving behind the melted detritus of Yabbahar's globes. Quiet and subdued, the Umbrinites returned from the halls of Thoth, many among their number regarding with a baleful eye the mainland, whose inhabitants allowed them to die in their droves...

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Summary:
With the Caspiite contagion purged from Umbrin, the quarantine on the Port has been lifted!


Penned by My hand on the 9th of Aeguary, in the year 685 AF.