Dramedo Sea.
Latitude: –1█.8█23
Longitude: –1██.556█
Rear Admiral Eresk Taar stood at the helm of the ODS Resolute, eyes fixed on the storm-lashed horizon as his flagship and two sister cruisers shifted into a vast triangular formation. The configuration was deliberate, designed to encircle the center of an investigation that had consumed the Dominion's Western Fleet for nearly a month.
Merchant captains had whispered the first warnings: blurred sightings of an impossible shape breaching the waves, and then the silence that followed, their ships never heard from again. Reports from across the Dramedo Sea spoke of a leviathan, a creature so vast that it defied reason. The Dominion's chartmasters tallied the vanished hulls, plotted the points, and reached an inescapable conclusion: something ancient and ravenous was hunting beneath the surface.
The Dramedo had long held its reputation for hosting the unnatural. Unlike the comparatively tranquil Wet Wastes, which hid its danger in silence, Dramedo was turmoil incarnate. But even seasoned sailors were shaken by the recent surge in disappearances, each more inexplicable than the last. It was as if the sea itself had turned hostile, birthing new horrors daily, pressing ever closer to the coastal trade routes.
Rear Admiral Taar had known many battles, faced down pirate armadas and rogue Deepkin subs alike. And it was both his duty and that of the Western Fleet to bring an end to this nightmare.
"Spyglass," Rear Admiral Eresk Taar commanded, his tone clipped and steady despite the pitching deck beneath his boots.
Commodore Wiggans passed the engraved brass scope without a word. Taar extended it, resting his elbow against the gunwale for stability as the ODS Resolute rocked under the weight of the encroaching gale. Through the glass, he sighted the growing vortex, its dark waters spinning counterclockwise with unnatural speed. Swells rose like the breathing of some vast submerged lung.
"Signal the fleet," he said sharply, lowering the glass. "Tighten the formation. Line abreast. 400-meter spacing."
Wiggans raised his voice to the signal corps. "Blinkers up! Run the order to the Venture and Aegis—formation eight!"
Midshipmen swung into motion, hoisting the semaphoric lanterns mounted on collapsible brass frames atop the aft signaling mast. The encoded pulses of light flashed across the waves. Off in the mist, the faint gleam of returning signals blinked back in acknowledgment.
The other two vessels, ODS Venture, a reinforced cruiser with twin steam-stacks and deck-mounted harpoon throwers, and ODS Aegis, a dreadnought-class battleship with plated iron armor and retractable mortar tubes, moved into place, their maneuvering boilers belching black smoke into the leaden sky.
"Sound general quarters," Taar commanded next. "Prepare broadside batteries. Load percussion shells and incendiary rounds. Double stack on the port."
The ship bell clanged five times, then five again, echoing across the weathered iron hull. A burst of steam issued from the deck vents as crewmen scrambled out of lower compartments. Gunners dashed to their stations, priming the auto-fed breechloaders that lined the broadside galleries. Each turret clicked as pressure built in the pneumatics.
Deck officers shouted over the roar of the wind, issuing orders down speaking tubes and along brass communication lines. Sailors in oilskins rushed to stoke the boiler furnaces, while alchemists monitored pressure gauges in the engine room, keeping the twin propeller shafts running true. The Resolute, despite her age, was a war machine of fearsome pedigree, fitted with a hybrid coal-ether engine, stabilized keel-rudder, and experimental shock plating imported from the Eastern Foundries in Kantos.
Amid the commotion, Wiggans leaned in, voice lower now but edged with tension. "What do you reckon it is, sir? Kraken? Deepkin warbeast?"
Taar didn't look at him. His gaze remained locked on the vortex ahead, its center dark and yawning like the eye of a sea god. Thunder rolled across the sea like distant cannon-fire.
"Doesn't matter," he said, voice as cold as the riveted steel beneath their boots. "Whatever's waiting down there, we'll punch holes in it big enough to sail the fleet through. Then we'll drag what's left into the daylight."
Wiggans gave a sharp nod. "Aye, sir."
The command pulsed down the chain of officers and along the signaling lamps once more. Across the crashing waves, the Venture and Aegis answered in kind, their steam-rigged rudders hissing as they fell into final position.
Taar gave one last glance through the spyglass, then lowered it.
"Let loose."
A heartbeat later, the decks of all three Dominion ships erupted with sound and fury.
Brass-rimmed cannons thundered in synchronized salvos. Gouts of flame and smoke spat from the broadsides as percussion shells tore through the sky and slammed into the heart of the maelstrom. The sea exploded under the bombardment, plumes of saltwater and steam rising in vast geysers. Ether-fired repeaters on the Aegis hissed with rapid discharges, while sorcerers mounted atop scorched the waves in wide arcs, superheating the surface.
For several long minutes, the sea boiled beneath their relentless assault. The vibration of fire echoed through every rivet of the Resolute. The gunnery deck became a machine unto itself, crew shouting, shell lifts grinding, smoke choking the air.
And then, silence.
The cannons ceased. The echo of artillery faded into the roar of the storm.
All hands stood still, smoke curling in the air, waiting.
"Is it dead?" a young ensign asked aloud, voice barely above the groaning wind.
"Should be," muttered another, still wide-eyed.
They were wrong.
Without warning, the sea split.
A shape, vast and ancient, rose from the deep like a mountain being born. First came the limbs: grotesque, barnacle-encrusted tentacles as thick as smokestacks and longer than any mast. They unfurled with terrifying speed, water cascading from their glistening hide.
The Kraken had come.
With a guttural groan that seemed to vibrate the bones of every man aboard, it struck. One of its tendrils snapped around the ODS Venture, cracking timber and iron alike. Another coiled around the aft rudder tower, lifting the ship partially from the water with unnatural strength. The Venture groaned under the pressure, but she did not break.
She fought.
Gunnery crews aboard the cruiser fired point-blank into the beast, some climbing atop the railing to reload manually between writhing limbs. From the upper decks, Dominion sorcerers loosed wards and spectral lances, glyphs glowing along their arms and staves as energy tore into the kraken's flesh. Knights clad in steam-assisted exo-mail engaged directly, leaping into the fray from boarding planks, slicing with rune-blades and thunderaxes.
Then came the second horror.
Slick, scaled figures began to emerge from the waves. Deepkin. Humanoid in shape, but alien in visage, their glistening skin shimmered with bioluminescent runes, and each bore jagged weaponry wrought from coral, bone, and abyssal iron. They climbed the hulls like spiders, joining the chaos with primal shrieks.
"Deepkin boarding parties!" someone shouted.
Taar wasted no time. His voice rang clear over the chaos.
"Bring us in close! Target the limbs and fire at will!"
The Resolute's maneuvering engines roared as the ironclad surged forward, steam pouring from her stacks. The starboard batteries re-armed, gears whirring and loaders clanging. The air filled again with the thunder of fire.
Taar gripped the rail, rain and salt stinging his face, eyes fixed on the maelstrom where man, monster, and machine clashed in a chaos not seen since the Exodus Wars.
His knights fought with unshakable valor, blades gleaming against the downpour, though they were sorely outnumbered. Their formation held the line on the Resolute's deck and boarding planks, even as Deepkin skittered over the iron like devils loosed from the trench.
The ship's mages, though present, were few, and barely more than sanctioned hedge-witches by the normal standards. They lacked full initiation into the Six Disciplines of Thaumaturgy, and their spellwork was ragged, poorly controlled. Bolts of raw force and half-formed illusions lashed out with little tactical effect, quickly spent against the thick, slime-slick hide of the kraken and the rushing tide of Deepkin.
Only Commodore Wiggans held true power among them. A necromancer of middling renown, he bore the red-ringed epaulets that marked him as an initiate of the Embalming Guild. Below deck, dozens of his undead thralls worked the furnaces and ammunition lifts. But in this battle, even the tireless dead would not tip the scales.
They needed devastation.
As the Resolute thundered into close range beside the writhing Venture, Admiral Taar stepped forward, steam rising from his breath like a furnace stoked with fury. He lifted his greatsword, nearly the length of a man, its edge carved from razorsteel and fused with a dormant alchemic circuit.
"Unleash everything we have!" he roared, voice cutting across the chaos.
A lieutenant rushed to his side, wide-eyed, soaked to the bone. "But sire, the Venture lies in the line of fire!"
Taar's eyes burned like twin coals behind his rain-streaked visor. "Then the Venture dies in glory. It is already lost."