Chronicles of Hedda Bardinsdottir - 'Tis Not Natural

Lohner may not be any closer (so he says) to finding Hedda Bardinsdottir, but his search has turned up pages from her journal.

From the Rhunikron of Hedda Bardinsdottir

Morgrim’s Beard! No more’n a few hours after we get our ship workin’ proper again and we’re back on the trail of our quarry when our clangers go wild. Reports quickly come that an unknown vessel popped up behind us and is followin’ our trail. The chief engineer – the one who invented our underwater listening device – reckoned the sound was bouncing off something that was about the size of our own ship, Grungni’s Whisper. More mysterious still, it sounded both like a ship and like a livin’ creature. That’s the same sound signature that was followin’ us earlier, the one that kept disappearing as soon as we turned to face it.

I said it then, and I’ll say it again, it stinks of sorcery.

There are few things in the world worse than grobi, but one of those things might be wizardry. Don’t misunderstand, like all my race I loathe grobi good n’ proper, and have heard tales of the horrors they have inflicted upon the Karaz Ankor since I was just a wee thing sat on me da’s knee. If grobi make me want to take up me axe and start swingin’, magic has an altogether different effect.

The eldritch powers be as untrustworthy as any grobi. Many are the fools that have been burnt by the lure of magic, ‘tis like cave moths to a candle. But not dawi. As a rule, we avoid it, and we don’t trust those that wield it. We are earthy, crafty, and value things made by our own hands out of materials quarried from the good earth. As me Uncle, the late Drakki Dagsson used to say, “if I can’t take it apart and see how it works, then I don’t like it.”

With dawi you know where you stand. We put our trust in engineering and craftsmanship, in runecraft and design, not on some fickle witch-wind that ebbs and flows at random. No double meanings, no illusions: what you see is what you get. With sorcery ‘tis the opposite, what looks one way might be t’other. And that magic
corrupts is plain to see, and I’m not talkin’ the obvious case o’ chaos. There aren’t too many umgi or pointy-ears that seek power through spells that don’t end badly, either misusing their wizardry for ill, or being betrayed in attempts to harness it.

As to what the ship might be, I dinnae ken, but I know it ain’t natural. Could I have made enemies of some sorcerer? Allies of the sunken Count Noctilus? I did slay the scourge Blackfist, but his pet wizard did escape? Maybe ‘tis no enemy, but some emissary from me da’s associate, the northerner Franz Lohner? Tho’, from what I hear that doesn’t seem his way.

‘Tis the part ship, part machine bit what my mind keeps going back to. It makes me think of something else... ‘Tis not the way of grobi. No, I think back to the hideous workin’s I’ve seen of the Thraggoraki. I think of their horned seers and their horror-machines built into the livin’ flesh o’ creatures.

I was thinkin’ that maybe we had a rat problem? The big kind. So here’s what I did. We tracked the ship followin’ us, acting like we dinnae see ‘em,, all the while plotting out their course, and loadin’ our last torpedo into our rear tube. After triple checkin’ our calculations we fired.

What we hit we don’t know, but we heard an explosion and the wailing cry of some underwater beastie. Then, all of a sudden like, we dinnae hear anything – no death wails, no bubbles, no sinkin’ ship. We also couldn’t hear anything followin’ us either. Whether our mystery ship disappeared or is just floatin’ dead in the water we don’t know. And frankly, right now I don’t much care. I got one thing on my mind, and that’s catchin’ up to the Git and getting’ back what’s mine.

As for that – I’ll reckon the next entry will be about me vengeance, for we’ve just picked up signs of what’s left of the last grobi ship just now comin’ into range.