Across the rich lapis waters of the Iliac Bay, the sun grew hateful. Days at sea, mired in ceaseless sheets of fog that ever threatened to culminate into a proper storm, the crew of the Storm-Breaker could only trust in their compass and their Captain. Each day grew hotter, to where Starkad had completely forsaken not only furs, but as much heavy clothing as he could. Instead, he worked the mooring of the Storm-Breaker in little more than his breeches and boots.
When the fog-wall broke, the golden band of Hammerfell glittered on the horizon, and the sun's rays became as clawed fingers raking across flesh. The same blazing ball that burned over his homeland, but twice again as punishing, it seemed. Starkad bit back a blasphemous oath, adjusting sail to the Captain's command, and finding brief comfort in the breeze that swelled the sails overhead. Lazy waves rolled beneath them, a breed of blue Starkad had never seen nor imagined. Gulls and seahawks called and squabbled around the peaks of the Storm-Breaker's mast, searching for a meal to plunder from the deck. Other ships with brilliantly-colored sails skittered across the water, some defying the wind with the coordinated sweeps of oars.
Again came the order for sails to be drawn as the Storm-Breaker drew into Sentinel's harbor, overlooked by a towering lighthouse of pale stone, capped with a sloped dome of shining brass. Sweeping his sun-pinched gaze to the metropolis, he found many structures blazed like torches in the sunlight, their similarly domed roofs capped in an array of copper to gold, while the stonework itself was two-toned: sand-pale and earthen red, forming an architectural mosaic tapestry wherever he looked.
The assault on the senses upon mooring at the Wayfarer's Warf could not be understated. While the familiar harbor scents were present - salt air, fish, and sailor's odor - the wind carried utterly alien smells of exotic spices and spirits, and the peculiar drone of foreign music all mingling together, dizzying. Rubbing the calloused heel of his palm against his good eye, Starkad shook out his frizzed mane as he helped lower the gangplank. Swarthy Redguard dockworkers took the other end, eyeing the odd-ball crew aboard such a plainly Nord vessel. Word of Ulfric's victory, and his policies, had surely spread by now. Starkad remembered seeing a gaggle of Redguard folk on some sort of mission in Skyrim. He had assumed them emissaries, but perhaps they were something else. No matter. It wasn't any business of his.
While Starkad joined the crew in the unloading of trade goods, leaving the dockmaster haggling to Lord Winterblade, he felt a prickle of unease through the blanketing sense of wonder. Setting down a barrel of Nord mead branded for market, Starkad swept his wintry gaze across the warf once again. Someone was watching them, he was sure. Chewing his lip in consternation, he turned to Khinada, partly curious how a creature so covered in fur could stand being in a place as sweltering as this. He'd heard tell of Elswyr's own raking heat, but despite all his adventures, Starkad had never left the bosom of Skyrim before this journey.
"Khinada," he called in a rough whisper, "What say you to a jaunt to this... bazaar these Iliac-folk are gabbing about? We've gold to spend, and I have a mighty thirst," he said, pantomiming a mug in his hand. That was only part of it. He'd desired some time with Khinada away from the crew... and he really did need better clothing for the climates they would be suffering.
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