Scenario #1 Planting the Flag
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"Bloody fog," Stren muttered, as he stumbled across the beach. Gravel crunched underneath his boots, and his toes were going numb with Ironshore's bitter embrace. "Bloody rain."

Something moved up ahead; or so he thought. A shadow in the fog, of a man - no - too small for a man. A child perhaps? He drew his pistol from his trench coat. 

"Who's there?" he called, "you want some trouble eh?" 

No one answered him, but a harsh wind blew in suddenly from the sea. Stren strained his eyes from left to right, and he smiled for a moment as he noticed his hand was shaking. "Odd," he mumbled, "not like me to get spooked." 

Then again, Ironshore was a different category to any of the islands he'd ever been to, inhabited or no. Its foggy overcoat was thick with an oppressive malice, and him not being able to see anything was driving his mind into anxiety's colourful corner. Maybe, he was getting old, old and stupid. 

"You there, boy," he snapped, pointing at a young scruffy sailor of perhaps fifteen winters. "Up 'head, your young bastard eyes will see betta' than mine, eh?"

The youth dutifully obeyed, albeit reluctantly, and he skipped ahead with a small blade drawn. Stren, and not for the first time in his life, was glad there were always stupid, younger folk to send into the unknown, rather than himself. 

Something growled; Stren's eyes narrowed, and he saw the dwindling silhouette of the young sailor suddenly vanish. 

"Boy?" He yelled, pulling back the trigger on his pistol. It clicked into place. 

There was a sudden noise, as if someone was tearing a lettuce in half, and then out rolled the youth's head from the fog; it stopped at Stren's feet, and his eyes widened. 

"Arm yerselves," he called back to the group. 

Forms materialised, as if called by his words. They circled him. Some were as tall as a man, but others were small, as if young children. One of them stumbled forwards, and Stren wretched into his glove. 

"Shit on a stick," he cried.

Before him was a man - or an Elf perhaps? But no, not quite. It was a dead thing; its neck, slanted to one side, and its skin green with sea algae. It rasped at him, and moved forwards with reaching arms. 

"Oh ballocks to this," Stren grunted, and sighted the withered husk with his pistol; he depressed the trigger and his hand disappeared behind a ball of smoke. 

The creature stumbled backwards, and released a moan. 

"The dead walk," Stren called to his comrades. "Get 'em in tha' head, or get 'em with fire!" 

He'd fought these wretches before, as they were not an entirely uncommon sight in the world - but their ghastly appearance never made things any easier.