Baileia smiled slightly, [color=bc8dbf][i][b]"Pleasure to meet you Amrik. I've never heard of Azure Strand before, but I doubt the pickpockets here will find anything worthwhile on my person."[/b][/i][/color] At that, she began chuckling lightly. When he changed his voice, her eyes looked at him inquisitively. But he did say he was a jester, so she shrugged, listening intently. This man was quite the oddity it seemed, and she wouldn't be surprised if that simply scratched the surface. 

[color=bc8dbf][i][b]"We left our port of Meskara on an exploratory mission. We'd heard from a dragon that there was an archipelago that wasn't on any of the world maps. Naturally, that piqued the interest of our benefactor. He was a great navigator, absolutely loved exploring the unknown, just as I do."[/b][/i][/color] She looked away sadly, her face looking as if she were crying silently, [color=bc8dbf][i][b]"We made our way to the rough location the dragon described, with little trouble. We met the locals there, many different types of winged peoples, mostly avien. We traded, partook of their customs, and learned much of their ways, before we departed. That was when the storm struck. It was one of the roughest squalls any of us had ever seen, and we were sure so many times that the Swift Lady would break in half.

In the distance we saw clear skies, no clouds at all, an oddity in the ocean. We thought maybe it was the center of the storm and would offer some sanctuary. We sailed through it and the seas were calm. We knew immediately that we'd sailed through a massive Summoning Portal to a world we didn't recognize. The stars were different, the air was hotter, there were too many moons. But of course, our captain pressed us onward, for our benefactor would want maps of this unknown world."[/b][/i][/color]

She turned now to face the jester again, [color=bc8dbf][i][b]"We traveled many years, meeting many differing peoples and creatures. The lands were all the same though. Barren, dry, wastelands. We lost some crew members and even gained some others. When we had charted all the coast lines we could find, we returned to the portal to our world, for everyone knew portals of that size would last centuries. But it was not there, and our Aurist was able to tell that it had closed, recently.

We were about to head back to one of our favorite ports, when we were attacked. We don't know what they were exactly, similar to dragons, but they didn't have physical bodies. Like we are now. But magic couldn't hurt them. They... drank our magic, every last bit, including the magic that grants life. So we all died, and a side effect of their magical draining was becoming ghosts. When we found we could still man the ship, we continued to do so, to hunt these creatures down.

So many years passed, until we found our old portal once more, and took the plunge, unsure of how long had passed. And now we find ourselves here. Or so we thought. But the stars are all wrong. The theory is that this isn't our world at all, but a completely different one. We don't know how long we've been at sea. What year is it now?"[/b][/i][/color]