[center][h3]Rising Tide[/h3]
Exalted Year 313 PF
Second Month of Winter[/center]

The harbour town of Port Cruor, still called the Portus by some, has no governor. Yes, yes- the office of Governor still exists, and has existed in some form used or unused since before the fall of the Kingdom. It exists on paper, mostly, and as the gubernatorial regalia, a set of medallions and seals which have been pawned, loaned and retained as collateral nearly as much as they have been used as props for an Official Portrait of the Governor- quite the luxurious ornament to display, if you can afford to have yourself made Governor for a little while. In the same way, the office itself changes hands, originally every ten years, now every two, and in practice every handful of months, passed back and forth between the same handful of fleet-owning families as they find uses for its remaining privileges. 

Nor does Cruor have an Admiral. To marshal the countless ships in its harbour under a single ensign would surely foul the mood and disturb the tangled loyalties of its veteran sailors, who do not survive long on the seas without growing the hide and temperament of a sea-lion, and are much better armed. Such a deed, attempted in earnest, would wreak more destruction than any attack on the Portus could, and be quite off-putting for any man with the cunning and ferocity to attempt it, never mind the staggering wealth.

But it does have a Commodore.

[hr]

"-and may we be redeemed by our works in His sight, for against His great glory we-"

The once-seaman watched morning fog recede into the streets of the Portus. There were times and places when he would close his eyes to say his prayers, times at sea or in closed rooms. Not here.

"-until He returns to cleanse us of our iniquity and set us in-"

Still waters did not rock the hundred galleys that lay before him, three of the largest newly launched, a fourth soon to come. In some small way, his master said, he would be part of that, much like he would always be a small part of the Exalted Kingdom in Outremer, so long as he had faith.

So the priest said. Crouching on the docks before dawn, bathed in the smell of fish just as the cobbles soon would be bathed in their blood, it was easier to have faith in his earthly master, though he knew not the plans of either. He simply served.

"-that the Light may shine ever brightly, like sunbeams upon-"

As the sun rose each day on empty piers where fishermen had already rowed away to haul full nets of fish from the sea, so he would wake up each day before dawn to haul goodness out of the dark.

"-unto God, the Most Glorious, the Exalted. Amen."

[hr]

Captain Rodgar of Cruor watched with no passion, his hands loosely resting at his back. He was a young man, strong, his position owed largely to his birth, sharply aware that he was only one heir among five and would lose even that privilege in an instant if he did not fight tooth and nail to expand it.

"Ask him again, Matio."

The burly ex-seaman heaved his black-eyed victim up from the cobbles and shook him. "WHERE IS THE [i]FUCKING[/i] KEY?"

The pigment trader raised his arm and waved it in the rough direction of his mute eunuch aide, croaking something. The slave immediately turned and went into the storehouse. "Grab the box while you're there," called Rodgar after him, knowing he would be obeyed. "The real one this time." 

He tapped his foot and looked around in the meanwhile. Cochineal, myrrh, cinnamon, exotic fruits. At its best, the pickings at the Portus bazaar were almost as good as its colourfully sprawling rival in the Grand Feitoria of Goldport. 

But only almost. And only at its best.

The eunuch returned with a small lockbox and an iron key, which Rodgar inspected for false walls or secret compartments before he opened. The trader stared up at him with bitter violence in his eyes as he retrieved a ring of fine jade. "Don't blame anyone but yourself," said Rodgar, pulling the priceless ornament over his finger. "That could have been much easier."

Sensing that they were finished, the seaman dropped his victim directly down onto the road and wiped his knuckles on his tunic. He was uniformed, like the rest of them, in nothing more than dark leather armour and a tattoo. The sea-nettle it depicted was, by design, a much rarer and less fashionable symbol than the scorpion, but the message was the same: [i]touch me and die.[/i]

The Captain wore no such leathers, of course. His tattoo was backed up by nothing more than a hat and a coat. A man of his status, assigned with his mission, could not afford to betray bodily vulnerability. It was a careful balancing act compensated for by the presence of the sea-nettles around him: To the wealthy, a refined face; to the poor, a stinging arm.

There were a great deal of poor men in the Portus.

"Cheat me again and I'll drown you in your own barrel," said the Captain before leaving. "You'll go down smelling of pepper."

[hr]

The streets occupied by spice-traders and perfumers were a thin island of beauty adrift in a dark lake of violence, slavery, prostitution, and fish. Between them lay a half-sunken shore of rare, exotic beauties, precious commodities of the living kind. The iridescent birds sitting songlessly in their cages were only the beginning of what the Portus had to offer, much as the jaw-headed camel spiders tearing each other apart in their jar were only a shadow of the fighting beasts still pacing the pits of the ancient amphitheatre, or the assassins in their distant dens.

"The error has been corrected," the Captain announced to a handful of foreign guards as they approached the tent of the flesh dealer.  "Let's do business."

"He gone," said the only mercenary with an appreciable grasp of the Outremer tongue. "He sell the woman."

Rodgar nodded and set off a little further away from the bright colours of the pigment trader. It amazed him a little, having undertaken voyages of many months in his time, to see just how many slaves here would surely have taken years to transport, never mind raise; eunuchs trained to do the oddest tricks and the most specific skills, who could throw their voice or sleep on nails, swallow poison or produce calligraphy. Even these males formed only a portion of the flesh dealer's domain. The rest were sold for other purposes.

A mercenary guard tapped the slaver on his shoulder and he looked up from the gold he was counting. His expression, cautiously content, soured instantly. "So soon," he said, nearly spitting. "Already the faker man comes to show me another fake."

"Not this time," said the Captain, displaying his hand.

The slaver's scowl lifted slowly into shock. "Aye- aye, ah, my ring! This is the ring great uncle gave to me! Aye-" He reached out his fat hands to grab Rodgar's, and the captain pulled away his fist. Suddenly the sea-nettles around him had grown terribly close, and the mercenary's straightsword looked terribly thin in the face of their hooks and mauls. Two young women stared out of the next room in fright, their faces as sweet and delicate as a peony in midwinter.

"There are conditions," said Rodgar, "from my friend down the street. Count those coins carefully. They'll be your last for some time."

[hr]

"So!"

The room was incredibly opulent. Ivory compass, ivory statuettes, even an ivory rosary, inlaid with gold. The fixtures were amber. The furnishings were ebony and silk. The treasure-mansions of Cruor's elite displayed wealth on a scale that could not otherwise be found east of Marleon, and the gilded saints upon the rosary beads would never have approved of the deeds it took to secure it. The man who welcomed them wore a peacock feather in his bejewelled hat.

Rodgar adjusted his own cap, this one also silk, and entered with a stance of brazen confidence. A servant followed him in with huge package in a leather tube.

"You've done me quite the favour, you have, Captain. Oh, you know I hate competition, I hate it almost as much as I hate getting my hands dirty. But nothing's free, is it?" He lounged over his seat, half laughing, exerting no effort at all. "What does the Commodore want, of all men?"

"Labour," he announced with no hesitation. "The Commodore requires both skilled and grunt slaves, and in time another sum of healthy oarsmen. It concerns his project with the galleys."

The merchant kingpin grinned and still did not laugh. "More? Again? Between me and that Bendsford man, he must have an army's worth of workmen. Come on, out with it."

"If I may," said Rodgar, moving an inkwell. His courier revealed their treasure.

The scroll was huge. It filled the desk, covered it, would have trailed off the edge of any less enormous table. The designs upon it were marked down in the kind of excruciating detail that cost more than a year's wage for the seaman on its deck. The man's perennial smile dropped down to the tiniest of bemused smirks as he leaned in to stare at the parchment.

"Galleys? That, Rodgar, is a warship." Rodgar raised his eyebrows a little in a way that made it clear he would not be delivering further comment. "For what purpose under Heaven would the Commodore call on his fortune to commission such a thing? Has the man lost his mind? Who does he think he is, a crusader?"

Rodgar looked over his shoulder, and beckoned the courier and guards away with a knuckle. They did not leave the room, but stood a little further back. Rodgar leaned in. "The Commodore, for the purpose of his own information," he said, "maintains correspondence with a variety of [i]professionals[/i] whose skills are not welcome in the Church. Since the appearance of certain- portents, he has concluded that the winds are fit for a more... [i]military[/i] fleet."

Rodgar withdrew. The old merchant likewise returned to his chair. He wet his lips, rolling the rumour around in his mouth. The Commodore's man had given him a secret. Maybe not a true secret, but that didn't matter at all, no, that didn't matter one bit.

"See me tomorrow, at this hour," he said, inspecting the designs closely. "We can begin to negotiate this contract."

[hr]

Captain Rodgar was shown into the study. The scroll recording the agreement felt heavy in his hand.

Before him sat a greying man, not at his primary desk but in a far more comfortable chair beside it, watching the fire crinkle. Some heavy book of records lay open before him. He'd spared the Captain barely a glance as he'd entered the room.

"Sir," he said, bowing. "A first copy of the contract has been drafted. I hope it is to your satisfaction."

Commodore Lano Loranze, who had held his title for twenty-three years and been named Governor for fourteen of them, unlaced one of his nettle-covered hands from the steeple in front of his mouth and reached out to accept the document. He paged over it briskly. Rodgar began to sweat.

"Thank you, Rodgar," he said. His voice was low, like timbers at sea. "That will be all."

[hider=Worldbuilding]
Still not sure if I should do proper summaries here, but this is a GM post for worldbuilding reasons so there's nothing to spoil.

-We see Portus Cruor's law enforcers, who are sometimes employed as the governor's personal strong-arm men. They are identified by their sea-nettle (stinging jellyfish) tattoo and sometimes referred to as such.
-There's a fair bit of Exalted religion in this city, co-existing with the evil.
-We see some legitimate trading in luxury goods and exotic animals, but even these businesses cheat from time to time.
-There are slaves and concubines of every description, as well as some foreign traders and their staff.
-We see an extremely wealthy, powerful class of merchants and slavers, who like treasure.
-Officially, the title of Governor changes hands. Most of the power is held by a mystery man named Commodore Loranze, who still needs to wheel and deal a bit to get what he wants from the merchant mafiosos.
-A few years ago, Loranze seems to have been informed by omens or soothsayers that trouble is coming, and has since been converting some of his wealth into war galleys, just in case.
[/hider]