Welcome to Phantasy Island (Aiden)

The Isle of Gont seems set in the midst of a sapphire ocean, nothing beyond the horizon by empty see. In fact, on the other side of the horizon are several different kingdoms and lands, just barely visible on the next horizon. Gont itself has won awards as among the most beautiful places ever seen, a vacation spot so attractive its local merchants can (and do) charge exorbitant fees for pretty much everything. They get away with it by giving excellent service for tiny mountains cash.

And then there's the Ban. No violence or fighting is permitted. An overly loud argument can result in a fine (an overly loud party just attracts would-be guests). Even the more aggressive sports aren't really encouraged. Which results in contests between individuals taking the form of bets on non-violent competitions. Like chess. Or cards. Or racing.

Gambling is not a sport on the Isle of Gont. It is an industry, an art, sometimes a religion.

They sure weren't kidding about this place, Aiden thought to himself as he stepped from the resort lobby out onto the veranda in the early morning sunlight. This is exactly what I could use right now, after the last few weeks.
Aiden made his way along the columned terrace to a small outdoor cafe which had been recommended by the elderly doorman on the way out. It felt good to breathe the fresh air and feel the early morning breeze coming off the ocean just a few dozen yards away.... Quite unlike the last few days, most of which had been spent on a particularly uninviting little world breathing stale air and dust. But he had found the artifact he was seeking (as he knew he would), and by later this afternoon it would be in his client's hands and he, Aiden, would be substantially wealthier. Maybe I'll just stick around for a few days and get in a bit of sailing.
The cafe wasn't crowded and Aiden immediately found a suitable table off to the side of the cafe courtyard very close to the low stone wall which surrounded the joint. The courtyard was of grey and pink stone, shaded by small groupings of dwarf palms and bounded on the east - oceanside - with an area of greenery beyond the stone retaining wall. A few small groups of early risers were scattered about chatting softly, one group of kids, probably college students on vacation were a little more animated. 'Kids'. Aiden didn't appear that much older himself...early 20s maybe, though he was certainly older than that....certainly felt older some days.
Aiden laid aside his distinctive grey fedora on the table in front of him, combed a hand through his thick, wavy black hair, and signalled the waitress over when he caught her eye. She smiled welcomingly and took his drink order - a mimosa - and left Aiden to study the menu. His hand slid absently into the pocket of his grey tweed jacket to fondle the mysterious puzzle box
that his client was willing to pay so much for...

The puzzle box is a pretty thing. From what he'd been able to gather it came from a different Shadow than the place he'd found it--a place that suffered even more damage than where he'd just been. One where time did strange things. Indeed that whole region of Shadow seemed a mess. Fallout from the Patternfall War most likely.

Of course the temptation to open the box lingered. He hadn't been told not to, only that any contents were part of the bargain.

Halfway through his drink the smiling waitress returned. Aiden ordered an exotic looking omelette of a type particular to the locale of this interesting little island which the waitress left to retrieve. His eyes traveled to the golden-pink dawn, to the rising sun, and the irrepressable optimism it always brings. It was going to be a good day! He knew he was hungry. He really hadn't eaten much the last few days...too much to do, but his right hand kept straying to the small object in his coat pocket almost as if his hand had a mind of its own.
He really was curious about the small box. The circumstances surrounding this particular quest had been a little strange, and the fact that he could find no two stories that agreed on what exactly it was used for or what it might contain only seemed to enhance his natural curiosity (which was quite exceptional to begin with). It was one of the main reasons he had chosen this line of work to begin with...new discoveries, exploration of the unknown. "To go where no man has gone before". A line from one of his favorite TV shows from childhood came to mind as his hand brushed against the small box yet again making him smile to himself.
Well, there was no reason not to open it. That had never been part of the contract. If it had then he would have abided by it, no problem, as he always strove to uphold the intent and indeed the letter of each and every agreement he made. That was one of the reasons he was so highly sought after, That and the fact that he always delivered in a timely and efficient manner.
Checking to see that he was not the object of any special scrutiny by anyone nearby, he slid the small puzzle box out of his jacket pocket and held it below the table. As he had examined the box somewhat when he had first retrieved it, Aiden was fairly certain that he could figure out the workings of its complex latching mechanism. His hands traced the smooth contours expertly feeling for the indiscernable lines, tiny crevices, ornaments that would depress causing a portion of the artifact to pivot and open on itself. He had done this kind of thing a thousand times. It was just a matter of turning off his conscious thoughts and looking for the right feeling. There! That was it. A barely audible 'click' and the top portion began to turn and slide away. A new treasure to behold. A new answer to an unknown question. He loved this part...

Within was something Aiden certainly did not expect. A partially rolled piece of material. Stiff and somewhat familiar. In fact, less the second was all he needed to identify the object--and to recognize a further mystery.

It was a Trump. But one he'd never before seen in his life. Even the design was odd. Its back did not sport the white unicorn on green (argent on vert) of Amber. This was a red unicorn. On a field of black (gules on sable).

As for the face...! Beautiful, with golden hair, imperious, dressed in black and purple with a few bits of gold. He does not recognize her at all, although one touch of the Trump confirms it is genuine--apart from the cold, it also shows no sign of its time slightly bent but instantly goes flat as any other Trump.

"What the hell!!..."
Aiden felt a lightning bolt go through his body. Who is she? A red unicorn on a black field? What does this mean? He sat staring at the small placard for a few moments. Aiden knew he had to think..and in someplace quiter and more secluded than this. The cafe was beginning to fill up now that the morning was getting on. Leaving some money on the table beside his mostly uneaten breakfast, he put on his hat and made his way out of the bustling little courtyard and back to the resort.
Back at his room, Aiden sat at the small table near the window overlooking the ocean. The card was laid out in front of him as well as a small brown pouch and a set of papers. Rolling himself a cigarette, he continued to stare at the card, thinking. Could this be a long lost daughter of Oberon? Possibly, but he had never heard of a trump with this particular backing. All of old Dworkin's trumps have a white unicorn on a green field. To be sure, there had been other trump artists in the family but they had all been drawn with the same backing...except for possibly Brand's. He didn't know for sure....had only heard wild stories about that uncle. Could she represent a threat to Amber? If so, King Random should be notified or at least his father. An alternate Amber?? Was such a thing even possible?? There was just no way to know without further investigation. He still had several hours before he was to meet his client at the art museum in town. Perhaps he could conduct a small test. His father had shown him a neat little trick a few years ago. There was a way to sort of feel out a person through the trumps. Not enough to make a full contact, that definitely wouldn't be wise without knowing more, but just enough to get a sense of their being...a sense of the thoughts uppermost in their mind at the time. If things looked like they might get hairy he could always break off the connection and try something else.
Sliding the his hand over the strange card, Aiden quieted his thoughts and cleared his mind, He did not want to be noticed by this person whoever she was, not yet anyway. He felt the card become cold under his fingertips. A vision beginning to form in his mind. Quietly, quietly......

Suddenly Aiden is falling! No, he isn't really falling. But it feels as if he's falling. And caught in hurricane winds, thrust here and there along bands of jagged light that looks...familiar.

The Pattern! I feels as if he's inside the Pattern itself!

Maybe. Or something like it. No, not quite that. This is not after all very much like walking the Pattern--but reminds Aiden of the experience somehow. Not least the flashes of images, of places and people and events he does not recognize. Most go by far too quickly to register. But some sear in his mind, because they are just too vivid and last maybe a few moments longer.

Making love. To a man. As a woman.
A ever-changing sky.
A young man--it takes a split second for Aiden to realize he is Oberon--hitting the ground and a woman's foot landing on his throat. He laughs.
The Pattern. But in a courtyard.
What looked like a dragon rising out of the sea.
Plus dozens of other images.
Yet one returned again and again. A city. Built with its towering domes surrounding and atop a wide waterfall. Bridges connect the different sections of the city. It reminds Aiden of Niagara but wider, more beautiful, many times more impressive. Like the capital of an empire to span the world entire. Or worlds. It flickers in and out of his consciousness, dreamlike. As he feels himself tossed away from this mental maelstrom he realizes what this feels like.

It feels like a dream. But not his own.

Shaking and breathing heavily, trying to hold his identity together under the onslaught of such powerful imagery. Focus, focus. Breathe. then A domed city. She is dreaming. Who is she?/am I? Aiden fights to keep the connection without being overwhelmed. Who IS she? Where is she? The city! These thoughts keep circling, fighting for resolution. Let's try this again. Slower this time. Keep it together. Aiden again tries to enter the mind of the woman on the card, more cautiously this time, more controlled. Hoping that he can surf this dream wave without wiping out, a silent question forms in his mind as he begins to reenter her psyche. "Who are you/am I"......

The effect is harder this time. Rougher. It actually hurts. And in less than a second, Aiden finds his mind tossed back. He feels his stomach roil for a moment, and very nearly throws up.

Okay, let's not do that again, Aiden thought after recovering his composure. Still, it's about what I expected. And then aloud, " Clearly I cannot just hand something like this over to anyone, contract or no, until I find out what it represents." Aiden frowned at his own thoughts...The first time I've ever broken a contract.... Aiden frowned again. " I need to walk and think."
Aiden put on his hat and stuffed the trump, puzzlebox, and other personal items into the pockets of his trousers. Leaving his jacket behind in the room as it was already mid-morning and quite warm out, he made his way down the stairs and through the hotel lobby, past the young doorman who had recently come on the morning shift. There was a small green hill overlooking the harbor that he had seen the day before. It seemed it would be a fairly secluded place to think about the next step to take, whatever that would be. Aiden made his way down the boardwalk, around the bay and past the docks, toward the green wooded mound north of the harbor.....

A ship is coming into harbor. Aiden is no expert, but she clearly looks battered and poorly handled. He can see ships coming out to meet the vessel which quite obviously is under some distress. He's tempted to use the fixed telescope to see closer what is going on (such things dot the local hillsides for guests interested in watching the comings and goings of the port).

As Aiden is making his way along the winding trail leading up to his destination, he is brought out of his reverie by hoarse shouts along the waterfront. There is a flurry of activity along the docks. Dockworkers are scurrying about. Sailors are hurriedly boarding boats of various types and putting out into the bay. Aiden's eyes travel across the bay to see a large ship erratically steering into the harbor, battered and listing slightly to one side. She looks pretty bad off. Musta been one helluva storm. Hope everyone's all right. Being an amateur yachtsman himself, Aiden has always felt an affinity with any who make the sea their home. Looking around Aiden spies a small mounted telescope on a grassy ridge not far above where he is standing. "Well, let's go take a look", murmurs Aiden to himself. "A little distraction may be a good thing."

Tis a cargo ship. Nothing very extraordinary about that. This one looks battered, though. Ripped sails, some loose rigging (especially in the difficult to reach areas). Its even listing at a noticeable angle. But more strange, at least to Aiden's eyes, is that so few crewmembers seem present. Maybe only three in a ship that should house ten or more. One of the crew wears an eyepatch. The other two have gray hair. And all are waving at those in other ships coming their way--rescuers. In Aiden's opinion, the three crewmen look as if they've been through some kind of horrible ordeal.

Where are the rest?, thinks Aiden to himself as he scans the main deck. That's too few by half to manage a ship of that size. Experimenting with the two control knobs on the top of the scope, Aiden increases the magnification to it's highest and scans slowly along the main deck from stem to stern, paying particular attention to the three visible crewmen who are waving.

Through the telescope, Aiden sees rescuers reach the ship. Examining more closely, he notes the name of the ship: Seawing. Never heard of it. But the damage looks nasty. He can see cracks in parts of the ship, including the wheel! The rope that should be attached to the anchor ends in a ragged fray of fiber. All three cremembers look exhausted and pitifully grateful to have made it to land, alive. As rescuers from the port climb on board, the crewmembers gesture wildly, one of them pointing out to the waves. North. Isn't any land north of here, Not for almost a thousand leagues. Although nothing is clear enough to make out the words shaped on their lips, all three seem to be warning about something.

One of them collapses in tears. People help him, slowly walking him over to a rescue boat. He has a long gray beard and bluish skin. Rebman?

Within a few minutes boats begin taking the survivors to land. Others line up, clearly with the intention of pulling the damaged schooner into port.

Without knowing exactly why but feeling pulled by the intensity of the developing scene below, Aiden makes his way back down along the winding trail and onto the wharves. Avoiding the gathering onlookers he threads his way between the low buildings and around the knots of workers until he comes to stand along side the pier which the rescue boats should be returning to.

( Perhaps Aiden can pick up some relevant snatches of conversation from the sailors and longshoremen before the rescue boats come in )

By the time Aiden reaches the harbor, medical persons are on hand while constables insist a gathering crown not interfere or get too close. They don't have to make too much effort. Most visitors to Gont have no abiding interest in misfortune--either having had their fill elsewhere or enjoying a pampered life where such things remain thankfully far away. Disaster remains fascinating, but not quite so compelling. The majority more or less keep their distance.

So few try to get any closer, the officials don't object when those few succeed.

Including Aiden. Survivors of the Seawing are carried in stretches, placed on the sand while some doctors examine them on the spot. All receive flasks of water to sip. The youngest one, with the eyepatch, talks to a robed official. "All the young men--they just jumped over the side, they did! We all heard the music coming out of the water, we all heard it. But they must've heard more. But when we tried to stop them jumping, that's when the storms closed in!"

On the first stretcher, the blue-skinned man with the long gray beard said one word, intoning it as he would a seal of doom: "Mere-wives!"

Aiden waits quietly trying to keep a low profile until the doctors have finished administering aid to the blue skinned man and moved on to the next. If possible he will then move closer in order to speak to the shaken sailor.

In truth the three aren't so much sick as exhausted, not wounded but thirsty and hungry. Aiden can quite easily approach the middle one--well into middle age but younger than the Rebman. He seems less upset, more stoic. Certainly he looks at Aiden with clear eyes.

Aiden walks up to the middle one pulling a small whiskey flask from his back pocket and offering it to the sailor. "Looks like you all had a hard time of it out there. I've been in a few bad storms myself, but you look like you've seen a ghost. What happened out there?

The man takes sip of the whiskey, and visibly stops himself from taking more. With weary eyes he looks into Aiden's own.

"Nord over there calls 'em mere-wives. Says he grew'up hearing stories about the things. Daughters of some sea god or sea demon or something. We didn't see 'em. None of us did. None of us. Maybe the others didn't neither." He loses focus for a moment, then recovers, speaking stronger. "Almost ten days back, Seawing goes through a storm. No big thing. Just a squall. But in the center of it, all was still. Save for the edges. In a perfect circle they were, spouts of water goin' dozens and dozens of feet in the air! All in time with this music, music from under the water. Pretty it seemed, at first. Then all the able-bodied men start heading over the rails, into the water! Nord yells something about the mere-wives taking the young men, and then screams to stop when we try to keep them from going overboard. Was right. Unicorn, he was right! That simple squall turned into a hurricane! And that nice quite circle? Closed in around us. Barely made it out. Poor Seawing got battered up bad! But Nord, he says these mere-wive things never leave their own paths. Never break the dance he says. Says they were somewhere new, and that shouldn't ought to have happened."

Curiouser and curiourser
Aiden pats the sailor on the shoulder. "Don't worry, brother. You're allright now." Aiden gestures to the small flask, "You can keep that if you want. Might do you more good than me."

A strange and frightening tale, to be sure. The shadows seem to be getting more and more squirrelly these days. But now back to my own strange business." Aiden disengages from the sailor and begins to wander along the docks...

Along the docks people seem mostly busy, with only a few tourists wandering around. Gont being the size it is, things are rarely far from each other. A variety of novelty shops ring one waterside street. Seashell art. Driftwood art. One story that caters to unique designs of mirrors, some clearly enchanted in one way or another. Another place has meticulously worked out models of wooden sailing ships. Aiden knows ships well enough to see the high prices make sense. Even the rigging is accurate.

One ship catches his eye--it resembles the Golden Hind back on Earth. A little larger, probably a little faster. Two feet in length with sails that look perfect, as does the planking on the decks, the tiny portholes and even the glass on those portholes. A beautiful woman is the figurehead, long brown hair waving in the wind. But it is the flag that gets his attention most of all. It wouldn't have one hour previously but now...

Surprise Now if that don't beat all. Aiden walks into the shop containing the beautiful ship flying the strange ensign. Looking around he spots a man who appears to be the merchant who runs the store. Going up to him, Aiden says, "Pardon me. I was noticing a very interesting model pirate ship you have for sale, the one flying the skull and unicorn. The detailing and craftsmanship is exquisite. I was wondering if you could tell me how you came by such a marvelous piece. Perhaps you know the artist? I should be interested in acquiring further works of art from such a talent. "

"Ah, Captain Medraut's ship? Yes, well, young Guillaume is quite a fan of pirate ships." The shop owner sings the praises of this work, certainly doing his best to get Aiden to buy the model (the Rogue Heart) but eventually giving him an address.

Guillaume it turns out lives on the other side of the harbor, one of several children of port official.