Captain’s Log – The Seam

Captain’s Log – The Kraken’s Fury

17th Day of the Black Tide, Year of the Hungering Moon

By my own hand, Captain Roderick "Ironjaw" Drake

The Seam. Cursed be its name, the blasted devil’s maw that cuts the very ocean in twain. I’ve sailed a thousand leagues and braved storms that would snap the spine of lesser men, but nothing—aye, nothing—prepared me for the madness that lies within that infernal stretch of water.

We made for the Seam two weeks past, seeking to shave months off our journey to Aekoyeron. The charts showed smooth waters—liars, the lot of 'em. The first sign something was amiss came with the wind, or rather, the lack of it. The sails hung limp as a dead man’s arms, and the crew muttered their prayers as we drifted into a sea as still and black as a mirror.

Then came the whispers. At first, I thought it the lads belowdecks, spinning tales to keep the fear at bay, but no—it came from the water itself. Faint, like a lover’s sigh, beckoning us deeper. Jenkins swore he heard his mother’s voice calling him home. Poor fool tried to leap overboard, and it took four of us to hold him back. The man’s eyes were wild as a cornered beast.

By the third day, the compass spun like a drunkard at the tavern, and the sky above—aye, the sky itself—seemed wrong. The stars were too bright, their light too cold. I’ve sailed by the heavens my whole life, but these stars were strangers to me, their constellations twisted and unfamiliar.

Then came the storm—or what passes for one in that accursed place. No rain fell, no thunder roared, but the air crackled with a fire I could feel in my bones. St. Elmo’s fire danced on the masts, and the sea itself glowed an eerie green, as if lit from below by some monstrous lantern. The Kraken’s Fury groaned like a dying beast, and I swear to every god above, the water began to rise—not in waves, but in columns, great swirling towers of liquid reaching for the heavens.

We lost two men that day—young Murdoch and old Briggs. Murdoch slipped into one of those glowing whirlpools, and the light swallowed him whole. As for Briggs... he turned his eyes to the sky and wept. "They’re watching," he whispered, over and over. We tried to pull him back, but he just stepped off the deck as if walking to greet an old friend.

When the sea finally released us, we were a day's sail from where we started—though I’d swear on my mother’s grave we’d been adrift a week or more. The crew’s a shadow of itself now, silent and haunted. Even the bravest among them refuses to speak of what we saw.

I’ll not return to the Seam—not for gold, nor glory, nor even the king’s pardon. Let it remain what it is: a blight upon the sea, a wound in the world’s flesh. If you’re wise, you’ll turn your prow and flee at the first whisper of its name.

And if you’re a fool like I was, then may the gods have mercy on your soul.

Captain Roderick Drake

Master and Commander of The Kraken’s Fury

Related Documents

First Report on the Seam

Expedition to the Seam

Location

The Seam