The Eastern Lands

A lazy steam drifts from the calm waters lapping at the sides of your travel-beaten boat. In the hazy distance, you see the first glimpses of stone towering and seemingly glimmering as it shifts in and out of view. You quickly wake your companions as you grow nearer and make out pillars of red stone, bubbling and steaming. The source of the acrid steam that's been lifting off of the water for days.   Despite the thrill of seeing a landmass for the first time in - you look to the even scratches carved into the boat - ten days, this is not a land that will fill your friends' shrinking bellies or parch their cracked lips.   A disembodied voice floats to your ears, its direction indiscernible. It speaks as if through a wry smile. "The Islands of Salvation. Welcome to - I think they call it... 'where the fated lie'." The mist parts and the narrow bow of a ship pushes silently through, helmed by a familiar cloaked figure. The figure is clouded in a dense, shadowed miasma which seems to vibrate in the air as if it can't decide which particles it wants to possess so it crackles from one molecule to the next. The very same figure that has stalked your nightmares since you narrowly escaped capture.   Your shoulders sag and you drop to your knees - thudding against the wood. There is no plan this time. A rusted and chipped crescent-shaped axe, the khopesh, appears from beneath the figure's cloak. You close your eyes and feel a piercing heat on your neck.