The Myth of the Steaming Sea

“So what I’m asking is, do you think there is any truth to the story?” the halfling asked. He looked about at the sailors sitting around him at the bar.
“Truth to what? That a great sky horse pulls the sun into the sky every morning and a horrible beast of the sea pulls it down with its nasty tentacles into the ocean and devours it?” the youngest of them said. He laughed, and some laughed with him. A few of the sailors made signs to ward off evil and took deep drinks from their spirits.
“Exactly, that and The Steaming Sea where they say the beast lives. It’s a well-known myth and I am here trying to find any information on it. Validity to the claims.” The halfling said.
“Nah,” said the young sailor, “It’s all mainlander bilge. No val… id.. uh, nothing to them at all.”
A raspy voice from the back of the tavern called out to them, “The boiling sea is real. The Ocean Maw is real. I seen them.”
A ragged-looking sailor came up to the group at the bar, skin deeply sunburned and hair unkempt.
“I was on a ship that was in the boiling sea, I was the only one who made it back to land.” his cracked face looked solemn. “The Ocean Maw pulled the ship down to the depths itself.”
The young sailor laughed, but no one else listening joined in, so he trailed off to silent. The rest of the bar had gone eerily quiet, all wanting to hear what the shipwrecked man had to say.
“You keep my cup filled with and I’ll tell you my tale,” he said.

We left Port Obrok with a hold full of Levin Seed for trading with The Itani. The Captain had connections looking to buy some of their Ironscales. Everything went fine for the first few days. We were making good time, and then a storm out of nowhere hit us. A tremendous storm. One of the worst I’ve ever been in. It lasted for three days and it blew us miles off course.
Once we got our bearings, we decided to still head towards the Itani isles. It had added more travel time onto our trip, but it was going to be worth it. Those scales the natives sell are worth their weight in gold.
We got underway, and it was smooth sailing until we all smelled something strange in the air. An acrid, burning odour. It was faint at first but got stronger and stronger until we were all feeling choked by it. I think we were so concerned with the smell and the coughing it brought that we didn’t notice the temperature rising until we were all sweating. We wore cloth tied around our faces to keep out the stink, but that just made us sweat more. It was a horrible trade off. Do we want to breathe or do we want to burn alive? Through all this, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was beating down on us, adding to our woes.
It was around this time a sizeable amount of the crew decided they wanted to turn back. Things were well past the realm of bad omens. The cook talked about the Ocean Maw. That we must be approaching its lair, and we needed to turn back. It would be the end of us, he told any who would listen.
At this the Captain laughed and called all those who wanted to give up derogatory names. He asked the cook if he also believed a great celestial horse pulled the sun into the sky every morning. Then he dismissed all calls for heading for port. He had invested much into this trip, to fail now would ruin him. Anything except pushing forward was out of the question. I was with the Captain on this. We all stood to be rich at the end of this run. So we continued on, the smell continuing to get worse, and the heat became oppressive.
The next problem came when one of the crew fell overboard during a fight, tempers were high because of the heat and the tension. When we finally fished him out of the water, he was dead. His skin was a bright crimson, and he was smoking like he had just boiled alive, which was true in this case. It was then we noticed the odd movement of the water. It was rippling and bubbling. Burning hot to the touch.
The cook babbled about the Ocean Maw again, and this time no one stopped him. No one laughed.
The Captain was desperate now. He promised bigger shares to the men if we would just push through. This worked, to an extent. Many of the crew gave him dark looks when he turned his back. That night the lookout saw the underwater lights for the first time. A deep glow under the waves, a reddish light that was hard to make out with any clarity.
“The sun!” the cook cried, pointing at the sky “It’s the sun taken to the depths by the monster!”
That was the end to any pretense of order. Most of the crew blamed the Captain and his greed for where we found ourselves. They hoisted him and threw him overboard. His screams pierced the night as he boiled alive, screamed and screamed, and then silence. The silence somehow worse than the noise.
The cook called it a sacrifice to appease the great Maw, but I knew what it was. It was just mutiny, plain and simple. Mutiny by a group of scared men.
I slept with my sword in my hand that night.
On the next day the air hotter than before, the smell worse. The crew were at each other’s throats. The helmsman was angry for the killing of the captain and a few angry about the new position as ship’s prophet that the cook had raised himself to. He spoke daily about the appeasement of the Ocean Maw. The crew was getting angrier and more scared by the hour. Some talked of seeing things in the deeps, movement as of giant tentacles they said. It wasn’t long before fights broke out, people going for each other’s throats.
It was during one of these incidents that the ocean maw took the ship. Its hard limbs punching up through the hull and stopping the ship dead in the water. Going down into the ship, we found where the water was coming in and we found what caused it. They punctured through the hull, these long barnacle covered tentacles, flailing around and somehow venting this thick smog into the ship. It wasn’t long until we had taken on too much water and the ship tore itself apart. Or the maw did. I’m not sure. I fell into the water and it burned, fighting to stay above the surface as I climbed onto a piece of the hull and I must have passed out.
Next thing I know I was being pulled aboard a new ship, in cool normal waters. My skin burned and my throat raw. They asked me what happened, but I knew they would think me mad if I told them the truth. So I lied and blamed pirates. I’ll never forget it though, the gurgling, bubbling roar that came from the deeps. I hear it when I try to sleep at nights. I’ll never go on the waters again now I know that thing is down there.

The silence in the bar was a heavy weight once the sailor stopped talking. Everyone thinking about what they had just heard. Suddenly the halfling broke the silence, putting his pen down.
“Well, I think that about covers my question.”