The Long Ebb
salvage fantasy 1 memberBuilt by maroon280
Forty years ago the sea went out one morning and never came back. The drowned kingdoms of the old coast lie open under the sun, and everyone with a shovel, a sword or a prayer is walking out onto the seabed to claim them.
Where it all began
the Ebb
On the first morning of the Ebb the sea drew back past the horizon in a single tide and did not return. Harbours woke up thirty miles from the water, and the kingdoms that had drowned in the old days lay open to the sky.
The lands
Greyhithe
The Beached Crown
The old royal harbour, its fleets propped on timber stilts thirty miles from any water.
Greyhithe is a port with no sea. Its great ships sit on stilts in the dry harbour, rented out as inns, chapels and counting houses, and its queen still collects harbour dues from caravans that roll in over the sand.
The Saltings
The Open Floor
The exposed seabed: salt flats, coral ridges, wrecks by the thousand and the towers of drowned kingdoms.
The Saltings is the largest treasure field in the world and the worst place to be caught at night. By day it is claim-flags and dig crews as far as you can see; by night the drowned dead walk to the places they died and anyone standing there is in the way.
Wendmere
The Last Water
A country of brackish lakes and reed marsh, where the tide-priests keep watch for the sea's return.
Wendmere holds the only standing salt water left on the coast, and the Lantern Vigil treats it as holy. The priests light a lamp on every lake shore every night, so the sea can find its way home, and they read its level like scripture.
Harrowdown
The Landward Kingdom
Rolling sheep country that was never near the sea and has grown rich selling salvage rights and horses.
Harrowdown owns the only roads down onto the seabed and charges for every one. Its lords were minor sheep barons before the Ebb; now they are the richest people alive, and Marshal Tallis wants to be more than a marshal.
Skarrow Fells
The Old Cliffs
The sea-cliffs of the old coast, now a wall of caves and gull colonies above the dry floor.
Skarrow Fells was the coast's cliff wall before the Ebb, and its caves were sea caves. Now they open a hundred feet above dry ground, and the Gullkin who nest in them are the only people who know which caves lead down into the drowned kingdoms' deep halls.
Brackenholt
The Hiding Wood
An old wet forest on the southern shore where the Drowned who walked out of the sea have made their home.
When the sea left, some of what lived in it walked out after it went. The Drowned came ashore in Brackenholt, and the wood is theirs now: a green, dripping country that stays wet when everywhere else is dry.
Who you can be
Landfolk
Ordinary men and women of the coast and downs, sunburnt and salt-cracked from the flats. They are practical, superstitious about the tide, and hungry for the fortune that is lying out there somewhere under the dust. Most carry a claim flag and a waterskin before they carry a sword.
Drownedrare
People of the sunken kingdoms who walked out of the sea when it left: grey-skinned, gilled at the throat, cold to the touch, speaking an old court tongue. They remember their drowned cities as home and see the salvagers as grave robbers. They sicken if they dry out, and they are very hard to kill.
Gullkin
A small, bird-boned people of the cliff rookeries, with hollow bones, bright eyes and grey-white down along the arms. Superb climbers, compulsive traders and shameless gossips, they know every cave in the fells and sell that knowledge by the word.
Magic
Beyond the gates
- The Sunken Court. The drowned kingdoms' deepest city, still underwater in a pocket of the old sea beneath the Saltings.