The waves crashed against the docks and the cry of the gulls pierced the air. Bells sounded as the gates of the harbour walls opened to allow the last of the Black Fleet ships to leave. The harbourmaster watched with impatience and eyed with a touch of dread the great looming shadowy form on the horizon, the leviathan of a ship masked by the low lying storm clouds that always seemed to follow it. He shivered. Such a colossus had no business floating, let alone ruling the high seas. The sooner both it and the Black Fleet left the enclave, the sooner he wouldn’t have to listen to boisterous captains telling him this new decree or that or the new laws from all the way in the black isles on the far side of the bloody continent.