(http://i.imgur.com/4ODbPNj.jpg)<br/>There are three ships in your voyage.  Each manned with thirty crew, full with passengers and freight.  Amid fearful and young missionaries, naievely brave and terribly young for such an adventure, there are also fierce-eyed laborers-- their hands thick and calloused, some aiding the crew for reduced passage fare.  A few are entrepreneurs-- those with family, those with investments.  They are withdrawn, keeping to their quarters much-- stir-crazy and desperately drunk most days, hoping only for a merciful end to the agonizing trip... then, of course, there are a full four dozen laborers-- pressed servants.  Slaves, some would say... the empire decreed a hundred years ago that no man should ever be born a slave, but that does not stop the crowns, nor their richest allies, from pressing into indentured service those who overdraw their debts, those whose crimes warrant hard labor, and those who exchange their youth for a middle-age of comfort-- if they live so long.<br/><br/>All through the day, the deck was an anthill of activity as the crew busied itself with preparations to land.  'Father' Harwen had stood by like a nervous cat for hours, his hand flinching eagerly toward his flog, but his frequent cursing lacked the punctuation of physical threat so long as the crewmen slaved so anxiously away of their own volition.<br/><br/>All hadseemed well enough.  There was still rice, fresh water, and rum in the locked cage.  The ship's cats were lazing in the sun as they pleased as worksongs hummed through the creaking, stout ribs of the ship, and the sun-- after so many weeks, certainly it was no welcome sight-- had warmed the sea air that abated the constant smell of humanity from below decks.<br/><br/>Bolvor, the chief workman-- a hulking, tattooed south-seaman who lost horribly at cards but came out ahead in all dice games-- had hoisted sail and thanked the Djiin of the air for his benevolence, his accented speech musical and jovial in its fiercely reassuring way.  And captain Finz-- the angular, dark-skinned woman who had been a hellish terror to layabouts and drunkards for so many nights and days-- had sought to share comfort with her guests on the quarterdeck, even flirtatiously ribbing at the male guests that, when they reached shore, she need not be so stodgy, and a woman of her years knew the best comfort from a long journey was to ease into 'steady land' with an 'unsteady dance in a soft bed, while the sea's sway still lingers on in the bones'.<br/><br/>By midafternoon, there were more whitecaps, and something about their frequency had worried the crew.  Their songs became mutterings and steady, rhythmic chants.  Dinner was served early, and no grog was offered... there was coffee, and much, and the meal was light.  The sailors all had the grim determination of frontline soldiers as the winds had begun to howl.<br/><br/>By sunset, there was grim acceptance.  On one hand, the great red and violet of the ocean's peace... the red sky at night should have been reassurance that the storm would pass... but the crew, those who had made this journey before, set their jaws and worked their paces as they made peace with their ancestors, their gods' avatars, and their personal debts.<br/><br/>Hell broke loose by midnight.  The storms that plagued the Kraken, that had crushed every ship within a hundred miles of the island for as long as men had dared sail, were upon them.  The storms were the devil of all civilized man, the seas so powerful that to sail them was to willfully roll dice with the Black Hunger itself.  The storms that some damned fool had once dared to survive, breaking the island's unchallenged reputation as a singular killing void on the horizon.  The storms that, by all accounts, should not be-- those that only happened when one dared grow close enough to foster hope.<br/><br/>Below decks was like a knot of leaking, clenching guts.  Seven men had been seriously injured trying to keep the course-- Bolvor was dropped to the deck when the mizzenmast snapped in half and a block and tackle had swung free to crush his ribcage... the smell of his unclean death filled the hull below.   Father Harwen, angrier at the storm's interruption of schedule than the murderous determination with which it bore down, was reported to have been last seen huddling below decks while one of the ship's 'servicewomen" sewed shut a foot-long gash on his drunken head.<br/><br/>"It's not so...  bad," he'd drunkenly muttered, "if the ladsss jus keep the sails up,we'll git clear to the island by 'morrow," then a swig of the rum, and the ship creaks loud enough to sound like a wounded beast.  The hull itself is starting to sound like it's being twisted in the hands of a giant beast, lifted by the upswells and dropped upon the sea roughly.<br/><br/>The ship's clock chimes three times as the ship takes its punishment toward morning.  The sails have been long furled and anchors dropped full in a desperate attempt to survive.  A full-dozen men are tied into their hammocks for something like rest-- the wounded, mainly, and those too weary to stand, groaning with each careening tumble of the massive ship.  No one sees it happen, but while freshly-stitched Bolvor staggers off to piss in the cargo hold, and, far from steady in his weakened condition, he is no match for the crashing seas and violent rocking of the ship.  He is bashed against a crate of rum, and his lantern bounds free, shattering in the wells of the hull and spilling a blazing pool of whale oil that spreads, seeps into the crevices of the ship's ribs, and fans out in eager wings.  A bucket of pitch, the livestock's straw... it isn't long before the hold is consumed in fire.  One of the men tied in his hammock awakens, delirious, and asks aloud for his mother to find out if it's the festival day-- is she roasting the ham already?  Oh, it smells fine it does... and soon others are waking to the belch of smoke and the redolence of Bolvor's roasted corpse.<br/><br/>The 'Kraken' is poised to seize another ship, it seems.  Smoke fills the lower decks as the hands above finally snap into action. They call for buckets up the ladder, their voices a desperate chain-- the shrill terror in their voices enough to rattle tested warriors and seasoned sailors alike, and soon there is so much smoke and steam that all those below decks clamor their way up and out-- bucket after bucket being tossed below in a desperate fury.  The men below scream until they are silenced, dead in their hammocks, or trapped in a corner after losing their way back to the stairs.<br/><br/>You are on the deck, having escaped the hellish heat and smoke below only to face the torrential wind and pelting, howling rain above.  You have what you carried, and someone is screaming to man the lifeboats.  The deck is pitch black and slippery with rain, and the only lights are the occasional riveted lantern on deck and, off in the distance, the glimmering wink of the other two ships' signal lamps, screened by the swell of waves and the rock of the ship.  It is, as they say, 'every man for himself.'