By Aqua Elf Introduction
You don’t know me. And you never will. If this little piece is headed for publication, my hoop is in a sling, or a coma, or a coffi n, or—most likely—I’m dragon drek. Th is fi le will only reach the public if I fail to send the monthly order. You reading this means that about thirty days ago (give or take publication speed) I suff ered an unfortunate event that ended my ability to communi- cate with my storage node. So here you go: my fi nal farewell to the world. And one more reminder to obey the wisdom of the street: “Never deal with a dragon.”
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How about “Never trust an elf?” Seriously. I’m on my second read; the fi rst time through I couldn’t believe the fragging nuts on this chick. Just keep reading and you’ll understand. Talk about catty.>
Slamm-0!I worked for the Sea Dragon. Her real name is impossible to say with a metahuman mouth, even one with an elven tongue well practiced in Sperethiel, so she gets to keep the lame moniker until she decides she wants to make up a shorter version. Th e likelihood of that is slim, though; she’s a bit of a snob. But this fi le isn’t about insulting her majesty, the queen of the sea—it’s about getting the word out about her lurkings and her lairs. Yes, that’s “lairs,” plural, and the number has been growing in recent years.
THE
SEA
DRAGON
. . .
Mind boggling as this immense treasure trove might be, it is only a fraction of her wealth. Th e Sea Dragon has three major lairs of which I am aware, and a “large number”—she was not specifi c— of smaller holdings scattered around the globe. Th ese are evidently way stations for treasures bound for one of her troves, and they also serve as sites for meetings or other business purposes; I think a few are just places where she likes to relax.
But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me tell you more about the security layout at her primary lair. As you might expect in an ancient installation this far under water, there are no electronics. Nothing. No cameras, no electronic doors, no sensors—nothing with an electric current (with the exception of the occasional eel). Th is means dead-zone for any of you tech heads. And seawater is not good for radio signals. If you plan on operating a drone, you’ll need to be swimming right behind it. Or dropping signal boosters every hundred meters or so. And your team’s network needs to be boosted to the max, or all that fancy tacnet soft ware will only pull in data feeds from you and yourself.
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R&D on underwater signals has been getting a lot of attention recently. Lot of steam behind finding alternate forms of transmission. Word is Aquatech has had some success with underwater security drone networks. Their facilities off the coast of the Ethiomalian Territories have been targeted in a number of runs lately. They must be on to something hot.>
Rigger XSo how do you have security without electronics? Easy. First thing you need is the entire indigenous population on your side. Every merrow this side of the isles, and most of them anywhere else, work with the Sea Dragon. She’s a great boss. Really. I’m only writing this report because of my long-standing need to feel insured. And because I’m spiteful. I’ve done a lot for her highness over the last ten-plus years, but I’ve started to feel a little under appreciated. Also I’m pretty sure some of her other pets are plot- ting against me. Maybe I’m just a bit paranoid. On the other hand, since you’re reading this, there’s a good chance I wasn’t paranoid enough. At this point, who cares?.
Th e Sea Dragon has more than those thousands of merrow for her security. She has a powerful series of wards, watchers, and spirits protecting her lair as well. Not every ward is maintained by the Sea Dragon; some of the merrow are shamans, and from the mojo I’ve seen them sling, they must be initiates. Th ey’re also responsible for some of the spirits that patrol the waters. Th ey summon primarily water spirits (Surprised? Didn’t think so), which are pretty much impossible to detect or aff ect in their native environment.
From everything I’ve seen over the last decade, Cardigan Bay is the Sea Dragon’s primary base of operations. She spends something like a third of her time there. Th e other two hundred or so days a year she’s touring her other lairs or cruising the oceans looking for sailors to terrorize.
Tropical Paradise
Her second major lair is located west of Hawai’i—I suppose it’s her tropical getaway when she wants to escape the dreary cold of Wales. Now this lair is a bit more public, at least as public as the land-purchase records in the nation of Hawai’i.
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Seriously? Only four sets? I killed four people in the last month. I’m not impressed.>
Riser>
She said it’s from the ones that got that far. And too many corpses makes things look cluttered. For me the biggest deterrent is the pile of dragon dung. That statement leaves no doubt about the fate of uninvited guests.>
WinterhawkPast this little reminder of your unwelcomeness is a confusing array of underwater tunnels. Some of these are dead ends, some loop back on themselves, and others branch into mazes. Two of them follow separate routes to an underwater city. Now don’t go thinking you found Atlantis, because unless the history books really messed it up, the Atlanteans were not merrow. Th e city—okay, large village—is built for swimming inhabitants. Th e structures follow no pattern or logic I can discover, as likely to be built down from the ceiling or out from a wall as up from the fl oor. Some do all three. Th e doors are placed at apparent random, allowing swimmers access with no real concern for up and down. If you haven’t fi gured it out, the merrow live here. Th ere are a lot of them, and they are everywhere. Th ey do not like surface folk at all—so if you’re not a guest of their master, they want you dead.
If you make it through the merrow village you’ll fi nd a rounded pyramid—think Aztec ziggurat, but with each terrace rounded to a quarter circle instead of a square step. If you squint, it looks a little like a beehive, but it’s a hornets’ nest you do not want to step in. Th is is the Sea Dragon’s lair. Inside the pyramid is a series of chambers and levels that goes down into the sea fl oor, and every one of them is fi lled to overfl owing with the Sea Dragon’s treasures. Ever wonder why so little is recovered from sunken ships? A big part of the answer is this place. Th e Sea Dragon and her merrow minions have been scouring the ocean’s depth for valuables since before the Awakening. Gold, silver, and other rare metals (including orichalcum), precious gems, statues, even common things like coal and iron can be found in her treasure chambers. If it was transported on a ship that sank, she got her claws on it. Did you notice I said “since before the Awakening”? Th is operation has been going on since man fi rst risked sailing the open seas. Th e Sea Dragon claims to have rested only a short time during magic’s downcycle and is smug about owning treasures that went down during the last age of magic.
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Okay. Let’s step off the crazy train for a second. This woman is claiming the Sea Dragon didn’t sleep or hibernate or go to another plane during the downcycle of magic. That would mean one hell of an advantage over the other dragons. If this is the case, why isn’t the Sea Dragon the queen of the dragons or the most powerful dragon in the world?>
Lyran>
Who says she’s not? We only pay attention on the dragons up here on dry land. If any part of this report is true, this one dragon controls all of earth’s oceans. That means a hundred or so dragons share thirty percent of the planet, while the Sea Dragon has uncontested ownership of the other seventy percent. Seems pretty powerful to me.THE
SEA
DRAGON
. . .
Shortly after Crash 2.0, the Sea Dragon went through the motions to gain offi cial ownership of an undersea mountain in the Hawai’i chain—and a good hunk of sea fl oor around it. Only the offi cial part of her ownership is new; this lair is almost as old as the one off Wales. Not that the owner of record is the Sea Dragon; on record it belongs to Island Divers, a deep-sea exploration company that earns its way through wreck recovery and mining the seafl oor. Th ough no one would ever be able to locate the mining sites, at least not without a small army and some really nice diving equipment. But that’s not what’s important right now; let me get back on track. Maybe I’ll cover that other stuff later.
Th e Sea Dragon has recently been letting humanity know this part of the sea is hers. Maybe she’s just gotten tired of chasing them off or sinking their ships. Which would be new; she doesn’t actually care that much about what metahumans do. But her mood has changed lately—one of the reasons I’m making this recording now. I have my theories on what’s up, but I’ll save those for later as well.
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She sure saves a lot for later.>
/dev/grrlTh is tropical lair of hers is about 150 kilometers northwest of Ni’ihau, the forbidden isle. The lair itself is in the Nihoa seamount, but her claim includes about 10,000 square kilometers of surrounding real estate. Nihoa was terra fi rma in the not-too- distant past; an island that sank when volcanic activity reshaped the local landscape. Seascape. At any rate, you can’t see it on scans or satellite surveys these days, but on the fl ank of Nihoa seamount, née island, are the ruins of a smallish but perplexing ancient city. Th ey were never properly excavated, and practical access was lost when the island sank. It all belongs to the Sea Dragon now. Th ose early excavators never found much—and they never came near the truth. Th ose ruins are just the entrance to an underground city that was carved out of the living rock of Nihoa. Not sure how big it is, but it’s big. Much of it feels like caves and tunnels, but there are open places where you can’t see the walls or ceiling; it’s spacious. Closest thing I’ve ever seen is the Ork Underground in Seattle.
Th is city doesn’t have the same sapient residents as the one off the coast of Wales. It’s swarming with trained seadrakons. Or maybe impressed seadrakons; I’m not sure about the whys and hows, but they’re loyal to the Sea Dragon—they constantly patrol the city, the seamount, and probably a good chunk of the surrounding area, ready to repel any intruders. Not that there are many—Hawai’ian fishermen and guides avoid the waters around Nihoa. Seems a large pod of storm dolphins took up residence shortly aft er the Awakening. Th at lost city is the stuff of local legends, and according to the legends the dolphins are the transformed inhabitants protecting their sunken home. No one has ever found the lost city—at least no one has returned to tell the tale—but the stories got a lot of the details about its layout and appearance right. Maybe they’re right about the transformed dolphins, too. Who knows?
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Seriously? Aren’t we close enough to the 22nd century to have outgrown the legends and superstitions? If the storm dolphins were the city’s original inhabitants then maybe they could beTHE
SEA
DRAGON
. . .
the fl oor of the Pacifi c. All of that ore, and a lot of goods her creatures scrounge from wrecks can be found inside the seamount or scattered across its slopes. I think that’s why she went the offi cial route and got ownership of the land/sea fl oor. Keep anyone from getting too close and helping themselves. One side note, if you don’t mind dying to see it, the south side of the seamount is a wondrous sight at noon. It’s where the Sea Dragon stores her less- valuable precious metals and gems; even in the faint light that penetrates this deep the slope looks like it’s on fi re with iridescent rivers of gold and silver. An uninvited guest might live just long enough to appreciate it.
Indonesian Complex
What I think is her third major lair—I say “think” because it’s a sure bet the Sea Dragon has secrets I’ll never know—is in Indonesia. It’s a twisting network of underwater tunnels and caverns honeycombing the sea fl oor under a nameless cluster of uninteresting and uninhabited isles and atolls. Even so, it’s the one lair daring runners are most likely to see: it’s the only one with an above-water entrance and it’s one of the few places the Sea Dragon spends any time above water. It is also the only place I know where the Sea Dragon has met with another dragon.
Unlike the other two, this lair doesn’t have any ancient ruins or other constructions attached. The above-water entrance is through a slit cave just out of reach of the surf on an island just like all the others. Almost literally, because every island in the group has more than its share of caves and tunnels and caverns—I think every one of them was designed to get intrepid spelunkers lost. Th e one cave you want takes a few twists and turns, then opens up into a huge cavern that must have been some kind of volcanic bubble— light gets in though some chimneys placed high up. Th e fl oor of the cavern is a beach of volcanic sand surrounding a briny pool that takes up most of the space. No surprise that’s the entrance to the lair. It leads down to an immense maze of twisting underwater tunnels and irregular caverns. From what little I saw—or didn’t see—on the way to one of the undersea air pockets there are no markers, no signs, and no light. If you don’t live there, you’re lost.
Th e cavern with the pool is where the Sea Dragon spends time out of water. It’s where she and Masaru met. I was only a guide for Masaru, I didn’t hear what was discussed, but my impres- sion was the two struck a deal they both liked. I’ve brought others to the cavern since—all metahumans. Th ey’d arrive empty handed and leave with sacks of varying size and weight. I never asked and they never told, but I’m pretty sure payments were being made for services rendered.
Th e Indonesian lair is where the Sea Dragon brings all of her changelings for testing and training. Ever since the comet rolled through in ‘61, she’s been collecting aquatic changelings. She’s had every air breather she can fi nd who’s developed gills or webbed limbs brought to the cavern to see what they can do. If she’s not impressed, she eats them. If she is impressed, she off ers them a job: work for her for the rest of their lives in exchange for learning to maximize their abilities and receiving some tiny fraction of a percent of her wealth. Of course everyone says yes, but she has a way of telling who’s sincere and who’s holding out on her. Th e ones she doesn’t trust, she eats. Th e ones she deems honest train with her and the changelings who work for her in Indonesia before being sent for advanced training with the merrow in Wales. Once
weredolphins or something. But all the hokey legend stuff just makes people sound stupid.
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HazeWhat makes the Nihoa lair so valuable to the Sea Dragon, why she has hundreds of deadly creatures on constant patrol, is not her horde—or not just her horde. Th e real treasure of Nihoa is dragon eggs. I saw four delivered, each the size of a small motorcycle. Th e runner team used a commercial fi shing boat, just cruised slowly above the seamount and slid the eggs into the water under cover of pretending to untangle nets. Needn’t have bothered—the storm dolphins made sure there were no eyes within a hundred klicks of the drop. When the last egg was safely under the waves, four spirits rose from the water with the runners’ payment: twelve fi st-sized chunks of orichalcum. And death. Th e runners were so focused on their new wealth they never saw it coming—the water spirits drowned them on the deck of the ship before they could move. Before you go getting pissed at the Sea Dragon for screwing the runners, it was the other way around. I’d found out the runners had gotten a tracking device of some sort into one of the eggs. I was planning to warn the Sea Dragon about it, but evidently she already knew. I don’t know what the runners had to do to get those eggs, but I have no doubt they earned both their payments. Th e important factoid in all of this is there are dragon eggs somewhere inside Nihoa.