Fort Doghouse

About two months ago, a company of barbarian-adventurers (though including citizen Sesel in their midst) entered into the Ocean's Throat sea-caves and thence returned to Cothon on the decks of the captured pirate galley Darkwing, to much admiring excitement by the Cothoni crowds and the Hansemänner of the Kantor Kabljauhof.

Immediately following his interview with the Hansemänner that very evening, Durham of the Ringing Anvil, accompanied by his renyu servant Pako, gathered several boatloads of supplies into the Darkwing and (with its skeleton crew of about 10 rugged seamen pulling the oars) returned to the Ocean's Throat. What he later reported was that he had secured the secret fort out of which the pirates had been operating--a fort carved into the living rock of the caverns themselves!

How had he secured it? With the assistance of the Wasgo Tribe, a group of renyu he and others had freed not long ago from the tyrannical leadership of the rogue alchemist Yramrag. The Wasgo continue to dwell in the Ocean's Throat, not far from the fort, and so rallying them to garrison the secret fort--now christened "the Doghouse"--was not difficult.

Not exactly accurate, but this gets the general layout of the place; there
should actually be room for two ships, one one either side, and the loading
beach on the left hand side (which would be north) is bigger ...

Holding onto Fort Doghouse may be another matter, however ...

Durham and Pako have both reported, on their return to Cothon, that the Sakkra of the Hsi-Hsiyya tribe who dwell in the caverns nearby came sneaking into the caves around the Fort to see if they might claim it for themselves.

Admittedly, the Sakkras' case was not entirely without merit ... the Sakkra Kaa having assisted in the defeat of the pirates before succumbing to the fortunes (the misfortunes) of battle. And their appearance not unwarranted for subjects wishing to know what had become of their fallen Kaa.

Well, according to Durham, he gave them a stern warning that the Kaa had fallen in battle with his warriors--to a lizard!--and that such was the fate of those who did such evil to supplicants they hold at their mercy. For, when they had had their initial dealings with the Kaa, a company had left Kalon, a proselyte of the Sakkra prophet Zh'kar the Blind, in the court of the Kaa--and when they returned to seek the Kaa's aid in defeating the pirates, they found that Kalon had been imprisoned!

And so Durham pointed out that indignity to the Sakkra scout-envoys, and enjoined them to consider that perhaps Zh'kar had indeed laid up vengeance against them in his stores, and that perhaps they had better look to their own house before attempting to expand into others--or something to the effects of those words. Who remembers what exactly is said in such a heated moment?

Well, it has been two months since the Sakkra came sneaking around the outskirts of the new Fort Doghouse, and word among the renyu is that some kind of internal disturbance continues to distract the reptilian creatures. But such cannot last forever--and the Sakkra are decidedly not the only ones with eyes on the Ocean's Throat caves ... a base so close to major lines of trade will surely have been a sore thing to lose for the Luwian Pirates; might they not also be mustering a force to reclaim their former holding?

Time will surely tell ...

Claws and Armor

But Durham has not been idle in the meantime. He has sent his servants out for supplies--some to the Souk in Cothon for suitable metals, some to the Great Spire of the Attine Klackons for the true-black carapaces of the dlakolel-beetles they sell in the market there.

Between these purchases, Durham has embarked on a mission to arm the renyu of the Wasgo well, with "claws" or "tines" to augment their own natural weapons, alongside dark "chitinothorax" armor of dlakolel-black to aid in their natural tendencies of stealth.

These arms are just beginning to be completed en masse at the Anvil, and to be delivered to the Wasgo, so it is not yet clear just how effective they may be, but they certainly promise much!