Stump could've been fooled into believing he was in the hold of a real ship. It creaked and whined. It tilted and lurched. Musty air hung around them, isolated from the cold sea winds beyond the hull. Sometimes what little contents remained in the pit of his stomach debated exiting swiftly through his throat.

  Morg was slumped against the wall beneath a porthole speared by grey light, murmuring to himself behind the mask. Pale green tendrils of ghostly smoke snaked off the floor where the light touched.

  Halwyn sat on an overturned bucket, eyes glazed over, staring at nothing. "Goblins… there are no goblins on Seabrace. My family… don't they know I must see my family?" he was muttering. The fact that Stump was a goblin didn't seem to register for him. He was as caught in a memory loop as the rest of the crew.

  "The goblin witch of Seabrace?" Denna spat, repeating the charges laid against them. "What's Wasptongue ever done to Seabrace but bring some life back to it? If we can convince them to pay it a visit they'll see." She was standing at the edge of their shared cell, fingers wrapped around the bars.

  "There are no goblins on Seabrace. My family…" Halwyn continued, around and around. He'd traded his previous fiction for another, still oblivious to the fact of his own death.

  "I think they've already seen the brewery," said Stump. Reports of a spectral ship just off the coast, Pest had told him. "They must be angry, like how Halwyn was angry when Morg and I entered his lighthouse."

  Denna leaned into the bars. They clanged against the buckles on her sword belt, but even that sound was strange, far away, like Stump was remembering it from a dream.

  "You think they started the fire?" she asked, putting the pieces together.

  "No goblins on Seabrace. No…"

  "It makes sense," Stump said. He scratched his head. "At least I think it does. But Morg told me the spirits wouldn't harm her because she's been here a long time. Then again he's never even seen a ghost."

  The dwarf gave a defeated shrug. "If they're stuck rememberin' the moments before their deaths I could see 'em being hostile to her kind. Uh… yer kind, meanin' no offence."

  "You mean goblins?"

  Sir Halwyn was incredulous. "Goblins? There are no goblins on Seabrace."

  Morg sighed. "Aye. There were no goblins on Seabrace, as per the dead man's mumblings. No monstrous races of any kind before Jaessun, matter o' fact. His battle with the gods tore up the walls meant to keep us separate. Any creature like that's gonna spook 'em as much as their kind spook the living."

  "Especially with the brewery built atop what used to be their homes," Denna added.

  "So why not burn it down?" Stump concluded.

  Denna paced back and forth, her footsteps kicking up ghost mist. "But that just takes us back to our first question," she said, exasperated. "Why? Why now? My mother used to tell us stories about Seabrace when we were children. She told us not to wander off after sundown, lest we slip off Breakpoint and fall into the sea. We'd be carried by the waves and stolen by the ghosts of the isles. Seabrace has been haunted for a long time. Why are the spirits getting restless now?"

  Stump and Morg fell silent. Their brief search hadn't turned up much in the way of clues, and the Ocelots hadn't helped there, either. Morg had cursory knowledge of the dead and the history of Seabrace, but judging by the defeated slump of his shoulders and his extended silence to the question, anything approaching an answer evaded him.

  Stump considered summoning a lumen to get them out of their predicament. Its light would make the entirely of the ship incorporeal. The crew's swords would pass through them like a gentle breeze. They could steal one of the rowboats and be off again, back to their search, invincible to their pursuers.

  But why do that now? If there was a destination for them—a prison, perhaps, or a trial on one of the islands where more of their phantom brethren lived, why not let the crew take them there directly?

  Denna continued to pace the cell, muttering fragmentary thoughts or stopping to peer through the bars. Halwyn continued to be Halwyn, blissfully unaware of their circumstances, or of his own.

  "My family will be safe. We've lit the beacon. Jaessun will soon be on us," he announced to whomever was listening, which unfortunately was all of them. Stump watched him for a while, for no other reason than to pass the time.

  "Goblins? There are no goblins on Seabrace. My family will be safe. I'll see my children soon…"

  Stump cocked an eyebrow. The ghostly ramblings had splintered an idea somewhere in his skull. "Morg," he said, fishing for it. "Where do spirits go?"

  "Eh?" The dwarf sounded annoyed at being disturbed again.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "I was always told that goblins join our god in an endless bloodlust in the afterworld," Stump went on. "But where do other people go? Like Halwyn?"

  "Hard to say," the dwarf grumbled. "He died before Lumensa's fall, so I'd wager the sunlit fields of her domain, but… after Lumensa's death I'm unsure if such a place is still out there. Might be the Godslayer's got his own afterlife planned for us, but I can't imagine—why're ye questionin' me about this?"

  Denna had stopped pacing and was listening intently to their conversation. Her tightened jaw and furrowed brow suggested her mind was steering towards the same conclusion as Stump.

  "You said the only reason goblins exist in the Spits now, why they exist anywhere in this world—" Stump began.

  "Goblins? There are no goblins on Seabrace."

  "—Is because of Jaessun killing the gods. Their battles were so powerful that the magic they used frayed the barriers between worlds."

  Denna nodded. "What if the hauntings are getting worse because something like that is happening again, here in the Spits?" she mused. "Maybe the world of the dead is slipping into ours."

  Morg stirred like an old bear at the end of a fruitful hibernation. He groaned to his feet and dusted himself off. "What, a battle 'tween gods?" he said, bemused.

  "Not as such. Just magic."

  Morg shook his head. "But where? If there's magic strong enough to bleed the realm o' the dead into our world, it's gotta be somethin' powerful."

  "Something," Stump agreed. "Or someone."

  Tenet of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (6/7).

  - Quest Updated -

  - Quest Updated -

  The Hauntings of Seabrace

  The hauntings of Seabrace have gotten worse, but why? Have the gates between the lands of the living and the dead frayed? If so, there must be some sort of potent magic occurring somewhere in the Spits. Find the source of the magic to uncover the cause of the hauntings and complete the Iron Fleece's quest.

  Rewards: ???

  Assigned to: Denna

  Assisted by: Stump (The Nobodies), Morgish (unaffiliated)

  Fire on Seabrace

  Someone has set the Wasp & Pest Brewing Co. aflame. But who? All evidence points to the string of increased hauntings throughout the isles and the phantasmal ship known as the Spirit of Dusk.

  Rewards: 2.5 silver + free Lumenurgy training with Wasptongue

  Assigned to: Stump

  Assisted By: Morgish (Unaffiliated)

  Wood creaked overhead, pulling Stump out of the system. Water dripped onto his cheek. "Someone's coming," he said, throat cracked and raw.

  "Aye, ship's come to a stop," said Morg.

  A groan escaped the boat from somewhere out of view, followed by thunderous footsteps. The captain sauntered into view, tailed by three scowling crew members, including Ulith.

  The captain leaned in close to the bars and held his lantern up to his face. The lightless grey flame flickered behind a foggy pane. He considered each of them in turn, lingering on Stump the longest. Finally, he stepped away and nodded to Ulith, who produced a ring of jangling keys from a pouch and sidled up to the gate.

  It screeched open. The four of them filed out at sword point with Halwyn at the head, who was smiling. "My family will be safe…" he mumbled, unbothered by the pointy sticks of phantom metal inches from his face.

  "Strange for me to be sayin' this," Morg whispered as he came up beside Stump, "but feel free to light that glowin' friend o' yers any time."

  They followed the captain to the deck where the fog had retreated across the sea. The ship was anchored and rocking offshore from another, larger isle. The beachhead gave way to sprawling buildings—a town, buzzing with activity.

  Homes and shops stood side by side, packed in dense stone thickets. Dirt roads carved winding paths between them like rivers cutting through urban valleys. Up and down strolled people, tradesmen, soldiers, fishermen. Humans.

  Denna gaped.

  "My family will be safe," Halwyn said, turning to Morg.

  "Keep on with that and you won't be," the dwarf promised.

  A faint light flashed beyond the isle, farther out to sea. A second illuminated hulking shadows on another island. Lightning, Stump thought, until a third flicker lingered too long before fading.

  The blunted edge of a sword nudged him between the shoulders. "Down," Ulith hissed.

  They descended to the rowboats in pairs, each of them guided by a dour looking ghost. Ulith followed behind Stump, and forced him to row to shore at the tip of a sword.

  The denizens of the town paid them little mind. A family packed their belongings into a cart outside their door. Down a winding turn a small group of spectres tossed their furniture into a pile burning with grey flames. Two men walked by and in hushed tones discussed the possible outcome of the battle between gods.

  Here and there shattered wooden frames and hollowed out dwellings wedged awkwardly between ghostly homes, upending the illusion.

  "Must be close to that magic, eh?" Morg observed. "Would explain why there's so many dead gathered in one place."

  Halwyn tried to hurry ahead, but was thwarted by one of the spirits. "My family is here," he urged. "I must see them." He tried again to break from their armed escort, but was shoved back by Ulith.

  "Keep behind us, traitor."

  Halwyn shrank back next to Stump. "My family is there, you see?" he said and pointed down a curved street bordered by rickety homes. "Right there… somewhere…"

  He paused amidst a worried frown. The road, like the rest of the town, was pockmarked by empty spaces, or ruined buildings that broke from the spectral facade. Where Halwyn observed to be his family home stood little more than mud-buried clay and collapsed beams.

  "My home… Where's my home? My family?" he said to no one in particular.

  "Keep movin', Hal," urged one of the guards who made up the rear of their escort.

  "What's he on about now?" Morg mumbled.

  Stump gave a final glance to the lighthouse keeper's vacant plot before they turned a corner. "I don't know," he said.

  The prison stood near the centre of town, down an alley spun off a wide and crowded fish market. Their names were marked in the book atop a desk occupied by a jailor—who looked not too unlike a distant ancestor of the clerk in Penny Hall—before they were shoved through a banded iron door.

  Stump and Halwyn were herded into one cell, while Morg and Denna were shuffled to the other. The gates were closed, locked, and the steel door groaned shut, leaving them in the damp darkness.

  And with the two other prisoners who already occupied the cells.

  Sylas tutted from an overturned stool beneath a barred window, half coloured by twilight. "My, my… life is strange, isn't it?" he hummed.