Today y’all get instead of Silm fic it’s original fiction (sort of, it’s actually a bunch of DC characters in a AU fantasy setting) but I got bored and wanted to write out some of the background characters. that dumb rose story universe, older time period stuff where I detailed more of the setting and played with adapting comic characters and a few plot-lines aka that vague batfam wish-fulfillment plot. This is the Green Lanterns stuff, hidden under a few layers of medieval fantasy, and tying a loose end or two to the first Rohese plot stuff.
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Rothaide inherited the ownership titles to two of her father’s fastest and most advanced ships, beautiful greensail-rigged river vessels with high-walled clinker-built hulls barely touched by barnacles, a pair of magnificent ships that could ply the harbor and safer of the coastal waters of the Navel of the World. The ships were a most unusual inheritance, and one of questionable legality – her legal right to them questioned only because the situation was unprecedented and the almost brand-new ships so undeniably valuable. Had the will stipulated that the ownership was for Rothaide’s dowry, or had not unequivocally given her authority in matters of captaincy, allocation of crew shares, and the imperial writ to hunt pirates and anyone declared a royal enemy -a lucrative enterprise if greensailed– no questions of the inheritance would have brought before a judge. With no actual legal prohibition and her father’s swishes so plainly written out along with signed witness statements from multiple lawyers, an envoy of the merchants’ guild association, the heads of various craft guilds from the shipyard and ropewalk, and the master of the greensail pilots and marines himself to vouch for her, Rothaide kept her ships.
It was the greensails that caused the greatest concern and their Grandmaster whose opinion tipped the ruling in her favor. Had she needed to, Rothaide would have forgone the greensails and rigged her ships only with ordinary cloth, allowing another vessel to take on the greensails contract and the pilot who used them. But Aubertin vouched for his former employer’s daughter, and thus the wizened old head of the greensail marines, Grandmaster Guarin, defended her inheritance titles in court. It would have been a hassle to work up a new contract with another ship owner in the free cities along the mouth of the Green River and to rig new vessels, if one could hope to find a pair of ships as swift and in excellent condition, to cover the same shipping lanes and territory up and down the coast that Rothaide’s contract provided. Anyways, the pilot assigned to replace Aubertin aboard the senior vessel was something of a childhood friend to Rothaide. As the guildmaster of the shipbuilders remarked in confidentially to Grandmaster Guarin, if everyone had done the sensible thing of betrothing Rothaide to Heral, as the comradery and attraction between the two of them was so readily apparent, then fewer questions would have been raised. A sharp reminder of the unavoidability of controversy and a scathing rebuke from the spokesman of the powerful merchant association silenced that train of suggestion. The greensails and their pilots were to be kept away from outright ownership of private vessels. Aubertin’s motives for inviting his ultimate superior including a fervent prayer that Grandmaster Guarin could impress onto Heral just how ill-advised it would be for him to enter any formal union with with Mistress Rothaide, no matter any current motives. Said conversation had been embarrassing and unfruitful – on Guarin’s end of things. The greensails were items of magic and forest-taint, powerful weapons and thus under the regulation and authority of the imperial bureaucracy- if given some autonomy by avoiding direct military control by having their leader internally elected as Grandmaster from their senior-most members rather than some army general or court favorite. Had Heral been married off to Rothaide, that would bring imperial scrutiny down on the greensails who enjoyed the semi-independence that such benign negligence of oversight had so far granted them. Their usefulness as the main force by which pirates were dealt with along the rivers and coastal waters of the central regions of the empire was a balancing act. As long as they kept the ships of the powerful merchant alliance safe and happy, that guild association lent the greensails protection and political clout, but seen as too closely intertwined and no longer impartial to all members of that guild or in danger of becoming too strong a rival replacement for the old river barons, such power and protection would be ripped from them, leaving the greensail pilots and marines marooned. And with their green-glass lanterns and the greensails woven with magic, the group was the most visible example of people using forest-taint related powers, even if the summoning magic was centered in the weft of their cloth and not visible on their flesh. Public favor towards anyone displaying forest-taint powers was at a low ebb, even in regions without widespread Pure Ones sympathies. On the Green River there were pockets of that heresy and stretches of banks unsafe for greensail marines to disembark. Like the priests, that their powers were both tied to external tools and so evidently beneficial for the safety of the general populace shielded the group from ostracism and persecution, yet if that public goodwill ceased, the greensails would be exterminated hand in hand with the priests, as it was in towns that the Pure Ones controlled. It was for this reason Grandmaster Guarin offered indefinite invitations to the senior clergyman of the port city of {} for weekly evening meals, and there was a longstanding careful threeway courtship dance between the marines, private merchants, and the upper ranks of the priesthood along the river and coast.
The morning after the judge’s verdict on the will was declared, Heral ambled up the docks to Rothaide’s ship with an unlit lantern cradled in one arm, then boarded the Judoc with a cocksure grin and hug his lantern from the ship’s stern. He carefully lit the lantern and closed the door, smiling at the light emitting through the panes of smooth jade green glass. Stamped at the bottom of the lantern brass was his full name, the emblem of the greensail marines, and a string of numbers that designed his personal record in the masterbook. Aubertin, holding his own extinguished lantern and looking forward to a necessary retirement, waved to Heral from the docks. On the Judoc’s sister-ship, Heral’s replacement was hanging his own lantern and lacing a pair of greensleeves over his well-muscled arms.
Greensails wip
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