Tales, Scripts, and Accounts

Navika's Legacy

Morning abruptly greeted me, for I groggily woke to the sounds of a street fight happening not far below my balcony. After realizing I wasn't the one in danger, I rushed to watch how the show would play out. The nonsensical pieces of paper were a lost cause. A chair eventually joined me because the view of the city was breathtaking. Nothing like the massive, overly-productive cities of Omashu or Ba Sing Se. In those places, people were always doing something or going somewhere. Here, I watched as people gambled, drank, and broke into quarrels in broad daylight. Kids were stealing directly out of people's pockets, then disappearing into the dust wound up by swarms of carts and carriages that fought for space on the tight roads. This place was truly alive.

And behind all this chaos laid the contrasting backdrop of the Si Wong Desert. A static frame for a dynamic place. The only thing other than sand and sky were a few small specks in the distance. I squinted and stared, trying to make them come out clearer. Then it hit me. I almost fell out of my chair and rushed to the papers. Looking it over again, a lot of the lines seemed to be loosely placed with the intent of intersecting certain small dots. Almost all the dots, actually. I had just gotten excited when I heard a knock at the door. Then an invite to have breakfast downstairs.

Lady Kezhan didn't particularly give me much more time to review the material I was handed. To be fair, they did give me all night. We reached the bottom of the stairs and she opened the large double doors on the left. She told me not to sit down right away, and then shut me in there with the same guy I encountered last night. It felt as if I was just thrown to the wolves.

So I stood at the entrance without a plan to sit. He didn't ask me to join him, just what I had come up with. I cleared my throat and pitched my idea: That they're trade routes and ports. A moment of not speaking felt like a week and had me sweating like a moo-sow. Then he asked for more. I laid the parchment out on the table, explained what I thought I knew and what else I needed to know. The latter of the two being frequent trade routes along the Si Wong and south eastern seas to confirm my suspicion. If all went well, we could probably narrow down locations to less than a dozen options: All the abandoned ports.

My enthusiasm must have been very convincing because Vibood then asked if I felt confident enough in my theory to lead an expedition. If all suspicions were confirmed, I most definitely would. And that was what he wanted to hear. It only took three days to gather all the common trade routes and ports from different sources. Maybe six hours to validate my theory, redraw a new map, locate the abandoned docks, plan the route, and estimate how much food, drink, and coin a crew would need. As for the shipmates, Vibood had already selected the best deckhands and sandbenders to accompany me. All our payments were whatever treasure we could carry back, leaving the rest for him. Everyone was sworn to secrecy.

We set sail from the eastern Si Wong port in a rush, but the days crept on like no other. Weeks of tiring travel from one abandoned port to the next left us dragging our feet from bow to stern. I lost count of how many times the crew had to stop and restock on materials. Or how many times the blazing hot conditions had rendered one of us useless. Each failure to find Shachuan parked amongst the various abandoned ports left us even more distraught than when we previously approached. For that was the ship we were searching for, as it only made sense to find a sand sailer in the desert.

On the way to the eighth port, I was staring out across the sand, as we approached what seemed to be a hole in the desert. As we passed it, I noticed it was the top half of a small sandstone sphere that had caved in and was now slightly filled with sand that had found its way in. I'm not sure how many we must have passed before now, but this one made me feel like a fool. There's no way one of the most sought out treasures would be sitting at a port, it would be buried underground! Of course, the others on board were against the idea of being at desert for a few extra weeks, but they didn't need much convincing when reminded of the alternative.

Our crew continued to the final two locations we hadn't yet visited, making sure the sandbenders dug up every reasonable inch of nearby sand. Once those proved fruitless, we began to backtrack in the most time efficient way possible. And then we found it. Four ports of the way through our backtracking, one of the crew's sandbenders whipped the sand off of what she thought was just a large boulder built right next to one of the abandoned docks. Lucky for us, it was sandstone.

Soon enough, we had blasted our way through, only to peer down into a deep dark abyss. After returning from a local village that had the proper exploration tools, we tied some ropes together, attached one end to our ship, and threw the other end down. I went first and man, was it a long climb. By the time my feet touched the ground, my hands were on fire and I was drenched in a heavy sweat. Months had been spent being dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted. All of it searching for this very moment. Then I lit my torch.

Baochuan sat in front of us. It was not what we expected and still nothing like any of us had ever seen. As we approached, this mystery ship's towering hull hung over us as if it were looking down in disappointment. For we had found Navika's legacy. Her famed sea ship hidden away deep within the Si Wong sands. All of her riches- were nowhere to be seen. All of us scoured the ship. There was no gold, no coin, and no items. Not a single thing of value. A couple of the men sat and wept, and while my hopes of endless wealth were dashed, I was still dumbfounded that we- no I- discovered it in the first place. The wrong boat, too. At least here, she never had to worry about someone stealing it.

My slow stroll of defeat led me to the captain's quarters, as I continued to admire the craftsmanship of the vessel's interior. Outside, I could just barely make out sounds of the crew starting to pack it up and retreat as I sat down at the writing table that likely belonged to Navika herself. When I dropped my head onto the desk, I heard a low thump inside. So I opened it up to find a thin book. And to the book, I did the same. A bunch of papers, all with lines and dots on them. I immediately started to call out for the crew, ready to announce my findings. And halfway through, I remembered what Vibood had told the crew- That each of us could take whatever treasure we could carry. So I did.