An audit opens, and the harbor counts ships twice
A courier arrived with seven days of chits tied in twine, and a separate scrap pinned to the Harbor Board that advised we count our ships this morning, then count them again.
The week the numbers took charge
The Black Tide was entered in the public record as being at war with all governors, and then proceeded to make the entry feel like a filing choice rather than a proclamation. It tested gates, slipped into BoomStinger Landing for a time, and was turned back elsewhere, including BoomHook Harbor under Luminous Reveller’s watch. The quartermaster insists this is easier to file as one war, in the same way a flood is easier to file as one wet floor. He has noted this without comment.
The same board now carries the older warning about night sails and missing craft, still without signature and still with the same instruction to count twice. Three patrol boats remain unaccounted for in the same careful phrasing. No one has claimed the penmanship.
SplashFish Nook, where arithmetic goes to be judged
roxx treated BigChris’ outlying islands as open storehouses, with thirteen raids in one stretch and no recorded losses among the outbound men. The lists are long, the returns are heavy, and the targets are filed as places rather than arguments. BigChris has not been seen at the harbor in some time.
At home, roxx opened the affair titled “The Uncloseable Ledger” at SplashFish Nook, ordering a fresh clerk to count alongside the quartermaster and resolve a discrepancy by independent audit. I have seen sieges begun with less ceremony than a disagreement over columns. The record reflects this.
Medium Island pays in idols, again
Aye-for-an-Aye struck Medium Island and cleared it of the Black Tide once more, taking damage across the church, harbour, housing, and storehouse, and carrying home another blackened idol. The quartermaster’s page titled “Idols, Blackened” remains open, and is now beginning to look like a habit. He has declined to explain.
In the same span, roxx cut the Tide out of two holdings recorded as Black Tide Chills and Black Tide Pall, while Ticklish Treasure threw it back at BoomStinger Landing twice. The Tide, being silent, has offered no clarification on whether this constitutes strategy or persistence. It has not commented.
New flags, old habits
Hidden planted a first flag on new ground and then claimed MapSquid Quay, which is how empires begin in this archipelago, by someone deciding a quay looks usable. Miko Misan kept the common shores busy with repeated raids, and PacoG and Peppy Bosun remain active enough that their ink has not yet dried. This is still the surest sign of competence.
A separate notice briefly placed Luminous Reveller at tenth on the realm board, and then the general traffic of the week pushed the name back down the page. The board continues to be treated as a living document, which is a polite way of saying it does not sit still.
Filed from the Harbor Board, Founders World.