((Closed to the-one-and-only Tankita Bananas))

It had been a hard week for Rakh. First, he’d been clubbed over the head and held to ransom by pirates. He’d been beaten, spit on, slapped, and mocked. If that wasn’t bad enough, once they realized he wasn’t the tribal chief they were looking for, they threw him overboard in the middle of the ocean. He survived being attacked by sea creatures, dehydration, starvation, countless injuries, and dangerous levels of fatigue. He woke the next morning with a face full of cold brine and a coarse grit between his teeth, gasping with a start, coughing and spluttering. His limbs refused to cooperate. He pawed at the sand with ragged, barely articulated effort.

Then another wave in the face, and further down the beach he was dragged. High tide was rolling in, and he knew he needed to get further inland or find himself back out in the ocean. The next wave he used to boost himself up and to his knees, yet still got tossed around like a sand crab. With considerable effort he stood, wiped the sand from his brow, and squared his shoulders at the sight ahead: a port town.

“A hive of scum and villainy,” he rasped. “Just great. Maybe somebody in this backwater toilet has a carrier pigeon or something.”

Despite having lived on Corone for his last two incarnations – the tribal detested sailing types. They’d come ashore, get smelly drunk on swill, and make a big mess of things. They’d roll into the bazaar district and just make a wholesale nuisance of themselves. When he’d led the Jihad for the Bazaar in his former life, confining the sailing rabble was a commitment he had to uphold. That, and carousing sailors were a spilled drink away from a huge riot-spasm.

Rakh stumped his way through the sand toward Noria well enough, getting his bearings and making his way to a town well for water. He knew the deal – sip, don’t gulp; a feat much more difficult in practice. He splashed a few buckets of water over his sun-burnt head to clear the bits of sand out of his hair and help gather his senses, checked his gear, and he blanched.

“Archus!?”

He checked again. Gone. His favorite dagger was missing, along with twin his ankh-hammers, even his shepherd’s crook – all of it was gone. They left him with his two prevalida spiked bucklers, mistaking them for armor. It made a certain amount of sense, then, why he sunk like a rock when they threw him overboard. But his dagger, above all, was one of a kind. It was just about all he could take today.

“Godsdamn, bloody sailors!”