Captain Hardolf carefully kept his airship, the three-hundred-foot length of the fair Dawn of Delpha, turned so that the auto-ballista and disintegrator cannons were facing his opponent. If they or those hippogriffs flying flagrant escort drew too close, they'd be taking a final dive into the drink, he had no orders to play nice with the uncouth barbarians.

Disappointingly, the famously aggressive Siricilans did not pick a fight. Captain Hardolf watched emotionlessly as the approaching Storm Wing carrier altered course to come upon the city from the south overland instead of over the sea and challenge the Delphan ship.

Right about at the two-mile mark was when he'd received the Message warning him to veer off. Captain Hardolf stood tall in his uniform, hands clasped behind him, watching as the Siricilan approached… and then slowly veered off and slowed down, gliding to a stop while the two hippogriffs continued arrogantly on, clearly a probe to test the resolve and claims of whoever was in the city. The arrogant fools even had bright red cloaks on, streaming behind them as if to announce to the land-bound invaders hiding behind their illusions that they did not DARE due anything to a proud elite warrior of their barbarian empire…

And then both hippogriffs fell out of the sky.

Captain Hardolf blinked, his hands coming forward to grasp the rail. Magically-enhanced vision leapt across the miles and watched the hippogriffs and the riders strapped to them plummet from the skies, formerly graceful wings beating frantically and uselessly, barely moving them through the air at all, as if they were suddenly far too heavy to be borne aloft.

All their grace and grandeur was totally lacking. Both riders managed to tear their straps free and kick away from their mounts, but that only saved one of them. Whatever flying magic he was going to use failed utterly, and he followed his shrieking, screaming mount straight down into the ground with a bone-crunching impact that was quite final.

The other one tore some sort of talisman, and his drop did slow, his hippogriff falling sadly away from him as his descent became a Featherweighted fall, the spell obvious by its effects.

Featherweight was not an effect of pure aeromancy, and didn't allow flight, it merely slowed down a fall until one hit the ground. Of course, that made the one floating there a prime target…

There was a flash of light from behind the illusion of the city. It passed through the dangerously exposed floating warrior, and cut him in two at the waist. Spurting blood that refused to fall and instead became streaming spirals about him, the falling soldier's corpse spun around, still heading for the ground, but any flailing or motions were purely random now.

Captain Hardolf's lips thinned. If that Ward could affect the magic on his ship, then driving the Dawn in recklessly would have resulted in a meteoric crash and likely the death of all aboard, if they didn't grab the Featherweight flotation rings quickly enough!

His eyes moved to other motions, and he followed the track of some ravens swooping into the area of the Ward, already converging on the falling corpse there, which had drawn their attention.

Interesting. The Ward doesn't affect natural animals?, he considered, wondering exactly how it worked. Would it affect someone who was Polymorphed? In Gaseous Form? Walking on the Winds? Using Telekinesis?

He'd have to consider all those methods and potentially test them out.

At the very least, he had confirmed that the force that had seized Newport had some extremely adept spellcasters, and just sailing in and displaying aerial supremacy wasn't going to intimidate them in the slightest.

His eyes fell on the fishing fleet that was out in the waters of the harbor, the natives often craning their necks up at the magnificent Delphan ship floating in the sky, doubtless wondering if he would deign to even consider raking them with clouds of launched flechettes or similar tactics.

Someone still had to feed the peasants.

"Helm, take the Dawn down, to just touching the waters, and prepare to launch the captain's pinnace. We will take the diplomatic approach and enter by sea."

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His little pinnace was called Daylight One, one of two somewhat larger lifeboats his ship carried. It was also capable of flight, and had its own aerial motivation that worked perfectly fine on the top of the sea, meaning he didn't have to mess with stepping up the mast and mounting the reserve sail unless something had happened to damage the propelling magicks.

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Ignoring the envious eyes of the jealous commoner fisher-folk as they watched him sweep smoothly past them with a boat that needed neither oars nor sails to move, he considered the sight of the city in front of him.

He could see it clearly now, the Illusion that masked it obviously having no effect from this angle. Contact with the ground, possibly?, he wondered, enjoying the puzzle and usefulness of such a move. If someone came in with modesty, they wouldn't even know the illusion was in place. As the only ones coming in by flying were doing so with arrogance or hostile intentions, there was no need to expose the sight of the city to them.

He had to admit, their spellcasters had a certain style.

The pale gray of the stone walls was broken up by complex murals in many hues, some geometric form that he wasn't familiar with, but all his instincts screamed was surpassingly dangerous.

The flags and banners that flew from the walls, keeps, and towers all had a simple device of a black sword on a white field, with what looked a blue pyramid in the hoist. It looked vaguely like some southern knightly order, without any additional flourishes, simply stark and straight… and one wondered if that symbolism of contrasting colors was indicative of something harsher?

Well, the Immortals moved in mysterious ways, and he was only here to secure the interests of the Empire.

The design of the harbor had changed drastically in what had to be a short period of time. There was a massive break-water in front of the great gates, with a large and very obvious arrow directing incoming traffic to the southern side. Walls had risen from the depths to guide the current, which took the boat with a jerk and began to push it smoothly down the wide entry which, if not large enough to admit a waterbound skyship, was more than wide enough to allow the largest of galleons through without issue.

Peering down from the helm, he judged that the current was at least partially artificial, even as his pilot carefully used the rudder to avoid contact with the mural-rendered stones of the wall that cut half the entry off for the benefit of those exiting, doubtless riding the current in a similar fashion.

The first thing that struck him when he moved into the harbor was how clean it was.

Harbors stank. It was a fact of life. The smell of rotting fish and wood, mildew, garbage, sewage and waste, and the sea itself always combined to form a reek unique to each port, one which locals rapidly became innured to, and most sailors could ignore after a moment.

There was no reek here. The water was pristine, with none of the floating refuse or sewage that he expected of all but the most advanced cities, which had complex magical and alchemical systems in place to transfer the waste elsewhere.

The docks in place were long and built of solid stone, wide and railed to handle large amounts of cargo, with what looked like movable winches in place among them to lift heavy loads out with speed and aplomb. There looked to be at least a hundred docking places, with more posts out in the water to remain moored at in case the number of ships were too great to handle all at once.

Incredibly pretentious. That was more docking space than some of the imperial yards in Delpha, with city populations of hundreds of thousands! Still, the simple fact they were building it here meant they had great aspirations, and were planning ahead!

The clean, austere lines and fine engineering indicated that this was a sophisticated builder with a fine engineering background.

The current the pinnace was riding died under them, but approaching them was a roundish craft, a strange design built almost entirely of metal, with studs about it and no visible means of propulsion. It bulled its way through the waters, clearly only one level high, almost more of a broken sphere than a vessel, topped by a covered wheelhouse with a railing all about it, and but two men aboard it.

The craft was guided right up to their prow, and paused just shy of contact. The man there, in a crisp uniform and a professionally bored expression, shouted out in an accent Captain Hardolf wasn't familiar with, "Toss a guide rope and we'll pull you in!"

Hardolf simply nodded, and the small crew rapidly secured a rope to the capstan and tossed it over to the man standing between two similar thick metal posts on his strange vessel.

He looped the hemp rope around both plugs with the casual skill and ease of a long-time dockworker, tightened them off, and held up his fist to the wheelman behind him.

The wheelhouse actually spun around, and the strange spherical craft surged back the way it had come. The guiderope went taut immediately, and Captain Hardolf braced as the other ship took the weight of his pinnace without slowing down or jerking in the slightest, a sign of either great weight or powerful motive force!

"How many crew, and are you carrying any cargo you are going to offload?" the handler asked them calmly across the gap, pulling a clipboard out of nowhere.

Captain Hardolf moved forward to answer those questions across the short distance between the two boats. "Five crew, including myself. No cargo. We are a diplomatic detachment from the Empire of Delpha."

"Two gold for the pinnace, one silver per crewmember." He looked them all over. "Three spellcasters. You'll need to bear cheek Tats for the duration of your stay in Eisfall. It will be administered at the dock as you set foot, and fade as soon as you leave the Wards. If you don't want the Tat, remain on your vessel. Is that understood?"

Captain Hardolf didn't bother to hide his irritation. "You are discriminating against spellcasters?" he demanded to know quickly.

"Magic is a concealed lethal weapon, and you are always carrying. We've found that fools and idiots tend to gain twenty percent more intelligence when they're realizing the person they are trying to shake down or bully is a spellcaster, and spellcasters who realize that everyone knows they are Casters are much less likely to disseminate Charm spells on waitresses, throw around Prestidigitation Cantrips to cause mischief, try to filch things with Mage Hands, and so forth and so on."

Captain Hardolf's lips thinned, but he couldn't rightly argue against such common sense.

"Eisfall doesn't outright limit Casting, but treats it as the dangerous weapon it is. You Charm people, you're going to get Feebleminded and work as a slave to learn how it feels to be forced to do things against your will. You mock people with magic, you're going in cold iron and get to work with the fisherfolk hauling in their catches to learn what it feels like to have to use your hands for a living. You assault anyone with lethal magic, it's treated like a sword in your hand, and you'll be either executed on the spot or after a short hearing if you're the belligerent party.

"You ARE encouraged to be very showy and very obvious if you are Casting spells. Make sure bloody everyone knows you are Casting, what you are Casting, and why you are Casting. Make it absolutely clear you are a Caster, you have control of your magic, and you're not doing anything illegal or stupid with your spells." The look he gave Captain Harold was cool and simple. "You're a Delphan. You know how to be polite. We don't coddle Casters here, they are treated like everyone else, so be polite to everyone and don't abuse bloody Casting!"

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