Location: Freedom Bay, Docks of Madness
Era Marker: The First Pull
They remember the weight.
Fourteen miles of drag through sand, root, and ruin. The sled biting into earth. The harness cutting into shoulders. Breath burning raw. The moment, miles from the bay, when legs shook and vision narrowed and quitting would have been sensible.
They remember that it should have taken two hundred men.
They know the frame was made from shed plates of Tank, the Three-Banded Armadillo—material lighter than oak yet stubborn as fate, immune to fire and crushing force, resisting almost every harm save poison. They felt how it resisted being moved, not with malice, but with ancient indifference, as if asking whether they were worthy to carry it at all.
They remember Erik never slowing.
No speeches. No commands. Just the steady pull. The refusal to yield. When the others faltered, he leaned harder. When hands slipped, he tightened his grip. Not once did he look back to check if they followed—because he knew they would.
They remember Garrick’s knots holding when lesser lashings would have snapped.
They remember Kethan calling rhythm through cracked lips.
They remember Atlas bleeding light into vines until the magic trembled but did not break.
They remember Kenjiro clearing the path with a blade that never wasted motion.
They remember Umbrix chirping defiantly at the world itself.
They remember arriving at the Docks of Madness half-dead, dragging something impossible behind them—
—and hearing music rise to meet them.
They know the ship did not become legendary that day.
They did.
The docks tell it differently.
They say five figures came out of the dunes hauling a giant’s spine like it was a funeral procession for the old world. They say the ground groaned. They say chains stopped rattling and sails forgot the wind.
They say no cranes were used. No slaves. No hired muscle.
They say the frame was black as obsidian and etched with ancient scars, and when it touched dockwood the planks did not crack—they bowed.
They say a woman stood above it all, playing music that sounded like the sea remembering itself. That the rhythm matched the pull. That the melody climbed every time the sled lurched forward, as if the song itself were dragging the ship home.
They say dockhands forgot their work.
They say Arnothi guards forgot their orders.
They say even Maximus Teach watched longer than he meant to.
Some swear the beast Tank rumbled approval miles away.
Some swear the ruins leaned closer to see.
Some swear the ship frame answered the music.
By nightfall, the story had grown teeth.
By morning, it had a name:
The Tankborn Spine — hauled by five where hundreds would fail.
The Valiant Crew — not hired hands, not madmen, but something worse.
Men on a mission.
And somewhere between truth and rumor, a new kind of danger took root in Freedom Bay:
Not a ship that could not be sunk—
—but a crew that would not stop pulling.