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Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Zendikar: Uncharted Seas - Introduction!

Scattered In The Blue

There is no telling where or what the storms of Zendikar can lead to.
And in fact, there is no telling where this island is, and what happened before you arrived here.

Few memories haunt your traumatized mind.
The wind was so powerful that it lifted you repeatedly.
The waves were so tall that looking forward from the stern of the ship you could see only dark clouds, while from the bow there was only angry ocean.
The roil spouts were dreadful: the massive ship felt like nothing but a tiny Kor kitesail blown away by a gale, when it was carried away into them and by them.

Into The Roil

There might have been something even more dreadful than the fury of Zendikar, into that storm. You remember seeing live flesh within the cloud of detritus flying above the immense waves. The strange flesh of creatures that never saw the light of Zendikar before, probably: such are the depths that the roil currents may have scraped and uplifted.

Roil Spout

The flesh of those creatures ripped dead by the storm is probably the reason why your leather and armor are completely soiled by a foul-smelling sticky fluid that is already half-encrusted. Who knows what or who was gutted by the wooden blades that splintered from the boat while it was being disintegrated. And who knows how many days and nights you were passed out on the beach, drying those disgusting deathly fluids under the sun.
The crabs were feasting all over-you and it's only blind luck that they didn't take out an eye of yours as well with their hungry pincers.

Near Death Experience

Your senses are overwhelmed. Apart from your nose being assaulted by the pungent odor of rotten marine life (or what you hope is marine life, and not the shreds of an ex crew member), the next sensory organs under attack are the ears. The waves and the pitched calls of the welkin terns are echoing in your head, as if everything around you happened to emit its sound twice at the same time.

Welkin Tern
Could it be the roil? Sure. Just like it could be the roil making the flooded strands in front of you look so damn near in the sky. There comes the third sensory attack. But damn, this looks nice.

Flooded Strand

It's like a piece of dreamy heaven painted right into the sky and popping up as if seen through an explorer's scope.

Explorer's Scope

You try to get up and you fall, over and over again. You feel like you're glued to the sand, and probably that's exactly the case.
Finally you manage to get up and look around.
The coast is varied, with high rocky cliffs alternated by pristine lonely sand bars.

Lonely Sandbar

And lush vegetation covers every space that is not firmly conquered by sand, rock, or water. Actually no, the water doesn't stop it, and probably not even the rock. Zendikari plants, unlike its people, have found out how to live in every corner of the enraged world.

Island

The horizon that is not occupied by floating land strands is a beautiful blue sky, were the few wispy clouds are tinged of pink: a sign that the hours are already quite postmeridian.
A, fortunately, really far away drake tosses and turns among the clouds like a young cat in a basket full of clean laundry. The first sign of life had to be that of a predator. Although it looks uninterested in anything that might lie closer than twenty leagues from you. You wonder how big must that drake big if seen upclose. You don't want to find out: anything that plays so cheerfully in the highest altitudes of Zendikar's skies must be awfully close to the top of the food chain.


 No sign of your ship, not even a wooden stake. No wonder there is also a lack of human bodies around: the ship was surely much more solid than the crew.
You're left to your own devices more than ever. Even in the direst straits of your past, you have always had some people around to face the world with. Now it look you're alone. Alone in an unknown, scary, beautiful heaven.

MPS Promo Island

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