Island AU take 1: Stan
The Verdessent Seacrew wasn’t one of King Stan’s most practical plans, considering how drunk he was when he drafted up the project, but the restoration of Faldoran, he felt, depended on innovation, not practicality. His idea was for a team of the kingdom’s finest navigators to spend at most two years scouring the Verdessent in search of unexploited territory. Hopefully, they would find an island, so they could drag it to the mainland, and thus bring the kingdom back to its former glory. The biggest obstacle was that there was no money left to fund a two year sea voyage, but Stan figured this wouldn’t be an issue if the project wasn’t officially documented.
Stan was enthusiastic at first, doodling beautifully-engineered ships and imagining how vibrant and alive his kingdom would be with a luscious tropical island resurrecting its withered ecology. However, as dedicated as he was to the project itself, he realized, to his despair, that he was in over his head with establishing it. Not to mention, he had no experience in leading such an extensive project. Begrudgingly, he decided to reveal his idea to Eric, his primary advisor, the Regent General of Faldoran.
“You want to want?” he drawled, wiping the wine from his lips with the back of his hand.
“Get a seacrew together to explore the Verdessent. To look for an island. So we can bring it back,” Stan repeated.
“Yeah, I heard you. But look,” he said, closing his eyes as he let out a breathy exhale, “We just managed to squash a civil war. People find out you’re spending what’s left of the kingdom’s cash on some pleasure boat, that’ll be the final kick for the rest of the peasantry to go off with that nomad freak sister of yours. Who’ll be serving us potato skins then, hm?” He shoved another whole one into his mouth upon saying so, leaving a splotch of cheese above his lip.
Stan hadn’t thought about that. “We could just keep it a secret then,” he offered lamely. They kept tons of secrets from the people. One more couldn’t hurt.
“Say they find an island and bring it back. How are you going to hide a whole island?” Eric said, speaking as he chewed.
“I don’t know!” Stan said, hating Eric for making him feel stupid. He took a long, concentrated sip of his wine to eliminate the temptation of dumping it over Eric’s fat head.
Eric raised an eyebrow. “You really want this to happen?”
Stan gave him a severe look. Even though Eric was nearly a decade older, even though he knew the art of politics better than some of the eldest court members, and even though the late King Randall had written in his will that his son always “seriously consider” the beefy royal advisor’s suggestions, Stan was still the king.
“Fine. Then I’ll see what I can do,” Eric muttered. He got up, dumped his napkin upon the tower of chicken bones on his plate, and staggered out of Stan’s dining hall.
As always, Eric came through in the end. They’d be cutting into some restoration funds, he warned, and if and when an island was found, they would have to maintain the story that a fishing boat had spotted it floating not too far from the shore, so they had to copperlock it, lest it crash into the mainland. Since Stan was beside himself with elation that the Verdessent Seacrew would soon become a reality, he readily accepted this tale as plausible enough to persuade the peasantry.
In the coming weeks, the top-secret project Verdessent Exploration quickly came together: an elaborate ship was designed by the kingdom’s most revered engineers, then constructed by hundreds of well-trained laborers. Additionally, the copperlocking process was refined, and a secret port was built on one of the kingdom’s private beaches. Of course, it was Eric who coordinated all of this. Or rather, it was a special council Eric had created, whose members reported to the Regent General.
Stan was insistent with Eric that he wanted to be involved in the project on a first hand basis, however. Thus, he was given the responsibility of assembling the crew. This proved to be a trying task, since there had been no sea voyages in the past seven years of civil war, and, curiously enough, the educated elite class seemed much smaller than Stan had thought. As of right now, there were only about fifty students enrolled in the Academy of Navigation and Seafaring.
After a week of pouring through the list of current students and recent graduates, then looking at their grades and teachers’ comments, Stan had decided on the twenty-five crew members. He felt extremely confident in his choice of captain, Wendy L. Testaberger, a graduate of four years ago who had specialized in cartography and ship management. Stan’s final roster contained nineteen graduates and six current students, all of whom had received, or were now receiving, exceptional marks at the academy. When Stan gave Eric his completed list, he made sure to tell him that he wanted the current students to have the rest of their education paid off.
The next two weeks passed in a whirlwind as everything was finalized for the ship and its crew to take off into the vast blue Verdessent. On the night of departure, a grand feast was held in the palace for the twenty five crewmembers, and Stan enjoyed himself thoroughly, chatting and getting to know each of them a bit. He started to wish that he, too, were going with them on their sea voyage, having been thoroughly impressed by Captain Testaberger’s enthusiastic resolve and Co-captain Tucker’s perfect jawline.
At exactly midnight, the ship took off. There was no moon to illuminate its bright white exterior. Stan watched the ship sail away, waving goodbye even after he could no longer see it. Although in his heart he knew Verdessent Seacrew would come back, and come back successfully, tugging along the fruits of its mission, the wind and the waves reminded him that the sea was endless in both size and danger. Stan tried to vanquish his worry for the crew with his confidence in their abilities, but he slept poorly that night regardless, dreaming of wicked storms and horrible sea creatures. Peering through a crack in the dark clouds, he saw these travesties assault the ship, unable to do anything but watch.
A few days later, a carrier locust from the ship arrived, bringing a wireplate update. Simply seeing Wendy’s face was an immense relief for Stan, and he was further allayed upon hearing that the ship and its crew were doing fine. They hadn’t found any land yet, though that was to be expected so shortly into the voyage.
As he was dedicated as ever to project Verdessent Exploration, Stan transcribed Wendy’s wireplates with utmost care. Over the course of the next seven months, he meticulously transcribed twenty-eight wireplates on dozens upon dozens of scrolls, all in his best handwriting. Of course, these scrolls were later delivered to a royal scribe who would re-write them in impressive script, but that was of no matter, for Stan was doing the most important part.
Then, the wireplates stopped coming. Stan fell into an inconsolable depression, smothering his guilt and self-hatred with copious amounts of alcohol. He locked himself away in his rooms, grieving for the twenty-five lives that had been lost at sea, berating himself for his “innovative” foolishness. Once darkness fell, he would stagger drunkenly to the balcony and peer over the ledge, entertaining the ideation of sacrificing himself for the sake of the crew. He told himself it was a stupid idea, for if the king died, Faldoran would surely fall apart. It had nothing to do with his lack of courage to climb over the railing.
Eric pounded on the door to the royal chambers regularly, at nine in the morning and nine at night, telling Stan he was “exaggerating” and that “it was imprudent to be making such assumptions.” Stan hated hearing this - he knew Eric was equally inclined to cynicism, and such assertions were only intended to interrupt his misery. When he couldn’t take Eric’s badgering anymore, Stan sent a note down the dumbbell, requesting a set of ear plugs. He took to wearing them day in and day out, satisfied that when he closed his eyes, it was easy to imagine he was at the bottom of the ocean, cradled in soundlessness and swallowed by the shadows.
One miserable month passed in this way. Then, on a day indistinguishable from the rest, Stan awoke from a late afternoon nap to see Eric looking down smugly at him. Groggy with sleep and irritated by the presence of another human, Stan pulled the covers up over his head and turned away. He remembered the emergency exit behind the bookcase in the library that led down to the basement and hated himself for forgetting to barricade it.
Eric shook his shoulder, presumably saying something that Stan was grateful he could not hear. “Go away,” he growled.
Eric pulled the covers down instead. Stan tore his ear plugs out, livid and ready to shout at the Regent General, when he came face to face with a wireplate. “Carrier locust just brought this in,” Eric said.
“Is this - recent?” Stan asked, already booting up the wireplate.
“As recent as it can be. Dated about ten days ago. She mentions a bad storm, so the previous three updates must’ve gotten lost,” Eric replied. “Looks like all your moping was in vain, huh?” The remark was not caustic; Eric’s enthusiasm was masked poorly by his façade of smugness.
“We found land,” Captain Testaberger said in her usual professional tone, though she was smiling broadly, something she had never done in a plate before. She turned the camera towards a green mound far in the distance. “It appears to be an island. We will, of course, need to investigate further…” She went on to say that the ship had suffered moderate damage during the storm, and they would repair it once they had docked.
Stan watched the wireplate again and again, convinced by the fourth watch-through that this was real; he wasn’t dreaming that the Verdessent Seacrew was not only alive and well, but had found an island, and so soon into its voyage! He held the wireplate to his chest, sobbing and laughing, thanking every god in the cosmos for safeguarding the crew from a crueler fate.
Twelve days later, a wireplate arrived with extensive footage of the island. Stan was awestruck by the lush jungles full of unknown fruits, shimmering lagoons, and strange animals. It was incredible to him that such a strange paradise existed, and even more incredible that it would soon be attached to his kingdom. The enchanted island was constantly on his mind, and not even Eric’s constant warnings to keep silent about the top-secret project could damper his enthusiasm.
In the last wireplate filmed from the island, the copperlocking process was detailed. Wendy estimated they would arrive home in about a month, depending on the winds, at which point the island would be attached with granulated terrain and marine connectors to promote regrowth and secure a permanent connection.
During those weeks, Stan was consumed with jittery excitement: he checked the mailroom for new carrier locusts every quarter of an hour and blathered incessantly about the island to Eric, the only person to whom he could divulge his ramblings. Although Eric would sometimes only pretend to listen out of obligation, Stan could tell he wasn’t alone in his excitement - Eric just had a more subdued way of showing it.
What Stan could not share with Eric, however, was his sense of pride. The island would be his first true accomplishment as King of Faldoran. At last, he was following in his father’s footsteps; at last, he was proving himself worthy of being the true heir of the kingdom. He thought of his father, sitting at the throne that now belonged to Stan, extending his arms out for him to rush into his lap; he heard his voice echoing the words, “One day, this kingdom will be yours, Stan”; he remembered the worry, even as a young child, that he could never do it, that he should tell his father that Shelley would make a far better ruler.
For the first time, Stan believed in his father’s confidence in him.The day before the expected arrival of the Verdessent Seacrew, Eric woke Stan up at dawn, relaying the news that a fisherman had seen the ship approaching. Stan sprung out of bed and tossed on a robe, not caring if he hardly looked like a king at the most pivotal moment in recent history. However, Eric refused to let him leave the palace until he was fully dressed, and he relented, shaking with anticipation as the servants helped him into his memorium gladiatorwear.
Before he even arrived at the dock, Stan saw it: a huge green mound, floating just behind the ship. He gaped, mesmerized, at its white beaches, devoid of rocks and the endless, wild foliage, holding his breath as the carriage got closer to the dock. Although he had seen all of this in the wireplates, seeing the island with his own eyes was overwhelming to Stan, not only because it was so much bigger in real life, so much brighter and undeniably tangible, but because it was proof that paradise existed.
Stan was enthusiastic at first, doodling beautifully-engineered ships and imagining how vibrant and alive his kingdom would be with a luscious tropical island resurrecting its withered ecology. However, as dedicated as he was to the project itself, he realized, to his despair, that he was in over his head with establishing it. Not to mention, he had no experience in leading such an extensive project. Begrudgingly, he decided to reveal his idea to Eric, his primary advisor, the Regent General of Faldoran.
“You want to want?” he drawled, wiping the wine from his lips with the back of his hand.
“Get a seacrew together to explore the Verdessent. To look for an island. So we can bring it back,” Stan repeated.
“Yeah, I heard you. But look,” he said, closing his eyes as he let out a breathy exhale, “We just managed to squash a civil war. People find out you’re spending what’s left of the kingdom’s cash on some pleasure boat, that’ll be the final kick for the rest of the peasantry to go off with that nomad freak sister of yours. Who’ll be serving us potato skins then, hm?” He shoved another whole one into his mouth upon saying so, leaving a splotch of cheese above his lip.
Stan hadn’t thought about that. “We could just keep it a secret then,” he offered lamely. They kept tons of secrets from the people. One more couldn’t hurt.
“Say they find an island and bring it back. How are you going to hide a whole island?” Eric said, speaking as he chewed.
“I don’t know!” Stan said, hating Eric for making him feel stupid. He took a long, concentrated sip of his wine to eliminate the temptation of dumping it over Eric’s fat head.
Eric raised an eyebrow. “You really want this to happen?”
Stan gave him a severe look. Even though Eric was nearly a decade older, even though he knew the art of politics better than some of the eldest court members, and even though the late King Randall had written in his will that his son always “seriously consider” the beefy royal advisor’s suggestions, Stan was still the king.
“Fine. Then I’ll see what I can do,” Eric muttered. He got up, dumped his napkin upon the tower of chicken bones on his plate, and staggered out of Stan’s dining hall.
As always, Eric came through in the end. They’d be cutting into some restoration funds, he warned, and if and when an island was found, they would have to maintain the story that a fishing boat had spotted it floating not too far from the shore, so they had to copperlock it, lest it crash into the mainland. Since Stan was beside himself with elation that the Verdessent Seacrew would soon become a reality, he readily accepted this tale as plausible enough to persuade the peasantry.
In the coming weeks, the top-secret project Verdessent Exploration quickly came together: an elaborate ship was designed by the kingdom’s most revered engineers, then constructed by hundreds of well-trained laborers. Additionally, the copperlocking process was refined, and a secret port was built on one of the kingdom’s private beaches. Of course, it was Eric who coordinated all of this. Or rather, it was a special council Eric had created, whose members reported to the Regent General.
Stan was insistent with Eric that he wanted to be involved in the project on a first hand basis, however. Thus, he was given the responsibility of assembling the crew. This proved to be a trying task, since there had been no sea voyages in the past seven years of civil war, and, curiously enough, the educated elite class seemed much smaller than Stan had thought. As of right now, there were only about fifty students enrolled in the Academy of Navigation and Seafaring.
After a week of pouring through the list of current students and recent graduates, then looking at their grades and teachers’ comments, Stan had decided on the twenty-five crew members. He felt extremely confident in his choice of captain, Wendy L. Testaberger, a graduate of four years ago who had specialized in cartography and ship management. Stan’s final roster contained nineteen graduates and six current students, all of whom had received, or were now receiving, exceptional marks at the academy. When Stan gave Eric his completed list, he made sure to tell him that he wanted the current students to have the rest of their education paid off.
The next two weeks passed in a whirlwind as everything was finalized for the ship and its crew to take off into the vast blue Verdessent. On the night of departure, a grand feast was held in the palace for the twenty five crewmembers, and Stan enjoyed himself thoroughly, chatting and getting to know each of them a bit. He started to wish that he, too, were going with them on their sea voyage, having been thoroughly impressed by Captain Testaberger’s enthusiastic resolve and Co-captain Tucker’s perfect jawline.
At exactly midnight, the ship took off. There was no moon to illuminate its bright white exterior. Stan watched the ship sail away, waving goodbye even after he could no longer see it. Although in his heart he knew Verdessent Seacrew would come back, and come back successfully, tugging along the fruits of its mission, the wind and the waves reminded him that the sea was endless in both size and danger. Stan tried to vanquish his worry for the crew with his confidence in their abilities, but he slept poorly that night regardless, dreaming of wicked storms and horrible sea creatures. Peering through a crack in the dark clouds, he saw these travesties assault the ship, unable to do anything but watch.
A few days later, a carrier locust from the ship arrived, bringing a wireplate update. Simply seeing Wendy’s face was an immense relief for Stan, and he was further allayed upon hearing that the ship and its crew were doing fine. They hadn’t found any land yet, though that was to be expected so shortly into the voyage.
As he was dedicated as ever to project Verdessent Exploration, Stan transcribed Wendy’s wireplates with utmost care. Over the course of the next seven months, he meticulously transcribed twenty-eight wireplates on dozens upon dozens of scrolls, all in his best handwriting. Of course, these scrolls were later delivered to a royal scribe who would re-write them in impressive script, but that was of no matter, for Stan was doing the most important part.
Then, the wireplates stopped coming. Stan fell into an inconsolable depression, smothering his guilt and self-hatred with copious amounts of alcohol. He locked himself away in his rooms, grieving for the twenty-five lives that had been lost at sea, berating himself for his “innovative” foolishness. Once darkness fell, he would stagger drunkenly to the balcony and peer over the ledge, entertaining the ideation of sacrificing himself for the sake of the crew. He told himself it was a stupid idea, for if the king died, Faldoran would surely fall apart. It had nothing to do with his lack of courage to climb over the railing.
Eric pounded on the door to the royal chambers regularly, at nine in the morning and nine at night, telling Stan he was “exaggerating” and that “it was imprudent to be making such assumptions.” Stan hated hearing this - he knew Eric was equally inclined to cynicism, and such assertions were only intended to interrupt his misery. When he couldn’t take Eric’s badgering anymore, Stan sent a note down the dumbbell, requesting a set of ear plugs. He took to wearing them day in and day out, satisfied that when he closed his eyes, it was easy to imagine he was at the bottom of the ocean, cradled in soundlessness and swallowed by the shadows.
One miserable month passed in this way. Then, on a day indistinguishable from the rest, Stan awoke from a late afternoon nap to see Eric looking down smugly at him. Groggy with sleep and irritated by the presence of another human, Stan pulled the covers up over his head and turned away. He remembered the emergency exit behind the bookcase in the library that led down to the basement and hated himself for forgetting to barricade it.
Eric shook his shoulder, presumably saying something that Stan was grateful he could not hear. “Go away,” he growled.
Eric pulled the covers down instead. Stan tore his ear plugs out, livid and ready to shout at the Regent General, when he came face to face with a wireplate. “Carrier locust just brought this in,” Eric said.
“Is this - recent?” Stan asked, already booting up the wireplate.
“As recent as it can be. Dated about ten days ago. She mentions a bad storm, so the previous three updates must’ve gotten lost,” Eric replied. “Looks like all your moping was in vain, huh?” The remark was not caustic; Eric’s enthusiasm was masked poorly by his façade of smugness.
“We found land,” Captain Testaberger said in her usual professional tone, though she was smiling broadly, something she had never done in a plate before. She turned the camera towards a green mound far in the distance. “It appears to be an island. We will, of course, need to investigate further…” She went on to say that the ship had suffered moderate damage during the storm, and they would repair it once they had docked.
Stan watched the wireplate again and again, convinced by the fourth watch-through that this was real; he wasn’t dreaming that the Verdessent Seacrew was not only alive and well, but had found an island, and so soon into its voyage! He held the wireplate to his chest, sobbing and laughing, thanking every god in the cosmos for safeguarding the crew from a crueler fate.
Twelve days later, a wireplate arrived with extensive footage of the island. Stan was awestruck by the lush jungles full of unknown fruits, shimmering lagoons, and strange animals. It was incredible to him that such a strange paradise existed, and even more incredible that it would soon be attached to his kingdom. The enchanted island was constantly on his mind, and not even Eric’s constant warnings to keep silent about the top-secret project could damper his enthusiasm.
In the last wireplate filmed from the island, the copperlocking process was detailed. Wendy estimated they would arrive home in about a month, depending on the winds, at which point the island would be attached with granulated terrain and marine connectors to promote regrowth and secure a permanent connection.
During those weeks, Stan was consumed with jittery excitement: he checked the mailroom for new carrier locusts every quarter of an hour and blathered incessantly about the island to Eric, the only person to whom he could divulge his ramblings. Although Eric would sometimes only pretend to listen out of obligation, Stan could tell he wasn’t alone in his excitement - Eric just had a more subdued way of showing it.
What Stan could not share with Eric, however, was his sense of pride. The island would be his first true accomplishment as King of Faldoran. At last, he was following in his father’s footsteps; at last, he was proving himself worthy of being the true heir of the kingdom. He thought of his father, sitting at the throne that now belonged to Stan, extending his arms out for him to rush into his lap; he heard his voice echoing the words, “One day, this kingdom will be yours, Stan”; he remembered the worry, even as a young child, that he could never do it, that he should tell his father that Shelley would make a far better ruler.
For the first time, Stan believed in his father’s confidence in him.The day before the expected arrival of the Verdessent Seacrew, Eric woke Stan up at dawn, relaying the news that a fisherman had seen the ship approaching. Stan sprung out of bed and tossed on a robe, not caring if he hardly looked like a king at the most pivotal moment in recent history. However, Eric refused to let him leave the palace until he was fully dressed, and he relented, shaking with anticipation as the servants helped him into his memorium gladiatorwear.
Before he even arrived at the dock, Stan saw it: a huge green mound, floating just behind the ship. He gaped, mesmerized, at its white beaches, devoid of rocks and the endless, wild foliage, holding his breath as the carriage got closer to the dock. Although he had seen all of this in the wireplates, seeing the island with his own eyes was overwhelming to Stan, not only because it was so much bigger in real life, so much brighter and undeniably tangible, but because it was proof that paradise existed.