The Vagrant's Chronicle: Rising Tide

In the age when Liyue was plagued by sea beasts, the legendary tale of a nameless shipmaster.

—Tide Rise—

When the bright moon hung high, the ship-song began to rise.

In Liyue Harbor there once were those who rode great warships to hunt sea beasts; people called them "shipmasters."

They adorned their hulls with the bones of ocean giants to show they feared nothing. Yet in the crew's long, melodic ship-songs, there was seldom any word of the hunt. It was not that shipmasters shunned fame or boasting of kills; rather, in an age when the seas were still restless, talk of blood-water in a ship-song was ill omen.

There was one shipmaster who bore a greatsword. He came and went at will through distant seas thick with reefs and raging undercurrents, free and reckless amid the roar of storms and sea beasts. To him the dark world beneath the silent seas was a boundless hunting ground; the rampaging ocean giants often became his trophies, hung high along the gunwale.

But the shipmaster who rode the waves seemed never to know ordinary joys and sorrows. His days held only endless search and slaughter, companioned by the briny wind and gloomy whale-song. The crew feared him more than they loved him, often uneasy at the kelp-twined scent about him. On the violent far seas, the shipmaster's swift ship always advanced in silence and cold resolve.

Only the girl forever seated on the towering prow could soften the shipmaster's gaze a little. That girl, lost in the sound of the waves, was his navigator. She sang with the whale-song and guided the wave-cleaving great ship toward waters where the giants appeared.

The navigator girl offered song as sacrifice to the sea, saluting every thread of sea-wind and every strand of swell—

"Listen with me to the great whale's low song; hear the crash of the waves.

"When current and wind stand right, set sail for the deep.

"Hail the long-departed gods; hail my old master.

"Let me weave the tangled currents into a sea-chart,

"and guide every soul safely home."

When the song ended, the shipmaster gladly cried the order to cast off. The great ship slowly left the harbor, chasing the broken light cast by the morning sun across the waves.

As on every day before, this was the beginning of the shipmaster's tale upon the waves.