The Drowned Lantern
A Light Beneath the Selbina Pier
Saturday Mornings at the Guild
The Fishermen's Guild of Selbina has brought back its old tournament. Every Saturday at nine in the morning, Pacific time, the bell on the guild hall rings and the pier fills with rods. For one hour the guild weighs every fish caught in Selbina's waters, and the anglers with the best five fish in each division go home with a title and a prize from the guild's own stores.
The roster is kept by Chenon at the guild's information desk, the same clerk who runs Fish Ranking. Newcomers are asked to sit a short certification before their name goes on the list, and Chenon is happy to walk anyone through it. Every fish weighed earns Angler's Marks, which the guild trades for bait, rods and equipment. For the hour of the tournament, the guild stocks the harbor with fish from much farther out than the dock usually sees.
The Night Ferry
Ask anyone who has worked the Selbina docks long enough and they will tell you about the night ferry from Mhaura. She went down in a squall within sight of the harbor, so close that the people on the pier could see her stern lamp burning as she sank. The crew made it ashore. The lamp was never recovered.
A few years later the fishermen began to notice a pale light moving under the pier. It never came on a quiet day. It came on the mornings when the whole town was out on the planks, when there were more lines in the water than anyone could count, and it was gone again before the crowd went home.
What the Logbooks Say
The guild has kept logbooks since before the ferry sank, and the light turns up in them again and again. The descriptions are written by different hands across decades, but they agree on more than they should: an old fish, black and scarred, with the ferry's lamp hanging over its jaws. It has never taken worm or minnow. Every account that mentions bait mentions squid.
No line in Selbina has ever held it. Old Zaldon says he hooked it once as a young man and lost his rod, his reel and very nearly his arm. Chenon will only say that the guild has set aside a place on its wall, and that it has been empty for a very long time.