Strange Death at Sea
From Twilight Realms Wiki
" Story of a strange happenings at sea reach the Equil coast this morning. Crew members of the Dream Catcher, a Tallagian merchant vessel, noticed a bright light coming from inside their captains cabin. On entering the cabin they discovered the bright light was the burning body of Robert Bailey the ships captain, but strangely neither the fabric of the ship itself, nor its internal fittings was damaged. The only thing on fire was Bailey himself.
"When we entered the cabin," said first officer Stacey Morgan, "he was lying on the floor half-turned onto his left side and his knees were drawn up as though he was trying to bend the pain from his stomach." Stacey said, 'There was about a four inch slit in his stomach and the flame was emanating from that four-inch slit. It was a blue flame.' Thinking the man might possibly still be alive, Stacey and the crew emptied several buckets of water over the body, putting out the flame but with difficulty.
The flame was actually coming from the body itself, said Stacey, "from inside the body. He was burning literally from the inside out. And it was definitely under pressure. And it was impinging on the timber flooring below the body, so much so that the heat from the flame was charred into the woodwork." One especially bizarre feature of the case was that Bailey, while still alive and apparently convulsed in agony, had bitten deeply into the solid mahogany newel post. His body remained with its teeth locked into the wood and had to be prised open. Bailey's clothing was undamaged except in the area of his abdomen. The area around him was largely undamaged except for the wooden planking immediately under his abdomen where a hole had been burnt.
Equil authorities are treating Bailey's death as suspicious but an inquest sat under coroner Dr Thurston, who initially wished to list the death as "asphyxia due to inhalation of fire fumes" declared that Bailey's death was due to "unknown causes".
About 305 AR
