I’ve not more than three possessions to my name: a pair of worn in boots, a rusty mail hauberk, and the well oiled harpoon of a whaler. It’s upon these seas I search for my greatest enemy, friend, and treasure; a great white whale the size of two galleons. The ambergris stored in its belly could fetch me enough gold to let mine and my children’s children to live as lavishly as kings. But an encounter with the pale monster won’t come without its price. If you garner one thing about whales from my story, understand this: they are wrathful creatures. Majestic as they are scornful. For there is one beast that laid waste to my own body more then any other. It was my leg that I lost upon our first battle. Bitten and torn clean from the bone. There’s nary a creature of God that can protect against the jaws of an awfully tempered whale, in the face of which my humble flesh of man was torn like pages of paper. It was in those days that I, Gormlain, was not but a deckhand aboard the Pelagiad, a merchant ship hauling sugar and spices from port to port. Our encounter with the whale - that in the 17 years between our last meeting I’ve come to call Abel - was nothing more than a cruel twist of fate.