Myrkentown's Fear.

[Carnath-Emory]

"The sheets were soaked with blood! Soaked, and the walls fair drenched as well--"
"It was four days afore he was found." "Five!" "Perhaps even longer, and the room was steeped in the stench of it..."



This has been one of the darkest months in Myrken Wood's memory; years from now, they will still speak of this month, but only ever in whispers, lest the horror come upon them again. "The Fivefold Blight", they'll call it, many years later. Lightning had set half the town ablaze. The slaughter at main road had savaged its population. Scores of uneral pyres, a fiery obscenity accepted with the resignation of necessity, had left the town overcast with a thick, ashen smog. Flood had come, as if to wash the cursed township from the very land it was built upon. And then the Baie -- for what else could possibly be responsible for the Councilors' vanishment? It had slaughtered its victims in the past, yes, but Bromn's bed had been bloody, and none knew the details of Avarante's demise.

"It flowed crimson from the very bedding itself, and leaked from the ceiling, and they knew that he was dead. They knew!"
"Her tears are like the rain, so Tomlin said; there's no end to her mourning, and in time there'll be no end to ours. Bah -- already it's so!"

It is a town in dire need of rescue, and perhaps this is the greatest cruelty of the Blight: that there seem none to provide it. The Judiciary is known to be decimated by this recent disaster in a string of many, for not only have Councilors Bromn and Avarante been slain (for such has become the assumed fate of Altias), but it is said that the Governor himself was an imposter, a sham, a pretender to power. Why, even the nobility have heard this rumour, puportedly begun by a very Lieutenant of the Guard, and frequently enough that they've begun to believe -- and to begin a hushed cry for the pretender's head.

"I heard it from McKenzie, and he from Goody Tailor, and she in turn from O'Halleran, and you know there was never a lie that passed that man's lips. It was that Lieutenant, he'd said, the one as burnt his wife; a kind enough man, said Tom, but...Godless."

'Godless'. They always pause before they say it, and it's said quite frequently, now, for this is a township that searches as a single mind for rescue, yes, and salvation if such can be found. It had found this for a time in the shape of Captain Kanashia, vilified and adored in equal measure -- there were none that forgot the Massacre and the confused role that he'd played in it -- but the Captain had resigned; this was publically known. And there had begun whispers that he'd vanished, too, but this is hardly unusual; in recent days, rumour's had it that entirely half the town's population has vanished and reappeared, and this is nothing but the idle talk of a panicked populace. But in any case, Kanashia has abandoned them, leaving an untried Corporal in his place, and while Daniels is a popular enough figure amongst those who know him, he is yet to truly make his mark. He is yet to become sufficient.

Indeed, the great flood, fourth amongst blights, might have given the new Captain his chance; he'd performed well, much as had the Lieutenant, and had succeeded in evacuating no small portion of the lower lying land before the town's walls had begun to give away. But his adulation had been usurped by magery; Coran D'zir had quelled the flood, had reined in the churning waters and redirected them elsewhere, and this, instead, had become the talk of the town. They say: "The water flowed forth, as if directed by an invisible hand." They say: "And then, the great stream ran into -- why, I saw it but poorly, but it was as a window into another world. Into heaven itself." They say: "It was a miracle," and "God bless the Inquisition's coming," and sometimes, just sometimes, they even say: "He had hair like fire, and was taller than any natural man, and it was he who turned the flood."

Most often, though, they speak of Prior and Pontifex, and beg blessings upon Elian's sweet name. Most often, they speak of distant Sancollis, and miracles closer to home, and an end to madness and fear...for Myrkentown has at last found its saviour.

[Mongrel]

And some scant 11 miles north of Myrkentown proper...a group of three horses arrived at the Priory of Stonebrook.

A man dismounted his dapple steed and looked too the south.

Lord High Inquisitor Tomias Gestahl had arrived.