(Date obscured by a smear of blood)Tell me, reader, have you ever heard of the Silver Plague?
Oh, what am I saying – of course you have.
We don’t know where it started. A traveller, perhaps, bearing some strange illness, or maybe a coordinated strike by some vile sorcerer. A few eccentrics even claim it to be caused by creatures so tiny our eyes cannot see them.
Whatever birthed the Silver Plague, it infiltrated like smoke and spread like wildfire. The only sign of its presence was a tiny cough. Then, weeks or even months on, the bruising and foul boils would appear on the limbs and lungs, followed by the cough worsening until blood came up with each cough. Finally, the fever and the necrosis of flesh would show, and the victim’s life would be in the hands of the Divines alone.
It took so long to get it under control. Radical treatments for limbs beginning to turn necrotic, experimental salves and concoctions, acts that would have us exiled as criminals in any other time – these were the measures the doctors and healers of the Realm of Silver were forced to resort to, by command or by desperation. I should know – my teacher was among them.
Day by day, the Plague began to subside. A few cases here and there – the occasional figure, heavy-cloaked and weeping in fear, pulled into my master’s practice for treatment. We would do away with the worst of the necrotic flesh, apply cloth bindings soaked in his specialised salve, and do all we could to keep them alive until his medicines and the will of the Divines could do their work.
Then I cut my hand when working on one victim’s boils.
Not deeply – a mere centimetre or two, and on one of the less virulent, recent iterations – but just enough for the uneducated, fear-crazed fools of the town to work themselves into a rabid mob once the world got out. My master’s protests meant nothing to them; they chased me out of town with pitchforks and torches into the freezing hell of the Tundra of Heroes – perhaps they thought the cold and the necromantic beasts of the wilds would do the Plague’s work for them.
I would have died were it not for the kindness of a few outcasts and strangers. They found me on the Tundra’s borders, delirious and half-starved; helped me reach their home, and nursed me back to health with what little resources they have. The Colourless Group, they call themselves – a ragged band of outcasts, outsiders, and oddities, dwelling in the remote hilltop monastery of Scrapedbarbs.
For some years, now, I have served them, using my knowledge of the body to harm and heal in varying measure. I was foolish enough to hope I had dodged the Plague’s grip – as if that damnable pestilence would be merciful.
Somehow, the sickness has reached even this isolated monastery. Perhaps some lingering remnant of it lurked in me, or in one of the other exiles and oddities that made their home here.
The symptoms are already setting in – the tiny cough, bringing with it blood. Nothing I have done seems to slow it down: prayers to the Lady of Healing, herbal remedies, the few experimental concoctions I was able to take with me – all of it has shown no results. I must leave this place, and soon, before I doom those who saved me.
There is a tower further north, said to house a band of isolative monks and scholars who hold great knowledge of the body and its humours in their archives. Perhaps they will have some arcane ritual able to cure this pestilence, or some knowledge as to how I may beseech a deity to cure me of it.
With me comes Ketas, the one who found me so long ago and helped me back to this place – she has refused to let me go alone. Whatever her reason for leaving, I will respect it and not inquire. Yet… I have seen the bloodstained rag concealed in the corner of her barren room.
The thought that I may have passed the plague to her –
No. It must be from her hunting activities. Yes, that must be it; blood from a slain animal, cleaned off from her hands or blade. It must be that. It must.
In addition to Ketas, one of the other hunters has sworn to accompany us on our travels, a strange man by the name of Abhaar. Supposedly, he used to be a Duke’s son, the first in line to take his father’s position, before the Silver Plague and courtly intrigues saw him overthrown and forced to flee here; though I doubt his claim to any kind noble blood (let alone a Duchy), his skill with an axe is indisputable.
Perverse as it sounds, I find myself glad that I will not be going into the wilderness alone; the stories reaching us, distorted as they may be, would shake even the greatest man’s confidence with their tales of Demon Kings and fantastic monsters.
Should you find this journal, reader, we have failed. May Otu Lovelycherished guard our souls.
They’d seen it long before they’d arrived – smooth stone buildings and a mighty central tower, jutting up from the snow of the tundra like the scattered knuckle-bones and skyward-pointed arm of some fallen giant.
The Tower of Combined Insight.
The three of them trudged down the gently sloping hills, into the divot where the tower and its attendant buildings had been built. It had been something of a struggle for them to get this far, Urus’ coughing fits and the constant barrier of the snow forcing them to move slowly, but at last, they had reached their destination.
They’d been expecting the Tower to be quiet; the monks dwelling here were notoriously isolationist, rarely if ever venturing out of their site for even the most important of things.
What they hadn’t expected was this level of… stillness. Not one track broke the thick coverlet of snow on the ground, not one footprint going into or out of the buildings. A few hardy patches of moss clung to the base of the dark stone, snowdrifts building up around the entrances to a few of the smaller, more remote structures. Even the flakes of snow, usually ever-falling in such cold climate, seemed to hang suspended in the air far above, like some scene from the rich artworks common in the courts of the noble-born.
Ketas exchanged a wary glance with him, eye flicking apprehensively across the buildings.
“Something’s not right,” She muttered. Her instincts, well-honed from a lifetime of hunting, were screaming at her – there was something off, something unnatural about this silence.
Urus managed a nod before another coughing fit bent him double. This time, it brought up a thick gobbet of liquid and the taste of iron, painting the snow under him with reddish spots.
“Need to find them,” he gasped, trying to force himself to breathe through the coughs. “Go. I’ll catch up.”
Ketas shook her head, planting the massive slab of copper that served as her sword point-down beside her; Abhaar had no such reservations, marching off without a word or backward glance. Urus would’ve argued if he had the breath – as it was, he settled for a weak scowl up at her resolute features.
It took him a minute or two before the coughing subsided enough for him to properly regain his breath and force himself back to his feet. A few faltering steps gradually changed to a walk as he regained his feet – slower than usual, but not enough to put him down.
“To the tower, th–”
Urus was cut off mid-speech as his foot caught on something under the snow, sending him into an undignified face-plant into the snow. Ketas stifled a snicker at the sight, Urus grumbling several choice imprecations as snow began to soak into his cloak.
A few quick swipes of the hand cleared the snow from the object under the snow, revealing short, scale-covered limbs and a ragged stump of a neck; beside it, a few shredded scraps of muscle, bone, and organ. It was the corpse of some strange reptilian creature, mixed with the wreckage of something else entirely.
Ketas moved in close, peering down at the body in open curiosity.
“A Kobold? I thought they went extinct long ago?”
“Far as I knew, they were,” Urus muttered, examining the massive gash down the creature’s front. The freezing cold had preserved it well. “The Great War wiped them out centuries ago, but this one’s barely rotten. How the hell’d one end up this far into the Tundra?”
He was broken out of his musings by the sudden thump of boots on stone; Abhaar, approaching from behind. Before Urus could get a word out, he shook his head, lined face tight with disgust.
“The Tower’s a slaughterhouse.” He jerked his head in the direction of the tower for emphasis. “At least a dozen bodies, all of them in chunks fit for an Elven stewpot. If any of these men are still alive, they’ve long since run away.”
Urus felt his hand curl into a fist, metal creaking softly. Frustration warred with a burning weight of guilt in the pit of his stomach, hot and heavy as molten iron. He’d brought the Silver Plague to Scrapedbarbs, dragged all three of them and a vital part of their limited supplies out on this fool’s errand – and what did he have to show for it, beyond frozen corpses and pieces of corpses and unreadable papers that might as well be a mad monk’s rantings?
“There is… one thing, though,” Abhaar held something out towards him – a slim scroll, bound with two aluminium rollers; a much thicker volume, bound in pitchblende, was in his other hand. “I found these, near some of the bodies. Feels strange, but I can’t tell how for the life of me.”
Urus frowned as he took it in hand, peering at the cover. There was something odd in the strange, archaic characters carefully carved into its rollers, something at once achingly familiar and painfully foreign, but it only became clear when he opened it, and laid his eyes on the very first line of the text.
Common Sense Ruination: A Study of Life and Death.Dark knowledge flooded into his mind and body, a red hot spike driving itself into his head and lungs. He doubled over, coughing and retching; he barely registered Ketas’ cry of alarm and her presence at his side. There was something in his throat, something forcing its way up –
A torrent of dark fluid erupted from his mouth to stain the snow underfoot. A quick drink from his water container only made the vile taste in his mouth worsen, ash mixing with the horrid taste of disease.
Urus forced himself to his feet, gasping, wiping away the residue from his chin with one gauntleted hand. The water, vile though it tasted, had managed to wash the worst of it out of his mouth.
He breathed deep, and for the first time in what felt like months, there was no pain.
“-ll was that, Urus?” The book had fallen from his hands at some point, and either Ketas or Abhaar had wasted no time in kicking it across the room, the two of them alternating between watching it as though it would grow teeth and lunge for them and shooting concerned glances at him.
“A sorcerous work,” He managed to rasp, through the pounding throb in his head. “The secrets of Life and Death, just waiting to be forcibly passed onto a reader – onto me.”
Ketas went pale as the snow at that, shooting a glance at the broken, butchered remains around them. Her hand tightened on her sword’s handle, her thickly-muscled arm quivering slightly from the white-knuckled grip.
“
Necromancy!” she hissed, understanding flashing onto her features.
His head throbbed painfully with newfound knowledge, power over life and death itself seething within his body. He felt free of the sickness that had wracked his body, able to defy death itself; felt younger, newer, stronger than ever before.
…And yet, for a long moment, he stood there, uncertain of himself. Where were they to go now?
Scrapedbarbs was no option – some remnant of the plague could still linger in them, and even that assumed that he had not caused it to collapse wholesale by now. To the north lay nothing but barren tundra and sites long ago laid to waste by the savage Goblin hordes. Eastwards was nothing but barren, impassable mountains and Nightwight-haunted tundra; southwards would take them back to the Realm he had fled long ago.
After a few moments consideration, he gritted his teeth and nodded to himself.
Before he could take a step, there came an odd lightness in the head –
Normally, when he communed with the Lady, her presence was akin to that of a calm, soothing stream. This time, it was a raging river of disgust and barely-constrained anger, powerful enough to drive him to his hands and knees. Ketas and Abhaar followed suit, driven to the ground by the weight of some crushing, invisible force.
The voice of the Goddess of Healing spoke, and they had no choice but to listen.
You have turned from my path, Mortal. You have betrayed everything my devotees should stand for, and there is only one punishment for such treachery.Sharp spikes of pain ripped through his head and lungs with each word, as the Lady’s fury spilled over into his mind and body. Beside him, Ketas was shaking painfully as blood began to pour from her nose and blood vessels burst in her eyes; Abhaar looked to have bitten into or through his tongue, his entire body straining as he tried to wrestle himself upright.
Despite the red-hot poker driving itself through his skull and chest alike, Urus managed to force himself to speak.
“M- My… Lady… please…!”
I cast you from my sight and service, creature of Death! With one final burst of pain, Otu Lovelycherished’s presence vanished as abruptly as it had come, allowing the three adventurers to stagger back to their feet. For a long, painful moment, there was absolute silence in the Tower of Combined Insight.
It was broken by the heavy thump of footsteps upon the earth. Dozens of them.
From the shadows, from beneath the snow, from the white-blanketed buildings, corpses marched. A dozen of them, at least, all of them either Kobold or Human. Witch-light spilled from their empty eye sockets and the rents in their rotting flesh, many of them missing any semblance of clothing or armour. They halted some meters from the group, staring the three down as they tightly gripped their weapons.
There was a terrible, warped grating noise, gradually resolving itself into something resembling a voice. Once again, that strange pressure returned, forcing the group to their knees.
By the Creator, the Healer truly is a fool. The voice came from the corpses, each one jerking like a macabre string puppet, rotting hands raising themselves into a mocking imitation of equally-mocking applause.
To cast out a faithful worshipper for so little – it truly is a wonder that there is even a single worshipper of her name.As the legion of corpses advanced towards them, it brought with it an unearthly chill, colder than even the freezing air around them. Frost formed across his snow-wet mail shirt as one of them – a former human, cold blue fire spilling from within its hollow eye-sockets to lick at the air around them – leaned down to press a thin finger into his chest.
You already bear my power, Mortals – but nothing is without cost, and I am nothing if not magnanimous. The creature leaned down further, until it was eye-to-eye with Urus, a ghoulish leer splitting the cuts upon its mutilated face further apart. It reached out with a thin hand to raise his head with the freezing tips of its cold fingers. He could feel the flesh shifting grotesquely beneath the parchment skin, the maggots burrowing within the creature’s body sending ripples across the skin and muscle alike.
I demand only that you complete a few simple tasks for me. First, northwards, to Hoodconstructs – you will know what you seek there when you find it.
The bodies began to fall, one by one, whatever supernatural force that had granted them animation retreating to the realm it had come from. The speaking corpse remained upright the longest, its demonic leer remaining even as it crashed face-first into the snow with all the dignity of a puppet with its strings cut.
The crushing, freezing presence vanished.
Urus slumped forward, chest hiking as he sucked in great lungfuls of air. His head felt like a red-hot pike had been driven into it repeatedly and there was a block of ice deep in his gut, blood was pouring out of Ketas’ nose in earnest and her teeth were clenched tight, and Abhaar was wiping bloodied drool from his lips, but they were alive, and as things were, that was all he could bring himself to care about.
“Let’s…” He stalled for a second, before dragging in a long, shuddering breath. “Let’s just get out of this damn grave.”
OOC: There’s quite a few Necromancer books (Disease and Death spheres) in the tower, and I didn’t bother reading the title until afterwards. I guess the title was… appropriate.
Treatyseed, 16th Hematite 754(The handwriting abruptly changes, becoming shakier and barely legible.)
Well, this is a right little cock-up.
Somehow, we’ve managed to read the map the wrong way. We’ve been heading away from Hoodconstructs the entire time, rather than towards it; we went west from Combinedinsight, rather than north. I knew Urus should’ve taken one of the better maps. Or someone who can actually read it the right way around. My ears are still ringing.
As it stands, we’re coming up on some old Dwarven fortress. While I can’t claim to know the Old Tongue all that well, Abhaar does – he claims that this place roughly translates to… ‘Seed-Agreement’. Or Treatyseed, depending on which version you go with.
Either way, he recognised that name. Went off on a long spiel about Walled Dyes, Peasant Kings and recent events and yadda yadda yadda. If it’ll shelter us for the night and let us get our bearings, I couldn’t care less.
The sooner we get that damned thing from Combinedinsight off our backs the better.
Treatyseed was not what any of them had been expecting. Far from the desolate ruin they’d expected based on what little news reached Scrapedbarbs, the old fortress’ trade depot was quite alive: several Dwarves and Humans alike were at work, hauling goods up from the depths of the fort or simply talking to one another. A mere few turned to look at the new arrivals, lumbering in through the open gates in full copper armour, before promptly looking back to their original tasks.
Urus looked over to his allies, all three of them hanging back warily near the main entrance to the fortress. They were strangers here, and not one of them wanted to be the one to start talking.
The choice was promptly taken from them as one of the Dwarven Traders broke off from the depot and started towards them. Something else came with him, something that made Urus tense and shift his hand toward the mace at his side, eyes narrowing to slits.
The Trader quite literally
reeked of death. How the Dwarves and his companions hadn’t smelled it was incomprehensible to him – the stench of old, rotting blood and desiccated flesh hung around his form like a miasma. There was only one thing said to smell like that, and it turned his blood cold even as he spoke.
“
Nightwight!”
At that word, the Dwarf’s entire demeanour changed. His lips pulled back to expose the canines, sharp and long as daggers; his eyes rolled back in his skull until only the whites were visible. When the life-drinker spoke next, it was a guttural snarl more befitting of an animal than a Dwarf.
With that, Snodub charged forward, his body bending to an inhuman angle to avoid Urus’ swinging mace. Ketas’ sword missed in similar fashion, splitting the air inches from the Dwarf’s beard. The squat Vampire scrambled past the two of them, gathering speed as he rushed about the trade depot. Ketas and Urus scrambled after him, armoured legs clattering on the stone, but the Dwarf’s head start and sheer agility were easily outmatching them; they could see it in the nasty smirk on his face as he looked back for a moment, before altering course towards the open gate of the fortress.
The tell-tale gleam of bronze was the only warning Snodub got.
Abhaar, skulking in the shadows of the trade depot’s ancillary warehouse, half-ran, half-leapt forth into the Vampire’s path. His axe was already swinging towards the Dwarf’s ankle; blood flew as it bit deep.
Abhaar really got some distance on that foot.
The Dwarf hit the ground sprawling, bouncing forward on his face and elbows for several steps. The faintly comical scene was heightened as the severed foot flew several meters, smacking into the face of another Dwarf scrambling away from the mayhem. Their yelp of shock and horror joined Snodub’s cries and the sound of battle, the din filling the entrance of Treatyseed for several long minutes.
Snodub Bosatosno squirmed out of the two’s blood-slicked grip, bleeding from dozens of deep wounds. His eyes, glaring out through the ruined rags of his face, were ablaze with fire-bright madness and fury; his jaw had been broken in half, leaving him barely able to speak beyond a wet, gurgling snarl. His once-neat clothes were now tattered and bloody, torn in numerous places to expose pallid flesh and rich, red blood beneath.
Blood pumping harder than ever, Urus rushed toward the downed Dwarf to deliver the killing blow, mace raised high and a war-cry tearing from his throat. He could see the look in the beast’s eyes as he closed the distance: hatred, fear, desperation – and then a sudden, wicked joy.
With inhuman speed, the Vampire half-leapt, half-threw himself from the ground and into Urus’ chest, forcing him to the ground as his weight impacted the Human’s chest. Snodub’s head butted hard against that of the downed adventurer, stunning him long enough for the Vampire to wrap a cold hand around his throat. Straining with the effort of moving his wrecked arm, the Dwarf managed to half-twist, half-push Urus’s open mouth into the veritable pool of blood beneath them.
Blood flooded down Urus’ throat, rich and coppery. Monstrous strength suffused his limbs, accompanied by a deep, unnatural hunger. Urus slammed his mace against the Vampire’s head, breaking the beast’s hold on his body and sending it sprawling to the ground face-first. Before he could press his attack, Ketas and Abhaar were upon the Vampire again, bringing down their sword and axe on every inch of exposed flesh they could reach.
Blood pooled under the dying old monster as the three adventurers tore it apart, inch by inch by bloody inch. Still the creature tried to fight, though its struggles faded with the blood seeping from its wounds. Finally, Ketas landed the death-blow, driving her massive sword through its throat with enough force to crack the stone beneath – there was a final, sickly spasm, before Snodub’s head fell free from the body entirely.
17th Hematite 754Damn that blood-drinking animal!
The curse he carried in his blood has passed to me. An unnatural craving for blood haunts me at all hours, swelling and shrinking like the tides of the Sea of Blades, stinging like a hook digging deep beneath my skin; my canines have grown as long and sharp as daggers, forcing me to speak as little as possible lest people see the change wrought upon me.
For now, I must find a way to slake this thirst, before it drives me mad. If it comes to it, I will drink the blood of the slain and animals to keep this filthy craving at bay; I already have some of that creature’s blood in sealed containers, but I fear drinking it will only make this thirst even worse.
I must be discrete. Ketas and Abhaar do not seem to know – and must not know – what has happened to me.
The Necromancer, at least, may help as much as harm with their dark arts, while the Nightwight cannot claim even that flimsy defence.
OOC: I will admit, I intended to take out Imimi Dankhonours (Peregrine Falcon Man Vampire, 1623+ unsolved murders, but no skills above ‘skilled’ tier), but Glloyd’s latest adventurer seems to have dealt with him. Instead, I ended up Benny Hill-ing the other guy around the trade depot, and he almost got away until Abhaar got his ankle and sent his foot across the trade depot. The ‘fight’ amounted to ‘I had my companions grapple him then scratch him till he died’, but that isn’t exactly much of a story.
Treatyseed’s quite the melting pot, from what I’ve seen so far – most of the populace are Human, Goblin, or Dwarven nobles, mainly barons and baronesses of various other sites. There were also corpses everywhere (including Necromancer Goden Charmkey the Gates of Mightiness, who was actually female and married to the guy I just killed), a couple rando goblins getting brutalised in a corner, and someone had somehow gotten stuck in webs in one of the most heavily trafficked parts of the fortress.
I’ve got what I was looking for (though finding enough barrels and backpacks for the task was a pain), but I don’t think I’ll be ending my run just yet. Maybe I’ll drop off the blood at the Museum, then carry on running around (since I’m not that good at fort mode).
And to end this long, rambling post-script of mine: with the death of Snodub Bosatosno (A.K.A.: Asmel Minepass) and the gathering of 489 Liquid-Urists of his blood, NPC Vampires are currently extinct in Orid Xem. Time will tell if this remains the case.
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Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 409614 times)