Dark Jack

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, outside Bor Manor, Borstown

Down the road about 150 meters to the southwest of the Fadewatcher station, almost immediately across the street from the Borstown winery, stood the manor house of the barony, the home of Baroness Vela Bor and, according to some stories, the very place where the Nemhimian Prooga had been felled 89 years ago.
The very plot of land the manor was built on stood out in stark contrast to its surroundings, as it was the only soil in the area that did not show any signs of crops being grown there or animals grazing. Surrounded by a 220 cm tall wrought iron fence – plain to look at despite the expensive material, but heavy and durable – the plot appeared to be one big lawn or garden. The width of the property took up some 86 meters of the street and went some 62 meters deep, most of which seemed to be occupied by nothing but grass and weeds that ranged in height from knee- to waist-level. Only at the front of the property, the part facing the street, was the grass cut short and suggested a half-hearted attempt at some level of ornamental presentation, with a nicely pruned drakehorn tree bursting with ripe fruits to the right of the building and what appeared to be a cluster of rose-bushes growing right up against the fence with blooms ranging from deep red to bright pink. Though the front garden to the left of the building was mostly just grass, a keen observer might have noticed a fairy ring of white orb-like mushrooms on the lawn at about eight meters in diameter. Irah in particular would be quite likely to recognize it as a ring of horse mushrooms, which were edible and generally regarded as tasty, but sadly not particularly useful in alchemy.
At the very front of the property was a 12 meter deep and 10 meters wide protrusion from the main plot, where the fence took a 90 degree turn toward the street until it was right by it to then turn again and encircle the area. In the middle of the protrusion facing the fence was broken up by a six meters wide double gate of white-painted wood, which were currently opened inward, toward the manor. The gate lead to a broad path cobbled with some kind of flat, circular white stones that lead straight to the front door of the structure itself, on either side of which, directly against the wall itself, were two neat and strikingly beautiful and well-tended flower gardens, the plants in which looked far healthier and more vibrant than anything else on the property and which exploded into a multitude of blossoms in all manner of shapes and colors.
The building itself took up less than half of the plot it was built on, as though it was 70 meters wide it was only about 20 meters deep, with an eight meters long and six meters wide protrusion at the front that seemed to mimic that of the fence and meet the path from the gate with. While this protrusion was only one story tall, most of the main building stood two stories tall.
The architecture was a curious mix of traditional Rodorian and penin design, with very sharp, straight angles everywhere and a generally rather boxy shape and thick, sturdy brick and mortar walls that were left plain, but with exterior detailing in dark wood on the corners and over otherwise bare diagonals that made the surfaces more interesting. The south-side of the manor – the one facng the street and thus the one visible to everyone – also had seven square two meter cross-windows, with four on the ground floor – two on the wall to the left of the entrance and another two at the center, with one window on either side of the protruding entrance – and three on the second floor, again with two on the left, slightly offset from the pair almost directly below them, and one that sat directly above the entrance. All parts of the structure had gable roof with ceramic tiles that looked like they had once been clay-colored, but were stained with growths of dark-green moss and light-green algae.
There was no movement to be seen inside the windows, however; the entire structure was built on a tall foundation, so most of what one could see through them from outside was the ceiling.

Directly inside the gate and to the left were two four meter tall wooden post connected with a metal bar between them at the very top, from which hung the large brass alarm bell that was just now starting to slow its undulating movements and utter its final hesitant tolls before falling silent once more. The bell had been operated with the help of a rope hanging from it, which was currently being held by a muscular human man in a suit of brown brigandine armor, a shortsword at his hip and a crossbow leaned against the bell-post. He looked like he might be in his mid-thirties, clean-shaven and with short brown hair, intense eyes and looking notably unsettled. This fellow, one might notice, seemed to be leaning left, sparing his right leg and had a fresh-looking cut across his left cheek.
A couple of meters from the post and up the path toward the house was a whole little cluster of people. Two of them were humans: a well-groomed gentleman in nice, clean but otherwise unremarkable clothes with a thin mustache and short salt-and-pepper hair that looked like he might be in his late thirties; and a somewhat rotund woman that was also dressed cleanly and nicely, though she wore a mildly stained apron over her dress, with strawberry blonde in a tight braid that reached halfway down her back, who also looked to be in her late thirties.
The last person standing in front of the manor, being fussed over incessantly by the two human servants, was very noticeably not human. Less than a meter tall with a slim and athletic build, this elderly penin woman was dressed in a pair of tight-fitting linen trousers on her short, thin legs, a pair of nice buckled shoes and a black vest over a light-gray blouse. Her exoskeleton had a pale yellowish color and looked slightly uneven here and there, and her large, round eyes were strikingly neon-green in color. She also had a shortsword at her hip, albeit one that looked much more ornamental than that of the bell-ringer, and she was leaning her elbow in the stock of a remarkably well-crafted crossbow with the bow itself obviously being made from metal and some kind of winching mechanism for resetting the bowstring to the lock. The crossbow was nearly as long as the penin was tall.

Outside the gate all the would-be adventurers found themselves gathering in place of the incapacitated Fadewatchers. Jaelnec and Freagon both halted their horses and were just beginning to dismount when Yanin demanded that they identify themselves, only for Lhirin to immediately declare them as allies.
Planting both of his metal-clad feet heavily on the dirt road as he disembarked Xilos, Freagon turned to Yanin with his scarred and expressionless face as inscrutable as always aside from a slight momentary narrowing of his single eye. Beside him, just a couple of meters away, Jaelnec swung himself nimbly from Sabicia, reflexively holding on to his hat, while looking nervously from Freagon to Yanin.
Not that anyone could ever be entirely certain where, exactly, a nightwalker was looking; their uniform black eyes meant that the direction they were facing was the only indication one had of such. Even so there could be little doubt than Freagon's intense attention was solely on Yanin.
There was a slight, ambiguous twitch in the right corner of his mouth as he inhaled one last time through his cigarette before spitting it out into the street.
“Freagon, of the Knights of the Will,” he grumbled while reaching for the gauntlets and helmet he had hanging off the side of his horse's saddle. “The boy is my page. We're here to help.”

Over by the gate, Lhirin was addressing the armored bell-ringer with almost the exact same assurance as Freagon had had.
“Inside,” the man replied, moving toward the ascended deigan with an obvious limp. “Piece of shit guest doing some crazy magic, and –”
“Get off me! I told ye, I'm bûhlen fine!” the penin woman suddenly exclaimed, shrugging off her human servants, slunging her crossbow over her shoulder and striding as quickly toward the gate as her little penin legs allowed. Despite her age she seemed quite fit and healthy as she let her sharp, discerning gaze sweep over the highly unusual, motley crowd that had gathered outside her home.
Her servants started to follow, only to change their minds when their mistress shot them a quick glance, a soft smile and gently shook her head no.
Then the penin turned her attention back to Lhirin, who was the one that had spoken up first, and spoke quickly and clearly: “I still have guests inside. There are wraiths on the loose, don't know how many. 50 rodlin to each of ye if ye help.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec and Freagon, entering Borstown from the northeast

A soft smile graced Jaelnec's lips as he rode down the road with his eyes closed. He listened to the steady sound of the hooves of Sabicia and Xilos on the dirt road as they traveled at a trot, the rhythm of the sound corresponding to the rhythm of his own movements in the saddle to create an almost hypnotic experience. He could hear the chain-links of his own hauberk rattling faintly with each of Sabicia's strides, could feel the scabbard of his sword tapping him gently on his left thigh with each sway. Nearby, somewhere to his right, he could hear the cheerful song of a robin and further away, behind him and to the left, he heard the slow, repeating tone of the call of a blackbird, all of it accompanied by the gentle sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze.
He felt the warm sun on his hands and arms through his leather gauntlets and shirt-sleeves, with the pleasant heat only occasionally fading to the chill of an early autumn wind. He could smell the scents of the forest gradually, very slowly intermingling with the smells of a town, just as the sounds of nature began to be accompanied with the sounds of hatchets on wood and voices in the distance. The sound of laughing children.

There was a brief flash through Jaelnec's mind at that sound: an image before his mind's eye of a very young, blond girl's smiling face, which prompted him to immediately open his eyes as he felt a cruel fist close painfully around his heart. For just a split-second he was convinced he could smell smoke and see the faint reflection of a bloodstained toy rabbit, only for the vague memory to fade and give way to the much more vivid present. He shuddered.
Though for just an instant he had been reminded of how he had been back then, Jaelnec immediately felt at home in his body as it was now: slender, yet muscular, strong and sturdy yet agile. He clutched the reins in hands to feel it better through his gauntlets; he inhaled deeply to feel the weight of the chainmail rest comfortingly on his chest through his gambeson; he clenched his thighs and calves and remembered the countless hours of training he had had to go through to become like this. Part of him almost wanted to reach for the hilt at his left hip and draw his bastard sword, just to remind him of the feeling of its weight in his hand and to feel the memory of his muscles bleed into his mind, assuring him that using it had become natural to him. He resisted the impulse, in equal parts because he was afraid that he might scare the townspeople and because he knew that reaching for his sword without reason would likely prompt a harsh scolding.
Instead he reached up and adjusted the wide brim of his hat, feeling the coarse fabric shift against the helmet he wore beneath it. The shade cast by the brim helped, even as the canopy of the forest began to give way and let more and more of the bright sunshine through, casting the world in radiant light. While Jaelnec greatly enjoyed the warmth of days like this, such particularly sunny weather was also troublesome in that the world become so bright that it became blurry to his eyes, shapes and colors bleeding into each other as his nocturnal, uniform jet-black eyes tried their best to adapt. On a day this bright, even just the sunlight reflected off grass and the light-gray dirt and brown dirt was enough to cause him discomfort bordering on pain.
He reflexively moved a hand up to brush back a few stray strands of honey-blond hair that had escaped his shoulder-length ponytail, only to feel his gauntlet-clad fingertips brush over the scar where it trailed across his right cheek, from his cheekbone, across his lips and toward his chin. Again he shuddered, huddling into his linen cloak as this mark immediately served its purpose of reminding him the consequence of defiance.
Sabicia snorted nervously, the mare he was riding seemingly sensing his discomfort, and Jaelnec quickly leaned down to pat her neck and assure her that everything was okay.

Glancing ahead, Jaelnec could plainly see his master, Freagon, riding the gelding Xilos just several meters away. The old man – a nightwalker like Jaelnec himself – sat stiff and straight in his saddle, facing straight ahead. His broad shoulders were outlined by his own cloak, though the cloak was down, allowing Jaelnec to see the knight's messy rat's nest of salt-and-pepper hair.
Without thinking and without really knowing why, Jaelnec's gaze was drawn to Freagon's left hip and thigh, where his scabbard was gently swaying back and forth. He stared at it, ordinary though it seemed at the moment, and felt a strange wistfulness come over him. Uninvited thoughts rose from the depths of his mind of how much he wanted to try to hold that sword himself, to feel it in his grasp, to cut the air with it. Roct: the sword of a true Knight of the Will.
It took a moment for Jaelnec to realize that his master had turned in the saddle, only for the young nightwalker to raise his gaze and meet that of his older kinsman. He let his eyes travel up from the scabbard, up where he could see the hem of Freagon's black coat within the cloak, past the almost blindingly brilliant shimmer of his gold-and-purple lutrium scale armor, to his face. The old man's skin was a mess of scars of all kinds, from burns and cuts and things Jaelnec dared not even imagine, which meant that the knight was mostly incapable of changing his expression, but rather seemed to wear a neutral, indifferent mien at all times. Even so his jet-black left eye – the right being hidden behind a large leather eyepatch – staring at him somehow managed to convey everything that his face could not: intense attention, impatience and expectation.

Jaelnec immediately jolted up straight in his saddle and started looking around frantically, trying his best to spot what it was that his master wanted him to notice, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary. They were still on the road on their way into Borstown, still a little ways uphill from the township itself with a nice view of the entire settlement. It easy to spot several buildings that were obviously bigger and than the others, namely what Jaelnec suspected was the inn, the local Fadewatcher station, what seemed like a winery and what had to be the manor house of the barony. There were people in the street, in the fields and a few along the treeline, but he did not see anything that seemed immediately obvious as something deserving of attention.
After a few seconds of this Freagon's eye narrowed slightly in disapproval, and the glow of the cigarette between his lips brightened as he inhaled deeply, then exhaled a large cloud of foul-smelling smoke.
“People are avoiding walking near those two buildings,” he said, his voice deep and a little hoarse, and he pointed toward the town, indicating two places near the central crossroad: one that looked like a regular house at a distance, a little southeast of the crossroad, the other that was the Fadewatcher barracks. “Most people are taking detours just to not get too close, and those who go there seem to be paying attention to those places specifically.”
Jaelnec took a deep breath to calm himself back down, anxious to feel his master's sharp glare on him like this, then asked: “What does that mean?” His voice was not as deep as his master's, but was young, healthy and strong.
“Not sure,” the knight shrugged, turning his attention once more from his page to the town ahead. “Could be lots of reasons, but most likely something happened. Recently. There's fresh fear in the air.”
Reflexively looking around again as if expecting to see the source of this fear spontaneously materialize out of the undergrowth, Jaelnec frowned. “Should we investigate?”
“We'll ride past on our way to the manor. If something important is going on we'll be able to tell from that. Otherwise we're here to see Bor.”
A worrying thought occurred to Jaelnec: “What if someone's hurt?”
He instantly knew that this was not an acceptable comment when Freagon turned in his saddle once more, fixing his dark stare on him with an intensity that made Jaelnec want to physically shrink so that he could somehow hide. “Have I missed something, boy? Did you become a healer while I wasn't looking?”
Jaelnec averted his gaze and spoke with a trembling voice: “No, Sir...”
“Really? You didn't suddenly discover that you were a healing elementalist, or learn an arcane spell of healing, or gain favored powers? Maybe you discovered a recipe for healing balms that you're secretly carrying with you? Or you've been researching surgery and medicine instead of sleeping?”
“No, Sir,” Jaelnec said, feeling a familiar sense of dread come over him. Though Freagon did not raise his voice and his expression remained the same, there was a coldness to his tone and his stare that never failed to make the twenty-five-year-old man feel like a ten-year-old child being lectured all over again.
“Neither am I. I am a Knight of the Will, and you are my page. My skills are better used elsewhere, and you follow me wherever I go. Or do you disagree?”
Jaelnec swallowed a lump in his throat. His master's last sentence was phrased as a question, but spoken as a challenge: Do you dare to disagree? “N-no, Sir.”
“Don't stutter, boy.” Freagon turned back toward the approaching town. “If we are needed we will act, but someone needing help doesn't mean they need our help. Now get your head out of your ass and pay attention.”
“Yes, Sir.”

Jaelnec licked his lips and started absorbing the world around him through the lens of a knight-in-training rather than a person, pushing back the appreciation he felt for this world that he was a part of to follow his master's wishes. He ignored fond thoughts of how fifteen years ago, before he became his mater's page, he had almost never felt the sun on his skin and mostly experienced the sunlit world through closed doors and curtains. He discarded the past, both the time spent with Freagon and the time before then, and focused on the present. Felt the world crystallize before his senses, not as a beautiful place full of life and wonder, but as a dark one fraught with danger and peril.
A world that needed his sword. A world that he was being trained to protect.

His gaze was drawn to the manor house of the town as he sensed movement there. Several people seemed to stumble hurriedly out of the front of the building, one of which looked notably smaller than the rest. One of them went to the front gate of the fence surrounding the small plot of land, and though it was impossible for Jaelnec to tell details from this far away and in daylight, it soon became obvious what was happening as the sound of an alarm-bell started chiming from down there.
“Go,” was all Freagon said, as both of them urged their horses to accelerate to a gallop, rushing through town with their cloaks fluttering behind them.
They rode for Bor Manor.

Yanin, Madara and Irah, main room inside Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Upon hearing Yanin's rank within the Fadewatchers, the other man – whose tabard marked him as a simple watchman, the lowest rank within the organization – performed a reflexive salute. His younger fellow, who was also a watchman, glanced up at hearing the information but did not move, focusing instead on holding the lantern steady for Madara.
“None, sir,” the Watcher Yanin had addressed answered his questions. “They didn't say anything and didn't wear anything we could identify them from. They came from the northeast and left that way again, too. They didn't seem to be interested in anything else, they just went straight for our healer. They spoke with him first, then he closed his door in their faces, and that's when things got ugly. There were...” He stopped to think for a second before continuing: “There were twenty-two of them, though six of them are piled up in the basement now.”
He heaved a deep sigh. “I'm sorry I can't tell you more, sir. When the bandits ran it was just me, Cavin and a two of the baroness' guys standing, and we decided it would probably be more useful to try to save the wounded than pursuing the enemy into a losing battle. One of the baroness' guys did leave to try to track them, but I haven't heard anything about that since.”

At that point all of them were interrupted in what they were doing by the loud, sudden sound of an alarm-bell chiming relatively close by, and all of the local Fadewatchers that were capable of it – even the wounded ones – froze in place, eyes wide and desperate.
“The baroness!” the one that had been speaking said breathlessly, clearly terrified. “The baroness is calling for help! Please, if she's using that bell it's an emergency! Go! We'll handle things here, but we can't lose the baroness!”

Jordan and Lhirin, outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

As Lhirin was leaving and Jordan still contemplating what to do about the situation, the calm and quiet of the day was suddenly shattered by the chime of an alarm-bell from just down the street, from Bor Manor. Within a handful of seconds the sound of the bell would be accompanied by the sound of galloping hooves, as two horsemen came rushing down the street from the northeast toward the manor: both wearing armor, and both with swords at their side.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Yanin, basement inside Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Looking over the dead presumed attackers, Yanin would find that most of them did not seem to carry much on them besides a scabbard for a missing sword, an empty quiver or a sheathed dagger on their hip or calf. Two of the six dead did each have a small pouch tied to their belts. Upon checking their contents, he would find that one contained four rodlin and the other seven rodlin.

Unfortunately it did not appear that any of them had any other clues on them. In fact, with how little they had on them, it seemed very likely that they did not bring everything they had to Borstown and likely had somewhere else that they left the rest of their things.

Jordan, outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

The girl nodded her head vigorously in affirmative. “Most of the time he gives people drinks that taste bad but makes them heal really fast, but sometimes he does magic, too!”
The older boy nodded his head in agreement, though less enthusiastically so. “Bren was our healer. He knew some alchemy and could do arcane healing, too.”

Madara, main room inside Fadewatcher station, Borstown

The Fadewatchers – both the seemingly intact one and the wounded ones – made no attempt to stop Madara and immediately cooperated with her without question. It was clear that these were desperate people, and that the two who seemed mostly healthy still had tried their best, but were immensely relieved to hand off the responsibility of treating the wounded to someone better suited to the task than themselves.

The slashed shoulder, upon closer examination, had received a deep cut across the side and front of the shoulder almost exactly at the joint. The bleeding seemed to be under control and his life out of danger, but she would know enough that without expert treatment – and ideally magical healing – this man might never regain the full use of his arm.

Irah, inside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

The Fadewatcher Irah examined barely even seemed to register her presence, his eyes staring off into space, unfocused and erratic. He babbled quietly to himself, seemingly delirious but also clearly in intense pain.

Checking the wound beneath the head-bandage, she found that the scalp had indeed been lacerated, though she would recognize that it was the type of injury caused by blunt force trauma rather than a bladed strike. The wound had almost completely stopped bleeding already, however, and it seemed as though the skull itself might be relatively intact. She would recognize that the more serious part of this injury was likely concussive force to the brain.

Healing brain damage through mundane or magical means was tricky under the best of circumstances, Irah knew, and she recognized that this would definitely be the kind of injury where divine healing would be a major boon. Knowing the process required for this healing to occur, Irah would place a hand so that there was skin-to-skin contact with the patient, upon which she felt the angel currently residing inside her shift its attention toward the Fadewatcher.
“Poor thing,” Kinder's gentle voice said compassionately in Irah's head. “Though my Lady can't answer your prayers, I will do my best in her stead. Receive Reina's mercy.”
Irah would feel the familiar sense of the divine spirit inhabiting her body flare up and suddenly get even hotter than it had been before, painfully so, as divine energy radiated from the angel, through Irah's body and into the wounded man. A faint white light could be seen where Irah and the Fadewatcher's skin touched, though no other immediate signs of magical healing could be seen: the head-wound did not close in the least, nor did any of his other minor injuries. Kinder knew to focus on what mattered and minimize the amount of divine taint she exposed both the patient and Irah to.

After a couple of seconds the Fadewatcher suddenly started blinking his eyes rapidly as he stopped babbling, suddenly seemed to shake and convulse as if having a fit, only for him to calm back down again as abruptly as it had started but a second later. He inhaled deeply and opened his eyes, only to swiftly find Irah's gaze and meet it with his own.
“M'lady,” he muttered through trembling lips, a desperate smile curving his lips as tears started to well in his eyes. “Thank you.”
As Irah removed her hand, the skin she had touched would be reddened and irritated, but otherwise healthy. She would know that this meant she had already exposed this man to an amount of divine taint that bordered on the unhealthy, but that in doing so she had likely mended what would have been permanent damage.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jordan, outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

“I dunno if they took anything,” the boy mused, sniffing loudly again and wiping his nose in his sleeve. “But I heard old Lady Bor's guys tried to help. They might know something.”
“Bren's nice,” the girl reiterated shyly to the question. “He always smiles and everyone likes him. One time Dad broke his arm and Mom and Dad got really sad because Dad couldn't work right and they didn't have money, but Bren fixed Dad's arm anyway. Then Mom baked him a pie, and Bren let me have a piece.” She smiled.

Yanin, basement inside Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Entering the basement, Yanin would be faced with the usual storage facilities these kinds of barracks had attached to them, which were usually basements like this or separate shacks to the main building. All manner of items, from equipment to food, oil and miscellaneous supplies were arranged either on wooden shelves, in crates or in barrels that lined the walls of the small subterranean room.
What was different about this basement compared to those of other Fadewatcher stations was that another four figures were laid out on the ground side-by-side, hands folded over their chests. All four of them lay perfectly still, and it was likely not difficult to deduce that they were all dead. Three of the four were in Fadewatcher uniforms, while the last – a man in his forties that looked quite well-groomed compared to the rest, at least for a corpse – wore no identifying heraldry and brigandine rather than the coat of plates assigned to rural Fadewatchers.

Just as unusually and immediately obvious was a pile to the left of the stairs of what seemed to be another six armored bodies that had seemingly just been dumped off the side of the stair. None of them seemed to have any heraldry on them either, and there was no discernible pattern in what armor they were wearing.

Madara, main room inside Fadewatcher station, Borstown

The other four seemed much better off than the two who had expired. They were all injured in somewhat debilitating ways: one had a head-wound and likely a severe concussion; one appeared to have likely sustained tendon damage from a slash across his right shoulder; one had lost four fingers on his right hand, leaving only the thumb, and seemed to have a broken jaw; one had a nasty gash across his left calf; and the last seemed to have a compound fracture in his right arm.

While serious, none of it appeared to be immediately lethal, at least.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jordan, outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Several of the children shook their heads no when Jordan asked about the bandits, and the oldest boy said: “It was in the night. We di'n't see anything. No one's telling us anything.”
A moment later when he mentioned bringing more supplies, the boy spoke up once more: “I think they already took what they could from Bren's house, and people come with more from time to time. It's been hours.”
Finally, when Jordan mentioned finding their healer, another child – a girl that looked about nine years old – spoke with a halting, nervous voice: “I w-... I want Bren back. Bren is... Bren's nice.”

Yanin and Madara, inside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

The young Fadewatcher seemed to relax a little when Yanin declared himself to not be an enemy, though he still looked nervous and exhausted. “Y-yes,” he replied when queried about whether there were anyone else in the building, “he's –”
At that time a second young man, looking only a little older than the first, also in Fadewatcher gear and decorated with his very own faintly blood-speckled bandage on his left upper arm, came trudging up the stairs from the basement with a bundle of cloth, likely bed-sheets, under one arm and carrying a basket with several brown jugs in the other. He looked a little calmer than his younger colleague, but also a little paler and just as sweaty.

The newcomer seemed surprised to see Yanin, and even more so to see Madara abruptly push through and announcing her intent to help. Despite how evidently unnerved he was, however, he quickly set down the things he was carrying – what was intended as improvised bandage-materials and four jugs of ale – and wordlessly went about following Madara's instructions, tending the fire and preparing a pot of water for boiling.
The younger man stood clumsily from his kneeling position, his body trembling, grabbed the lantern he had had sitting beside him and bringing it to provide what light it could for the half-palanter.

As she examined them, it quickly turned out that the two quiet ones were still for a reason: neither of them was breathing and there was no heartbeat. Even at a glance, Madara's practiced eye would likely recognize that, among several less severe wounds, one had bled out from a cut across the inner thigh and likely had a severed femoral artery, and the other seemed to have expired from a stab-wound in the abdomen.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Irah and Lhirin, Outside Healer's House, Borstown

With both of the deigan travelers examining the scene, each perceptive and intelligent in their own way, it was not too difficult to deduce a general state of affairs and series of events.
Lhirin's casting of elucidate revealed that the only magical energy glowing in the area was what he was spending on the spell itself. Whatever had happened here, it did not appear that magic had been involved.

Looking at everything else, a vague outline of the situation began to crystallize for the two of them:
The door to the healer's house had been beaten in from the outside, and the pattern of cracks in the wood seemed to suggest that it had been smashed in by multiple impacts side by side. It was not localized enough to suggest the use of an actual battering ram, nor did the door seem sturdy enough to call for such measures. It rather seemed as though someone, perhaps multiple someones, had destroyed it just by repeatedly throwing their body-weight against it.
Outside the house the tracks were chaotic, overlapped and made it difficult to follow any one set of specific tracks. It was clear that there had been at least a dozen people here in fervent motion, boots digging up ground and kicking up bits of grass and soil.
Blood was similarly going this way and that in the area, having been splattered and sprayed over the ground in a way that clearly suggested that fighting had happened here, with numerous injuries. There were also four much more localized puddles of blood in places where the grass had been flattened top-down rather than in any particular direction, in ways that seemed to draw a contour that could be a close approximation of a humanoid figure.
Combined with the other signs of a skirmish having taken place, it would not be a stretch to deduce that the broken wooden handle on the ground was either from a spear or another polearm that had snapped during the fighting, though it appeared the weaponized end of it had been carried away.
Two distinct trails seemed to leave the scene: one that seemed to have fewer drips of blood along it and thus be less obvious that lead around the right side of the healer's house and seemingly toward the forest to the northeast; and one that was much more obvious owing to the smears of blood along the ground starting at the puddles, suggesting that bodies had been dragged along that path. This trail headed up the road to the northwest, toward the crossroad.

Pushing aside the broken door hanging off its hinge, Irah would see that the inside the house was remarkably mostly intact. A small table and a chair seemed to have been knocked over near the door, but there was no blood inside the house. Otherwise the house was about what one might expect from the home of a healer and pharmacist: a pleasant, if slightly cramped, space in the front to live and receive patients, and a combined workshop and storage in the back, with cupboards and cabinets lining the walls and a table with quite a kind of assembled alchemical equipment that would be quite familiar to Irah.
All of the cabinets and cupboards were open, however, and many of them seemed to be empty. Otherwise the interior of the house seemed untouched.

Yanin and Jordan, outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

Yanin listening at the door would not hear much in terms of voices other than the sounds of pain and injury he had already identified at first. After a couple of seconds, however, he might have been able to hear the sound of quickened footfalls on a wooden floor for just several seconds, followed by a male voice, muffled by the door, seemingly speaking in a soothing, if panicked, manner.

The children being addressed by Jordan – five human children, seemingly with ages ranging from around eight to thirteen – stared at him with nervous fascination, though none of them seemed particularly inclined to follow his instructions to leave.
When Jordan mentioned bringing a healer, the presumably oldest child – a thirteen year old boy – sniffed loudly before bluntly stating: “The bandits took our healer. There's no one to get.”

Yanin yanked the door open and revealed the interior of the station. The interior itself was somewhat familiar to him, standard as it was for this type of minor Fadewatcher station: the end furthest toward him was occupied by tables, chairs and a fireplace that was faintly smoldering, but practically burnt out. On the right side of the room there was also a stairway going down to a basement. Past this living area were the rows of beds lined along each wall.
Blood dotted the floor in here in varying degrees, most of it in relatively sparse drips, others in more worrying, larger and more frequent splotches, and others yet that seemed smeared from a body being dragged. The smears seemed to mostly go from the door Yanin had just opened and down the stairs.
Six of the fourteen beds arrayed in the other end of the barrack were occupied by people, many of which were still in partial armor with only obstructing pieces having been removed, with bandages covering various wounds. Some bandages looked fairly clean still, others with dots of blood. A few bandages looked as though they had been soaked through entirely. While four of the six were making noise and gently writhing in place, the last two – the ones with the most obviously drenched bandages and mattresses – lay completely still.
A seventh figure, a young man that looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, was on his feet, drenched in sweat and in the middle of changing a bandage of one of the wounded. He was still in his almost gear, including the tabard with the Fadewatcher-insignia on it, though he had discarded his helmet and gauntlets for the moment.
The intact-seeming Fadewatcher jolted upright when the door was opened and stared at Yanin with eyes wide in panic, looking as though he might burst into tears at any moment. “Please, no more!”

From Downfall ReRisen

Gramps merely nodded his in understanding as Enn spoke, first when he explained that he was not the first to attempt to desert the Anderekians, then when he stressed the importance of keeping his equipment, and finally, with a deep sigh and a face that furrowed deeper with lines of worry, when he reported on the usage of AI.
Kay just looked from one to the other with wide-eyed wonder, at once smiling excitedly to actually be part of something this new and important and slightly unnerved about what it all meant. She was also still quite concerned about what was going to happen to Eighfour and confused as to why Gramps was being so calm about them being discovered and Enn's being here when it should mean impending annihilation. Was it just a facade? Was he just putting on a brave face to comfort everyone else while he knew the countdown for Eighfour disappearing in a mushroom cloud had begun? Was he unmoved by death approaching? Or did he know something she did not? Obviously things were already progressing in ways Kay had never expected with what seemed to be preparations for an evacuation underway.

“It's as I thought, then,” Gramps mumbled, his voice barely audible as his gaze shifted to Kay for a second – looking, it seemed, specifically at the box-like interface embedded in her skull – before moving to the front of the cupboard, turning his back to his guests, opening it and starting to rummage through its contents. “The drone was too big to be a bug, too small to be a manned vehicle, and it can't have been remote-controlled during the sunstorm. So it's probably the thing to the west.”
He nonchalantly threw a small wrapped package over his shoulder that landed on the table between where Enn and Kay were seated. The impact seemed to jostle it enough to make the wrapping come partially loose, revealing what appeared to be some very stale-looking and crumbled salted crackers of some kind.
“You're allowed to speak freely, by the way,” he remarked as he turned back around, a dented old metal kettle in his hand. “I'm sure you have lots of questions.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Name: Sir Freagon, AKA Freagon Grimglare, AKA Freagon the Half-Blind, AKA Patch

Species: Nightwalker

Age: He refuses to tell anyone. He looks middle-aged, which would put him at 70-100 years old.

Occupation: Claims to be a Knight of the Will, would make him the last of their order if true.

Sex: Male

Magic: None

Languages: Can speak Rodorian, Fermian, Penin and some Tarahn. Can write and read Rodorian and Penin.

Affinity: Earth

Strength of soul: Unknown

Currency: 16 rodlin

Appearance
Height: 194 cm

Weight: 95 kg

Hair: Black with dirty-gray streaks, tangled and unevenly cut with shears to 5-15 cm in length.

Eyes: Wears a large leather eyepatch over his right eye. Left eye is jet black, as is typical for nightwalkers.

Skin: Slightly tanned but covered almost entirely in scar-tissue from a wide assortment of burns, cuts and punctures.

Build: Athletic and muscular, slender yet sturdy.

Face: Only small patches of facial hair and only partial eyebrows, since facial scarring has rendered him unable to grow hair in most places. Broad jaw but narrow chin with a faint cleft. Pronounced, somewhat low cheekbones and slightly sunken cheeks. Long, narrow nose with a swell in its tip and several bends and indentations in the bridge of the nose. Thin, pale lips. Narrow, close-set downturned eyes. High brow with a low hairline.

Equipment
The hand-and-a-half sword Roct, typically kept in a scabbard with an interior of steel and an outer lining of leather. The sword has a blade measuring 110 cm, is made of sartal and has an extremely smooth surface, giving it a very bright silvery, almost platinum-like sheen. The blade is double-edged and leaf-shaped; it starts out at a width of 6 cm into a concave curve from the hilt outward where the blade narrows to a width of 4 cm at 30 cm from the hilt, before widening and transitioning into a convex curve that broadens to a width of 9 cm at 60 cm from the hilt, before tapering into a very sharp point. It has an unadorned steel crossguard that is 22 cm wide. The handle is made from two semi-cylinders of wood attached to the tang of the blade with three steel pins, and is wrapped in leather cord and shaped for a secure, comfortable grip. It bears an unassuming steel pommel at the bottom of the hilt in diamond shape.

Roct illustrated

A cuirass of scale armor made of lutrium, giving it a color that shifts from golden to purple depending on the lighting. It has sleeves that go to the elbows and a hem that goes to halfway down the thighs.

A thin gray cotton gambeson.

A pair of wrought iron bracers secured with leather straps.

A pair of steel-plated gauntlets.

A pair of plain steel greaves.

A pair of sturdy but worn dark-brown leather boots.

A set of armored headwear, consisting of a padded coif, a chain coif, a bevor and a bascinet helmet with an unusual double-layered visor. The first visor layer is mostly normal, faintly rounded visor that can be shifted upward to clear the face, has round eye-holes and a number of smaller holes to make it easier to breathe. The second visor layer is like a lid that swings to the side, attached to the right side of the helmet, which covers the right side of the face and obstructs the holes on that side entirely.

A dagger with a blade of sterling silver with a 22 cm blade and a small crossguard.

A long black leather coat, the hem of which goes to halfway down his calves.

Other notable possessions
A mottled-gray gelding with white markings on the face and haunches called Xilos.

A set of saddle and saddlebags.

A worn, faded brown hooded linen cloak.

Three different worn gray linen shirts.

Four pairs of tight-fitting linen trousers in gray, black and two that are brown.

A fire striker.

A bedroll.

A woolen blanket.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Name: Jaelnec

Species: Nightwalker

Age: 25 years old, looks about 18-20 by human standards

Occupation: Page to Sir Freagon of the Knights of the Will

Sex: Male

Magic: None
Languages: Can speak, read and write Rodorian, though he is slow at writing

Affinity: Kinesis

Strength of soul: ~0.4 kWh

Currency: 4 rodlin

Appearance
Height: 185 cm

Weight: 90 kg

Hair: Honey-blond cut to shoulder-length and typically worn in a small ponytail tied with a leather cord. Mostly smooth with a hint of waviness toward the tips.

Eyes: Jet black as is typical for nightwalkers
Skin: Pale on the body and faintly tanned in the face. Somewhat calloused on hands, feet, elbows and knees, but otherwise remarkably clean, smooth and mostly hairless, with what hair he has in his armpits, forearms, shins and stomach being short, delicate and difficult to see due to its coloration closely matching that of his skin.

Build: Athletic and muscular, slender yet sturdy.
Face: He only has faint hints of adolescent, fuzzy facial hair that is nearly impossible to see unless you are looking for it specifically, adorning mostly his upper- and lower-lip, along the bottom of his jaw and around the tip of his chin. Has an average-width but sharply defined jaw, squarish chin. Subtle, tall cheekbones and full, slightly rounded cheeks. His nose is somewhat average in terms of the width of the bridge, but with some flare to the nostrils and a long, pointed tip. Wide mouth with a thin lower lip and an upper lip with a pronounced cupid bow and pale lips. Has a long cut-scar stretching from just below his right cheekbone and to the left, curving downward and crossing his lips toward his chin just below right nostril. Large, round and slightly upturned eyes. High brow with thick eyebrows and a tall, rounded forehead.

Equipment
A fairly standard hand-and-a-half sword of steel with a blade measuring 90 cm in length, with a scuffed surface and faintly chipped edges. The blade is double-edged and straight, measuring 5 cm in width where it meets the hilt and tapering gradually along the entire length to a thin, sharp point. Has a standard hilt with crossguard and rounded pommel.

A hauberk of steel, with several links missing on the chest- and abdominal-areas of the mail, around which the metal is also slightly rusted. It has no sleeves and is split into flaps past the waist, with one flap on the front and one on the back, reaching to just above the knee.

A thin gray cotton gambeson.

A pair of wrought iron bracers secured with leather straps.

A pair of thick leather gauntlets.

A pair of sturdy but worn light-brown leather boots.

A hat that looks almost comically large for him, with a somewhat floppy brim that extends 18 cm from his head and a tall, rounded top. Inside the hat is a cervelliere of steel with a padded interior.

A steel knife with a blade 12 cm blade.

Other notable possessions
A brown mare with white markings on the face, neck and flanks called Sabicia.

A set of saddle and saddlebags.

A worn, faded brown hooded linen cloak.

Two linen shirts, one white and one gray.

Two pairs of linen trousers, one gray and one brown.

A fire striker.

Two wooden practice swords.

A nearly empty pouch of salt.

A brass pot and skillet.

A small bag of eating utensils (forks and spoons).

A bedroll.

A woolen blanket.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

The year is 630 of the Second Mundane Age, the date is the 4th of the month Akleth, in the great kingdom of Rodoria. It is a country founded on the first day of the current age, a country built upon the ruins of the nation once known as Gazzeralesh, and one of the most influential countries in the central northern part of the continent of Kirirak.
The country is divided into ten duchies, each one the domain of a separate duke: Wenal, Nemhim, Seclyr, Zerul, Relimon, Anaxim, Pelgaid, Etlon, Fokon and Gilmah, nestled around the colossal Center Lake. Each duchy has some autonomy and are governed by their duke, but all the dukes answer to the monarch, who reigns as the ruler of all the kingdom.
It is a country stricken with plague; for 11 years the terrible disease known as the Withering has ravaged Rodoria, during which it has killed 2.5 million people, or about one fourth the population. Among the dead was every immediate member of the royal family, leaving the Rodorian throne empty for the first time in over six centuries, and sending the Rodorian duchies into civil war as they each vie to assume the throne. As the armies turn on one another and the enforcers of the law, the Fadewatchers, find themselves divided by the fracturing of the kingdom, lawless ruffians, wicked schemers and terrible monsters thrive as the opposition against them weakens.
It is a dark time in Rodoria, and looks only to get darker, as both the Withering and the civil war continues to sunder its people.

Our story, however, begins much smaller than that. In the eastern part of Rodoria, within the duchy of Nemhim, sits the small barony of Borstown. An unremarkable hamlet to look at with a population of less than a thousand souls, Borstown sits at a crossroad about 80 km southeast of Nemhim City.
Many small homes are lined up neatly along the dirt roads that act as the main thoroughfare of the town, humble and unremarkable places for commoners to live. It is about an hour before noon, and though the year is transitioning into autumn, the day is bright and warm under a mostly cloudless sky. Children are playing in the street, and adults are out working either in the fields and pastures closer to the actual crossroad at the center of town, in the farmlands that dominate the landscape to the south and west of the town, or out working in the forest to the east, either collecting firewood and timber or hunting game. The air is full of shouting, swearing and laughter, carried by a gentle, chill breeze.
Here, since about two months ago, the lady of the hamlet has sent out a call:

My name is Baroness Vela Bor. I’m the last surviving member of my party of adventurers, the Melody of Freedom. I had a lot of adventures, collected a lot of treasures, but now I’m getting old and I have no heirs. I’m too weak to do much myself, but I invite any active and prospective adventurers to pay me a visit at my manor in Borstown, Nemhim, so I can get to know you. At worst, if I don’t think you’re cut out for making Reniam a better place, I offer free food, drinks, a place to stay in my home and advice. At best, if I think you can carry on the adventurous spirit of me and my friends, I have a lot to give you out of all the riches, equipment and spellbooks my party collected over the years.

Since then there has been a continuous trickle of from all over Rodoria to this insignificant little town of people seeking to visit the baroness. Some wish to take advantage on the aging noblewoman, hoping to deceive her and take as much as they can get of her wealth. Others come with a genuine hope to begin adventures of their own, or to obtain aid that will let adventures already in progress continue and succeed. Others yet may be here out of sheer curiosity; to see what this strange baroness is like to make such a strange offer, or to see what kind of people will respond to her call. Even people who came just in the hopes of filling their bellies or being able to brag about having rubbed elbows with a baroness were welcomed in. So far every visitor to her home of Bor Manor, many dozens of them, has been fed and given a warm bed to sleep in for their stay, but have left empty-handed, rejected by the former adventurer.
The trickle has just started to slow, as more and more people start to suspect that Vela Bor may never deem anyone worthy heirs of her and her party.

It is on this day, at this time, we find some of the latest applicants come to meet the baroness.

Along the main road, a short ways southeast from the crossroad, the ascended deigan Lhirinthyl reading in the back of a stagecoach while the true deigan Deo'irah has just arrived by the front door of the local healer's house: a small unassuming cottage with a herbal garden in the back and two apple trees in the front on either side of the short gravel-strewn path leading to the door. A signpost at the corner of this path and the main road declares it as the “Borstown Healer and Pharmacy”.
Even at a glance, however, it is clear that something is awry. What appears to be the broken handle of some long tool or weapon lies discarded in the grass by the path, and both the grass and gravel have spots that are red rather than green or gray. The front door is not only open but broken, the wood splintered near the handle and hangs askew from its upper hinge, seemingly torn off its lower one. The place lays in silence.

Just a short ways up the road from there, at one corner of the crossroad, the human knight Sir Yanin Glade and his equally human squire, Jordan Forthey, are in the process of checking in with the local Fadewatcher station and barracks. It is a elongated, plain wooden building with a small gravel-strewn yard beside it, decorated with several racks of wooden practice weapons, some basic dummies and a line of archery targets. On the end of the building, above the entrance, the wall was decorated with the eye of the Fadewatchers.
The wide double-doors stand closed before the two travelers with no Fadewatchers in sight. However, here too they might notice small splotches of red on the ground and on the handles of the doors. Sounds of panicked voices can faintly be heard from inside, along with the telltale groans and wails that told of wounded.

Just past the crossroad and down the road to northwest, the half-palanter Madara was just leaving the shop of the local carpenter, declared by an ornate, well-carved wooden sign out front as “Prooga Carpentry”. The building itself was probably no bigger than the surrounding residential buildings despite serving not only as the carpenters workshop, but also a store for selling furniture, wooden toys and various little knickknacks, so it had been no surprise when the interior had proven rather cramped.
The inventory of the store had been of middling quality, no worse than one would expect but also unremarkable. The furniture was mostly plain and utilitarian, if sturdy, and the toys had been simple and unimaginative. The most interesting and unique things for sale in there had been various carved wooden goods in the theme of the most significant event in memory of Borstown: memorabilia of the fight between the Melody of Freedom and the Nemhimian Prooga. The shelves had been stocked with carvings of prooga in varying sizes, stances and quality. Some of the best ones had been surprisingly detailed, even getting some of the texture of the fur to express through the wood.
As she left to head for Bor Manor, Madara would soon reach the crossroad and have a direct line of sight to the Fadewatcher station.

Going back to the crossroad and down the southwestern road instead, just a little ways away from the Baroness' home of Bor Manor, the Dark One Nabisisstra Rhe'anyl Qelarn – a rare sight that earned curious stares and surprised whispers everywhere she went – was visiting what the storefront sign declared as the “Borstown Winery”.
It was a fairly large and relatively well-maintained and decorated building, with the front door having scrolling in the style of grape vines, and a large window on either side of the door that gave a good view of a store with shelves full of bottles of red wine. Most of the building was not visible from there, but it was probably a fair guess that those would be the facilities were the wine was actually made. Behind the winery was a large field with rows of grape vines, and crowds of people in the midst of harvesting and tending the vines or carrying baskets of dark-red grapes.

Finally, going back to the crossroad and in the opposite direction, to the northeast along the road through the small forest that cast the land there in sun-speckled shade, the nightwalkers Sir Freagon and his page, Jaelnec, were just getting to where the trees started thinning and the first residences marked where nature gave way to the artificial. Slightly uphill compared to the rest of Borstown, the two of them had a mostly unobstructed view of the entire hamlet.

None of these groups are aware of each other yet, but they will be soon. They are all here to meet Baroness Vela Bor for one reason or another, merely the last in a long line of hopeful visitors. Yet something is different on this day; something strange is afoot in Borstown. Whether these people know it or not, their adventure is about to begin.