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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormrunner" data-source="post: 1895406" data-attributes="member: 13471">96) A hygiene inspection of a (magically-chilled) butcher's meat locker reveals a serious health infraction - dangling among the slaughtered cows, sheep, and pigs is the naked corpse of a female centaur, hung by her heels and gutted like a deer.  The butcher loudly insists he knew nothing of this (and magic shows him truthful).The centaur's face would be pretty, if it wasn't twisted in a rictus of agony and swollen with blood (lividity) from hanging upside-down.  Her coloration is unusual - blood-bay hide (dark brownish-red, shading to black on hooves, hands, and face) and curly mane/tail of a fiery reddish-orange color (natural, not a dye) - perhaps there was a little bit of fire elemental in her bloodline?  In short, in life she would have turned heads and drawn attention even if centaurs weren't a rarity in the city.  Yet no-one remembers having seen her alive, and the gate guards have no record of her entering the city.There is no blood on the floor, and no sign of what happened to the internal organs.  From the trails of dried blood adhering to her flanks and the rope marks on her wrists and pasterns, she was spread-eagled on her back by ropes tied to her arms and legs, then disemboweled alive.  Lividity of the face and upper torso (and lack of lividity elsewhere) shows that she was hung up within an hour of death.  Rigor mortis has come and gone (the locker is not cold enough to freeze her solid), so she has been hanging there at least a day.  Other than the rope burns and the huge gaping slash in her belly there are no recent wounds - it seems clear that disembowelment was the cause of death.  There are a number of faint, long-healed scars scattered across her body - the kind of marks one tends to acquire in an active life of adventuring (or just surviving in the wilderness).Curled around the outer edge of her left breast is a complex black tattoo.  It radiates moderate Evocation magic - and strongly resembles a Least Dragonmark of Fire, but with subtle variations.  Could this be a new type of dragonmark?  Can centaurs even have dragonmarks?  The manner of her death is strongly reminiscent of some kind of ritual sacrifice - but why leave the body where it was certain to be found eventually?</blockquote>

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