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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3653837" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for the posts, guys!* * * * * Chapter 214NIGHT OF THE DEADA feeling of dread hung over the city of Camar.  In addition to the prospects of civil war with Dalemar to the north, there was a constant flow of information—some legitimate, some rumor—about the attacks in the south, and the near-destruction of Highbluff by a monstrosity that became more terrible with each retelling.  Uncertainty bred fear, while fear bred panic, and panic bred violence.  The Ducal Guard had swollen as the Grand Council had drawn in new recruits, mostly older veterans of the legions.  Young men were being impressed into service as well, and a new camp was being constructed a few miles outside of the city, for training of a new Fifth Legion.  The survivors of the Border Legion—mostly that handful that hadn’t been able to keep up with Dar’s march in time to make it to the slaughter at Southwatch—were quietly allotted to other units.Winter had come in full force, and the citizenry of the capital city of the Grand Duchy huddled together for warmth and protection.  Business continued, and lives went on, but the stream of people that typically filled the streets had slowed to a trickle.  Men and women went about their business with dispatch, pulling their fur-lined cloaks tightly around their bodies, and avoiding eye contact with strangers.  The coffee shops and ale houses were crowded with people, but the din that typically filled such places was muted.  Even the brothels and gaming dens were quieter than usual, if no less busy as Camarians sought distraction from weighty matters. Like any city of substantial size, Camar had a considerable indigent population.  There were shelters for the poor scattered through the Docks that were maintained by clean-shaven acolytes of the Shining Father, but despite their efforts there was a large and shifting population of the desperate that drifted beneath the surface of the city’s life, like barnacles clinging to the underside of a ship.  With winter’s coming this human detritus burrowed deeper into the shadows, taking shelter in abandoned buildings, sewer tunnels, and long-forgotten hollows beneath the city.  In this gloom-world a different coda of laws and customs held sway, and few of those living in the civilized realm of urban life a world away had little real understanding of how these people survived and lived. In the deep of one winter night, a small company of such folk held court in a cellar.  The building above, once a two-story tenement, had been consumed by fire almost a decade ago.  The place was a stone’s throw from the notorious neighborhood known as the Pike, and the ruined shell had never been cleared, left to rot in gradual decay.  The cellar was mostly intact.  The fire-scarred beams supporting the ceiling were hardly safe, but those who took shelter here cared little for such niceties.  The five men huddled around a stone hearth, within which a pathetic fire burned fitfully.  One slept, shivering in his layered rags, his body wracked by an occasional cough that spoke of damaged lungs.  One fortunate soul wore a new wool blanket across his shoulders, a gift from the church of the Father.  Several of his brethren eyed it enviously, but its owner had been a man of considerable size before his fall, and he was known to have a furious temper; not someone to trifle with.  A sound, distant and faint, reached them through the tangle of beams and rubble above.  The ears of the men twitched, and several made signs against evil.  It was midnight, the hour of dark things and fell powers that men of all stripes secretly feared.  The man with the blanket took a swig from the bottle in his fist, and passed it to a neighbor.  The man eagerly drank.  “Dark things abroad this night,” he said.  “Bah!” the next said, seizing the bottle.  But his hands shook slightly as he downed a swallow of the swill within the flask.  He wiped his mouth with the back of a grimy fist.  “Cold,” one of the others said.“It’s winter,” the man next to him said. “No,” the other replied.  “I... I feel a chill... like a tread upon my soul.”“Supertituous fool,” the man with the blanket said, recovering the bottle as it made its way back around the circle.  But as he drank, his eyes shot around the edges of their shelter, where the shadows had suddenly grown malevolent around them.  “Something’s not right,” the superstitious man persisted.  “I feel...”“Death,” another interjected. “You are all touched,” the man with the blanket said.  But his darting eyes betrayed his own fear, and after a moment they settled on the recumbent figure of the sleeping man.  After a moment, the others noticed his stare, and they turned to the sleeper as well.  “Rorry’s stopped coughing,” one said.  The four men shared a look.  Theirs was a brotherhood founded upon self-interest, but some lingering shred of humanity still clung to them; a sense of concern for the well-being of another.  One of the men reached out to the motionless figure, shook him.  “Rorry.  Rorry, c’mon now, wake up.”He touched the man’s face, turned back to the others.  “He’s cold.”“Poor bastard,” another said.  The four shared a look; none of them wanted to sleep with a corpse, but neither did they want to stir from the warmth of their shelter.  Finally, the man with the blanket said, “Well, I suppose we should...”He was cut off as Rorry leapt up and seized the man who had tried to rouse him.  The color had drained from his face, leaving it a sickly gray.  His jaws opened wide, revealing yellowed teeth, and a hiss that stank of charnel erupted from deep within his body.  Rorry’s companion screamed and tried to tear free, but was dragged down in the other’s grasp.  His cries broke off abruptly as Rorry sank his teeth into the man’s neck, crushing his windpipe and opening the artery with a spray of uncannily bright blood.  The ghoul looked up from his victim, grinning through a mask of crimson. The other three men cried out and tried to flee. They were not successful. * * * * * Camar was an old city, and it had six graveyards, ranging from the haphazard mounds of Pauper’s Hill to the sculpted marble monuments of the Quiet Meadow.  But beyond that there were hundreds if not thousands of unmarked graves scattered throughout the city, and every canal and trash heap had the potential of holding a collection of remains from some long-forgotten soul.Screams of horror and pain filled the night, as these repositories of death came alive.  Skeletons, burrowing up from old graves, poured out into the streets, seeking the living.  Zombies, their bodies covered with caked dirt, followed slowly in their wake.  Scattered in desperate places throughout the city, the occasional ghoul rose where someone on the brink of death had been pulled over the boundary by the pulse of negative energy that had enveloped the city.  There were even a few wights, here and there, where a particularly corrupt soul had succumbed to the power of unlife.    Pockets of resistance sprang up as houses were fortified, and men and women gathered to fight against the dead.  Fire was a favored weapon, but it was a fickle ally, and within an hour after midnight dozens of blazes poured thick streams of black smoke into the sky over the city.  Scenes of carnage were everywhere, but densest in the Docks, where the city’s poor faced the largest numbers of undead.  Ships overflowing with desperate refugees sailed out into the harbor, leaving behind screaming people at the ends of long piers.  Their cries attracted knots of skeletons and zombies.  Many of the citizens leapt into the river to swim for their lives; many drowned.  The long night dragged slowly onward, as Camar burned, and screamed, and suffered.</blockquote>

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