The Morrow's Eve

[dard 756]

 

 

 

The First Seed and night’s eve of the Grand Harvest, 1636

 

After the first public trial of Devirad, First Judge Alduous’s words rang in the broke down streets of Mordhelm.  Well after the words were spoken, their pressure could be heard weighing down the silence of a decaying city.

 

"What say you in response to this determination?"

 

—

—

Second Judge Sataric of Devirad walked through the unmanned gates.  They had begun to callous in rust for years of unused.  The iron groaned beneath the pressure of the rainy winds.  Water cascaded from rooftops onto the streets; it pooled from the moss-covered fountain from its absence of maintenance.  Vines draped down the mighty walls as for some ironic homage to its architects.  They expected the city to last forever—everyone did.

 

As the rains washed away the newest traces of dredge that built upon it.  The city had come to life, aware of its sins as it tried to cleanse itself.  The gusts of winds howling through the damp alleys and across the cracked pavement was its voice.  It was in pain, agony; there the city stood weeping as its pitiful state was but a shadow of the promise it once held.  What had become of Devirad?  The promised land, the Bastion of the Godless: it is naught but rubble.

 

The Second Judge stood in solemn contemplation as he stared at the empty crossroads.  His eyes peered to the King’s Manor, where he soon made his way to.  Moss had creeped up upon the door, sealing it shut.  Letters, some recent, lie dampened, crumpled, as the rains dissolved the message they once held: words meant for the king that now drained into the sewers.  Sataric placed his gauntlet to the door, then leaned forward as he placed his ear to the wooden entryway.

 

The silence spoke louder than the rains.  Compared to the howling wind, its song was deafening.  A cacophonous discord of an absent King, mentor—a friend—rang true in his ears.  It was as if, for a moment, the Second Judge had hoped to be wrong of the truth the city would have to face.

 

His soaked bronzed armor rattled through the melodic rainfall as he approached the theatre.  Sataric turns once more in quiet contemplation.  He faced the entrance, the gate. There he stood above the fountain, in the quiet streets of a rotting city.

 

The armored figure’s fist rattled as he clenched his fist.  It shook.  He shook.  Devirad shook.  The city that once was his true north now lies as a cesspit for violence, backstabbing, and debauchery.  Where his grief took shaped, anger formed.  Where hope once lay, scorn filled.

 

The figure pivoted on the slick surface.  He did not want to face the city or what had become of it.  His visage aimed itself to the entrance of the theatre.  A poster remained nailed into the brick.  Most of its text had faded, but the man already knew what it said.  A calling beckoning. A memory of a now dead man.

 

Where the sadness formed, hope broke through.

Where the anger formed, inspiration struck.

Where the hatred formed, resolve pierced its veil.

 

Once more, the man turned.  His fist no longer trembled.  His body no longer buckled. The city no longer wept.

 

From his visage, a hollow, reverberating sound pierced the silence.  He knew not if any still resided here—this city of the Damned—though he spoke anyways, if not to anyone but himself.

 

“Devirad, I speak not to you now as a Judge of Xion, but as a man who called this once his home,” he prefaced.

 

“These walls were meant to stand stall to the maleficar that threatened us.  This gate to protect our people.  These homes to shelter our kinsman.  This theatre to teach our Doctrine.  The clinic to heal our wounded.  And the streets to stand with our fellow Man.”

 

Sataric raised his plated fist into the air as well as his voice, if not to do anything else but challenge the nature of the rain falling itself.

 

“The King is dead!” The man thundered, looking around for any who dare challenged his proclamation, “This city is dead!”

 

“But I dispel the notion that our hopes are dead.  I dispel this notion that the Way is dead.  As I speak, clerical tyrants, Ascended scum, treacherous filth, and Canonist dogs conspire to eradicate our Way. The Way of the Old Lords before us.”

 

The armored man retrieved a thick bound tome from being tucked away in his chest piece.  He thrust it high: its dark leather cover emblazoned with a four-part heraldry on its face dripped with water from the rain it now was held to.

 

“We shall not fear the damnation of aengulic minions.  We do not fear the droning of actionless Canonist heathens.  We shall not fear the unseen knives from those we once spilled blood for.”

 

Sataric exclaimed loudly as he quoted the adage of the Old Lords,“We fear the Old Dark.”

 

The Second Judge took a knee, looking to the stone pavement.  He lowers the Good Book as he placed it back into its home beneath his armor. Sataric rested his gauntlet on the rain-glistened floor, and drug his metal fingers through the thin layer of silt.  His voice restrained itself; the words taking on a grim, foreboding tone.

 

“It has been decided Devirad shall be judged,” he spoke to the ground softly, yet firmly, like a father to his son.

 

“I wonder, what say you in the determination of morrow’s wake?”

 

 

[Parker 390]

"Sounds about right." a darkstalker muttered.

[wytch 870]

"Can you just die off or vanish already? We're kind of tired of you spouting your bullshit."

A blonde elfess mumbled as she heard the news, running a hand through her hair and wandering off.

[Vindicant 642]

"When will they realize their irrelevance?" a Cleric does a wonder.

[Jentos 9425]

An old, withered man edged from the city gates, hunched and limping, pulling himself forth with the aid of his cane.

He stared up at the sky, his old, wrinkled, scar covered face as well as the lack of an eye making his pale face but a grim show.

"Oh! What a wonderful day to die!" Scoffed the old man of Brisengamen hall, marching off into the wilds.

 

Leaving it to rot

Leaving it to die

Leaving it to end.

 

 

[Guest]

"Fear the Old Dark." says Faustus with a gay smirk.

[Ixli 1472]

Within the Crypts, his voice split through the vines and the squeaking of the rats. Some remnants of those who once held this nation to utmost prestige lifted their heads from the limbs they wielded and the magic they adored. Many of them sad, abandoned creatures. Here and there, gatherings of elves and humans and dwarves alike stand, beginning to make their way out of the depths of the king-less city. Among them, an elf, a glint of hope in his purple eyes. He looks to the puppet in his hand,

 

"What do you say, my little puppet?" the elf inquires openly. The puppet, of course, doesn't respond. Nonetheless, the elf seems satisfied.

 

"We fear the Old Dark."

[monkeypoacher 8055]

"He died after that," Conleth remarked to his Lucienist brother-in-arms, scrubbing some obstinate carmine stains on his tabard.

[HedgeHug 2049]

Third Judge of Xion, Amar of Strife, observes the spectacle of his fellow judge's declaration of Judgement.

"So it begins."

[ForeverGinger 148]

"I told that old fool this city was a fool's gambit," a short, cloaked figure mutters, tugging the brim of an absurdly large hat low over its face. "Madder than a starving ghoul, he was..."