Dark Deaths Upon A Dark Night

[Praetor 1550]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUV5kBSDAik

 

No moon shone in the black sky, no stars pierced the thick blanket of clouds that covered the sky that dark night. A promise of rain? Perhaps.

 

But tonight there was a promise of something else...Something much...Much darker than the night itself, or the shadows in the forest. Barely a sound could be heard apart from the occasional cricket, or creak of an ancient tree. Silence lay like a heavy blanket upon this part of the Island. Rare was the animal that wandered into the barren grasslands interspersed by sporadic little clumps of trees.

 

And yet, light flickered dimly near one tree. A campfire? For two dark shapes were lying down nearby what appeared to be a fire. The grass swayed slowly in the light breeze, sighing like the souls of the damned. Any person having approached the fire would soon notice that those were no embers. 

The grass itself had burned to it’s roots, taking with it any life in a small circle surrounding the epicenter of the blaze. All life.

 

Both of the men seemed to be asleep, and yet upon closer inspection both were covered in armor, and terrible wounds. Their faces horribly charred and disfigured, as if Hell itself had touched them. Their skin peeled slowly, a small, sinister sound in almost absolute silence. 

A sickly smell of roast manflesh hung in the air, slowly ebbing away with the wind.

 

Both men’s abdomens were torn open by what would seem to be a might weapon. Their armor itself had been punctured and torn apart, pieces of rough leather strewn around their bodies. 

Akin to a macabre fertilizer, their blood covered the burnt dirt around the two immobile bodies. 

 

A ungodly scream shattered the night time quiet, echoing mournfully across the lands and fading into silence once more…

 

Both men had died gripping their swords like their last hopes, their charred and blackened faces twisted into terrible screams of pain and fear, their eyes fused with their skull, no more than  pale difference in skin tone. 

 

And yet, their torment did not seem to have ended there, for a closer look upon their bodies would show that they were shriveled, like the body of old, weak men, their skin clinging to the bones of once strong men. 

 

Who had they been? Had they had family? Had they died pleading for mercy or fighting for their lives? Whatever the reasons of the cause, they had been torn apart as if by a heavily armed gale…

 

And throughout the fighting “ring” small piles of sand covered the ground, a suiting symbol of barrenness in such a place..

The night went on, for the night cared not of the two pour souls who had been claimed by Ariel that night...

[LaCabra (Soda) 1519]

A Halfling by the name of Bili Hollowmead hears a much more condensed version of the tale, passed through lines of storytellers and being often skewed by each one. He shudders at the grisly murder of the victims, and says to his fellow Halflings,

 

"Le' this serve as a reminder to ye all, stay in the Vale with us 'alflin's!"

[Thatpyrodude 2008]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.