Thime Passages / Date Unknown
Time passed and finger-like shadows cast by nearby trees stretched across the ground toward twilight. Another shovelful of dirt piled up outside of the deepening hole and the man doing the shoveling paused and looked up asking, "You sure we're in the right spot master?"
The cloaked and hooded figure looked down and quietly chuckled, "As sure as death Roggy, it should be just a bit more."
Roggy shivered at the choice of words and continued - a few more shovelfuls of dirt and the distinct snap of dry bone breaking came from the hole. "Stop you thrice-cursed buffoon," grated the cloaked and hooded figure. "Slow down and be more careful or the next bone we hear breaking will be your neck!"
Roggy mumbled a hurried prayer under his breath as he put down his shovel and used a broom to begin the laborious task of uncovering the skeleton. . . . . . intact. Roggy's thoughts snapped back to the unexpected visit a few nights ago. Roggy, his wife and their children had just settled in for supper when an unexpected knock sounded from their front door. A tall and well dressed figure stood framing the doorway, asking to be invited in for a brief audience. He was polite and paid well in advance for Roggy's services, giving him a pouch of coin and a map to their current location but Roggy was beginning to question the man's motives now. "Begging your pardon sir but how many bodies is it we be lookin' for again?" The man outside the gravesite looked around and adjusted his hood before speaking, "There should be four skeletons and they should be in very close proximity to each other."
"Pro-procks-procksitimy" questioned Roggy, a more than slightly puzzled look on his face.
"That just means you won't be there all night," answered the man. "Now keep digging. You were not hired because I require a student, you were hired because I need a gravedigger."
The moon had just crested the horizon when Roggy laid the fourth and final skeleton on the ground next to the hole. "Now fill it back up Roggy. We don't want prying eyes to know what we've done, if it can be avoided." Roggy began shoveling the dirt back into the hole as his employer continued examining the skeletons. The skeletons were bare of any clothing, flesh, or organs as much time had passed since these four last breathed, much time indeed.
In the years that had passed since the death of the Dunjonstompers adventuring group, several events had transpired to drastically change life in the Valley of Castellum. First and most stunning was the destruction of Hearth. With the erection of the massive town fortification wall, the village had experienced a surge in growth and construction under the guidance of the ruling families and some say, influence from Malcolm. This boom in growth and prosperity heralded a swelling of the population and even more construction. Survivors of the destruction felt that when Hearth collapsed it was due to the sheer weight of all of those people and buildings. Hearth had never been designed to be a city, particularly given the unstable conditions on the banks of the sandy river Ivliss. In the wake of the collapse, people all across the valley heard rumors, far-fetched stories and more than one tall tale regarding the event. Chief among these was the yarn of a bloodthirsty colony of troglodytes that built a labyrinthine warren of passages directly under Hearth, planning the collapse and reaping the dead populace to feed upon. Another story spoke to the concerns that Hearth had possibly been built upon an even older and buried civilization; some say the village hall was once an ancient temple that the forefathers rebuilt and disguised.
Not long after the collapse of Hearth came the burning of Sathenge. The Brotherhood of the Light and the Way had a brief yet violent history of altercations with the college but the destruction of their headquarters at Hearth drove the Brotherhood commander to madness. Accusing the mages of orchestrating the destruction of Hearth, the commanding officer ordered his troops to storm Sathenge and put any and all heretics to the sword and cleansing flame! Sathenge was not without its defenses and many of the Brotherhood were also lost. The burning of Sathenge rather resembled a siege as it lasted for a week and in the end although they could not find the Magisters body, the Brotherhood claimed victory and demolished any building still standing. With their mighty airship destroyed, their numbers considerable thinned and Hearth gone, the Brotherhood fractured. The core loyalists decided to make for and through Talibra and back to their homeland, if they could find it. Some say that not a single brother made it to Talibra's southern gate. The members of the brotherhood that stayed behind regretted the genocide at Sathenge and adopted a monastic lifestyle, eschewing all magic and weapons. It is rumored that those survivors stayed in the vicinity of Sathenge and built a monastery upon the ashes.
The man paused in his reverie to continue the examination of skeletons. Enough time had passed to erode much of the skeletal mass but they were not dust yet, unlike some of the other adventurers he had tried to recover. The first skeleton had a broken skull and breaks in several bones, including the one delivered by Roggy so the man deduced that this must be Ensho. Many years ago Ensho had escaped the hangman's noose by volunteering to convert to the Brotherhood of the Light and the Way. As a probationary convert Ensho's first task was to help bury his former comrades - the three that had not escaped the hangman's noose. Prior to heading out to the fields Ensho did not see the clipped discussion Malcolm had with one of the members of the burial detail nor did he see the surreptitious signals that went around the group as they moved out; Ensho was not to come back to Vandy's when the task was done. Ensho contemplated running but one look at the crossbows carried by each of his squad mates and he knew he would be a permanent pincushion before he got more than a few paces away. As Ensho stood hip deep in the mass grave he did not see the first strike come streaking at the back of his head. Reeling from that first pickaxe hit Ensho was the proverbial fish in a barrel for the flurry of blows that came from his fellow gravediggers. Shovel and pick struck with merciless accuracy and Ensho soon joined his friends in the afterlife.
The man moved on to the shorter skeleton and knew immediately that this was the dwarf Pilgor. The separated neck bones confirmed this as did the holy symbol they had buried with the dwarf. At least the Brotherhood had respect for the dead, especially a cleric. Of the two remaining skeletons one was an identical mate to a skeleton he had recovered at another site and so must be Zerzer. Thus by process of elimination, the last skeleton had to be the remains of Araster.
Seeing Zerzer's duplicate the man briefly remembered the other location; those four were a bit harder to recover but he had managed. Long ago after a fierce but one-sided battle with a horde of zombies, the flesh and organs had been utterly stripped from Kalus, Flynla and Darence. Kalus, in his almost catatonic state was easy pickings and while Flynla and Darence destroyed their fair share of zombies even they eventually succumbed to sheer numbers. Not long after the massacre, the passage was reopened and the remaining bones as well as Zerzer's were moved and buried in the forest at the foot of the mountain path. With the passage of many years Zerzer was surprisingly still identifiable due to the burnt state of his bones. Kalus was an unsettling discovery because when he was buried someone's hatred of magic use led them to stuff Riksa's rodent corpse in his ribcage. Of the two skeletons remaining, one was human and the other elven - obviously Flynla and Darence.
The man came of out of his musings and seeing the hole half-filled called to Roggy, "When you finish filling that hole, put these skeletons in the back of the cart and be quick about it as I want to be away afore the sun rises."
This close to where Vandy's once stood, the man was earnest in his desire to be away before sunrise as it was rumored that this area was fiercely guarded by a mysterious protector. Those who had seen fleeting glimpses of this "protector" claimed it was vaguely humanoid, usually appeared in the early morning hours, was accompanied by wild beasts and was violently protective of the forest and grasslands. The man did not fear this protector if it did in fact exist but he preferred to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. The man looked around and thought about the times he had spent at Vandy's when a wave of nostalgia overcame him. The area around Vandy's experienced a bump in population and commerce soon after the events at Hearth and Sathenge but it did not last long. Most were survivors of the events at Hearth and Sathenge or just travelers passing through and with those two bastions of civilization gone, business dried up and people moved on. As the years passed the buildings in and around Vandy's were quickly claimed by the wilderness and only stray timbers now marked where buildings once stood. The valley was still dotted with farms and pockets of civilized life but with the passage of a few more generations, the man predicted that the valley would probably revert back to the way it was before anyone had set foot in it.
The man adjusted his cloak and thought of the one good thing that had happened and that was the perpetually nice climate the valley now had. Whether due to a climate change of planetary proportions or some other unknown reason, the weather in the valley vacillated between spring and fall with no summer and no winter. For that change the man was somewhat comforted as that may lure humanity back to the valley. Over these past years the valley had become a wild and dangerous place and although his brethren were at work in other areas of the valley, the man's task here was to recover the bones of these so-called Dunjonstompers. The man looked over at Roggy who was almost finished and called, "Roggy, finish up so you can get back to your home and I can begin my journey back."
Roggy paused for a moment and redoubled his efforts as he desperately wanted to get back to his family and he did not want to risk the ire of Master Thime.
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