Astonishing Collection of Necromancy
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Discovered By | Janna Da Hadez |
| Discovery Date | 2013-05-18 |
| Discovery Location | Sudfern, Atamara |
| Abilities | Prestige +6 |
| Current Owner | Janna Da Hadez |
Janna Da Hadez had entered the narrow, overgrown gorge cautiously. Although it did not appear on any map her investigation into vague rumours about the place had unearthed some of the whispered tales that persisted among the hill farmers of Sudfern. These tales were mostly fragments, half-remembered from children's rhymes and local legend, but with patience she had managed to find a common narrative emerging from the superstitious ramblings of the suspicious old men and half mad women that she had been able to persuade to divulge what little they could recall of the place.
The story that had emerged was somewhat anti-climactic and straightforward given the effort required to find it. It told of a small army of soldiers who had sought refuge in the gorge after some long forgotten battle. Half-starving and ravaged by wounds they had hoped to rest, heal and regain their strength before striking out for home. Disaster struck when their marshal was captured by enemy forces while scouting the rough farmland south of the gorge's concealed entrance. The other four men in the party were brutally slain before his eyes and although the marshal was an honourable man his body and will were not strong enough to stand the hideous tortures his captors inflicted upon him. Broken and maddened from pain and exhaustion he finally betrayed the location of his army's sanctuary. Trapped and weakened as they were his army did not stand a chance. They were slaughtered to a man with neither mercy nor pity shown and were thrown, dead and dying alike, to sink into the muddy waters of the cold, dark gorge where they were left to rot with not so much as a cairn to mark their resting place.
Janna was no stranger to war. Though she had not served as a soldier for as long as she cared to remember the thought of soldiers lying betrayed, forgotten and unknown even after all this time stirred disquiet in some deep part of her soul she had though to be long buried. A colder, more cynical sense much closer to the surface mused that acts of such treachery and evil may not always stay buried and forgotten. She privately vowed to find these forgotten soldiers and, one way or another, that they be laid to rest with the honour denied to them so long ago.
Her worst suspicions were confirmed some way into the musty shadows of the cold, damp gorge. The first sign was the fresh carcass of one of the long-horned cattle that roamed free on the hills. It lay torn and broken upon a mossy boulder. While the extent of the damage to the beast was consistent with the attack of a large wild animal something about the nature of it's wounds hinted at another possibility.
The second sign were the sounds that she caught on the edge of her consciousness as she knelt by the remains. She knew those sounds well.
As she slowly rose her hands reached for the axes that hung from her belt. With a snarl she turned to face the shapes emerging from between moss covered tree roots and rising from the muddy waters of the rancid stream.
The fight was long and gruelling. The rotting, rusted armour and degenerate flesh of her assailants proved little hindrance to her axes but their sheer numbers and the mindless ferocity behind their wasted and rusty swords tested her hard-earned skills to the limit. For every one of the gurgling, slashing fiends that fell to her blows it seem another would rise behind them. She was forced to retreat further into the gorge, fighting desperately every inch of the way. Eventually, however, the weight of her enemies started to dwindle and as the last one went down she too fell, exhausted, into the stinking morass of leaves and mud.
Although bloodied and half insensible with fatigue she forced herself to her feet and checked her surroundings. The rotten horde had corralled her to the head of the gorge. A meagre waterfall trickled down lichened channels on the rock face onto a huge heap of moss-covered logs. Something about the heap caused her gaze to linger. She wiped the blood and mud from her face and looked more carefully. This was not simply a pile of logs but a squat cabin, collapsed and ruined by time and water and all but buried in mud, dead branches and moss. She approached it cautiously and peered in between a gap in the ancient, sodden logs.
Among other contents too ruined to recognise was a rough chair hewn from a single rough log. Upon it sat hunched a skeletal figure, pinned to the chair by the dozen or so ancient and rusted swords that protruded from it's disintegrating breastplate. There was no threat here. The meagre fingers of sickly sunlight that groped through gaps in the sagging roof of the shack drew her attention to something that both fascinated and chilled her in equal measure.
Upon the knees of the hunched cadaver was draped a threadbare and mouldy marshal's banner.
Upon the banner a book sat open..
