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[The Ebon Skull]

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The spring breeze crisply whirled about the smooth sandstone architecture of Mazewood as the peasants of the quiet and tranquil Felluca Hamlet took in the spoils of their labors. The taverns, and many a hearth blazed with light and relaxed jovial voices blending seamlessly with the natural symphony of all manner of insect and nocturnal bird in the wilderness. It stood as a diamond in the rough, an oasis in the land tainted by evil and long abandoned by the “civilized” world.

All eyes quickly darted from drink and friendly faces to the centre of the hamlet as the wilderness seemed to grow ominously silent. Suddenly a familiar sound shattered the new found quiet and the cool moonlight was broken by the blazing light of six red-moongate.

Methodically and with great reverence two moongates yielded a traveler each, humanoid in body-type but cloaked in heavy richly black robes, a single Ebon-Skull emblazoned on their chests. They swung in perfect unison two incense censors of ornate shadow-ore hanging from long and oppressive chains wrapped tightly around their persons. With every pass of the censor's thick plumes of smoke enveloped the slowly processing thurifers. As the incense’s odor of rose and hyacinth filled the air they took up a chant…

I am the thorn in the foot, I am the blur in the sight
I am the worm at the root, I am the thief in the night
I am the rat in the wall, the leper that leers at the gate…


Then two more cloaked figures appeared, these, while garbed in the same heavy hooded robes, each carrying what appeared to be a large and ornate standard of heavy fabric, a large Ebon Skull emblazoned glaringly on the center of each, they too carried the chant…

I am the ghost in the hall, herald of horror and hate
I am the rust on the corn, I am the smut on the wheat
Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet…

The centre gate yielded a single figure, processing backwards, dipping a hyssop branch into a large shadow-ore urn and seemingly sprinkling the path behind her with a dense and dark colored fluid. All the while crying out with feverish intensity…

I am canker and mildew and blight, danger and death and decay
The rot of the rain by night, the blast of the sun by day
I warp and wither with drought, I work in the swamp's foul yeast
I bring the black plague from the south and leprosy in from the east
I am the shrill cold spirit that chills the darkness you feel at twilight…

Again from the central gate, another figure now processed. This one, garbed from head to toe in darkly hued and intricate robes and heavy dense shadow-plate armor marked with an intricate vine pattern. A heavy metal gorget ran seamlessly into a porcelain mask of a beautiful and flawless male youth, his face carrying with it an expression of total indifference. Two penetrating and bright pin-points of green energy shone forth from the mask’s deep eye-sockets, casting a sickly green tinge over the angular nose and cheek-bones of the mask. A long and flowing cape of around eight feet long, of dense fabrics carrying on it’s back the mark of Ebon Skull hung off his back, being kept from dragging along the dirty village-square’s floor by two more robed supplicants of seemingly elvish build chanting yet again,

I am the chaos that tears stars apart.
You cannot escape me
You cannot defeat me
You can only embrace me!

Extending it’s hands outward to the sky, the masked figure began to speak it what seemed like a whisper of a great multitude of voices, yet perfectly audible to any who glanced upon him,

Agrâk nagh mïgàl et zhûm Lök emphème tîz anak lit anar -töik eghême lôt mäz mïgàl Abrûk nakar et lokîm!

To which the robed supplicants stoically replied “Etheng”

Tatiana Alexi, watching nervously from the Mazewood Tavern was suddenly left with no doubt of who these strange visitors were…her shrill cry pierced the awed silence of the tavern…


“RUN!”


To Be Continued...