Quoted By:
>SELECTED: Father Towbray was comparing notes with other clergymen from Romaine, or elsewhere that had studied the Ardenne. He has found something disturbing. [The Ardenne]
<span class="mu-i">“A son of Romaine like yourself would have seen something of what we are to face, I would think.”</span>
<span class="mu-i">“Yes.”</span> You remember the lessons of the Comitas border fort well from your youth.
Every male had to serve in one or the other for a time when they came of fighting age, whether they blood was noble or common. It was of little moment to the holy knights that lead you, and even less to the terrors you stood guard against.
<span class="mu-i">“I remember the first time I saw a Weiderganger.”</span> You suppress a shiver at the memory.
<span class="mu-i">“Yes, the rotten.”</span> Father Towbray does not supress his sneer, although you must wonder if he has every actually seen one close up. <span class="mu-i">“Abominable parodies of past lives. Mindless and bestial on their own, it is said. But it is also said they are capable of terrible cunning and insight.”</span>
<span class="mu-i">“When lead by their Dread Lords.”</span> You have never seen one, not with your own eyes. But you have heard them.
The scratch of talons on the rooftop of your fort, the flap of wings as you and your fellow initiates stumbled shaking from your bed in the dead of night. The scream of a sentry left disembowelled and displayed, lungs torn out of the back of their ribcage and hung like a parody of an angel in torment. No man should be able to scream, not when left like that. It was Brother Jesaul who finally ended him, a small mercy. You will never forget the sight, and such incidents are sadly typically across the border and even inland during winter. Nowhere…. Nowhere is <span class="mu-i">truly</span> safe, and the Dread Lords seem to make a habit of reminding your people of that occasionally.
And you have seen the change in the movements and attacks of their minions when one is nearby, their mindless hunger replaced with an evil intelligence that can just barely be observed in the dying light of the eyes. There lies the true threat to your people, not a plague or misfortune that must be cured and repaired. No, it is an existential threat that will see cities burned and babes put to the sword and feel neither regret, nor rage nor even joy at the sight of it.
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