The mists of Mo'lluk clung to Kingsgate on that Semisaday, which happened to be the seventh day of the month, which for reasons not quite discerned dictated that it was market day in that impoverished often neglected town.
In amongst the stalls of misshapen vegetables and off-colour mangos was found the merchants of black-market data-crystals, vendors of Treesian-Red, and the purveyors of various strange meats, of doubtful provenance about the origins of which it was deemed never prudent to inquire.
In many respects it was felt by others that Kingsgate had all in all spent too long in the dark shadow of Elwynn and that a little too much of the corrupting influence of Lest had floated down that river, that and untreated sewage from Eliria – still pungent and toxic as it floated past even hundreds of miles from its source. People boiled the water, they strained the water, they dropped purification pills into the water, they boiled it all again, and still they died. It was a wonder that the fish survived in the water at all. The trout and pike were said to have acquired a demonic aspect, this much was perhaps inevitable for creatures forced to swim in waters polluted by the malevolent and irresponsible will of the Khan on the far shore. Corpses too would float past sometimes. There was evidence that they had been gnawed at, but the cadavers were in such an advanced state of decay that it was often impossible to determine who they were and what had feasted upon them. People often wondered as to this. Were they workers from the Osman-Almagro Works in Eliria, victims of unspeakable accidents? Could they have been enemies of the Khan quietly done away with and cast out in the black of night to the beasts of the wilderness? Others still insisted that there were Piscators who still hungered for revenge against the Khan for the massacres inflicted by his line upon their order. How many then met their deaths amidst nameless horrors? It was best not to think of such things.
Which is why most did not – instead sensibly preferring to get on with their lives the best they can in spite of the banality, the grimness, the neglect by Imperial and Ducal government alike and the ever present prospect of invasion or worse from Elwynn.
However there is a limit to how far even the most obstinate housewife can succeed in excluding external reality from intruding on the unending routines of domesticity, and when a cruise missile detonates about two-hundred and fifty feet above your head on a market day in Kingsgate, all the Mo'lluk fog in the world won’t obscure the blinding flash of light nor adequately muffle the deafening explosion.
It would be redundant to deny that a certain amount of flaming debris fell onto the market square, or that there was a noticeable increase in patients arriving at the Healers Guild demanding treatment for significant lacerations or wanting shards of twisted-metal extracted from their person. Nor indeed would there be much to gain from denying that what significantly resembled a rocket motor had crashed into the newly opened Temple of Arya, immolating its votaries who are, for the moment at least, listed officially as missing.
What was indeed worthy of note was that, not so long after the detonation of the object was the fact that numerous pieces of singed and burning paper fluttered to the ground, these added greatly to the fires but enough fragments survived to relay a message.
Remarkable as it seems the detonation over Kingsgate appears to have been intended merely as an attempt to deliver a message to public officials in Goldendown by means of scattering it in leaflet form over the targeted settlement. It would however appear that the fuse had been set wrong or else the flightpath set to conclude at too low an altitude for the dispersal method to, strictly speaking, be considered safe. This revelation prompted one rescue worker outside the Temple of Arya to remark:To Regional Director of the Benacia Rail Systems Ltd & the Seneschal of the County of Goldendown or whomsoever exercises authority in lieu of the Count of Goldendown greetings,
It is my duty to inform your Excellency that in view of the seizure of power in Goldshire Hamlet by the Bolshevik-Tudeh renegade Nider and in compliance with Order 05/1386 Prohibition of Trading with the Enemy and Elwynnbrigaden Internal Order J402/TK/CS it has been necessary to close the railway bridge at Islus into your county from the Elwynnese side. An appropriate guard has been posted to that end.
It is the desire of the Council of Eliria that the peoples of Elwynn and Ynnraile should remain long in the close association of mutual friendship and solidarity that has benefited both counties so well in the past. Elwynn has acted in accordance with a spirit of friendship with regards to Ynnraile and would be greatly honoured to see that spirit upheld on both sides of the river.
Brigadengeneral Khan
3824 ASC
“What the fuck is wrong with those people? Have they never heard of email?”
