PROLOGUE

 

PICTURE

 

 

You've slept here for around two times, but, compared to the swamp near it, it without a doubt a filth ridden place. Maybe, you think, it's because the people here don't accept their life - it is true that the beastmen are deplorable, but maybe, you feel, they are true to themselves. That their nature is not hidden behind the customs of Order and Law; and from what you've seen during your life as a warrior, maybe  Order is untruthful to the nature of man, and so, it can never truly exist peacefully. Maybe that is why you hate the Hand so fervently.

You know too that you despise the people. Because you are stuck here with them, but every moment here seems choked with thick clouds of dust. And you see that the ground is naught but mud stepped flat, for they walk bare through the soil. And all sorts of deviants prowl about the thinway tunnels of red clay that come about from the main square. Their lives, you do not know or care to understand. Their eyes empty and pale, their forms unshapely, gangly and bulged. You begin to humor why the lawmaker was dispatched here in the first place.

And in the main square - near the well, drifts a battered, hanged man. Surely this is the work of that Lawman you're supposed to meet.

A small stream runs through the city.

There are but a few buildings here: the inn, some odd houses, all made out of the same red sediment. The inn seems to be the only important part of this city, apart from the jail and the gallows.