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Tuesday 1 July 2014

The Horror that came to Little Thorpe

The Horror that came to Little Thorpe

Little Thorpe has lived in happy isolation since it was settled by Brandobians fleeing the initial Kalamarian invasion, generations have passed without a stranger coming across the place and apart form becoming more than a little inbred, though the worst of that has largely passed now. The  the place has been a rural idle even a pastoral halfling would envy, until late last year when a company of men rode out of the east. which was unusual in itself  as most of the few who have come to Little Thorpe over the centuries have been on foot and often lost or fleeing something in the wider world and almost always in ones or twos. 

The mounted company where none the less greeted as one might guests according to Ancient Brandobian cu8stom. However strangers did not react as guests at all drawing weapons and surrounding the villagers who had come out to see the strangers, out of curiosity.  They then sorted the villagers into two groups adults of both sexes and children and the elders the former they striped of  there belt knives ans roped together by the neck an the latter they corralled with weapon points. and both where made to watch as they  flogged old Mindori  the village priest to death for worshipping a false god, he  was as one might expect a priest of life's fire as had his father before him. Then they dragged his brother, Brensen, the only other man in the village who could read, out and made him stab the corpse with his knife before the leader a fellow called Dvorn, the villagers where too terrified to recall if he gave surname but he was a Brandobian they believe, publicly initiated Brensen as a priest of the Lord of Shackles, saying he was the true gods slave and would teach them the true religion and that they where all slaves. The strangers defiled the village chapel and stayed to reconsecrate it to The Lord of Shackles. Before riding off with practically the whole able bodied adult population of the village on a chorfe of slaves.

The next day Brenson who had been left with a copy of the Lord Of Shackles prayer book was found hanged by the scourge the strangers had given him as his symbol of office, he had written something on the prayer books frontice page but no one in the village could read it. .  Over the next few days the half dozen or so adults who had been out hunting at the time of the visit drifted back to their horrified and traumatized kinsfolk  They buried Mindori and Brensen and attempted to shape a life out of the ruins of the old.

It however was not over for about a month ago a strange woman who spoke an unknown language but who did not seem to be Kalamaran or have any thing to do with the terrible Lord of Shackles or its murderous followers arrived and with time and by dumb show she told the still traumatised villagers that  a demon had taken up residence to the north. A couple of the hunters went out to look and the one who returned told the tale of terrible monsters seen distantly in some ancient over grown ruins.

How could it get worse.....

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