Altdorf was not a pleasant-smelling place at the best of times. Even its own inhabitants had taken to calling the city on the river Reik “The Great Reek,” which said something about the typical Altdorfer’s sense of civic pride. Sergeant Lang, who had recovered from civic pride the same way other people recovered from the Galloping Trots, was a connoisseur of Aldorf’s various odours. He knew the fish and eel smells of Marketplatz, the smell of burning traitors from Crackle Hill, and the smells of booze, desperation and, oddly, cheese that permeated the Street of Many Taverns. Today the city was teaching him a new smell: a mixture of river mud and death. Refugees had been cramming themselves into the city for weeks and Sergeant Lang was one of the Watchmen given the impossible task of finding places for all of them to stay. The Temples and hospices of Shallya filled quickly and nobody wanted them in the Palast District so they’d had to be squeezed into tenements behind the docks. Whilst Sergeant Lang was convincing families of ten to bunk down in rooms made for two, he’d heard the stories of what they were running from. Soon, everyone in Altdorf had. They were running from the Red Pox. The disease had depopulated much of the southern countries of Estalia and Tilea, and had now reached the frontiers of the Empire. Victims would become covered in a distinctive red rash of itchy lesions, which swell over the course of a day to the size of small grapes. The disease was invariable fatal and highly contagious.
When the city’s panic had subsided enough for reason to return, preparations began. The gates were locked and a strict guard instituted. A moat was dug and the Reik was diverted to fill it. When the channels that divided the city dried up, every piece of garbage at their bottom was revealed. Amongst that junk were bodies. This was why Sergeant Lang was wading through river mud followed by Officer Carlstadt, who was writing down the details of the dead in his sketchy handwriting and slinging their carcasses into the cart so they could be dispatched to the Temple mortuary. This area of riverbed, just off the Beloved of Manaan dock, was as crowded with corpses as were the nearby tenements with the living. The refugees had brought old feuds and old allegiances with them and the same fights continued with new names. The ones calling themselves the Fish had obviously been dumping the evidence in this patch of the river. Several unsolved cases were about to be tidied up and a few new ones discovered. Sergeant Lang kicked at a rotting heap in the mud. “So that’s what happened to Willi the Hook.” “How can you tell who it is, Sergeant?” asked Carlstadt. Lang prodded at an arm bone that ended not in a hand, but in a large, rusted docker’s hook, crudely attached. “Write him down and chuck him in, Carlstadt. And Theo the Trivet here, too.” “What’s a trivet, Sarge?” Lang prodded with his muddy boot at another arm without a hand. “One of those,” he said. “Anyone can gut you with a hook. Using a trivet—that showed Theo had class. Class lasts, but these Hooks and Fish won’t. It’ll all blow over inside of a year, you mark my words.” Carlstadt wasnt so sure.
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The WizardIn time, you will come to know the tragic extent of my failings... Past Journals
September 2017
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