The Third Saga - All Chains Rust, All Men Die

 

PLAYER/CHARACTER

Rebecca/ Matilda Pennywhistle, Human Gunslinger/Warlock

SEGOVIA - LATE SUMMER TO MID-AUTUMN

What led to the assassination attempt on Evoallah Sweetsong by the Iron Mongers, you ask? Well, as it turns out, a few days before, she had sanction a raid on one of their ships by a foreign agent of hers. The agent, a foreigner named Matilda Pennywhistle, had liberated a cargo hold full of slaves held in dock on the Iron Mongers' quay. However, in doing so, the stranger contracted a pestilence that had begun ravaging the poor quarters of the city, one that turned those afflicted by it into ravening, dead-flesh eating monsters. For betrayed by the stranger named Noctil, Matilda had unwittingly set free a cargo hold full of Novix. One of the ratmen had bitten her, and infected her with the necrophage.

Several Mongers were killed, and their place among the Shadow Syndicate of Segovia was now threatened by their breaking the anti-slavery laws of the Imperium.

 

But while the ship burnt, and four chained shadows fled the hold (see the Fourth Saga - Black Moon), Matilda had already moved on, heading north to the Karthoum desert, looking for a lost "elven" boy (what they call eldren across the sea) for her patron, as well as for a cure for the plague that now inhabited her body.

 

Along the way Matilda a woman wielding a powerful black-powder weapon and a shadow-laced whip gifted to her by her new patron, the Shadowking Nyx, liberated what first appeared to be a somewhat inconsequential dyavolk slave from the predation slavers (see the forthcoming A Skin Made for Fire Saga).

 

It is said Matilda travelled all the way to Dujrah, where she met with a seer, who told her of a dark future darkening her path. Later, after finding the lost eldren boy, she entered the Dreaming Caves to the west of the city. It is said that there, she encountered an old crone named Aoshi Kiga, who guided her to the hidden palace of the one they call The Salt-Eyes - Khavir, an Assyr bent on restoring the desert of Karthoum to the lush glory it was before his people destroyed it all in their war against their masters, the Gurak.

At Khavir's palace, Matilda learned how the Gurak had been decimated by a plague - the necrophage - and while their progeny the Assyr, were immune to it, they nonetheless spent the entire power of their society - and in doing so destroyed the green paradise that was Karthoum - in an attempt to destroy the plague. Their land in tatters, many fled west and north, disappearing in the mountains (the Saga Thanesdottir Saga). A few remained, living in the ruins of their once grand and powerful civilization, while humans moved in and took their place in the ancient cities of Karthoum - now a vast desert of white sand.

 

What occurred at the palace no one knows... What is known is that, some time later, Matilda emerged from it, healed, but leaving in her wake an ancient shadow, once long dormant, now finally awakened once more… Shadowsong. The stranger was now charged with a new quest: to find four people who recently fled a sinking slaver's ship, whose only distinguishing feature was the mark of a black moon and sword tattooed on their necks (the Black Moon Saga).