Plotline Snapshot: "Catspaw"

[Nephallim]

A pageboy walked through the streets of Celeis, leaving the foreign cacaphony of the docks. Clutched in his little hands was a delicate scroll of perfumed parchment from the Fallen Star. Gradually the streets deteriorated into slums and the boy slowly grew into the form of a young man, bedecked in the leather and wool of a common street tough. The slums grew deeper, and darker. The streets narrowed and traffic all but vanished. Eventually the young man stood in an ally with his reflection.

"I've forgotten who I am again," the reflection droned, eyes glazed.

The young man's eyes went wide as he reached up for his face. A knight in delicate blue scale mail tossed aside a simple white mask. "I am a Spell-Knight of Celeis," he intoned as he drew his longsword, "stand aside!"

"Ah," the reflection sighed, "now I remember." He began to shift, to change. His clothes mended and darkened. Simple black leather boots grew to replace his simple sandles. A long-hilted sabre formed across his back and a brace of daggers grew at his side. His height enlarged to nearly seven feet and his shoulders broadened. His skin paled, his eyes grew dark and bulbous, and his hair and ears melted away. A doppleganger stood there, gaunt and terrible, facing down the knight.

"Die by my hand, fiend!" the knight shouted as he swung at the doppleganger, a spell shimmering down his blade. The doppleganger sidestepped easily and the sword thudded into the outer wall of an inn. Flames exploded from the blade, engulfing the wall it struck. The knight emerged from the ally, from the inferno, to face the doppleganger's sabre. He died like a dog.

In the morning a blue armored corpse and a mummified cat's foreleg were found among the smoking ruins of an inn.

[Nephallim]

Tokrash circled the small encampment, his great ribbed wings carrying him far above the merchants. They were stumbling around in the night, preparing to move ahead, not bothering to stop and dispose of the bodies of their attackers. Why should they? Why return violence with kindness?

Tokrash scowled and let the winds take him higher into the air, above the clouds. He was always at peace above the clouds, free of the hatreds and worries below. Free of his commitments and vendettas. With great weariness, he turned northwards, towards home.

*****************************

The Catspaw waited on a balcony overlooking what had once been a minor lord's hall. The Hellhounds had changed that when they had emerged from the marshlands last moon, easily wrecking the pompous aristocrat's private militia. Now, the orcish sellswords made the fool's wrecked keep their home, their fortress. The oldest among them, the first to take the sacrement of blood, sat at the head of the fallen lordling's table, picking at the roasted corpse of what seemed to be a horse.

The brutes were disgusting no doubt, crude and wicked. Still, that was as much an asset as it was a bane. Their purpose was to brutalize and spread panic after all.

The Catspaw looked upwards, at the hall's ruined ceiling, as the beating of wings became audible. The master of the Hellhounds had returned.