The Return from the Forbidden Desert Valley
Tales arrive that a strange man wanders the streets of Semall. People talk of a scarred and scrawny wildman who was seen drifting out of the cursed desert valley of Dayr, babbling without words and jerking without apparent reason. None have heard an intelligible word from this figure, but rumors swirl of a madman who wandered that tainted valley for almost a year. It is believed the man in Semall is the same from the valley that none return from...
Willy slunked through the streets of Semall. So many pretties, so much that his hands itched. The ancient tome in his backpack seemed to burn as well. So close, so close! Just a ways further, and all would burn. Fire and blood, Jarbosh would see the world cleansed in red....grow from ash. All he had to do was continue his divine quest. Appease the shrine....appease the devil...
After turning into an area with an unnamed estate, he found the slums. Yes...YES....quarry could be found in the slums. Easy blood for his first stalk. No more insect, no more scorpions....the desert had shown him how to survive. The living could only sustain by feeding off the living. Blood to make blood, flesh to build flesh. It was the way of the world...the way of chaos.
Making his way into a narrow alley, he waited in shadows. After hours, a group of street urchins made their way through. They were but children, dirty and innocent. Could Jarbosh mean to give him such treats? Obscured from their vision, they never saw the quickness of the shortsword. Four fell, almost unaware of the pain in the sudden violence. Their screams were masked by the bustle of the slums. Even the ripping sounds were masked by the hum of a busy street.
Reports arrive to you of murder in the lesser parts of Semall. Children, apparently without parent or kin, were slaughtered in the slums. The details you hear are grisly. The few things you do know for certain are that the heads were left intact, except for the tongues which were missing. That, and all other flesh was stripped from the bone. Dreams of small skeletons with tongueless heads haunt your dreams this night.
