Plague was the great leveller, striking terror into every soul from the most pathetic savages in the north to the mightiest princes of south. Plague could not be bargained with, not threatened, not bribed, not fled from. Entire neighbourhoods might be struck down, yet others a mere street away would go untouched. Parents would turn against their children, wives against there husbands, all in a vain effort to escape from the death they could not understand. There was nothing that man feared quite as much as plague, save for Devilry of course. Even then, the similarities between the two let many to believe that the great sicknesses were but symptoms of worse evils. A lifetime of war had left Raelwyn inured to most horrors, but even he had to fight to supress a shudder of fear as rumour gripped the town.
The Drowned Shark was scarcely more than a block from the docks of Soupat; close enough that the stink of dead fish gave an extra pungence to the usual cheap tavern odour of vomit and piss. The beer was watered down, the vermin ubiquitous, the whores dirty and the fights bloody. But even the drunkest mobs of dockworkers and sailors somehow avoided him and Raelwyn had lived through worse. Besides, the deeper irony he felt behind the dive's name appealed to him. He sat alone in a corner, idly running a thumb over the plain metal bracelet on his left wrist, comforted by the familiar feel of the marks engraved into it. The mention of bodies lying in the street and the whispers of pestilence had subdued even the Shark's crowd. More than one ship would sail early Raelwyn suspected.
When the shouting began outside it seemed certain that the worst had come to pass and plague had been confirmed. Even when the cry of fire went up, most thought the two calamities were linked; burning the homes of the diseased was a radical measure, but far from a rare one. If anything though, the panic was even greater when the news that a ship was on fire broke. The seamen, those with the most to lose, were out first, followed by the dockworkers and whores. Even amongst the the locals though, the nervousness only left when it became clear there was no chance of the flames spreading into the city. Only once it was clear that misfortune had befallen someone else entirely did the atmosphere change, becoming almost festive as the folk of Saupot strained to see the tiny figures scuttle about desperately, backlit by the very flames that they fought. The sailors amongst the crowd cursed their unlucky brethren as fools, for taking care around flames was an iron rule beaten into every one of them. When the mob realized that was the vessel of the Dragon Flame that burned they were split; some fearing the dark arts, others happy to see the harsh witchhunters laid low. Someone even thought they saw a man leap overboard.
Amongst it all, Raelwyn slipped through the crowd, eyes not on the burning ship, but on the men and women around him.
[OOC: Witch? Sorcerer? Abomination? I imagine that for southerners, virtually all terms for spellcasters are used in a derogatory way.]
