The Story of Karam
Every day, he was there.
Sitting in the shade of the canopy that hung over the entrance to the shop, the man was dishevelled and filthy and Karam felt sorry for him. He went over to the man, the same routine every day, and knelt down before him.
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” said the man, coughing as he spoke.
Karam brought out the loaf of bread he’d been saving for lunch and broke it in two, giving half to his friend.
“If it weren’t for you, I’d have starved to death in this wretched city long ago. Ever since the Titans arrived, we’ve had to share our food and water with them – there simply isn’t enough to go around,” he continued, the bitterness in his voice seeping into his words.
Karam nodded. He was the son of a baker and it seemed as though he spent every waking moment by the great oven in his father’s shop, an endless queue of people desperate for food. Even in the brief moments when he was able to get away, there would be people like his friend, huddled in the corners, seemingly ignored by the world.
He heard his father’s voice call out his name from inside the shop. Sighing, Karam got to his feet again and turned to walk back inside. A hand grabbed him by the wrist and his friend looked up at him. “You’ll be back tomorrow, right?”
As Karam nodded, his friend’s face split into a big grin. “Gods bless you, sir!”
****
The heat from the oven began to fade as the first stars of the evening appeared in the sky. Weary though he was, Karam headed out into the city and founds himself walking along the banks of the river. He sat on the grass and stared distractedly at the red moon’s reflection in the water.
“Can’t sleep either?” said a voice behind him.
Karam found himself staring at a tall figure in a long white robe. The man looked like he hadn’t slept in months, his eyes were drawn and sallow. “Peace, Karam, I mean you no harm. I merely wish to talk with you a while.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know much and more that passes within the walls of Markien,” said the stranger and a wry grimace formed on his face, “although at times I wish I did not. My name is Malack and I know that you are a good person, albeit a little…misguided. I also know why you do not sleep.”
Karam’s face turned pale and he bowed his head slightly. “The dream…”
“Yes.”
Every night it was the same. Dreams of chains. Dreams of agony. Faces of people he knew contorted in anguish. And always at the end, those two terrible red eyes.
“Most people in the City forgot the Dream a few nights later and felt the loving embrace of the Night Mistress once more. Yet there were those of us whose eyes were permanently opened to something we should not have seen.”
Karam’s thoughts were in flux. This stranger, Malack, seemed to know exactly what was going on in his mind. “What is it?”
“You refer to the eyes. Your assumption that he is the one behind the Dream is correct, I believe. As for who or what it is, I do not know for certain. Some of us believe him to be a devil of some sort, others see him as a lost sibling of Lord Carolinus. I think the latter is the case and some unimaginable horror warped him into the being he is now. The chains, perhaps, are a clue.”
“What does…he…want?”
“The being has one clear purpose, although I discovered it quite by accident,” Malack’s eyes glazed over slightly and when he spoke next, his voice sounded as though it were far away.
“We had never been particularly close, our marriage one of convenience to our parents rather than any true blessing of love. Yet, I did love her, even if she did not share my feelings. When word of the Titans first began to spread throughout Markien, we began to prepare for war. Day and night I worked at my anvil, forging sword, spear and shield that we might defend ourselves and those we held dear. Each night, I would return to my home utterly weary and fall fast asleep. The days and nights got longer and I saw my betrothed less and less. She began to grow distant from me and the few times I did hold her close, she was cold and flinched at my touch. Then, as I was working at the forge, I heard sniggers from my apprentices and whispered words about someone called the Whore of Markien. I tried to speak with them about this mysterious lady yet my words were met with silence.
One night, a few days after the Dream, my wife came to the forge and told me she was leaving me. With tears on my face, I asked her why. With mocking laughter in her voice, she asked me why she should stay.
“You spent your days and nights working at the forge, yet let the fires that dwell within me grow cold. When you warm the bed beside me, you scream and weep in the night.”
I do not know what possessed her to keep talking – maybe she had drunk wine to fortify her courage, or perhaps she merely wanted to hurt me for my neglect.
“There are other smiths in this city, that keep my forge burning brightly long into the cold nights. I feel warmth, I feel desire and I feel loved. Your heart is as cold and unfeeling as the chains that hang from the roof of your smithy.”
Rage infused me, body and soul. In an instant I had seized one of the chains and had it taut around my wife’s pale slender throat. She kicked and clawed at the bronze links around her neck and with strength I didn’t know I possessed, I flung the chain over a rafter and hauled her off the floor.
What happened next was a sign from Him. As my lover choked and gasped the last of her life’s breath away, I saw something slowly open on the floor. Baleful red light filled the darkness of the room and as I looked, I saw the shade of my wife being dragged away in chains into a void.
Yet when I looked up, the cold, lifeless body was still there, the chain still tightly wrapped around her throat. I hid the body far beyond the walls of the city and when I returned home, I collapsed, utterly spent.
That night, the Dream was different. There were no chains, no cruelties, just oblivion all around. A voice spoke out of the darkness to me…
“THE CORRUPTION MUST BE PURGED.”
The Dream did not return that night, nor the next. With the passing of months, slowly it did. The tranquillity of the void would be disturbed by a faint clink, a whispered pleading for mercy and it grew louder and more frequent. Eventually, I realised what I had to do.
The second man I killed was a miser, sodden in wine. The only thing he valued more than the bottle was gold and he cared naught for the lives he destroyed to get it. The night after I sent his soul screaming into Torment, the Dream receded once more. Long has it been since I have experienced the full horror of the Dream.”
At last Malack fell silent and Karam stared at him, a mixture of horror and fear on his face. “Have you come to murder me as well?” he asked.
Malack sighed. “You heard my words, yet still you don’t believe or understand. No, Karam, you need have no fear of cold bronze choking the life from you. My lord seeks to purge the world of the corrupt and the sinful. To the best of my knowledge you are neither.”
Karam was still not convinced. “And the people you kill, do they not deserve a chance of redemption or to put a plea before their lord? Where is the justice in what you do?”
Malack turned to walk away. “One day you will understand,” he replied and was soon lost to the darkness.
****
After a night troubled by Malack’s words and nightmares, Karam found himself outside the shop, sharing lunch with his friend. After he had finished eating, Karam’s friend seemed anxious to be off. It was odd but Karam found himself thinking about the man. He was always keen to talk as he ate yet once the food was gone, he often departed swiftly afterwards.
On a whim, Karam followed the beggar from a discrete distance, never letting himself be seen. About 30 minutes later, the beggar stopped outside a butcher’s shop and began talking with the owner. The butcher handed him a joint of mutton and once he had gnawed the meat from the bone, the beggar was off again.
With a sinking heart, Karam continued to follow him. From market to market, from inn to inn, the beggar talked and ate. The man was no true friend to these people – all he cared about was the free food he could get. Karam’s despair slowly turned to anger. There were hundreds of people in Markien who barely had enough food to survive and yet here was this man, abusing the kindness and generosity of strangers. The beggar left his last benefactors – a family sharing a meal too small even for themselves – and made his way to a stable to sleep.
Karam’s fury took hold and he silently crept into the stable. Whether by happenstance or design, a bronze chain was hanging from the wall of the stable and the cold, bronze metal felt good in his hands. He leapt upon the man that he had once thought of as a friend and, ignoring his pleas, crushed his throat with the chain. As the beggar kicked and struggled, the room seemed to darken and the torches on the wall flickered and went out. A hellish red glare filled the room as a baleful portal yawned open before them both. Karam gazed into it, mesmerised by the swirling patterns. Something flowed from the beggar into the gaping maw and Karam thought he briefly saw the face of the beggar screaming as it fell away into the void. The portal closed, leaving the stables in pitch darkness so that as Karam staggered out in a daze, he failed to see a figure in a white robe nodding in the corner.
Spoiler
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The Cult of Het:
Following the Disk-wide nightmare, a number of individuals persisted in seeing the dream over and over. Some went insane and killed themselves while others saw it as a vision and a calling. The Cult is dedicated to purging the corruption of men and it achieves this by murdering those it judges to be flawed. These are very basic sins it seeks out – lust, murder, greed, etc where the members are clearly shown to be less than noble beings. The murders are ritualised, usually done by throttling the victim with a chain of some description, although other methods such as torture are used. Souls murdered in this way are sent straight to Torment.
The Cult operates with great secrecy, recruiting new members by looking for those afflicted by the Dream. Their methodology is less than perfect – they are cultists, rather than assassins.
Act Expenditure: Read up because this may affect you....
1 Minor Act - Cultists spawn in Mariken (obviously)
1 Minor Act - Cultists spawn in the Olm
1 Minor Act - Cultists spawn in Salus
I'm not sure whether it will affect alternate races such as the Jongoscion, Sonata's Foxes or the Breuddwydirhodiwr...
Re: Heroes of the Fall
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