The East PacificBoard

~~~{The Collector, Advisor of the Queen}~~~

The thief's blood tasted sweet as candy when I strung him up and skinned him. No one touches my artifacts. No one.

Queen Sascha was ever cooperative in allowing me to travel to the city where Arthur Darren was found dead. My informants had just discovered his location when he threw himself out of a window. How uninspiring.

No matter. The Puppet Queen permitted me to go, and my Order guards are arranging my transportation right now. It will be good to get out of the house. But my heart always aches when I must leave behind my beautiful artifacts.

Darren's team was efficient and helpful. Finding replacements will be annoying, but first I must find where Darren hid the book from the Forest. I must have it for my collection.

The Order promises me that they will make sure my house stays untouched. I don't trust them one bit. They allowed the mad thief in. Whether on purpose or no does not matter. My things are in danger.

I smiled at the thought of how the Order's guards will taste if my artifacts are stolen and I must bleed them.

When I arrived in the city, I saw how the factories' smoke dominated the sky and the stench of poverty seeped into every stone. A horrible place to live. Darren deserved every moment of it.

My fame within the Order was all that was needed to get me unlimited access to the Arthur Darren suicide and the "victim" in question's belongings. The tricky part would be finding the book.

Of course, an initial sweep of the wretch's slum found nothing, but I ordered my men to make sure no stone was left unturned. The police confirmed that there was no book on the man's person, although there was a dagger, which I was pleased to find. I had a suspicion one of my employees had stolen something from me. I felt at peace to have it back.

I made sure the dead man didn't own any other property or have access to anywhere where he would consider the book safe, but I did talk with an old man that had been living next door when Darren returned from the Forest. He said the man came from the north, and that he arrived bearing only a coin purse, some morphine, and the dagger. The intriguing part, however, was that this was weeks after the group missed our rendezvous.

Darren was staying somewhere before this.

Understandably, my men found nothing worthy of my attention, but I shouted at them all the same. They must fear me, lest they doubt my power.

We went north immediately, and I was just hoping that the trail hadn't run cold. The path north of that rathole to the forest was large ground to cover, but I have always found a way. Two towns stood out, and I dispatched half my party to check them out while the other half stayed with me on the way to the Forest. It was home to a Grand Temple, that much I knew, and thus the tome inside was the ultimate prize.

When we reached the edge of the Forest, I was shocked to find an ashy wood, burned down. My informants had never told me of such destruction. The strange part was that I couldn't even sense the Temple. Could Arthur Darren and his wretched group have destroyed the Grand Temple and burned the Forest? They were lucky they died trying, that's for sure.

Poking around the edge of the Forest, we found nothing out of place, but I could hear with perfect clarity the howls of the wolves that used to guard the Grand Temple.

We camped outside of the Forest, the night casting a gloom over the Touched Forest that spooked even the Order Guards. That night, they were plagued with nightmares, while I was rewarded with a glimpse of the Precursors.

The rest of our party caught up the next day, having found out from an innkeeper that a strange man fitting Darren's description lived there for some time, after arriving from the northeast.

Pulling out a map, we found one likely town for Darren to have come from. Probably his first stop after the Forest. We set off at once.

The town betrayed nothing in a whole week of investigation. I needed answers, however, so citizens began... disappearing. Their screams were music to my ears as I stretched their limbs and their blood tasted like fine wine when I opened their skin.

It wasn't long before one started frantically spilling every secret he knew. One stopped me dead in my tracks. "Harold Pierce sells morphine to the beggars to con the rich and—"

"Tell me about Harold Pierce."

"He's the hunter who frequents the market! He owns the shack on the edge of town! I swear he's been conning noblemen for years!"

"Enough out of you. I don't care about his con. I care about his drugs."

"He charges more to the rich than the poor so you should disguise yourself—"

The knife cleanly slit his throat. I was enjoying my new toy.

Harold Pierce was dodgy when we approached, but I didn't have to threaten him too vividly before he told me everything he knew about Arthur Darren, the refugee by the Forest. Including the cave where he lived.

The cave turned out to be a damp, horrid hole in the ground, and it took a few hours before I found the nearly hidden passage that led to Arthur Darren's home. A little more investigative work and we found the jackpot. The book was exactly as described in his own tome. Beautiful and esoteric. And it was all mine. I let a smile grace my face.