Beliana Fauncrest sat with her council. The evidence, the images, and the individuals arrayed around them, on display, and under critique.
“Are we sure that he will not speak further?” she inquired of the investigator, her hand referencing the Orruk that stood in their midst.
“Unfortunately not Lady Fauncrest,” the investigator replied, “he barely responds to his own name, what we’ve managed to get out of him, I’m afraid, is probably all that we’re ever going to get.”
And it was true, Belianna thought to herself, Bristlewhakka could barely make sustained eye contact with those around him, let alone give regular testimony. Not to mention that he acted nothing like what she would have expected.
Bristlewhakka had been found wandering the forests of Neolotl. He had seemingly stumbled into a camp of scouts, who had subsequently returned him to the city atop Nasson to face trial for his participation in the War of the Worm. He never said a single word to the scouts, even after being threatened (and probably assaulted, she suspected). The government’s lead investigator had been more successful, well, to a point at least. Bristlewhakka had spoken of “eyes in the dark” peering out at him through the trees and of a “deep void”. He also screamed in his sleep. Every night. Furthermore, those that studied the arcane had sworn up and down that the orruk was completely devoid of Waaagh! energies. The orruk had, quite literally it seemed, lost the will to live, to participate in life in even the most basic way.
“All of this is connected,” she whispered to those most near to her, “I can feel it in my bones”
Along with the two living individuals in front of her was a dead man. He had gone by the name Lotharad Keelspite, a fisherman from Neolotl. He had been found washed up on the shore and taken to a crematorium. The issue was that this had occurred three days prior to his name making its way into the papers. Those same papers had claimed the man had killed off his family (in brutal fashion) that evening and then vanished without a trace. If the worker at the crematorium had not been inflicted by mite-pox they wouldn’t even have the body in front of them now, it’d be ash, and they would have written the two contradictory tales off as fancy. But those that knew Lotharad swore up and down that, yes, the dead body was his, but yes they were absolutely positive that they had witnessed Lotharad tear through the throat of his late wife and then “disintegrated” into the night itself, and no the Lotharad that had killed his wife did not look half-eaten by fish and dead, he had been very much hale and hearty.
The other living individual that had been brought into the room along with Bristlewhakka could not have been more different from the subdued orruk. He stood tall and proud, wearing well-tailored garb that spoke of a good position in good society. The aelf had been sent all the way to Nassollotyl from the Brimstein Heartlands, in Aqshy. He was there to confirm a suspicion that the images displayed in evidence was a man that went by the name Manut Octenheimer. The aelf had confirmed the likeness without hesitation, with a snarl that marred his otherwise perfectly kept face.
“I’m telling you madam, this is Octenheimer, I’d recognise that face anywhere.” He nodded to the drawn images of the man that were splayed out on the table, “I have no idea what he’s up to, but that is, without a doubt, him.” The images had been drawn by the investigator after questioning some children who claimed to have been out to what was now known as the “Island of Eyes”. The children claimed to have seen two creatures at the small realmgate on the island, the first was now staring out at them from the paper, the other burnt into their minds. It was Drakazra. Possibly the most clear aspect of this entire ordeal, Belianna had no doubt in her mind the children would recognise the creature that was still spoken of in Nassollotyl.
“So let me get this straight,” one of her counselors finally exclaimed, “we’re supposed to not only believe that Drakazra is working with this Octenheimer fellow, something which sounds suspect in of itself, but that they are also the cause of the corruption of the gate?”
“And that this is also connected to what’s happened to our orruk friend here?” another replied, as incredulous as the first.
“It’s absurd, I acknowledge that,” Beliana replied, “but it does fit together. As insane as that sounds. We know that something came through that gate, we know that something now leads the old warclans of Bristlewhakka, and that that something looks just like him. Acts just like him. But we also know that this orruk in front of us now is the real Bristlewhakka.”
The entire group stared at the dozens of messages that sat next to the images atop the table. Tales, all of them, of similar-sounding events in a dozen different allied cities, in every realm they had access to.
“So what is it then?”, another asked, “what are these two doing to our gates? What, or who, have they brought into the realms…?”
