Cold winds blew up from south, down onto the small border town. Like evil spirits, the frost wailed against the destitute guild hall turned spital, tested its defences and devoured all warmth that leaked outside. For the Sword Syndicate, this border village was supposed to be be nothing more than a short stop. Now, Astrid shivered despite the cloak of werewolf fur as she watched over a man who coughed slime, blood and filth and she did not know what to do but to say nice words. Jacob Griffen handed her the ashes of a phoenix and rushed back to his post. She scattered them over the man, until the vial was empty. First he smiled, then he screamed, then he faded, as thousands of worms poured from openings old and new. The demon's magic ate the magic of the ashes, then it ate him. He was but one of hundreds who filled the house, moaning, dying, puking. Pilgrimages both small and great at once they had made from houses not farther away than an arrow's flight. Now they found a triumphant end in the opium sleep, tired bodies wishing for the end more than a cure.It were desires as rational as their cause, for in the wafts of burning mana sticks, the priests had foreseen the best course for the county to prosper and the count had organized the necessary obedience to the prophesied will of the gods. The gathering of snails, for the beautiful dye they made when crushed and for shells to hold the spindle had been found to be most efficacious for profit and prosperity and of course the peasants obeyed their betters. The gods' war, the empire's war upon the demons and the dark gods and the monsters needed to be won. But as they were washed in the river, the infernal parasites inside slimy aquatic vermin had spread into their only source of water in this cold, unyielding land and from there into the blood and organs of the serfs. There, the hermaprodite creatures writhed and bred with each other freely, feasted upon the innards and left behind numbing secretions and tiny gray eggs, uncountable in their number. Now, their cattle died, laid in great festering heaps to out tower their shabby huts, the whole of it a stinking ooze and the corpses full of gray, clear bodied worms who wiggled free in search of a new home. The same with even the living humans, skin painted by jaundice, from whose orifices the vermin crawled in legions, like dew in the morning on stalks of golden, rotting wheat. Those they could not save had their souls dragged straight to the Cauldron, drafted into the hierachy of the demons' armies, as was the fate of all who succumbed to the demons' corruption.The mercenary band of course headed the command of the lord to cure the plague, as soon as the terms of service were decided. Griffen prayed day and night to the Lady of Progress to deliver medicine onto him to save the helpless from their blight. Menas was in the marketplace, a shop assembeled from nothing but small planks in the matter of minutes, like a barricade against the loss of wealth. Clothed in skins and furs, eye bags and a pale teint he worked his great rites without cease. Business did not wait for anyone and never slept, thus neither would he. Thus, he pumped the circulation of goods and money ever onward, full of fear and hope for the day it stopped. With great shouts, he hawked gloves, ointments and potions that promised relief and protections, taking grain and cabbage and rutabaga and turning it into gold by the means of a darkling, mercantile alchemy unkown to the world and bereft of renumeration. His compeers, however prefered the meat of beasts hunted by Klorb. For the barbarbian now brought in great skin-sacks of game, deers, boars, badgers, bears, wolves, papio, which is the satyr-apes and the white zmei-drakes too, both the vague shape of human, frostbitten and trembling shorn of their hide or scales or skin, their organs, muscles and fat stuffed back inside and bound with their horn, like a true hunter hunted. These pyramids to Death grew near the mist-shrouded village and were eagerly devoured by the noble and the clerics, the commoners left with the offal and remainders and the priests were satisfied for the omens read in the last parts of cattle promised great gains and prosperity to come; the terrible order had been fulfilled. The gods were pleased with the child-like obedience and sacrifice they had made. Offers even more profound they promised to the human herd, who rejoiced in explosived laughter and hailed the one true pantheon and the freedom blessed empire.Astrid, with her love of the commoner, protested. Against the tax, the hunger of the peasants, the poverty of their conditions, the slavery and nothing or hell after death that awaited these commona man but Griffen set her straight, patient and world-wise."I know it is not right." He spoke. "But we can't rush in and get in over our heads. The peasants are just people. And most people are flawed, greedy, dumb and selfish. If we take away their troubles, we raise children, not men. They are easily misled and look for easy targets for their wrath who seemingly have it better, like us adventurers, elves and nobles. They forget the true darkness. The sinister gods who failed, who lost the play for the world. And the demons, who lost and broke the rules. And their spawn. The cultists, the criminal syndicates, the ahumans like the orcs and the goblins, ruled by bloodthirsty gods and a war-like culture. None of them have regard for Liberty and Humanity. We must educate them about these dangers, tame their selfish nature before we can give them a say in how things are run or relief the burden of forced work. Else, mad tyranny follows when heroes just rush in without a plan to slay the tyrannt. And even if they are sometimes a bit corrupt... To fight the Nobles ourselves means death or worse for us and the serfs. At best it would leave a vacuum of power that will allow the ruthless and greedy Demesians, no offense Menas..." He quibbed to the absent man. "...the pseudohumans, short-sighted extremists or Demons to take power in their stead. And what those will do will be worse than making people collect snail shells. No!" He looked up, high beyond the sky, to the second sun of Arbol, its scorched and wasted land, to the heavens and the dangerous lights that burned there; with the baleful black fire of the northern desert, only those most burning astral fires could be seen. "The situation calls for wise and pragmatic thinking. To assure the greatest Good for the greatest amount of people in the Long Term. That is how there will be real Justice and Peace." Astrid lowered her head in thought. Griffen once again attacked the breach he had made. "Yes, the people suffer. But it will be worth it. The pollution of one river will save a billion other streams from our savage foes, who have no regard for the Order, Purity and Light. Hundreds die now. But if we hold on, billions will live. If we let the others win, Life will be subjegated, destroyed and twisted. Just think of the spiritual pollution the Necromancer will bring if he'd be able to conquer this place. The never ending suffering and undeath, the corruption of meaning of a life or death without end. Or the Drake, enslaving and ravishing our helpless population to sate its dark appetites as if they were helpless cattle. So please shut up and do as you are told." Astrid's head was red as she lowered it, bowed by the immensity of his Ideas and concepts. Griffen knew this must come from her shame at having been so misguided by naivety. He was glad he could make clear to her how important reasonable compromise for the defence of the empire and ultimate victory against the demons was.

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  So they worked on, watched by the weathered wooden predecessors coalescealed with the hall's timbre halls, their paint chipped and scrapped, long since open to the forces of water and cold, decaying from the inside. No one saw that as time passed from antiquity to the current age, the less and less they looked like a struggling, frightened peasant and the more and more they looked like a lord, while the monsters they faced shrank from demons to dragons to giants to large animals to strange chimeras, half man, half animal, half another and, finally, to vermin or humans with pointy ears that cringed before the righteous, unstoppable human hammer.