On this forty-fifth day of our Ninth year of Reclamation (223 ADW) we commit the body of Jeanien the Harrowed to the earth. A hero and Honored Dead. Fallen in battle against an onslaught of thirty score corpsewights. He died for the protection of his people. He is given all the virtue his righteousness deserves.

  -Book of the Honored Dead, from the Exile Princedom of Blestrysnia.

  —-----------------

  Death was a constant. On the wind, in the swamps where bones peeked out from stagnant pools, the lingering scent of rot which could never truly be escaped regardless of how many incense one lit. Such was the land of Blestrysnia, the home of those for whom death was known from birth. The land Dragomir called his own.

  He walked behind his mentor, Florin, a large man but pale of complexion like everyone who lived in this gloomy region. They walked close together and with bows ready despite the cargo they hauled on their return towards town. Corpsehunters like themselves were careful to always slay any wandering dead which came too close to home. But complacency had killed Corpsehunters before and gheists were known to fly closer to territory hostile to them in search of unwitting prey.

  In the perpetual dusklight Dragomir had known his entire life he relied upon the shadows for guidance. He searched not for the shape of figures in the dark, as all monsters knew instinctively to hide themselves within deep corners. Instead, he kept close watch for shifts in that darkness, any passing sign of movement, of unlife. Thankfully he’d found nothing, likewise with his mentor as they kept a steady pace towards town, towards Blestrysnia proper.

  The light of their home became obvious through the swamp woods from miles away. The only source of yellow or white light Dragomir had ever known; it stood as a singular beacon of life in an otherwise cruel world. If not for its high stone walls and watchtowers, the Corpsehunters like himself who stood watch upon them, and the willingness of other good people to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their families then truly nothing living would ever have endured in these lands after hundreds of years.

  Approaching closer, enough that the finer details of the town of Blestrysnia could be caught through trees while its light reflected off swamp waters, Dragomir saw the guards atop the town’s only set of gates. From their positions, with halberds, bows, and ballistae for fighting bone constructs, the men atop those walls showed no sign of direct hostility. And after both Dragomir and Florin emerged from the woods and gave a sign to the guards, the gates began to open for them.

  The sign for entry was an important thing, given how some corpses would attempt to imitate those they killed, wearing their skin to hide their rotting flesh and trick the living from afar. Proof that one still breathed served a practical purpose, beyond the more spiritual significance it also carried.

  From the moment the gates opened, slowly and with guards on alert lest they all be taken off-guard by an attack, to the moment they closed behind the two Corpsehunters, Dragomir and his mentor remained silent. They walked with a dour demeanor both. For they had gone into the woods as three hunters, but returned now as only two and a corpse which they pulled across the earth on ropes. Bound so as to be harmless should it rise and wrapped in cloth to spare the fallen Corpsehunter his modesty. No words were exchanged between Dragomir, Florin, or the guards. All understood what had happened, what so often occurred during expeditions. The guards simply offered a short gesture in the body’s presence, like Dragomir had done upon his fellow Corpsehunter’s death.

  Nobody else paid much attention to the body. Through the streets of Blestrysnia, busy at all hours of day and night, citizens passed by without concern for the body. Most offered gestures, some noticed but did nothing, and more simply didn’t notice the Corpsehunters or their precious cargo.

  An old woman carrying two crying babies attracted more attention than them. The hawkers on the streetside, negotiating prices between the street cooks and mushroom farmers were the primary focus of people’s attention along their path in these few hours before another mealtime. Workers, mostly farmhands with experience in both harsh underground quarrying, mushroom cultivation, and corpse disposal drank away their earnings for yet another day.

  Blestrysnia was a place of harsh reality. Death was everywhere, in the air, the water. Its smell could never be escaped regardless of the incense lit or spices used. Decay had permeated deep into the soil. Only the rocks far below the ground were still free from death’s touch. Yet there was still something rather marvelous about Blestrysnia, this town which was more like a city, its walls a relic of the world before the Deep-Woe.

  Generations of sacrifice had built this place, a refuge from the vile beasts that wandered their home. The names of fallen Corpsehunters, Dragomir’s predecessors and perhaps soon fellows, were etched into the stones of every building. Altars built for the sake of the greatest heroes were on every street corner. Skulls, some being from the highest among the Honored Dead, decorated people’s doors to serve as protectors even after their passing.

  The evidence of sacrifice was everywhere. Dragomir could only hope to earn his place among them one day, as the good Andrei had some hours ago when he fell in battle against a terrible throng of ghouls. They had been sent into the dark lands to fight off the ghouls which had begun to dig into the old tombs beyond town, threatening to release the restless dead within from their mausoleums and the crypts which keep them from threatening the world beyond. But when they arrived, one such tomb had already been breached, and in the desperate battle against the wandering corpses within, Andrei had been killed. But in his death Andrei had slain enough corpses to allow Dragomir and Florin to fight the horde back and reseal the tomb, thus preventing further death.

  Owing to the honorable nature of his passing, Andrei would be given his place among the Honored Dead. He would not rot, but instead burn; his body cleansed to thus become immune to the dark magicks that ruled these lands.

  Within an hour of their return, the Templars had taken Andrei’s body into their custody, then within three hours the ceremony had been organized. At the center of Blestrysnia the ritual was performed, Andrei was given the title of Honored Dead, his flesh was burned, his bones entombed save for his skull which found a place among others on skull mounts surrounding the town square. Nearly a hundred people had gathered to watch the ceremony, a humble showing by the standards of some Dragomir had known from those most expansive and elaborate services given only to the truest heroes whose legacy was etched into the status which also surrounded the center of town.

  Yet the ceremony for Andrei was warm nonetheless, not only for the fire but also the sheer mirth which permeated the celebration. For in a land where death was known from the moment of birth, a good passing was a rare reprieve that brought many to sing songs and dance.

  Dragomir watched many make merry around the funeral pyre, his attention increasingly on the crowd as he imagined the shape his own funeral might take. He hoped it was heroic, that his death would earn him honors few others ever received. It was his purpose in life to fight and die. He was a Corpsehunter. His family had mourned his inevitable passing the day he’d been selected. He held no purpose but to give everything he was for the selfless sake of others. And the celebration of another hunter’s death only made the prospect of his own sacrifice all the more enticing, though it might still be many years away.

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  Dragomir was content to watch, mind wandering in the same manner as he wandered through the crowd, until he came upon an unfamiliar and strange sight. Blestrysnia was a town of many thousands, large enough that one couldn’t hope to know everyone, but small enough that its most unique citizens would still be recognizable by all. And the man Dragomir now caught sight of in the crowd would certainly be counted among the strangest of people.

  His black hair was the only normal thing about him. Most of his face was covered by a black cloth mask, but the stranger’s face was so gaunt and his skin so pale as to make his head almost resemble a bleached skull regardless of his attempts to hide his features. Hauntingly frail, but harsh in his gaze, the man looked upon the still burning funeral pyre with singular focus, attention taken wholly to the sight though exactly what he thought of it was unreadable by his face alone. Nobody Dragomir had known even passingly resembled him.

  Dragomir, curious, moved to approach the stranger. But in the last moment before he could part the crowd enough to reach him, the strange man finally looked away from the pyre and towards the Corpsehunter. With lesser interest, the man observed Dragomir for only the faintest moment before turning away. And within a blink of one’s eye, the stranger had gone from the crowd, leaving Dragomir curious, but unable to find answers.

  Yet the mystery was a passing one. And after mere seconds he refocused upon the celebration, intent to enjoy this night for however long his fellow citizens would allow.

  —-----------------

  Dragomir didn’t find much rest that night. Funeral celebrations, while hearty reprieve for the soul, also allowed for exhaustion to creep in slowly and with a vengeance. Thankfully Dragomir had avoided much drinking, even after entering a pub alongside a few other Corpsehunter apprentices for an extended night of light-hearted revelry. He allowed the others to sing their songs, with most musical efforts focusing on the writing of Andrei’s legend, as was always expected for the Honored Dead. Heroes deserved poems and tall tales, as some already went about inventing.

  Dragomir had known Andrei only in passing but was certain that the man had never dueled any foreign nobles nor taken the interest of their wives. Yet the scene of his fellow Corpsehunters locking into a challenge among each other to see who could invent the most outrageous story about the good Andrei was entertaining enough to occupy Dragomir’s focus as he quietly drank the following hours away.

  Overdrinking was all too easy in a land without true sunlight. Mealtimes were organized by the ringing of clock-bells every six hours. Times itself was marked with the rigorous keeping of hourglasses. But neither dawn nor dusk made for the end of each day. People rose from bed and fell into slumber depending upon the demands of their work. And the grey malaise coupled with the constancy of candlelight made for a sometimes dangerous combination.

  Eventually Dragomir found himself suffering from an acute drinking-sickness which was made only worse once his hangover arrived. And it was there, as his friends likewise began to suffer the ill-effects of drinking while winding down their celebrations, that another pub patron arrived.

  At first Dragomir offered only the most passing of glances, his headache stopping him from caring about anything else. But in recognizing so many telling and unique features, the corpse-pale skin, the masked face, the signs of sickness so extreme that the man shouldn’t have been able to stand let alone walk, Dragomir turned to fully observe the newcomer.

  The stranger offered the bartender, a stout woman, a vague gesture in greeting which she offered only a grunt in return to. She likewise seemed to notice how undeniably foreign the man was.

  “Hey.” The bartender gruffly called towards the pale man, her tone as unwelcoming as her eyes. “You’re not from around here.”

  The man in turn merely took a seat nearly all the way across the bar from Dragomir before answering. “No, I am most certainly not.”

  Despite his horse voice he carried an accent unusual to this region, as if his appearance wasn’t already enough indication. And while Dragomir knew very few learned men, the stranger's manner of speaking seemed to carry a hint of education.

  “Where’re you from then?” Barkeeper Imanuela asked.

  “Far away…” The stranger answered while placing a coin, a silver one, upon the bar.

  Imanuela wanted better answers as certainly as Dragomir, but with money before her, she elected to simply hold her silence and fill a cup of mushroom wine for him. The people of Blestrysnia were naturally cautious of outsiders, and in turn foreigners. Those few who dared enter would always look upon their way of life with revulsion. The open display of death, the ancestral skulls that adorned every fireplace mantle within Blestrysnia and even in Imanuela’s pub, their subsistence upon underground mushrooms cultivated off the bodies of friend and foe alike. Only the Honored Dead were spared from their bodies being sent into the pits for mushroom cultivation. All others would have their heads removed to prevent reanimation before being thrown into the cultivation caverns below town. Everything that rotted and could be retrieved was used in those farms. And while absolutely normal for the people of Blestrysnia, foreigners had a habit of vomiting upon learning how their mushroom stew was made.

  If this stranger knew about the mushroom farms, he showed no sign of discomfort as Imanuela placed a bowl of soup before him. Still masked, the man sipped from the meal without complaint, earning a raised eyebrow from Imanuela and increased interest from Dragomir. Whatever brief curiosity he’d felt before, in the crowds, had now grown tenfold.

  Dragomir quickly found a new seat next to the stranger. Casting a glance at the man’s ruined green cloak, the locally made black clothing he wore, and the belt full of liquid within equally strange vials, Dragomir spoke to the man as he drank his soup slowly. “What’s your name lad?”

  “Runt…”

  Dragomir huffed, nearly a chuckle. “Is that your real name, seems slightly too descriptive to be so.”

  “I was always on the small side.” Runt answered.

  Now laughing more audibly, Dragomir signaled Imanuela for another drink, having already forgotten his own hangover. “Well, Runt, what brought you to this far corner of the world?”

  Runt shrugged. “For the last week of travel, everyone I’ve passed by has warned me away from coming here. They kept talking about the terrible evil of the Barrow Mountain… I suppose I was curious to see it all for myself.”

  “Did you come to merely sight-see, or are ya’ interested in joining the fight?”

  Runt glanced down at the heavy cleaver on Dragomir’s belt, a weapon favored by Corpsehunters for how it could sever limbs and decapitate the living dead. “I haven’t decided.” Runt answered.

  Although non-committal, Runt’s answer was enough confirmation for Dragomir. With a lighter but louder laugh, he raised his newly acquired cup of mushroom wine to Runt. “Well then, you might earn a place among the Honored Dead yet.” Dragomir couldn’t help but feel respect for someone like Runt; weak of body, clearly on the path towards wasting away, but strong enough in spirit to overcome those limitations. Dragomir believed, instantly and without need for better evidence, that Runt had arrived in Blestrysnia to die honorably before his sickness could claim him. And immediately Dragomir thought Runt to be a kindred spirit of sorts, a man who’d rather sacrifice everything than leave this world peacefully.

  Dragomir decided, in that moment, to assist Runt in his quest and allow the man an opportunity to earn a burial by fire.

  “You should travel with me.” Dragomir said. “I’m sure my mentor and the others will happily oblige your mission. You’d find a place beside us all to fight the dead.”

  Runt nodded, still slowly sipping broth from beneath his cloth mask. “I suppose I will consider it.”

  Taking his answer to be a definite, Dragomir patted Runt on the shoulder, taking note of how bony the man truly was. “We’ll be setting off from town two mealtimes from now, roughly ten hours…” Dragomir then signaled for another drink, which he offered to Runt. “But until then, we should celebrate the making of a new Corpsehunter. And if the heavens will it, a new Honored Dead.”

  Runt lacked Dragomir’s enthusiasm, his entire demeanor being as pallid as his skin. But regardless he took up the offered wine, clearly willing to accompany Dragomir on his next expedition from Blestrysnia.