Correcting a Few Small Technical Errors

By Astrid Mercury

If the venerable Professor Cenote had actively wanted me dead, he’d be hard-pressed to pull a masterstroke half as good as “Cenote’s Handbook to Fharamun”.

To say that Cenote’s Guides are popular back home would be something of an understatement - you’d think each new release was penned on ratskin with how fast they vanish from shelves. The wandering Professor certainly cuts a dashing image as he braves every danger in the world’s various backwaters, and seals all that adventure down safely within a sleek tome. The homebodies, looking for adventure, live them vicariously, while the travelers, finding it, come home swearing they dodged Death’s teeth by a book’s breadth.

In retrospect, we never asked the ones who didn't come back what guides they were following, and all those stories of near-misses really should have raised more eyebrows.

While this article wasn’t literally written in the pale snow with my own heart’s-blood, and I didn’t use the sword that spilled it for a pen, I hope I’ve conveyed the damn point well enough.

I was busy with some impromptu cremations in the eastern Sanctuary Groves when I recognized the first small problem in the Handbook. I turned to my companions for that night. The shorter one, Glowstick, was self-professed scum, wore enough scars to prove his love of violence was no casual fling, tried to cheat at cards six times that morning, and then knifed the other cheat’s hand to the table like he’d practiced the motion every day.

In other words, the model Fharamuni mercenary. What set the little horned bastard apart from the rest was that he thought himself a ‘people person’. A talker, and something of an open book.

“Ay, Glowstick. Got a question.”

He paused, halfway through stripping all the metal off of a recently-undead knight. He’d be throwing the parts he didn’t snatch onto the pyre after. “Yeah, Birdy?”

“Book says-” I didn’t need to specify “-that this’s a good place to come if you’re lost and incapable, since there’s all those garrisons and patrols to keep the dead down.”

It takes a lot to stun a good mercenary, but I’d managed. Glowstick looked at me like I’d been having chats with the Flesh (more on that later), then started laughing, almost bent in half. He’d just about calmed down when the other one made his way back, three more recently self-unearthed corpses on his back.

“What’s the joke?” Shackle was big, and wore some hag’s bone mask stitched to enough cloth to make a circus tent. Quiet and brooding, from suspicion rather than nature, he’d been glaring holes in the back of my head the whole day in some attempt to drive me off. Frankly he looked creepier than most of the Nachzehrer, but it’d take more than a scarecrow routine to get rid of me.

“Birdy’s book says the Sanctuary Grove’s - get this - a sanctuary!”

That startled a snort out of the walking tent, as he lobbed the bodies onto the burning pile. “How true that is.”

I looked around.

Maybe a minute’s sprint away, more fires burned - the torches of a watchtower, manned by a handful of soldiers, still visible between the snowfall and the trees.
But closer to us, much closer, were the graves, the disturbed earth that spat its contents up as we passed, the bright spilled blood and dark fetid rot we’d spread across the snow.

And with that, we left, starting the long hike down to Munkarshan.

“Nachzehrer retain a little bit of what they could do in life, but don’t worry - the rotting scent that makes them easy to detect is just a sign of the greater rot within. Between the forewarning and their failing bodies, there isn’t much to fear from the walking dead.” - Page 25 of Cenote’s Handbook.

“While it can take upward of 6 minutes for brain death to set in, consciousness is usually lost within seconds. Decapitation is one of the gentler methods of execution we have.” - Somewhere, some manuscript.

I found some issues with both quotes as I watched the carnage. My perspective was a little poor, seeing as my head was half-buried in a snowdrift while my body was busy being staked to a tree, but I figured I had enough of a view.

Our walk through the woods had been interrupted by a flash of steel passing through my neck, followed by hurricane-force winds blowing through where we stood. My world spun, and the snow veiled everything for some brief moments before I could see again.

What I saw was a Rotaska girl with big floppy ears, maybe half Shackle’s size, deflecting an axeblow with a textbook-perfect Spiral Counter before sending the giant sprawling with a slide kick. She spared me a glance, and I could see the barest remnant of a face, like she’d gone sixteen rounds with a brick wall in a headbutt contest before plowing through a field of thorns facefirst, before she turned back away. Two other corpses followed her - a skin-covered skeleton, practically mummified, and a bannerman covered in stitches and animal pelts. The first was trying to impale a frantically dodging Glowstick with shimmering swords that he was firing out from his palms. The bannerman was flailing some feet away, burning runes glinting on his flag as the wind picked up around him.

There had been no warning, and even as they fought in front of me, I could barely tell they were Nachs. I had a good nose for dark magic, and I’d missed it completely -only answer I could figure was that they’d been hiding in the Rotaska’s ‘shadow’ until they could pull their ambush off.

The next few moments were brutal. Shackle could only barely fend off the Rotaska, who moved so fast she seemed to be in two places at once. Whenever his wild axe-swings let up, she closed in with a set of short cuts, before nearly flickering back to dodge the next set. Only a few lines drew blood, but it would be enough. Glowstick had pulled out a revolver and blew the desiccated one’s skull apart, but that didn’t seem to slow it down any. The bannerman’s waving grew more frantic, and the winds started to whip up again - but that only fed the flames that quickly engulfed him.

Briefly I wondered who’d done it, before I made the connection. Ah, my mistake. I let my head dissolve into sparks, and I was back to my body.

Without the harassment from the bannerman, Glowstick managed to blow off the mummy’s knees, and I followed up by lighting the bastard up too. He’d shot four feet of steel through my chest twice and completely ruined my jacket, so I took a moment to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, the Rotaska zombie lunged back, moving too fast for even my eyes to follow. It stopped for a moment, glaring at us from the treeline, when a burst of blood erupted from its chest - a red spearhead, dyed black in the rotten blood of the thing. The girl started to twitch and spasm, coagulated blood bursting back into motion across its ruined excuse for a face.

The one who did it stood behind her, surprised he’d acted at all, and looking at us in a mixture of apprehension and relief.

“Hello?”

His name was Cyrus, ‘just Cyrus’, and he had about as much idea as I did for surviving in the wilderness. That is to say, none at all.

He was tired, hungry, and looked like he’d taken a few bites. His story confirmed it - he’d found himself without a memory in his head up in the Rotten Peaks, and had been walking south since. He’d followed that band of Nachs ever since they’d wiped out some Cavebeasts up in the mountains, and apparently they’d been walking for several days, straight through the nights.

I could believe it.

We filled him in about the world over a small campfire we’d hastily made - not that he needed it, seeing as he practically radiated heat. A Draco, oddly enough; Fharamun seemed to attract lonely bloodlines. Meanwhile, he told us stories about the Rotten Peaks, and the Flesh that still dwelt up there.

As an aside, the Handbook has no mention of the Flesh. How you forget to include a spreading biological corruption in your overview of the northern mountains, I don’t know. The good Professor must have never seen the Peaks in person - the place has been completely overtaken for years, and sometimes you can see the mountains themselves rupture, spraying gore and infestation to the valleys below.

We turned our discussion towards happier topics, but in a place like Gharamun, it’s hard to keep up morale. Especially since, right after, we were jumped by a pack of rabid ghouls. Needless to say, Cenote’s Handbook was worthless in that fight.

We’re back on the road now, our heading still Munkarshan, just bringing an extra head with us in tow. Despite the disasters we ran into on the way, we’re eating up the miles fast.

Still, Fharamun’s deadly. I’d imagine some poor soul wandering in, expecting something completely different, but I don’t need to - that was me, some days ago. It’ll take more than a few undead to put me down for good, but not every adventurer has that privilege.

So, if you’re heading down to Munkarshan too, listen to the locals, not books barely better than hearsay, unless you’re looking to join the Grove’s dead knights in their restless vigil.

Not sure about this style. I think it has potential, but it might be too experimental, too wordy. Maybe it needs more action? I’ll sleep on it…