Letter from Rosalind to the Heroes of Cleenseau

Received January 11th, in Cleenseau

Friends:

Disaster! Woe! What has befallen us! I fear a curse has settled on this land after what I saw outside Fellburn. A horde of hundreds - or perhaps even a thousand - skeletons and worse, arising from the battlefields, swarming the city.

The walls are stout, and the skeletons seemed mindless. We passed by on ship, not daring to land, and they did not attempt to stop us, or even seem to notice. It seemed that they were uncoordinated - but despite that, the city of Fellburn seems truly besieged. I hope the Duke can do something or the King. I saw no signs of the Army of the South, which should be garrisoned here. Where could they be?

Eremon assures me the gods have not forsaken us, but the string of bad luck in the last year… We reach Stavenford this evening, where I will endeavor to find someone to bring this letter to you.

What horror has befallen us? I have reached Stavenford, and here too the dead have risen! Only a few they say, but a three dozen men and women are dead this day. The rotting bodies arose from the grave, the people here tell me, and would not die until they were struck many times. One of them was fearsome and wielded a wicked sword, I am told, and killed two dozen before it was brought down. It had a strange sigil on its armor, which Arthur has reproduced below. The people here are in shock, but I fear I cannot stay. I desperately wish to turn for home, but perhaps the King has need of me in Embry.

I pray all is well in Cleenseau, and I thank the gods you arrived, for I believe if the dead have risen in Cleenseau as well you will fare better than the poor souls of Stavenford.

Yours in peace,
Lady Rosalind Essford
A dark day, the 8th of January, in the 7th year of Robert I’s kingship

There is a rough sketch:

Also a postscript in Eremon’s hand:

I fear this is what my unease was warning me of and that worse is to come. I pray hourly I am wrong.
-Eremon