First scroll

First Scroll From the translated journal of the Order of the Six, a mystery cult. Declared a heresy against gods and men, Hegemony Year 232.

Translated by Sister Ethina of the Goddess’s Wisdom from the notes of the Order’s, one Jeanna of Carlot, written in the year 202 of the Hegemony.

The traveller came to my house in the year of the hegemony 182, when I was in my eighteenth year. (The true age of Jeanna is unclear -Sister Ethina) I thought how strange she looked. She was dark skinned and dark haired as is the nature of the richer provinces of the hegemony, but her features bore the features of no ethnicity of people I knew. She wore a battered blue cloak but carried with her a spear and armour of type that seemed ancient but wondrous design. Even looking at her I knew she must be more than a simple adventurer, but I did not at first know how much more.

I was at the time a girl of nineteen, widowed. My parents and my husband had died in the hegemony’s suppression of the Ithinacs. My ambitions to being a scribe had died with them, and now I made a living as a simple farm gatherer and hired help for the farmers stalls in the market. Any job that I could take to keep myself fed and housed.

When I first saw her, I worried. She was obviously foreign, and she gave me a look that was inviting and predatory in a way that terrified me a little. She was a young looking woman, but her eyes, a strange blue that fit not at all with her dark features, were old. We spoke little that first time, merely arranging for her to buy some fruit. I saw her around town however, as if waiting for someone.

My life in Dalwag was always precarious. By the time the stranger came I had been robbed or assaulted on several occasions. The hegemony troops in the area regularly robbed the peasants to supplement their wages and diet. Food was becoming scarce, after the blight of ages had struck been unleashed. I was walking home with the food that was my wages when I found myself surrounded by a squad of hegemony mercenaries. They were big, light skinned northerners, recruited by Hegemony coin, and they regarded me cruelly. “Your food girl.”

“Please. I haven’t eaten all day. I’ll starve.” I protested. Too hungry to realize that by objecting I’d make them hurt me.

The leader looked like the kind who would hurt me anyway. One of them grabbed me and the leader raised a fist. Then the woman was there and she had his hands.

“Leave.” She said. The man was foolish enough to splutter some insult, and she crushed his face. In a few moments the others were dead too, and I was standing, blood of the one who had been behind me running down the back of my dress. “W-why? Why.”

“Because you’re beautiful.”

“But they’ll kill me.”

“I won’t let them.” I saw rage raise in her eyes, and around her a suit of strange armour appeared. It was ancient in design, built of ornate bronze, with a shield on her arm. It looked the armour of a goddess.

And by dawn, every hegemony soldier in Dalwag was dead.