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[i]To Carthage then I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves.[/i]
- St. Augustine, Confessions
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A new day was breaking behind the city, its jagged skyline shadowed by the rising sun. [i]Ozgad's Folly[/i] the place was called now, after the pirate king Ozgad One Hand, who had made an ill considered last stand here against the marauding orcs and beastkin of the Gorelord. The Folly was not this place's original name, nor was serving as a port to desperate pirates and lowlifes its original purpose, but few things in the vast desolation of Nagath were called now by the same titles they wore in the days of their glory, or served the same uses.

He sat back in the saddle and fixed a battered pipe in the corner of his mouth, lighting it as he surveyed the mudplains and marshland around the Folly. A few small villages- if that word could be used for collections of huts on stilts- could be made out in the faint dawn light, home no doubt to toadfolk and crab-farmers, eeking out an existence in the salt swamps, under the dubious protection of the city they helped to feed.

His gaan-lizard shuddered beneath him, letting out a cantankerous snort, signaling its displeasure at the fetid atmosphere they had recently entered, so different from the dry heat of the ashlands they had spent weeks traversing. He gave his mount a sharp kick and it plodded forward more briskly, towards the darkened Ozgad skyline.

He could almost hear Them now, a barely audible thrumming just below the surface of things. Finally, after so much hunting, so much pain and death and weariness, the final Pieces were assembled in one place. It was ironic, he supposed, that years of toil and planning would come to fruition in a squalid backwater. But it mattered little. From humble beginnings could come great things. Even gods.