[i]If you’re reading this letter, then it means I’ve either managed to get enough salty dogs to join the expedition, or you’ve looted it off my corpse. 

Assuming the former, it’s time for us to meet up again. Make your way to that little town I told you about, on the northern shore of the Ink Sea: Nesville, and try to be there on the 17th of New Breath. It’s a tiny little shitstain, as I mentioned, but it’s the closest dock to the island and I’ve already made arrangements with the locals. You can get there via Ferry if you head to Old BlackSky, or you can take the rail to Clakestown and then hire some horsemen. You could also, which I would not recommend, walk, and given the weather and the disposition of the starving farmers that surround it, you’d better be prepared to stab some blokes as you go. 

Right, on that note, bring whatever coin you want, but on account of their livestock having made the journey to this mysterious island of ours, the folk of Nesville are far more inclined to exchange goods and services for food. I’ll be supplying the rations for the trip itself, so you don’t have to worry none about that, but if you want a room, or a cohort, or just wanna watch the old ladies dance till their legs bleed, bring meat, salt, bread, the works. Just be ready for knives in the back. Or the front. You mix hunger with desperation and they’re liable to try their luck against any of you.

One last thing. As I mentioned, I’m taking responsibility for the rations, but I’m also stocking up on fuel, oil, first aid supplies, steam-cells, ammunition, the works. That means I’m going to be a few days behind you all but I expect you can spend that time productively getting to know each other and the locals. So do as I says, not as I does.

Anyways. Assuming the latter, you can go ahead and blow my corpse, you filthy rat. 

Sincerely, 
The Recruiter 
(I also go by Kenningway if you’d prefer.)[/i]

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The town was described by The Recruiter as a “tiny little shitstain”, but that was honestly doing a disservice to shitstains worldwide. It would perhaps be more astute to describe the town as a husk. Battered by an unusually cold spring, starvation, and the usual turmoils of endless rain and howling northbound winds, to create a gray, empty corpse that looked as if it had never seen the sun or a smile since the day since some fool decided to lay the first brick of his home here.

Indeed, fortune seemed to have long abandoned this Gothic stone town. At the very heart of Nesville was the town square, which hosted a barren and long dead tree, from which hung the bodies of thirty men and women who had been caught by the sheriff doing anything he didn’t like, which might occasionally include breaking the law. On the trunk of the the tree, several people had carved names and dates, makeshift tombstones for the decaying bodies, and the same phrase repeated over and over: “N’knan Uoon”, which came from a long-dead language forgotten by outsiders. 

Surrounding the town square were a number of buildings, which may have one point been fronts for a bustling market, but were now half-collapsed and largely used by the poorest within the city, who used makeshift wooden roofs and improvised iron furnaces to try to keep the spring cold at bay, with little success. Hey and mud were everywhere, remnants of when the livestock used to provide both livelihood and an extra source of warmth, but were now simply another layer of grime to scrape off their shoes when they dragged themselves home every day.

The circle of buildings beyond the town square were in slightly better repair, although it was still very normal to find a broken gargoyle eroding on the street, or a giant hole in a wall that was eaten through by the open-air sewer that flowed through the city like a series of irrigation canals, using water from the sea to wash away their filth. Here, the tradesmen, the miners, the sailors, the craftsmen, and the low-level government officials languished, working their trade out of a resigned acceptance that if they don’t, they’d have nothing to do but waste away into nothing. They could still get coin easily enough, traders came from all over to buy their goods low, and sell food at a premium. And every time some blacksmith had the bright idea to rob them, their armed guards made quick work of his makeshift blunderbuss packed with wet powder and rusted screws. 

Further outward, outside the village proper, were the farmers fields, which were still too frozen to start working. These people had it worst of all, with the traders not even bothering to stop by and offer them the chance to sell anything. The people in the city, too, seemed to scorn them, as if it were their fault they were all starving and cold and wet, and thus any farmer who was found walking through the cold, cobblestone streets were usually not long for the world. And if they were to get killed either way, many decided it would be more comfortable to do as much killing as they could beforehand. Thus, the road were peppered with desperate and starving men and women, armed with whatever sharp objects they might have on hand. 

The only part of town that was still keeping the whole city alive, if barely, were the docks, where the fishermen worked day and night to bring in enough white meat to keep the people of the city fed. At least, in theory. The dock-masters took their cut, and then the sheriff, and then the mayor, and the sailors, too, had to steal some away for their own families: which meant that by the time the fish were rolled into the morning market, the offerings were thin and the quality, barely edible. All the same, there wasn’t a day that passed where someone didn’t break someone else fighting over the last scraps of some ugly-fleshed bottom-feeder.

In the whole time Wolfgang had been there, which was considerably longer than specified by the letter, the sun had never come out. The sky seemed trapped in a murky, violent darkness, and on the days it wasn’t raining, the town was covered in a fog so thick it may as well have been. 

Wolfgang had lived like a king for the past week. Taking the Recruiter’s words to heart, he had taken some of his heard, four of his less-valuable cattle, and brought them with him when he took the ferry over. Between the cattle and his large body and swollen stomach, proof that he was someone accustomed to eating well, he as treated like a god, and was only stabbed around five times since he arrived. 

Still, by the 17th, his last cattle had been butchered, and he only had a few thick slices of red meat left. He had traded his food very quickly, and very carefully.

“Good morning.” He smiled as he stepped down the stairs of the most well-to-do inn in the city, a wooden building with a modern fireplace right by the docks and sea, typically used by captains when they docked for the night. The wooden stairs seemed to buckle under his weight, loudly protesting his every move. He was used to that by now.

The woman who ran the place, a gangling old wench with a figure as thin as her dark blue eyes, merely glared at him as he approached, readying his morning cup of tea. He knew she hated him, but the feelings weren’t reciprocated. His round face balanced a pair of silver glasses nicely on his button nose, and he adjusted it slightly as he picked up a cup far too small for his meaty hands. He sipped as he glanced out the window, an idle smile on his rosy cheeks.

“The others should be here today.” He spoke, both to her and himself. “I wonder what they’re like.”