Chapter 1 - Starfall
December 12th

This could not be happening. Hieronymus Mauser stumbled blindly down the alleyway. The cool autumn wind tore at his naked flabby body and he cried out in pain as fragments of broken glass dug into his bare feet. He was a flabby man, soft from decades of complacent power with thinning hair and a sagging gut. Although he appeared to be in his fifties his real age was closer to thrice that. Wizards aged slower than regular mortals, though the march of time would claim them if no worse fate rose up to swallow them.

Such a fate intent on swallowing Mauser. Limping along he turned back to look down the alleyway, the shadowy form of his pursuer flicked across the graffiti covered tunnel, a flash as quick as moonlight. Mauser hurled a torrent of spell fire back down the alley, the golden fire igniting everything vaugle flammable. Trash burst into ugly black orange infernos and a lone trash can melted to slag before the onslaught of arcane violence. There was a momentary silence broken only by a distant dog howl and the wail of a car alarm, then there was a sultry feminine laughter which dripped with cat like cruelty.

“Who are you!” Mauser screamed, his voice high and tiny with panic. There was a flash of movement to his right and he turned and fled blindly down another alleyway. Mauser was the head of the Council of Seven, a coven of powerful wizards who kept the peace in Detroit. He was accustomed to being in control, to having power of the situation, it had been decades since he had felt physical danger the reminder of the sensation made his guts curl. Even for this area of economic wasteland the streets were suspiciously empty, where were the vagrants, the homeless, the drug abusers who haunted these desolate stretches of the city? How was it that he found himself alone amidst hundreds of thousands. 

The naked wizard ran wheezing over a section of cracked asphalt that had once been a parking lot, unsure of where he was running save for a generalized desire to find some other living soul that might ward off the terror that was stalking him. Something whipped past him on his right and he spun and unleashed another blast of arcane fire, blowing in the front of a boarded up convenience store. More mocking laughter sounded, sourceless and devoid of humanity. The wizard could feel the things malice as a cold choking terror around his heart, pushing in on his arcane senses. Could it be that the vampires knew he had stumbled across their little game? Surely they wouldn’t dare come at him directly and this thing, whatever it was, was like no vampire he had ever felt before.

LImping on his injured foot and leaving bloody footsteps the naked wizard ran across the street and into an abandoned park. It must have once been a place where children had played and bored parents had flirted with one and other but years of neglect had taken their toll. Tall trees reached up like skeletal fingers from beneath the ground. The grass, brownish and unwholesome, brushed his calves as he ran across the overgrown flower beds that had long ago choked on weeds. Rusted playground equipment creaked in the wind. Even through the burn of adrenaline the cold was getting to him now, searing his lung and burning at his nose, ears and genitals. How had he ever allowed this to happen. He tripped and stumbled down a small incline hitting something unyielding, freezing and hard enough to bloody his nose.

“No! No!” the wizard shrieked as he tried to push himself up. He realised that he was on a sheet of ice. Perhaps it had once been a duckpond at the center of the park. Slipping and sliding he pushed himself to his feet and then froze. A figure was moving down the gentle slope of the ponds bank.

“No, no, no,” he repeated though now it was a desperate whisper rather than a terrified scream. Mauser shook his head as though he could deny what was happening by sheer force of will. Desperately he began to incant the only spell he could think of that might save him but it was already too late. It had been too late for a long time he realized as the figure stepped onto the ice. She was beyond him. THe figure stepped close, fingers as cold as ice reaching forward and touching the wizards lips with a gentle shushing sound. The incantation faltered and failed. Again there was silence. In the clear winter sky a shooting star streaked overhead, vanishing into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared.

“Please,” the wizard blubbered, hot tears running down his face.


“Shhhhh,” the figure said in a catlike tone, and then, with an almighty crack, the ice gave way, plunging Hieronymus Mauser, head of the Council of Seven and Hierophant of Detroit, into the ice blackness below. 


[hider=The Basics]
The Head of the Wizards in Detroit is found naked and frozen to death in a pond by the mortal authorities.

The word Thaum has been carved into his chest. [@Sophrus]
He had been investigating the criminal dealings of vampires. [@Hour Error]
A certain fae is rumored to have recently had an argument with Mauser [@POOHEAD189]
There are very few beings who could kill a fully fledged wizard [@Fetzen]


[/hider]