Location: Monthaven
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd Year, Fall
It was Autumn, the season of dying leaves and heavy, wet winds. As Emcorae was busy pleading his case in Arbola, a storm had gathered over his home town – a tempest so unnatural that the elders later claimed the sky itself was screaming a warning…
Koaz Comes Calling
The sky above the Pennal region had become a churning cauldron of violet and charcoal. The “Great Autumn Gale” had descended with a fury that defied the seasons, turning the rolling hills into a landscape of shifting shadows and screaming wind. Rain didn’t fall; it was propelled horizontally, sharp as needles, driven by gusts that tore ancient oaks from the earth as if they were saplings. Lightning strobed with an unnatural, rhythmic frequency, illuminating the valley in flashes of ghastly white that turned the familiar silhouettes of Monthaven into jagged, alien ruins. It was a storm that would be talked about for generations—yet not for the wind that tore the shingles from the roofs, but for what arrived in its wake.
The village stood huddled in the valley, its inhabitants bolted behind doors, praying to their God Yah-Way that their roofs would hold. In such a tempest, movement should have been impossible. Any horse would have been blinded; any man would have been swept from the path.
Yet, Kaoz moved with ease – for he wasn’t a man, but a Myz.
I’ve always taken a certain pride in Kaoz. Like all Myz he was hand-crafted by me. At nearly seven feet tall and weighing over twenty stones, Kaoz was a giant even among other Myz—a walking fortress of slate-colored muscle and ancient, refined malice. He didn’t need armor; his dusky grey skin was tougher than any plate mail forged by man. With his wild black hair whipping in the gale and those eyes—completely black voids of endless night—he was a harbinger of doom that the mortals were never meant to survive. Dressed in a simple burlap tunic and cowhide pants, he looked like a common laborer from a distance (albeit a giant one), but the massive broadsword strapped to his back told a much darker story. He was a perfect blend of power and rage, a walking monster that only I could truly appreciate.
As the storm raged, Kaoz commanded a black warhorse that was a singular, monstrous pedigree in its own right. The beast’s hooves struck the sodden earth with the heavy, rhythmic thud of a funeral drum. The Myz sat motionless in the saddle, his massive frame unyielding against the gale that threatened to topple stone walls. He didn’t feel the cold; he didn’t blink as the rain lashed against his void-black eyes. He moved with a predatory certainty that felt less like travel and more like an inevitable encroaching shadow.
He skirted the main thoroughfare of the village, staying where the darkness was thickest. He passed the massive church and the town square, where the Brandonale’s tavern sign creaked and groaned on its hinges like hanging man, and he ignored the shuttered shops. Kaoz was seeking the fringes, the place where the village gave way to the wild.
Eventually he reached the edge of town, where the hovels were smaller and the distance between neighbors grew. Sheltering from the storm under a stand of trees, the Myz reached into the pocket of his burlap tunic, pulling out a crumpled, rain-soaked parchment. It was a crude map Dugan Finch had drawn with a trembling hand and given to the messenger he’d sent to King Diked – it was a map of betrayal that pinpointed the Azop household on the very fringes of the settlement. Kaoz studied the ink-bleed for only a second; his black-void eyes had already memorized the layout. To him, the hovel he sought was not a home, but a coordinate for a promised execution.
Leaving the trees, Kaoz moved again. In a short time, through the strobing lightning, a single, humble structure came into view at last —the Azop household. It was a low-slung house of fieldstone and thick, sodden thatch, looking more like a burrow than a home. Standing before it with the thunder raging overhead, Kaoz pulled his mount to a halt.
The Myz sat there for a long moment, the water cascading off his tunic, his nostrils flaring as he caught the scent of the blood. It was now time to have some fun!
Inside the Azop hovel, the family never knew of the danger until it was too late. With the storm a deafening roar against the walls, the hearth offered Emcorae’s family a deceptive sense of sanctuary. Scents of damp wool, drying sage, and a bit of metallic tang from Alboris’s tools in the corner.
Beckali, Emcorae’s mother, knelt by the fire, her face lined with the constant worry of a woman whose husband and eldest son were always elsewhere. She poked at the embers, trying to coax enough warmth to fight the draft. Her husband, Alboris, lay slumped in his chair, a heavy wooden relic he’d reclaimed years ago. At present he was dead to the world, a half-empty mug of ale at his feet, his snores a rhythmic counterpoint to the thunder.
In the shadows near the back wall, Pallina, Alfranco’s wife and the family’s matriarch, sat still, reciting her litany of prayers in a low breath. She’d been at it over over a candlemark, her fingers white-knuckled as she clutched her shawl. Nearby, nder a heavy wool quilt on the floor, Emcorae’s teenage sister Teree huddled with Chich, the family’s potbelly dog. The tiny beast was trembling, but it wasn’t the thunder that bothered her. Chich’s ears were pinned back, and a low, guttural snarl was vibrating through her small chest.
“Hush, Chich,” Teree whispered, pulling the dog closer. “It’s just the wind.”
But it wasn’t the wind.
CRACK!
As the thunder raged overhead, it shook the house – at the same time, the door didn’t just open; it was annihilated.
Kaoz burst through the threshold of the Azop’s shack – his seven-foot frame shattering the timber and the stone casing as if they were made of dry twigs. He entered the hovel like a god of ruin, his presence so massive that he seemed to displace the very air in the room.
The firelight licked at his dusky grey skin and caught the sharp, predatory glint of his razor-teeth as he bared them in a mirthless snarl. Chich let out a terrified yelp and scrambled into the dark void beneath a heavy oak chest, but the rest of Emcorae’s terrified family remained frozen in place, their minds refusing to process the nightmare that had just stepped out of the storm.
Beckali let out a strangled cry, her hands flying to her mouth. Alboris jerked awake, his eyes wide and bloodshot, staring up at the giant who stood nearly touching the rafters.
Kaoz didn’t speak. He didn’t search the rooms. With a slow, macabre grace, he reached down and snatched a thick, burning branch of oak from the hearth. He held it for a moment, watching the orange flames dance in the reflection of his black-hole eyes, relishing the terror that had turned the family to stone.
Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed the brand into the dry, winter-stored bedding in the corner.
As the straw ignited with a violent whoosh, the light in the room shifted from the warm glow of a home to the hellish glare of a pyre. Kaoz reached over his shoulder and drew the massive broadsword. The steel was cold, notched from a hundred kills, and long enough to cleave a man in two with a single hand.
“Emcorae Azop?” the Myz rumbled. The sound was a low, tectonic vibration that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves, more ominous than the lightning overhead.
Beckali found her voice, though it was thin and trembling. “He… he is not here! Please,—”
Kaoz didn’t wait for the plea to finish. It didn’t matter much to him who he killed – so long as he killed someone – many someones. Kaoz wanted to create a slaughter that would echo – what he did to Emcorae’s family was beyond words. At last, his prey mercilessly dispatched, the bloody Myz stepped back toward the shattered doorway as the fire took hold of the walls, the dry thatch above beginning to hiss and crackle. Within minutes, the Azop house was a torch in the darkness, the flames whipped into a screaming frenzy by the Autumn wind – the fires quickly covering the macabre scene that Kaoz left inside.
“YAAWP!” Kaoz roared as he stood outside in the rain, watching the smoke rise, and relishing the fact that the devastation had only just begun.
The Hopeless Stand
Sometimes, the most dangerous thing to mortals is the illusion of safety. The people of Monthaven had lived under the protection of the eastern hills for so long they had forgotten that their cozy village life was still vulnerable to the evil things of the world. For generations, the town had been a place of predictable seasons and quiet commerce, where the greatest threat was a late frost or a spoiled batch of grain.
The town square, usually a place for midday gossip and the bartering of textiles, was about to transform into a macabre theater—and it all centered around the church—that bastion of hope for Monthaven’s poorly educated townsfolk. The Church of The Holy Son stood as a daunting silhouette of granite and white-wash, its steeple reaching toward the heavens like a desperate, stony finger.
The intensity of the earlier storms was replaced now by a new, more terrifying sight—the orange glow on the outskirts of town was no longer a distant flicker; it had become a hungry inferno that licked at the low-hanging clouds. It turned the mist into a sickly amber haze and reflected with a hellish intensity off the oily puddles in the potholes of the muddy road.
<RING! RING!>
The heavy iron tongue of the church bell began to toll—a frantic, uneven rhythm that sounded more like a death rattle than a call to worship. With the rains dying down to a miserable, cold drizzle, confused people began coming outside, clutching their shawls and lanterns, trying to piece together what was happening. Standing upon the high stone steps of the sanctuary, Pastor Kastelli’s broad frame was draped in ceremonial robes of white and gold that whipped in the still-gusty wind. Normally, Kastelli moved with a practiced, slow dignity, his large belly preceding him like a royal herald in the grand processions of Mannah’s feast days. But tonight, his movements were jerky, his breathing heavy with a mixture of exertion and dawning horror.
He had an ill feeling crawling beneath his skin, a cold weight in his gut that no amount of prayer or lard-crusted venison could soothe, but he tried to hide that from the villagers gathering in the square.
“Stay calm, children of Mannah!” Kastelli’s voice boomed, though it lacked its usual resonance. “It is but a fire at the edge of the woods! The storm has surely brought a branch down upon a hearth! Go, get your buckets, but do not fear! The Holy Son watches over this square! This house of stone is your shield, and my faith is your armor! Do not let the shadows deceive you; we are the chosen of Yahway!”
Religion is a curious balm for the mortal soul. People build great monuments to gods they’ve never met, hoping the structures alone will act as a shield against the forces of darkness. The Church of The Holy Son was the pride of Monthaven, a sprawling edifice dedicated to Mannah—the son of Yahway. It was meant to be a bastion of light, featuring arched windows and heavy, intricate masonry that spoke of permanence. It was presided over by a man whose girth was nearly as impressive as his self-importance. For two decades, Pastor Kastelli had ruled his flock with a firm, controlling hand, believing himself to be the shepherd of their spirits. But this shepherd was about to realize he was merely another lamb.
Meanwhile, from the Brandonale Tavern, the heavy oak doors swung open, spilling a sickly golden lamplight into the black muck of the street. Drunken men stumbled out, the smell of stale ale and pipe weed clinging to them, blinking against the still-misty rain.
“Look!” Jon Middleswarth pointed a shaking finger towards the road that led from the scene of the growing fires. The smoke was thicker there, swirling in the wind like ghosts.
“It’s some kind of… giant shadow!” Ben Wirtz, the town medic, squinted his eyes, his professional detachment failing him as he clutched his bag of tinctures.
“A monster! It’s a m-m-monster!” Jon’s wife Sally shrieked, her voice cracking as the silhouette grew larger, blotting out the light of the burning Azop hovel.
Nearby, still upon the church stairs, Kastelli reached into the folds of his vestments and produced a heavy silver icon of Mannah—a shining figure with outstretched arms. He thrust it toward the encroaching darkness, the metal catching the strobing blue-white glare of the lightning that still flickered in the distance.
“In the name of Mannah, the Holy Son! In the name of Yahway and Meree!” Kastelli shrieked, his voice sounding high and reedy, a thin reed in the wind that offered no shelter. “I command you! Begone, foul spirit! This ground is sanctified by the blood of the righteous!”
Then it was that the shadow became flesh.
Kaoz stepped into the square, leading his massive war horse, a beast of charcoal hide and foaming mouth that seemed birthed from the storm itself. The pair emerged from the acrid smoke of the burning outskirts like a tectonic plate shifting into view. The firelight of the dying Azop home danced within his void-black eyes, and as he bared his razor-sharp teeth in a silent, predatory snarl, a thick plume of mist exhaled from his throat, looking more like the sulfurous breath of a dragon than a man. Standing nearly seven feet tall, his dusky skin looked like wet granite, and the massive broadsword on his back seemed heavy enough to cleave the church altar in two.
That’s when the world seemed to tilt for Kastelli. The silver icon didn’t just slip; it felt as though it had become lead in his hand, cursed by the mere presence of the giant. It fell from his nerveless, fat fingers, bouncing down the stone steps with a series of hollow, metallic clangs before splashing into the thick muck of the square with a dull, final thud.
The Gargoyle! The pastor’s mind screamed as a memory hit him with the force of a physical blow.
Years ago, Kastelli had watched from a safe distance as a stone-faced demon—a creature that looked exactly like the one standing before him—chased a terrified, twelve-year-old Emcorae through these very streets. The boy had run up these very steps, his small hands bloodied from banging on the wood, begging to be let inside the church, begging for the pastor’s religion to save him from the reaching claws of evil. Yet Kastelli was watching from the safety of his upstairs window, peering through the curtains. He had wanted to open wide the church’s doors and save Emcorae; he had felt the stirrings of a shepherd’s duty. Yet the cleric lost the battle of courage. He had remained hidden, his hand on the bolt but too terrified to slide it, paralyzed by a primal fear. It was a cowardice he had since spent a decade dressing up as “divine patience” or “the mysterious will of Mannah” whenever that fateful day came up in his guilty conscience. In his heart, he knew he had failed the boy then, and as he looked into the bottomless black pits of the Myz’s eyes now, Kastelli realized he was about to fail everyone else too.
Tying the reins of his mount to a gnarled, leafless tree at the square’s edge, Kaoz took a heavy, deliberate step onto the cobblestones—and the ground seemed to groan beneath his twenty-stone bulk.
“What do we do, Pastor? Give us the word!” The barkeep Aldom Mercaldo asked, clutching a heavy iron fire poker, his eyes darting between the priest and the giant.
Kastelli didn’t answer. The words of scripture had turned to ash in his mouth. He didn’t call for the villagers to stand their ground or form a line of defense. The “de facto leader” of Monthaven simply turned, his heavy robes bunching around his ankles and tripping his frantic feet. He scrambled back through the massive, iron-bound oak doors of the Church, his heavy breathing the only sound in the sudden, terrifying silence.
A few panicked villagers rushed to follow him, hoping for sanctuary, but the sound of the heavy inner bolts sliding into place—clack-clack-clack—echoed through the square, a final, metallic punctuation to his betrayal. He had locked the House of God from the inside. He left his flock standing in the mud, staring at the empty, white-washed steps where their shepherd had been, while the stone-faced doom approached them, his massive broadsword already drawn and gleaming with a cold, thirsty light.
“There’s only one of him.” Emcorae’s friend Kurk Frixer said to his mates, his voice trembling but determined as he gripped a wood-cutting axe. “We can take him if we move together.”
“Find something to fight with! Surround him!” Aldom agreed, stepping into the muck, the illusion of safety finally stripped away to reveal the raw, desperate need to survive.
Kaoz smirked at the chaotic scene that unfolded around him, his void-black eyes reflecting the flickering orange light of the encroaching fires. Panic had stripped the villagers of their reason, and they rushed into homes and barns, quickly emerging with whatever meager weapons they could find—blacksmith hammers, heavy oak clubs, and rusted pitchforks. With the desperate courage of the damned, they formed a wide, trembling circle, surrounding the seven-foot monster in their midst.
“Let’s get him!” bellowed Farmer Pryde, his voice cracking with terror and adrenaline as he charged forward, swinging a heavy, curved scythe. From the deep shadows of the Newberri Farm wagons, more villagers surged forward to join the fray, while Neil Belzer, Kurk Frixer, and the other younger men moved with frantic speed to flank the giant, hoping to find a weakness in his stony exterior.
“Blood!” Kaoz snarled, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. As Pryde swung the scythe with all his might, the Myz didn’t flinch; he caught the whistling blade in his bare hand. The sharp steel hissed against his dusky grey skin, but it was like metal meeting granite—it failed to draw even a single drop of blood. With a guttural growl of contempt, Kaoz snapped the thick wooden handle like a dry twig. Before the farmer could even gasp, Kaoz backhanded him with a force that defied human physics. Pryde spun through the air like a ragdoll, his body thudding against the stone fountain in the center of the square with a sickening, wet crunch that silenced his screams forever.
What followed was a symphony of slaughter. Kaoz moved through the mob not like a warrior, but like a harvester in a field of wheat. He was a whirlwind of grey, slate-colored violence, his twenty-stone bulk crushing bone and shattering spirits with every movement. He didn’t need his broadsword yet; his fists were enough to cave in chests and send men spiraling into the muck. The villagers surged forward in waves, driven by a primal need to protect their homes, but their bravery was a useless currency. They struck at him with axes that notched and broke, and hammers that bounced harmlessly off his hide.
A paralyzing realization began to ripple through the crowd: nothing they did was working. They were not fighting a man; they were fighting an evil creature of Baal, one the devil had forged to be unkillable. Panic, cold and sharp, replaced their fury. They saw their neighbors—men they had known their entire lives—tossed aside like refuse, their limbs twisted at impossible angles. The square became a macabre theater of broken bodies and desperate, sobbing prayers that went unanswered by the bolted doors of the church.
“Dad! Get Kymm to the cellar! Go!” Kurk Frixer screamed. Bloodied, bruised, and gasping, still he fought on amidst the fallen, thrusting a pitchfork at Kaoz’s midsection with a final, desperate lung.
The Myz didn’t even bother to parry the strike. He took the iron tines directly against his stomach, leaning into the blow. The heavy metal prongs buckled and snapped against his cowhide pants and iron-hard flesh. Before Kurk could retreat, Kaoz’s hand shot out, grabbing the athletic young man by the throat and lifting him off the ground with a single, effortless hand.
“Where Emcorae?” Kaoz rumbled, the vibration of his voice so deep it seemed to rattle the teeth of everyone present.
“Never!” Kurk wheezed, his face turning a dark shade of purple as he clawed fruitlessly at the grey, slate-like arm that was strangling the life out of him.
With a grunt of boredom, Kaoz tossed him aside. Kurk crashed into a stack of wooden crates near the Middleswarth stall, which collapsed in a spectacular shower of splintered wood and trampled winter produce. Suddenly, a volley of arrows hissed from the upper windows of the surrounding houses, loosed by those too terrified to join the ground fight. They struck Kaoz’s neck and chest in quick succession, but they didn’t sink into flesh; they rattled against his hide and fell into the thick mud like pebbles tossed against a mountain.
“WHERE EMCORAE?” Kaoz bellowed, his voice booming over the roar of the flames and the cries of the dying.
The name Emcorae hung in the air, far more devastating than the physical blows the Myz had dealt. The realization hit the survivors like a sickening wave of bile. This horror—this unkillable engine of destruction—hadn’t come for their winter grain, their livestock, or the gold in their mattresses. He had come for the “Elf-boy.” The fires, the deaths, the ruin of their lives… it was all a debt being collected on Emcorae’s head.
“He’s not here!” Sandi Frixer wailed from the church steps, her voice a jagged edge of grief. She was kneeling over her husband Rik, who lay broken in the mud like so many others. “Go away! He’s gone! Leave us in peace!”
Kaoz paused, his black-void eyes scanning the burning village and the landscape of the dead and dying. He had achieved the first part of his mission: he had turned their peaceful sanctuary into a graveyard.
“Challenge not King Diked,” Kaoz hissed, the words carrying a lethal weight.
He turned his back on the cowering survivors, move back towards his massive warhorse, and mounted with a terrifying grace. He began to canter away from the ruined square, the horse’s hooves splashing through puddles of blood and rainwater. He moved up the hill, toward the highest point in Monthaven—the Finch Estate.
The “Legendary Devastation” he wanted to inflict on the town was complete. The village was broken, its spirit crushed by a creature they couldn’t kill and a fellow villager they would grow to hate – again. Now, the Myz had a girl to find, a father to kill, and a debt of “mercy” to collect for his King.
Behind him, Monthaven became a hellish landscape of orange flames and broken spirits. Doc Wirtz began to move tentatively among the injured, his hands shaking as he opened his medical bag, but it was a battle the medic would lose many times over that night. One by one, more and more of the villagers perished from the horrific wounds and shattered bones Kaoz had levied upon them, their deaths adding to the silent, smoking tally of the Great Autumn Gale.
The Sleeping Warrior
While the square outside descended into a cacophony of breaking timber and human anguish, the interior of the Brandonale Tavern remained a pocket of eerie, preserved silence. The thick stone walls and heavy timber beams, which usually echoed with the boisterous laughter and tall tales of the local tradesmen, now served as a muffled tomb.
In the deepest, most shadowed corner of the room, far from the hearth that was now sputtering into cold ash, slumped Alfranco Azop. To a casual observer, he looked like nothing more than an aging laborer who had reached the bottom of too many cups. His weathered, calloused hands—hands that had once fought in The Last Great War as part of El-Janus’ troop —now lay limp and open upon the scarred oak of the tabletop. A half-empty flagon of Aldom’s strongest ale sat beside his elbow, its contents stagnant and flat.
By every right of his nature, Alfranco should have been the first soul through the door when the Azop hovel ignited. He was Al-Corragio, the Lion of Arbola, a man who had scene far worse than a single Myz in his prior battles. Even in his twilight years, the sound of a scream or the scent of malicious fire should have shocked his heart into a rhythmic war-drum, sending him charging into the muck to defend his kin.
But a strange, heavy lethargy had claimed him earlier in the night, weaving through his senses like thick, silken wool. It wasn’t merely the ale or the exhaustion of a long day’s toil. Hovering just above his furrowed brow, visible only to those with eyes for the ethereal, was a faint, golden, shimmering mist. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic light, acting as a divine veil between the old warrior and the horror of the present.
This was the subtle, desperate intervention of the Goddess Alyssa. Somehow, she knew about the Myz; somehow she saw the fortress of slate and hate that was Kaoz. She knew that if the Old Gaffer were to wake now—if he were to see his wife Pallina and his family consumed by the Myz’s spite—he would draw a kitchen knife or a fireplace poker and throw himself at the giant in a final, suicidal blaze of glory. He would find only a quick, unceremonious death, his head separated from his shoulders before he could even utter a prayer.
And so, to save the seed of future hope, the Goddess had closed Alfranco’s eyes. She pressed him down into an enchanted slumber, forcing him to stay anchored to the wood of the table even as his world was reduced to cinders.
As Monthaven burned and perished, Alfranco snored softly, a low, rhythmic sound that was a tragic counterpoint to the screams of his fellow villagers and the bellows of the giant in the square outside. The old man was, as yet blissfully, cruelly oblivious to the fact that his family home on the edge of town was now a pile of glowing, skeletal beams, or that the only living member was the small dog Chich which cowering in the ruins. Emcorae’s grandfather could not hear the voices of his neighbors—the people he had helped and protected for years—as their grief curdled into a bitter poison. He did not know that even now, they were beginning to curse the name of Azop, branding his house and his grandson as the lightning rods for this “Legendary Devastation.”
And so, for this night at least, Al-Corragio slept on, preserved in a golden cocoon of divine mercy, while outside, the great storm carried the ashes of his life into the black, unfeeling sky.
How touching. A Goddess playing nursemaid to a relic. So Alyssa saved the old man’s skin? What a fool she was – didn’t she realize that in doing so, she ensured he would wake to a fate worse than death: the life of a pariah in a town that once called him friend.
Yet the “Scourge of Monthaven” was not over yet, for the work of the Myz was not yet finished. The blood in the square was cooling in the rain, and the villagers were left to bury their dead, but now it was time for the King’s “bride” to learn the true meaning of her dowry…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 