Massacre of the Caravan

The caravan of the “Diamond Ace” is one of the most terrifying events that happened in the country for the last fifty years. Unofficial investigation data has it that the caravan was to blame for the disappearance of over one hundred young people. Of sixteen murders the caravan was accused and found guilty, and there is suspicion of them being the weapon for carrying out another thirty four murders. This hellish team floated to the surface somewhere on the outskirts of the Tarunian area and traveled for four hundred kilometers down the middle of our country, taking lives as they went. Some people were killed and many disappeared never to be seen again. The strategists of the governmental secret services made several mistakes for some unknown reason and the Caravan managed to escape a number of times, just to appear somewhere else spontaneously. It was on September the 14th that the Caravan was caught and massacred near Orv.

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The Keeper of the Cemetery

The position of the Keeper of the Cemetery has been passed on for over three generations now, however there is no information as for its being caste or ritual. Since the foundation of the stone city, the cemetery was kept by quite a number of people and among them there were not only ones from the steppe. Our contemporary keeper is actually of the late settlers, so it would be foolish to attempt explaining the strange behavior of the keepers by attributing it to their being members of the local death cult. In fact, people of the steppe don’t actually have a fully developed death cult; it is in some way integrated into the complicated cult of the earth. The inhabitants of the steppe are afraid of their dead and take them for filth. The custom of burying the dead by means of putting them inside the earth they think for barbarism and only the chosen ones, the most revered of their people are allowed to be buried in this way. Moreover, occasions of such “filthy” burial are accompanied by numerous rituals of cleansing.

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Nina

When Nina Kain ruled the town, the people, who weren’t used to monarchy and even more so to pristine magic, watched with awe and fear how a demonic queen can rule. It seemed that a figure of a divine woman with a sweeping wave of dark hair is soaring in the sky, her exquisite features wrapped in clouds; she seemed to be a massive monument of an ancient sovereign. They said she was almighty. They said that at night, in her true form, – her head touching the sky, her figure slim and lithe as an ivy branch and as the lightning, – she walks around town, lightly moving her pale shoulders, and takes what is hers, but gives with godly generosity what otherwise mortal men could have under no circumstances.

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Geographical note

Nobody could imagine any of the difficulties or terrible events that could come with the building of the railway that was bound for the north-west of the Mountain Knot. So the Local Administrative Council decided to go on with the project.

This decision was inspired by the rate of development of our country and the promising results of the geological survey. The scarce settlements of this area, most of which were built in the previous century, are basically cattle-dealing factories, and few of them became small towns. Theses towns’ inhabitants are a society that is quite unusual and paradoxically pretentious. Manufacturers, ethnographers, inspectors, anthropologists, descendants of the political outcasts and random visitors – all in all educated people – managed to peacefully coexist with the native inhabitants of the area, whose traditions haven’t gone far from the archaic social system.

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Of some peculiarities of the method of brewing twyrin

Viscous twyrin, drunken twyrin, smoky twyrin, gray and green, black, bloody, brown and rusty twyrin… What a great amount of tears and blood were shed because of this drink, and how much is yet to be shed… Similar to the western absenter, but more complex, more ancient and deeper, it like no other drink gives an unrecognizable distortion of reality. It also has a similar history to the one of absenter. First it was the drink of beggars, some barely literate steppe inhabitants, who understood the howling of their bulls better than human speech. Gradually, it was discovered by the aesthetes and rich eccentric people, and there, it is being collected, tasted at prestigious saloons and pharmacies sell it in silver thimbles as an expensive poison.

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Of Herman Orff’s methods of investigation

“… This Herman Orff has a simple appearance. Quite small, baldish, lean – forty years of age, looks sixty. He has none of that arrogance that is usually a recognizable feature of all governmental inquisitors. They say he is not a man of great physical strength and that is quite a rarity for universal emissaries that are our inquisitors…”

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/soon/ Victoria

While the heads of the Houses wielded material power, such as governing, their women were traditionally close to the earth and the Steppe, so they had the sacred power. These women had the reputation of powerful telepaths that are able to communicate with the supernatural forces.

…Victoria Olgimskaya, The White Mistress, has practically become a local saint. Her tombstone is still decorated with heaps of flowers, and people keep bringing all sorts of foodstuffs, embroideries, apples, cups of salt and other tributes.

/soon/ Recreation

The memory of a dead person lives just as long and just as fully as often and how properly he is remembered by the people that were close to him. This widely acknowledged banality is not as simple as it might seem. According to our legends, the person is beginning to be forgotten as soon as his soul leaves his body. Only constant mental effort, which demands really inhuman exertion, most thorough concentration of attention, memory and imagination allow us to keep the dead among the living just as if he were alive.

This primitive childish view of life after death, which has nothing to do with the existence of the soul after its owner is deceased, has set in quite firmly in the late colonists’ traditions. Perhaps it has something to do with the special role of small children in our society.