The Flesh of Mournstead

The people of Mournstead lived in poverty and fear, but humans have the amazing talent of finding happiness even in the most dire of circumstances.

When Wex arrived in Mournstead, farmer Louen and his wife Tilda overlooked his malformed traveling fellows and invited them all to stay the night in their barn.  In the morning, they brought out what little they had to feed their tired houseguests; millet and nearly mud free water-of-life from the well.  Wex played pat-a-cake with young Nestry while Leish made apologies for Squagg's terrible manners.

The people of Mournstead were good folk.  They deserved better than the downtrodden, cursed life the edge of the Geistwald had to offer.  Wex resolved to bless them with fecundity, with fat children and burgeoning fields.  As they left the town, Wex whispered his blessing quietly and carefully as he had done many times before, but as began the incantation a powerful gust of magic knocked him from his feet.  He sputtered and stumbled through the words as the winds of death ripped through his lungs stealing his words and mutilating them.

As the ground shook beneath them, rivulets of blood streamed from the rooftops of Mournstead and screams pierced the cool morning air.  Following after the levitating streams of blood, flesh squeezed between boards and shingles stretched thin and translucent.  In the sky above the town, it formed a charnel orb pulsing with the wailing faces of the farmer and his wife and their neighbors.  The people of Mournstead were crushed into a single cursed sphere and held aloft by a floating pool of their own blood.