Sighing heavily, the old beggar continued his solitary rounds of the dusty streets of Magnagora. He was every bit the quintessential stereotype: his clothes filthy, his white hair tangled and matted, his belongings carelessly thrown over his shoulder in a tattered, sagging bindle. His struggle was the struggle of all who have been cast out by life. Only one thing separated him from the countless lost souls which haunted the desolate nighttime streets of the Engine of Change: this beggar was a former Paladin. Which is why his blood ran cold when he turned a corner to find himself confronted with a silent, sullen gang of viscanti teenagers. Clad in the formal robes and regal colors which denoted nobility, they clutched rocks of varying sizes. All but one - their apparent leader. In his right hand he clutched a dagger, instead.

"Here he is - the Knight of the Dove." one of their number hissed, stepping forwards.

"Reeks, doesn't he? I suppose there's less water to go around here than in New Celest," another sarcastically observed, "Perhaps we should give him some help?" Darting forwards, spiderlike, he spat into the beggar's humbly downturned face, the hot fluid sizzling noxiously upon his forehead.

"Lads, please. All of that was decades ago. I just want to be left alone, in peace..." pleaded the old man, carefully setting down his meagre belongings to wipe the corrosive spittle away. One of the youths promptly kicked them into a nearby open sewer.

"Give us one good reason why we shouldn't split your head open, wyrm," the knife-wielding noble's son taunted. He was tall and rangy, with pale violent skin and hollow, jaded eyes, which wordlessly communicated his intent more efficiently than any threat could hope to match.

"Yeah, what are you good for, human?"
"You think anyone's going to miss you?"
"You'll feed the mutts tonight if you don't entertain us!"

The situation didn't look good: they were circling like sharks, their eyes hungry and lusty for violence. They had cut off his only escape route, and now surrounded him - a false move would be his last. They had chosen their weapons well: jagged, Tainted specimens, studded with rich venations of blackened quartz. They would surely be sufficient to crack open the skull of an old unfortunate human. Panicking, the old beggar said the first thing that came to his mind -

"How about if I tell you some stories?" he asked, valiantly mustering a smile robbed of its charm by its missing teeth. The viscanti mob - despite their disparate geneology, ranging from a malformed trill lookalike to a horned semi-taurian - were briefly united in appearance by their identical looks of disbelief... and in the resultant outburst of derisive laughter.

"You want to barter for your life with nursery tales, old man?" the leader sneered, nonchalantly tossing his knife to his other hand. As it span through the air, the old man had a clear vision of it wedged to the hilt in his throat, and swallowed with an audible click.

"I... they'll be good stories, lads, I promise. Just give me a chance." his voice little more than a croak now; his tired, rheumy eyes envisioning the many injuries a human being could live through, from shattered limbs to crucufixion. To his surprise (and relief), the violet-skinned youth nodded thoughtfully, and placed his knife within his pocket for the time being.

"Weave your tale, old man. If it's good, you might be allowed to walk out of here on your own two feet. If it's not... you'll be lucky to crawl."

Supressing the urge to flee - knowing he would be caught, and beaten all the more mercilessly for the attempt - the old man opened his mouth and began to speak...

*

Once, there was a young viscanti nobleman named Erwinius i'Xiia. He was one of the scions of his House, and stood to inherit great wealth upon the death of his father, a man who was known amongst the Iron Council to be sickly and frail; the very antithesis of his stout and sturdy child. His uncle, however, was a much younger man, and his seething hatred for Erwinius was the stuff of gossip amongst the gentlefolk. Forever envious of the great wealth his elder brother stood to inherit, he had held out hope that the ailing, bilious wretch would pass on before he managed to procreate. Alas, he had not, and now the uncle faced a lifetime of servile scraping to a boy less than half his own age. However, he was nothing if not resourceful, and birthed a scheme to remove the filthy child from his inheritance the only way he could - an assassination.

But how could such a feat be accomplished, the wily uncle wondered? His distaste for the boy was legendary: as legendary as the love the boy's father had for him, the sole reminder of a pretty wife now dead. (The uncle had a hand in that business - do not doubt it.) A suspicious death would result in a lengthy investigation, and his hand would be felt no matter how clever and careful he was to conceal it. Clearly, then, it would be necessary to divorce his hand from the process entirely, and manoeuvre the heir into a genuine accident. And that is why, one day in early Dvarsh, the clever uncle summoned Erwinius to his chambers, making sure that several aristocrats of different noble allegiances were present to bear witness.

"Erwin, my boy," he said, utilizing the nickname he knew the boy to loathe, "My spies tell me you have been seen far abreast of the Lich Gate, wandering the scorched expanse of the so-called Blasted Lands?"

"So what if I have?" the boy preened himself, with all the arrogant self-assurance that only a priveliged child may muster in the presence of his inferiors. "Do you plan on having me assassinated, old man? You know full well that such an act would mean your death as well. Do you so want your head to decorate the northern gates?"

Though inwardly the elder man seethed, he forced a paternal smile to his sallow lips. "Don't be foolish, Erwin. I think only of your continued safety, and the continued safety of our lineage. You know that gravediggers make their home in the Blasted Lands; that the surface there may give way at any moment. One false step would mean your doom, and you would be wholly devoured by those foul creatures, leaving only bones behind. Truly an ignominious end for so fine a young warrior." He roughly tousled the boy's hair, resisting the near-insurmountable urge to dig his fingers into the skull beneath.

"Is that all, old man?" the boy sneered, running a hand through the his regal ebony curls.

"Yes. But mind my words, child!" he called to the boy's retreating back, watched with great interest by robed and masked courtesans of every stripe, "We don't want you getting hurt..."

It was several days before the boy ventured out from the Lich Gate again, so preoccupied was he with the studies which follow birth into high society: but of course his return to the Blasted Lands was inevitable. None are more wilfully precocious than the young, and to defy the advice of his uncle gave his venture a special measure of added spite. Nevertheless, he watched his step carefully as he explored the pitted, blasted remnants that may once have been vegetation. He might have considered his uncle an addled and simpering fool, but every Magnagoran child feared the slimy grip of a gravedigger upon their ankles, and awoke from fevered nightmares set in smooth and sandy pits.

"As if I would not be careful in the first place... dotard!" Erwinius scoffed, unaware that unkind eyes were upon him as he nimbly leapt over a fine pile of sand.

He continued on his merry way for several hours, stopping occasionally to breath deep of the Tainted air or kick some of the limping, pathetic dogs that trotted ceaselessly around the landscape. The notion of returning to the Lich Gate was just surfacing in his mind when he saw Father Sun glinting off something silver, to the east.

"What...?" he muttered, raising a hand to his brow and squinting. It appeared to be a sword, carefully placed on the shadowed ground near the eastern mountain ranges. A grin split his features as he reconstructed the genesis of its arrival: no doubt some fool crusading Paladin from New Celest had ventured through here to ensnare Magnagorans, and found himself the food of some Tainted predator, instead. Unable to fend them off, he had been dragged off (or down - though this thought never occured to the presumptuous youth) and dropped his sword in his terror.

"A worthy prize for so fine a young warrior!" he unknowingly echoed his despised uncle's words as he sped off towards the blade, no longer thinking well of his movements, no longer paying attention to the drifts of Tainted sand that the strong winds of the south amassed. No longer watching his footing, it was only a matter of time until he stumbled - not pulled feet-first into a pit like so many of the poor fools who venture into the Blasted Lands, but catapulted in head-first as he clumsily stumbled over a loose rock, tumbling straight into the waiting claws of the slimy beast that dwelt beneath the sand. He had never considered an alternate reason for the genesis of that unlikely sword: the idea that elegantly gloved hands had carefully placed it there, to best reflect the light of the setting sun, the notion that his foolish uncle was as conniving and cruel as the boy had thought himself noble and witty. As torturous screams began to echo from the pit of the gravedigger, a cloaked and hooded figure ventured forwards, throwing the silver blade into the pit.

He knew the story that would follow, the investigation that would ensue. An uncle, finally mastering his resentment to offer the child advice; the child, petulant and arrogant, disregarding it and venturing out into dangerous lands anyway, armed only with a stolen sword. And when the poor child was inevitably bested by the beast he sought to slay, only the sword and bones would remain to be found. The footmen he had recruited to witness the incident would only solidify a tale that would be obvious to even the most cursory of examinations. The uncle had triumped, and pearly, fanged teeth glinted beneath the shadowed darkness of his hood as he (prudently) picked his way through the earth to Magnagora, to await his appointment as heir.

*

The beggar finished his tale, raising his head at last from its downward slant. He had kept it fixed on the open sewer his possessions had been so rudely kicked into, reasoning that were he to be set upon, at least he would not see it coming and would succub to unconscious before he realized it. To his great relief, the viscanti children appeared to be great fans of his tale.

"Truly, you paint the House of i'Xiia in a flattering light, human." their leader mused, stroking his pointed chin with a thumb.

"I have heard this story told many times on these streets. There is no need to thank me," lied the human beggar. He saw no reason to inform the beastly children that the story was a hastily rewritten Celestian morality tale, one featuring rocs swooping down and ensnaring a hapless merian child, one in which the 'uncle' character was a villain, and played by a cruel female Geomancer. Such a truth would doubtless see him picking up his teeth, presuming they left him with eyes to see with. "Do you think this tale is worth my life?"

"Your life? It is worth your life and more, I think! Itinne, go and get some food for our friend!" the leader barked to one of the swarthier looking children, who nodded enthusiastically and sped off. It was mere moments before he returned, clutching a steaming bowl of soup in his clawed and feathered hands.

"Here you go, friend human!" the malformed creature squealed, thrusting the hot bowl into the beggars hands.

The beggar smiled widely, looking around at the viscanti children who no longer seemed so threatening. It is as true now as the day I began telling tales, he thought to himself, that their ineffable power to unite others can never be underestimated. Were he not so wrapped up in his thoughts, he may have noticed the hungry look in the eyes of these 'charitable' viscanti, the way they leaned forward; or perhaps even the strange purplish tint of the soup as he raised it to his chapped, parched lips. But he did not, and the children clapped and laughed with glee as he dropped the empty bowl to the floor with a noisy clatter.

"Why... What am I doing here? I should be seeking service to the Engine! Why do I not possess a job?!" the beggar croaked in a stilted, mechanical voice. The leader of the gang placed a consoling arm around his thin shoulders.

"Why, friend, don't worry. I am sure we can find gainful employment for you!" he intoned, as the mocking laughter of his fellows echoed throughout the alley.

Together, they formed a worthy entourage as they led the former Paladin to his new home at the workhouse.