Imwalle

The bells are ringing in the church, the sun is falling beneath the horizon. The night is here, the hunt is coming. The people are retreating in to their homes and the hunters begin to mobilize. The Church of Lor’s militant wing, the Spears of Saint Balen, don their arms and armor. The Imwalle constabulary mans the barricades at major sewer exits. Hunters, foreigners come for the slaughter and promise of coin, walk the streets. With the first howl, the hunt begins.

Beasts, once men and women, turned by the mysterious disease, crawl from the sewers. The carnage begins with the gunshots of turret emplacements. Multi-barreled machine guns tearing through the swarm. Bullets of the riflemen tear through the beasts like hot knives through butter. The howls and groans of pain drowned by the hail of gunfire. Some barricades hold the night, others are not so fortunate. The lycans tear through the weak barricades and spill in to the streets.

Once the beasts break the surface, the symphony of violence reaches its zenith. Man fights beast, spilling each other’s blood and painting the city red. When the sun rises and the beasts retreat in to the sewers once more, the costs are tallied. Widows and widowers are given the bad news. Orphans are sent to the orphanages in Imwalle’s “safe districts”. The bodies are burnt on pyres.

The days are tense, the dread blanketed by a thin sheet of forced normality. Townspeople pretending the night’s events never took place, that the nightmares never came. Stores open their doors, school bells tolled, and the birds sang. But no one acts as if it was normal, not below the surface. People speak with dark inflections and no one makes eye contact. They stare in to the distance, looking as if they’re staring death in the face. Imwalle is a cursed town, where the people have gone mad and bloodshed is not too far away.

Father Kordin of the Church, led by conviction and duty above all else. He leads the Spears of Saint Balen. When he’s not leading the battle-clerics, he’s locked away in his study. His days are contain meditation and finding the way Lor has set out for him. Rumors have circulated that he has the Ars Helfric, a grimoire containing eldritch magic. Perhaps he has this tome to seek a cure? That is, assuming these rumors are even true. He is a jovial and kind hearted man. He loves taking care of people, with a special affinity for the elderly. When in hunts, he is silent and focused.

Police Chief Randon Ackles, the man who holds the Constabulary of Imwalle togehter. It is because of him that Imwalle hasn’t fallen to anarchy and chaos. He is a serious man with a grim expression never leaving his face.

The City Council of Aldermen stay in the Imwalle Town Center’s main building. Since the scourge began, they have not left their station. The lights are always on and always bustling with activity, keeping Imwalle running.

The Hunter’s Bureau manages the thousands of hunters currently operating within Imwalle. They are also responsible for the messages sent outside the city. These messages promised payment for those who would kill beasts. Mercenaries aplenty flocked to Imwalle, tempted by the promise of coin and slaughter. The Bureau tests a hunter’s skill on captured beasts in enclosed environments. If a hunter passes the tests, they are given a hunter’s badge and sent out in to the city. The Bureau is the creation of Andre Seidenburg, a big game hunter and, at one point, a seat-holder on the city council.

The Holy Order of Lor is the state religion of Imwalle. It has an entire city district dedicated to them. The Order venerates the god Lor, the deity of Sunlight and Healing. Their primary colors of yellow, orange, and white, reflecting their god. Their symbol is a sun depicted in orange, alternating yellow and white sunbeams. Their motto is “With the Sun comes the Dawn.” The clergy of the Order wear heavy robes of orange and white with yellow scarves.

The Church District is where Order calls home. Within the district, there's the Holy Library which holds the grimoires. Grimoires are tomes that contain arcane knowledge and spells. Outside the priesthood, there are certain grimoires that none can read.  These books are dangerous to those with untrained minds. There is also the Cathedral of Lor, the center of all prayer. The Holy Court, where judgement is passed on heretics and other blasphemers. There also various homes that house the clergy and their families.

There are three sub-orders within the Order itself. The Spears of Saint Balen, the warrior-priesthood who hunt down heretics, wytches, and beasts. The Healing Hands of Saint Paulic are the caretakers of the sick, the elderly, and the abandoned. The Eyes of Lor, the inquisitors and judges in the Order’s Holy Court. They punish those the Spears apprehend. The Spears have separate colors to their brethren, with dark colors of blues, blacks, and purples. It symbolizes the dark tasks they must perform to keep the people of Imwalle safe.

Imwalle is a large city in the mountainous north of the continent of Vasonia, bordering the Blansett Sea. It is its own city-state, completely autonomous from the other countries of the world. Imwalle’s inhabitants are  xenophobic. Though in recent years they’ve had to get used to foreigners helping to deal with the beasts. People outside Imwalle view the inhabitants of the city-state as strange and reclusive. Though, an Imwallite beyond the city’s walls are a rare sight indeed, even before the scourge.

Imwalle has something the countries outside it do not, magic. Magic is a coveted secret kept by the Priesthood of Lor. Grimoires keep arcane knowledge and secrets, penned by magicians in years passed. Rogue priests ran off with certain grimoires containing dangerous spells and knowledge. Knowledge which would be disastrous in the wrong hands. These priests would form the wytch covens of Old Town. These groups of people use the powers of magic for unspeakable purposes.

Magic, as stated in grimoires, draws from the power of the gods, known as Animus. Animus, the primordial building block of all things. For the most part, they are correct.  What they didn’t account for was the gods themselves. The gods don't look like their depictions in man made art.  They are monstrous and grotesque. A glance at their horrible forms can drive men mad. The gods live beyond the veil of reality, in a world that humans cannot access. At least, not in the world of the waking. Yet, the boundary separating them from man has weakened. As humans use more magic, and by extension more Animus, they draw the gods in to our reality. This causes strange and horrible events to occur. Some theorize that the beast plague is the fault a wytch coven in the Old Town district.

Beasts are man-like, but have grey fur and wolf-like faces. They are vicious, relying on their primal instincts and behaviors. Their flesh and eyes are photosensitive, burned by bright lights. They are also sensitive to silver for reasons unknown. Their home is the sewer system beneath Imwalle, shielded from the sun. Barricades the Imwalle Constabulary constructed seal off the exits, keeping the beasts at bay. Riflemen and machine gunners using silver bullets and bayonets man these barricades.

A particularly nasty variant of beast are the wyrm-beasts. Where lycanthropes are wolf-like, wyrm-beasts resemble reptiles like Komodo Dragons or Bearded Lizards. They’re covered in scales, coated in a mucus-y, napalm-like substance. They’re not sensitive to light, but have a particular weakness to extreme heat. They have teeth like needles that drip with deadly venom. Their hands are long, ending in claws that pierce stone with little effort. They call the cool and dry burial grounds of the Mourning Forest to the south of Imwalle home.

Animals haven't been spared from the beast scourge gripping Imwalle. Least of all the feral packs of cats and dogs who once called the sewers their home. They have been driven out and in to the streets and alleys. They eat out of dumpsters and garbage cans, or hunt the mice and rats. Some have even mutated, becoming larger than normal and more aggressive. Some have even taken to hunting the living. The pigs and cattle the people of the city depend on for food have also been affected.  Their meat causing madness in some as their temperament worsens. Sows give birth to violent young who eat their weakened mother and even each other.