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LOCATION: LORD MARTHEN'S HUNTING LODGE
CITY: THE SHADOWED HAMLET, ALLOVIA
DATE: MAY 8, 2026 | TIME: 9:00 PM
Lord Harris Marthen stormed into the kitchen and quickly looked around for the three sisters.
"Where are they?" he shouted.
He spotted one of them, just refilling a carafe with more wine to bring into the dining room.
Marthen grabbed her shoulder and violently spun her around to face him, causing her to drop the half-full glass container onto his foot.
Red wine splashed on his pants and trickled onto his shoes. Glass shards covered the floor.
The girl froze in terror, her chest heaving, her wide eyes locked on Marthen's raised hand. The kitchen had gone utterly silent, every servant frozen in place as if they feared his wrath might lash out at them next.
For a long, taut moment, Marthen stood poised to strike her. Then his eyes narrowed. It wasn't Elayne Calderane at all, just a frightened maid barely old enough to be here.
His lips curled. "Useless," he muttered, jerking his hand back.
"Clean this up!" he shouted as he turned heel and stomped upstairs to change his pants and shoes.
Two women in the kitchen rushed over to comfort the scared servant, while three others brought mops and rags to clean the mess.
In the back of the room, Samir smirked. The trap had been sprung, and it was time to watch it unfold.
Samir snuck through a back room and inched open a door leading to the rear of the dining room.
Lord Marthen returned after a few minutes and apologized to his guests.
The mayor was up in arms about the Calderane sisters, but Marthen assured him it wasn't them.
"So you murdered the daughters too?" one of the nobles asked.
Marthen had just taken a sip of his wine, and turned slowly toward the accusation.
"How dare you accuse me in my own home. Who in the fuck are you, anyway? Who invited you?"
Samir, watching from the shadows in the back of the room, chuckled. "Any time now…" he muttered.
Lady Elsinore stood and was about to begin defending the host, when suddenly her face twisted. She lurched forward, retching, and vomited red wine and half-chewed meat across the table.
The stench of sour bile and coppery blood hit instantly, turning stomachs all around her.
Some of it splattered the mayor's jacket. He recoiled in disgust, wiping at the stains, when Elsinore convulsed again and emptied what remained of her dinner onto the floor.
A second noble gagged, then a third.
Within moments the room filled with the hideous chorus of retching, splattering wine and meat striking linen, and the clatter of chairs as nobles stumbled back from the table.
Lord Marthen jolted up from his chair, looking around for a poisoner, but it didn't take long for his guests to realize that while they were all violently ill, he himself seemed to be unharmed.
The mayor wiped his mouth and the front of his jacket with his white linen napkin.
"So you invite us here to poison us?" he asked. "I'm kicking off an investigation tomorrow and we'll get to the bottom of it all."
The mayor turned to leave, but felt the distinct poke of a sword on the back of his neck.
He turned slowly and saw Marthen, arm extended, holding a sword now to his throat.
"You're not going anywhere," Marthen said. "Nobody leaves until we figure out what the fuck is going on here. Guards!"
Within the space of two minutes, thirty guards filled the room, and the Lord's guests became his hostages.
"Bring the kitchen staff out here," Marthen barked at one of the guards. "Every one of them."
"So you will hold me hostage too?" Lady Elsinore asked. "After all I have done to back you up?"
"Silence!" Marthen yelled. "We're going to get to the bottom of this right here and now. Someone is trying to turn us against each other."
"It seems like it's you, since you seem to be the only one unharmed…" one of the nobles in the back said, still wiping vomit from his shirt.
One of Marthen's guards stepped forward behind the noble. He grabbed the man's forehead with one hand and jerked it backward. With his other hand, he slashed a dagger across the man's throat and stepped back to let the man fall to the floor, gasping for air and bleeding out.
That was all it took. The room erupted in fury and action. Nobles drew their weapons. Marthen's guards cut them down.
Aides and bodyguards who had been out on the back lawn were filtering into the room now, weapons drawn, and Marthen's guards engaged with them as well.
In under five minutes, two of Marthen's guards, Marthen himself, the mayor and Lady Elsinore were the only ones left standing.
Marthen still had his sword pointed at the mayor's throat.
"Well," Marthen said, "this just got awkward."
"I'd say so," the mayor said, looking around at the absolute carnage.
The kitchen staff had run at the first sign of trouble, Marthen's last two guards chasing them into the night. Samir still watched from the shadows. It was almost time to make his exit, but he needed to see how this went first.
With Marthen's focus on the mayor, his back was turned to the Lady. She moved very slowly, reaching her left hand up and removing a tiny vial that was nestled between her breasts in the folds of her gown.
She uncorked it slowly with her fingertip, careful to not let it fall.
Then, just as Marthen was about to speak again, she flicked her wrist, and a few drops of the rapid acting poison entered the host's mouth.
Lord Marthen thought he'd imagined it.
He wiped his cheek with his sleeve, still focused on the mayor.
But as he spoke, he found his words slurring. It was harder to form thoughts coherently… which was one of the last coherent thoughts he had.
The hand holding his sword loosened and the weapon dropped onto the table. Marthen raised his hands to his throat, unable to breathe.
The mayor didn't waste the opportunity, as he picked up the weapon and stabbed it into Marthen's chest.
The two remaining guards had just returned from chasing the kitchen staff, and witnessed the action.
One drew a large knife and threw it across the room at the mayor with all the force he could muster.
The knife buried itself into the mayor's eye socket, and Lady Elsinore screamed, moving to flee the scene.
The remaining guard slashed his sword across her throat just as she did the same to him.
Samir stepped into the dining room.
Nobody was left alive.
Marthen had toppled back toward his chair, his body slumped halfway over it.
Samir raised his right leg and shoved the bastard onto the floor.
He spat on the corpse, took one more look around the room and smiled.
"That went about as well as could be expected," he muttered as he walked casually to the kitchen.
He spilled the cooking oil onto the floor and lit it on fire.
Samir exited the hunting lodge onto the front lawn. In moments, the entire log cabin structure was ablaze, the flames reaching into the night sky. Samir was hundreds of feet away, and the heat still reached him.
A System message appeared in Samir's vision.
---
System Message
Territory Claim Available: The Shadowed Hamlet
A new Mayor must be appointed.
Management class required.
Requirements not met.
---
Tomorrow, Grimwatch would come and claim the territory. And Mayor Thomas Brae would run The Shadowed Hamlet with the compassion the townsfolk deserved.