Fri Jan 27 2012

Fri Jan 27 2072 Deep in the woods of The Sticks, something slumbering, something long asleep and dreaming, something better left to qlippothic somnolence awakens. Not fully, not completely, but enough to roll over in its torpor. Ground fog rises, quickly blanketing the forest in an eerie stillness that is punctuated only by the occasional scream. No animal moves. No wind stirs. Near the ground, fog rolls so thick you cannot see your feet, while visibility above is cut to mere tens of feet. Dark shapes scuttle and scamper, just outside of view. Screams anew, but this time.. not from the Sticks. From Orktown. Rignaka Griswald, Grandmomma to the Griswald clan who settle the outskirts, comes into the central Orktown area. "The fog, Oh mah stars! It took mah babies! Mah babies!" She screams, falling to her knees in the road. While no one doubts this elder of her people… no one who looks at the wall of fog that is the Sticks has any interest in going in. Proctor is holding mass in the mission chapel. The Laymen are out in force tonight, perhaps better prepared for this event than any other gang in the Warrens. A peaceful serenity of sorts reigns over this district. Brothers of Saint Sylvester have gathered on the border with the sticks, and while they do not use magic or spell, they kneel in a line, several hundred feet apart… and they pray. They pray in latin. They pray in a synch with each other and in time, a chorus of prayer. It's beautiful really, in its way. Such unity and devotion. The fog from the sticks rolls forward, a malicious thing, an ugly thing that roils and boils with unseen malevolence. The praying men do not bend. They do not break. The fog comes to a stop some ten feet from the men.. and then it evaporates. It continues to come, this fog, but it strikes some opposing counter force and can come no further. The pitch of the praying men rises just slightly in celebration. But there is no celebration in Orktown, as gunfire breaks out at random.