As the Year of the Starving Fades...

[DM Hawk]

The year 1381 was set to end on a high note with festivities such as the Baron's Ball of Valkur's Roar and sightings of the Jolly Spirit of the North by children and adventurers sparking cheer and warmth during the cold winter days.

However, before the end there was more bloodshed in what had already proven to be a year marked by violence. The winter snows were stained crimson in Shallybrook and within sight of the walls of Skull Crag during the year's last days.

In Shallybrook the outlaw adventuress known as Abii of Cyric, returned from the dead by the whim of the Mad God, appeared alongside an ogre and murdered several brave guardsmen while summoning fiends and other planar creatures to add to the carnage. Abii departed Shallybrook leaving eight guardsmen and a peasant maiden slain in her wake.

It was discovered soon after that the Temple of Mystra had also suffered an attack during the outlaw's rampage. The Mystran priestess Talinnita reported publicly that she was assaulted by a "little person" masked by spells of illusion. The priestess was temporarily blinded and stabbed. Once she could see again she found her attacker had fled and that her own blood was used to desecrate the altar of Mystra with the mark of Cyric. Further investigation found that tithes offered at the shrine of Azuth were stolen.

Elsewhere in the Kingdom, a murder was committed within view of the walls of Skull Crag. Travelers from the snowy mountain community came across the slain body of a naked woman, frozen in the snow. The individual was unrecognized for several days until a citizen of Greatgaunt recognized the woman as a local by the name of Colari. The circumstances of the woman's abduction and grisly death remain undetermined.