Village of Silence: History and Rumors
During the time of Keitai Zakumo, around the year 1100, settlers arrived from Belinara requesting a land grant to begin a taun. The keitai, a magnanimous man, allowed them to pick a spot, happy to have a new source of tax revenue under his rule. Details were hammered out, laws explained, expectations set, and the hundred or so Belinarans went forth to find a suitable location to live.
They found a valley, lush and green and beautiful, right at the base of the northern Spine Mountains. Here they built their taun and named it Niwah, gardens. It is believed that they did well for the first two years, although times are hard to judge as the records are gone. Sometime before the third year, some of the children fell sick. Then a few more. Then the handful of older people, and soon enough the healthy adults were failing to what was called gut sickness because of the crippling abdominal pains that signaled the onset. A rider was sent to shato-Zakumo, and two clerics of Lucinda were sent back to assess the malady.
It was found that the entire village had fallen prey to a common sickness, one that the natives of the island were resistant to. However, the sickness had changed as it passed through the settlers, and both clerics fell ill. By this time almost a third of the village was dead and one of the clerics died, clutching his belly and crying out in agony, before they made it back to the shato.
The other returned, gravely ill, and remained outside the walls rather than inflict the illness on those inside. He passed on his message, warning the keitai to seal the village rather than let the new and more dangerous sickness out, and the keitai listened. The cleric died hours later, wailing.
The keitai ordered the village shut. Fortunately the settlers had built a wall and all that needed to be done was put up gates. Mages under the patronage of Keitai Zakumo placed powerful wards on the walls and gates, powerful enough to kill a man trying to overcome them and to last for centuries.
How the settlers took their impending death isn't recorded. It is remembered that a large quantity of pesha, a powerful narcotic derived from the rare peshan plant with a deadly but peaceful overdose, as well as food and wine were left just inside the gates before they were sealed. And then Niwah was left alone. All contact was lost until a few years later, when it is said a young dwarf from the mines around the mountain ventured near and called out to see if anyone was there. Supposedly, a lone, young voice answered, in broken common. The dwarf reported it to the keitai but no records exist that indicate it was ever pursued.
Time passed and the village lay quiet. Locals that knew about it began to call it the Village of Silence, and things continued on this way until the fall of 1262. There were a few that day close enough to remember the shattering percussion of something throwing itself against the gates, again and again, howls and hisses of agony echoing as the weak but still functioning wards delivered their painful reminder. This went on for two days and then stopped, abruptly. The Keitai Tewo, newly in power, ordered guards near the gates to watch for whatever it was again and nervous but reassured miners and cattlemen went back to their lives.
The spells on the gates faded with age. The guards posted there were recalled when Bloodstone invaded the lands. For some unknown reason, the fiends of Blood did not even attempt to break the gates. In 1403, a brother and sister scaled a section of wall that was now unprotected by wards and climbed down into the city, the first to do so since the iron gates were sealed by all accounts. They both returned to their homestead, albeit terrified and unable to sleep alone in the dark after that. They spoke of creatures, many of them, "with snake heads with big skin wings for ears and snaky skin with legs and arms and a tail -? moving around, -hissing like they were talking and acting like they were people." While the father of the children dismisses the description as his children's overactive imagination, others are not so sure.
