(https://i.ibb.co/fdx5rK53/The-Mark.png) (https://ibb.co/fdx5rK53)
The tavern in the ruined quarter of Yulash groaned around them, all warped beams and smoke-stained rafters. Tankards knocked together, someone's off-key lute stumbled over a tune, and laughter rose too loud and too brittle—then faltered, as though even mirth knew better than to linger here.
Varran sat with his back to the wall, gnawing absently at the edge of an old scar as he nursed a cheap ale. The grizzled thug watched the warped door for a moment, then leaned in over the battered table.
"Told you," he muttered. "Sewer gates on the east run were choked again this morning. Talons pulled up four bodies afore breakfast."
Kesh, barely past boyhood and still a little too clean around the eyes, stiffened on his stool. "Four? All... all cultists, right?"
Mirra, sharp-eyed and lean, smirked around the rim of her cup. "You hoping it's not?" she asked. "Why, you got friends down there now?"
"No," Kesh said quickly, flushing. "I just— I heard they don't always stay dead, that lot."
Letho, all angles and easy arrogance, lounged back in his chair. "These ones did," he drawled. "Proper dead. Neck stabbed clean, straight through the gristle. No gnaw marks, no slime blooms, no roots growing out of the ribs. Just... quiet. Efficient."
"That's the part that bothers me," Varran said. "Moander's filth you expect to find in pieces. Melted, rotted, half-eaten by their own damned god. This... this was tidy work."
"Tidy work, in our sewers." Mirra's smile turned thin. "There's a first."
They shared a low chuckle that never quite softened the tension in their shoulders.
"So it's true then?" Kesh asked, voice dropping as he leaned closer. "About the one in black armor? With the... dog mask?"
"Not a dog," Letho said. "More like a hound from a bad dream. Long drooping snout, pointed ears, all plate and scales black as a Zhent's heart. One of the sewer maintenance boys swears he saw the eyes shine red in the dark."
Varran snorted. "Repair boy also swore he saw a ghost knight riding a headless mule last winter."
"Aye," Mirra said, "and you still don't go near that alley after midnight, old man."
"That's not fear," Varran said, lifting his mug. "That's... respect."
The laughter that followed was small, but real enough. It slipped away quickly, swallowed by the low murmur of the tavern.
Kesh worried the dented rim of his tankard with a thumb. "But someone's doing it," he said. "Every few nights, it's the same talk. Screams under the cobbles, echoes in the pipes. Then the wash-outs, all in tatters and robes and those rotten vine charms they wear—"
"—and always Moander's worms," Letho finished. "No one else. No merchants. No Zhents. No Baneites. No beggars. Just the rot-priest lot."
"That's what makes it clever," Mirra said softly. "If you're going to start carving off a slice of Yulash for yourself, you start with the one neighbor everyone wants gone. No one sheds a tear when the garden mulch gets taken out."
"'Mulch' is kinder than they deserve," Varran said. "Moander's lot were stringing folk up like scarecrows two summers ago. Half this tavern's got someone who never came back out of those tunnels."
For a moment, silence settled over the table. The tavern's clatter seemed distant, thin; the wind's whistle through a cracked shutter sounded louder.
"So... what is he, then?" Kesh asked at last. "Some kind of monk? Knight? Assassin?"
"Doesn't move like a monk," Letho said. "Word is, he hits them once, maybe twice in a tenday. Drops out of the dark, blades flash, shadowy at his heels, then gone. No sermons on the walls, no demands, no tithe. Just bodies and... that mark."
Kesh swallowed. "The snake?"
"Cobra, lad," Mirra said. "Coiled up tight, head raised, hood spread wide. Someone carved it deep in the lower levels, where the brick runs out and the old stone begins. Fangs all bared, like it's about to bite the whole damned city."
Varran shifted uneasily. "Not local work, either. Lines are too clean. Looks... foreign. Makes your eyes itch if you look too long."
"You recognize it?" Kesh asked.
"No." Varran shook his head slowly. "And I've seen more banners and godsmarks than I've got teeth left. This one feels... old and wrong in a new way."
"Old and wrong in a profitable way," Letho said lightly, "if he keeps gutting Moander's vermin for free."
"For now," Mirra said. "That's the trick, isn't it? First you do the city a favor. Clear out the rot. Then you say, 'This drain, this tunnel, this little stretch of sewer? Mine now.' And by then everyone's so relieved they don't ask what the snake means."
Kesh's fingers tightened around his cup. "You think he'll start asking for coin? Or blood?"
"Boy," Varran said, "no one puts their mark on the deepest walls unless they intend to hold ground. This isn't some wandering madman. This is someone planting roots. Black, armored roots."
"And whatever walks with him," Letho added.
"The creatures?" Kesh's voice dropped almost to a whisper.
"Depends who you ask," Mirra said. "One gutter-runner says he saw shadows peel off the walls and tear a cultist apart. Another swears they're like hounds made of smoke, with too many teeth. Someone else babbled about tall skeletal shapes with eyes like dying embers, moving in ways people shouldn't."
"All the stories agree on one thing," Varran said. "You see them, you don't live long enough to count how many."
Kesh glanced toward the floor, as if he could see the dripping tunnels through stained planks and warped beams. "Why the sewers, though? Why here? Yulash is half rubble and ash as it is. If you want a kingdom, there are cleaner places."
"Cleaner, but watched," Letho said. "The Talons keep watch on the surface. The weak hide below. And down there? The only law is who walks back up the ladder."
"Besides," Mirra said, "the cult of Moander always did like it in the dark, in the wet. If you're hunting fungus, you go where it grows."
Varran took a slow drink, gaze distant. "Mark my words: if the cobra keeps showing up and the bodies keep flowing out, sooner or later, every crew in Yulash will have to decide. Do we share a city with whatever that is... or do we get washed out next?"
Kesh looked from face to face, searching for some sign of bravado, some joke to cut the dread. "You're not thinking of going down there, are you?"
"Me?" Letho huffed a quiet laugh. "No. I'm smart. I'll wait up here, where the blood only sometimes comes through the floorboards."
"If someone wants to clean out Moander's scum with no coin from my purse and no blades from my belt," Mirra said, raising her mug, "I'll drink to their health and keep my feet dry."
Her eyes, however, stayed dark.
Varran tapped his knuckles lightly on the table. "Just remember, loves... folk who make war on gods, even little rotten ones, don't usually stop at one enemy."
The words lingered in the smoky air. For a heartbeat, the tavern seemed to hold its breath.
Then, faintly, from somewhere far below, a dull clang rang through the old sewer pipes—metal on stone, or something like it—echoing up through Yulash's cracked bones.
((From a meta perspective, I am well aware that for leveling purposes and new character dungeons this faction cannot be removed and replaced. This is simply roleplaying the beginnings of my character putting the fear into a local weak baddy faction as the first of many steps towards carving out territory, building infamy, and beginning a faction to her deity.))