The Valley Before
Your Honor, I have compiled the following brief, as you requested, to aid in the search of your quarry. [Personal note: if murder wasn’t a horrendous enough crime, the evidence of 8 settlements subject to a Burn Cycle! I shudder at what monster could be so callous towards fellow survivors]
Allow me to share in your frustrations at the current situation at the Greater Bailey. The barring of transit through to Dominus Columbia has been of great concern to all but the redirection of caravans has no doubt made your pursuit more difficult. A shame the suspect didn’t try his normal belligerence to force his way through and meet a deserved end at the hands of the Bahlsmore guards. I have scoured our records and compiled a timeline of known information on the “N.V.O.” region [Personal note: Must the Black Tide scribes use acronyms for everything] My apologies for the brevity of the document, your Honor, the information available was sparse and most comes from self professed “histories” kept by various religious sects and from passing references to the area in other documents. I have endeavored to combine the most reliable reports into a single narrative of information rather than burden you with the heap of original citations that now litter my desk. I hope my meager contribution leads to true Justice reaching this vile reprobate, at your righteous hand.
- Witness Kave
Before the Fall
Before the world broke, the valley was just like the next one over a land where the earth itself seemed to breathe soot and steam. The elders’ songs tell of "the Black Diamond" era, where men crawled into the belly of the Blue Mountain to claw out the anthracite that fueled the old empires. They lived in the shadow of massive mine works, alongside machines that screamed as they crushed coal from stone. Yet just a few hundred yards away and over the creek, it was a place of deep, shadowed hollows where the scent of woodsmoke mixed with the sharp tang of iron, and the rivers ran dark as ink from the mountain's washings.
Yet, for all the scars men carved into the hills, the wild remained a heavy, watchful presence. The forests were thick with black bears, huge, shadow-furred spirits that raided the coal-patch gardens and the white-tailed deer were so numerous they moved like a brown tide through the hemlock groves. In those days, the night sky was still pierced by the screams of great owls circling the thermal drafts of the ridges, oblivious to the fact that the men below were digging their own graves in the dark. It was a hard life, forged in grit and ore, but they say the mountain felt alive back then, pulsing with a heat that didn't just come from the furnaces.
Post Fall History
When the fall came it came with fire, from both above and below. For more than a century, the Valley became a literal furnace; the anthracite veins beneath the earth ignited in a slow, suffocating burn that cracked the foundations of the world, while the forests above vanished in a roar of orange light. What emerged from the ash was a twisted reflection of the old wild, a landscape where the ground still weeps caustic steam and the air tastes of sulfur and ions. The radiation and infection didn't just kill; it reshaped life to fit a more predatory, scorched reality.
The creatures of the modern Valley are echoes of their ancestors, warped by heat and the invisible poison of the Great Fall. The deer are no longer gentle grazers but mutated husks, their pelts replaced by patches of charred, bark-like hide and antlers that have fused into jagged, blackened crowns used for scraping soot-clogged moss from the rocks. The bears, once the kings of the hollows, have retreated into the burning mines; they have become sightless, hairless terrors with elongated limbs, their skin translucent enough to show the rhythmic pulse of their sickly blood. Even the birds have changed, their feathers now metallic and brittle, circling the rising heat of the underground fires like omens of a world that refused to stay dead but forgot how to be whole.
Benefits of isolation
References made in some older Ossuary reports seem to indicate an organization with similar interest but opposed to the Ossuary ideology was active in this region. Details are scarce and the Ossuary appeared to have been rebuffed in their attempts to share information with them. Many references to “Unorthodox contamination and quarantine” methods in use. These references appear infrequently over a period of many years but abruptly stop ruffly some eight decades ago.
Beyond the Hills
The last reference to this group was in the membership petition of a young researcher that claimed to have been raised in the region and was the child of organization members. The applicant seems to have gained a solid foundation in medical practices through mixed with what the reviewer of the application called “quaint superstition”. There is a note that the applicant had left the Valley and the local organisation due to moral differences between themselves and the Organization leadership. The record was however incomplete and lacked many details including the applicants name but it is recorded they were accepted as a new member of the Ossuary.
Buried Secrets
After this all mention of this group disappeared from records entirely. I believe I found records that indicate this group may have since disbanded but due to redactions and missing pages it is unknown what the fate of the individuals or what became of their facilities or research was.
The Kin of Valley
According to scattered caravan reports and notes from the residents of Haze Hollow, a settlement ironically a few valleys over, The residents of the Valley’s region call themselves The Kin. These survivors of the ashen wastes are reportedly the descendants of long lines of mining families, woodsfolk, and farmers of The Old ‘Latcha. Families who have held to each other and the earth of this land for longer than there’ve been strains. When the end of the world came to these hollows and the fires raged across the earth they did as the folk of these ancient mountains have always done. They dug their heels in, let the world roar and scream, let the wheel turn and keep their roots buried in the weird dark earth where it could continue to survive. They’re a quiet and calm sort of people, welcoming and warm but oak-hard stubborn when needed. They keep to themselves and toil the land diligently, keeping to the comforts of their hollows and the safety of their traditions.
The loss of a leader
Among these first signs of recent trouble was supposedly the disappearance of a pillar of the Kin’s community. The eldest and wisest of the practitioners of their traditions; a leader of the Kin who had time and time again rallied the families of the region’s hollows and valleys against harsh times and great threats vanished. Their home and altars were found in a state of ruin. Stained with the aftermath of combat but no certainty of death. This served as a chief omen to The Kin and it took powerful urgency to get them to give up the hunt for their lost spiritual leader. Before long the other warning signs of trouble emerged and as the danger to their remote way of life became clear they took their leave from their homes and scattered, leaving the mystery of this leader to the woods, and those who would come soon after.
[Personal note: this would be the cause of that earlier request for our order to come to the valley. You will recall that we declined at the time as Arbiters do not serve as peacekeepers for hire, as their initial requests seemed to indicate was the want]
The coming of the Tribes
The current situation in the Valley is well known to us from reports issued by the Black Tide and Wells researches already onsite. No report however summarizes the situations well as this article from a local newspaper in Killadelphia.
Drums. Smoke. Screams. The Valley shakes with the coming storm. Life and order in all its forms flees from the shadow of a swooping predator and its talons.
The ashen wastes and the region's valleys are no strangers to the violence of Raiders but in living memory neither has ever witnessed such a virulent invasion of these blood thirsty madmen.
The locals of The 'Latcha have battered themselves against a dozen clans in the past who competed and even warred among themselves. They were more desperate scavengers and small packs of dangerous predators that could be hidden from, warned off, or if needed battled. They were treated like sickness or storm, needing to be waited out or burned off if the occasion called. This time has been different. The clans are now fewer but stronger and larger. They mark the victorious aftermath of burned homes and brutal carnage with one a few bloody banners. The slain are found marked with the same signs. They bicker but do not war amongst themselves and they have been seen sweeping through the valley like locusts, uprooting any sign of settlement or strain. This warband grows in number with each passing day, and they strike at the farmsteads and would-be settlements of the, now named, N.V.O. amidst clouds of noxious fog before slipping back into the forests of The 'Latcha, laughing and screaming as they drag their spoils back to their warcamp amidst drums, smoke, and screams.
The Tide of Hope
The situation seems to have changed, as is evident, and so has the Kin’s request of us since the arrival of the Black Tide Hunters main force.
[Personal note: and our purposes in seeking this fugitive seems to align]
The Kin open the hospitality of the valley to the strangers who are arriving in droves. But isolation can often make communication hard, even dangerous. They seek some help with preserving their culture of fair dealing and making sure the homes they hope to return to are still there. The Kin representatives that have made contact with Arbiters in the nearby regions have requested we come to the valley to ensure the Mercenaries, gathering to face the raiders, deal fairly with the Kin and ensure that Justice tempers the dealings between them.
[Personal note: It seems they have also made overtures to several Rover caravans to enter the valley and act as mediators between the Black Tide and themselves. Perhaps they can aid you in your pursuit of justice on both fronts - Kave]
