Life, as if were, in Reaper’s Gate was unlike actually living. While for the most part you were expected to do something for the town it wasn’t strictly necessary. The primary currency used for trade was plain gold coins and a variety of precious jewels. These things were generated by a man who came to Reaper’s Gate some thirteen-hundred years prior.
This man was known as Nisodine. He was a soldier when he died defending ancient Constantinople from some foe long forgotten to him. In all honesty he never cared. His father and brothers had been the ones who forced him to join the military when he was perfectly happy minting coins with the image of Leo III embedded on them.
He wasn’t truly a wealthy man in life, but something about gold always had appealed to him but his life ended abruptly due to the frequent attacks against the city he called home. An arrow struck him directly in the heart while he kept watch one day. His final thoughts were of his family, and how much he regretted giving in to their demands that he join the defensive force of the ancient city.
When he arrived in Reaper’s Gate he found the place in economic shambles. They had only just developed a form of law system there. As he heard it from his friend, the originator of law in the Gate, a man called Dirius Anancolomy the most powerful being living in the Gate used their power to get what they wanted when they wanted it and the weak were forced to do what they could with what they had.
Between the two of them they turned the Gate into a more tolerable dwelling. Dirius had been successful in recruiting the most powerful of the current Gate residents to help keep order and enforce the law there. She was an immense woman with platinum blond hair. She was always clad in furs and armor and brandished a massive sword at anyone she didn’t get along with, which was most men. She became known as Kirma the Iron Maiden.
She was dubbed this title by Dirius because the woman never spoke and she needed a title that would strike fear into the disobedient masses that lurked around the Gate at that time. Feared she was, though you could not be killed in the Gate you could still feel pain. Not dying, in fact, only made this experience worse in most cases.
Together the three of them established the economy and the following tenants.
*If you cannot provide for yourself, you must contribute something to the Gate.
This was directed at the weaker willed folk who entered the Gate with barely enough power to restore their bodies. If you are powerful enough you can do literally anything imaginable. So you can supply yourself with clothes, food, a home, and practically anything you could ever need. Before the advent of the law the stronger folks would do for themselves only. The weaker were forced to beg, or suffer. The really strange thing about this was the fact that you didn’t need to eat or drink to survive. The only reason one would get hungry was because it seemed like they should be. Even if you don’t need to eat you can still suffer from hunger.
*Do not deal with necromancers, they are a ruination unto us all.
Ever since more than four people lived in the Gate there have been necromancers. Living people who learned of the Gate’s existence and the powers one could wield there. They began tapping into the Gate and enslaving the residents for their own gain. If a single Gate resident becomes linked unwillingly to a necromancer they could tell the necromancer of other more powerful residents of the Gate for them to try and control. Imagine being enslaved by someone who only wants your power for themselves, and the only way for you to escape is to grow a greater willpower than they have. While most of the stronger people of the Gate could resist, and in some cases even destroy weak and foolish necromancers, the weaker residents would always succumb. The worst part of this is that no one in the Gate could help someone who was pulled back into the living realm by a necromancer and enslaved by them.
*Do not take what is not yours.
*Do not harm those who do not deserve it.
Self explanatory. Some cruel individuals disobey these on a regular basis. They have to deal with Kirma and she does not tolerate thieves, or those who would harm for pleasure.
Besides these laws there was little to worry about in the Gate. Dirius and Nisodine built a town out of literally nothing. Dirius serves a judge for minor personal discretion’s. He also tells Kirma who to deal with making him one of the most powerful men in the Gate.
However there is a bit of deceit afoot in the Gate. On the night that Richard Cullen arrived there. Nisodine was slipping out the side entrance of the court house. He was a skinny man with short hair and a trimmed beard. He was of dark complexion, and he was clad in a plain white robe. He was always somewhat nervous. He always seemed to be looking off in the distance with a faint sign of worry on his face. This has been the case since he was shot from some distance away by an unseen archer.
This night however, he was nervous for a different reason. The night before he had been approached by a man, no a creature called Parrish. Parrish was what was known as a ghoul. A Gate resident who willingly dealt with necromancers. Parrish was quite powerful as well, and fearsome. You had to be powerful to be a ghoul for any length of time otherwise the necromancer you’re dealing with may just decide to consume you when he’s done using you. Being fearsome came with experience however, as necromancers warp and pervert the energy of the common Gate dweller turning them into something wholly different and vile.
Nisodine raised the hood of his robe over his head. He made sure no one had seen him leaving out the side entrance of the court house before locking the wooden door behind him. He walked up the alley away from the square where the Grim Reaper statue stood silent holding it’s scales aloft.
The opposite end of the alley was barred by a large stone wall. Nisodine wasn’t very powerful, but this wasn’t an obstacle for him. He leapt up thrusting one hand downward towards the ground as he did. A gust of wind pushed him up to the top of the wall where he crouched for a moment looking either way along the road behind the court house. His robes did little to camouflage him against the dark blue stones, but the coast was clear.
He hopped down. Everyone was at Cold Ones. This was the usual practice for Gate dwellers. There was little to do in the town besides work. No one was particularly happy at any given moment so there was little reason for recreation outside of drinking the night away. He wished things were different. It depressed him to think about the people of the Gate, it always had. Hopefully the conspiracy he was partaking in would change things for the better.
He slowly walked down the road that followed behind the court house. The back doors were firmly closed as he passed them. Making his way to the edge of town where the ghouls lived. He avoided drawing any attention to himself though there was no one to avoid.
As he crept along he recalled the night before when Parrish had approached him. He had told Nisodine that the ghouls were planning something big for the Gate. That the living worlds most powerful necromancer was going to try and open a portal between the two planes. Nisodine doubted this would work. He was intrigued however as Parrish told him that they would be alerting non-ghouls to this fact. He didn’t quite understand why at this point. In fact he was on his way to speak with Parrish to find out more about this.
His thoughts dwelled on the portal. If this necromancer was able to sustain this it could spell something very bad for the real world. Part of him wondered if Ichabod knew. So little was known about the headless gatekeeper or who he worked for. He supposed if an all powerful god-being created this place that they would know if it was in any real danger.
He shuddered. He was getting close to the ghouls now. He could feel the perversion that they radiated. He was always curious about them. He supposed they liked having the temporary freedom that necromancers could grant them. He also supposed they were people who enjoyed doing the things necromancers were known for making them do.
He walked through the stone gate into the walled off area of ghoul town. He shuddered.
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