08-31-2015, 08:32 AM
A few hours later, Shang Tsung was alone except for the attendant ushering him through a back corridor in the town hall structure. The solider, yet another recruit who looked as if he had just been hired, got turned around a few times before he found the plain door that apparently housed the ‘Brevet Garrison Commander.’ After a short conversation on the other side of the door, the aide told Shang he could enter and proceeded to excuse himself to other business.
Stepping through the doorway and shutting it behind him, the sorcerer found Dobson on the other side of the room. The officer turned around and gazed upon Shang with eyes that had gone old before their time. Although he still had hints of his youthfulness, it was clear that events had taken a toll on someone who had once been the resident ‘younger brother’ of the more experienced officers in town.
“It’s nice to see you,” Shang said genially as he looked around the small little room. Most of the walls were covered with bookshelves and display cases, and a few tiny windows allowed enough sunlight to spill into the secluded room to ensure it wouldn’t need any candles for another hour or so.
“It’s nice to see someone who I can trust.” Dobson replied, walked across the room and extending a hand for the sorcerer. Shang shook hands with the soldier and suppressed a much wider smile. “I remember your heroics during your time in the garrison. I would kill for a few dozen soldiers just like you at my side. Please, I ask that you have a seat,” he requested as he gestured to a small table with a chair on each side. Shang took a seat, but Dobson continued to walk around the room, apparently unable to calm himself quite enough.
“You need to tell me everything,” Shang rasped as Dobson paced in front of him. The younger man had the appearance of someone who hadn’t slept in days, and the frantic manner in which he moved spoke volumes about his mental state. “I know that I’ve been gone for a few months, but the situation wasn’t this worse. It wasn’t this worse by a long shot.”
“Things have gotten bad,” the interim Guard Commander muttered as he stopped to look at the sorcerer. “You were last here months ago… you are aware of this?”
While it had only felt like a few days since they had entered Silent Hill after marching across the Moors, Shang knew that time was a fluid and dynamic thing in the Omniverse. For all he knew, Atelos and he had spent days or even weeks talking with Omni up in the Oververse. “Yes, I know. I’m sure you’re well aware that primes experience time in weird ways.”
“Be happy you were able to take the short way,” Dobson grumbled as he started to settle down a little. The young man walked over a cabinet and grabbed two glasses and an unlabeled bottle. Without speaking, he dropped the glasses onto the table next to them and wrenched the cork from the bottle. Shang’s nose told him the liquid was scotch, and once Dobson had filled up both glasses with a few fingers worth of the liquor, he set the bottle down and handed the sorcerer a drink. “It helps to take the edge off,” he muttered as he pantomimed a toast and threw the liquid down his throat in one short swig.
Whatever’s happening here has broken this man. Shang tipped back his glass and let the liquor flush over his tongue and down his esophagus. As he would have expected, the vintage that Dobson had was ‘the good stuff.’ Once both men had their glasses refilled, the military leader gestured at a seat next to Shang. The sorcerer took the hint and dropped into the leather chair and eyed Dobson as he slid into one on the other side of the small table.
“Did you ever meet Abraham?” Dobson asked after downing half of his drink. When Shang shook his head in response, the younger of the two men frowned. “Abraham van Helsing?”
“The name is familiar to me,” the sorcerer replied truthfully. He had heard mention of a man with a Dutch name who mixed healing the wounded with hunting monsters. In his time in Darkshire, Shang had never had the chance to meet up with the good doctor who seemed to be just a peg or two above Argento when it came to being beloved by the citizenry. “He was one of those people who went out of their way to try and improve the Pale Moors.”
Dobson nodded. “He was also a good friend of my father and I.”
“Was?” Shang inquired, his brow furrowing as he took a sip of the scotch and leaned a little closer to Dobson.
“I found him dead…” Dobson muttered as he refilled his drink. “His head had been left in a gibbet for the town to discover in the morning.”
“I’ve heard rumors, but no one confirmed anything.”
“I found it on my patrol just after midnight,” Dobson explained. “I removed it before anyone could catch a glimpse of it… Do you imagine the pandemonium that would have occurred if I hadn’t taken that extra shift?”
“Isn’t he a prime? Shouldn’t he have been reborn at the Fountain?” Shang asked as Dobson shifted uncomfortably.
“You would think so,” the soldier replied as he shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. “But there’s been nothing, and I don’t think he has been banished. Banished primes tend to not leave behind corpses.”
“That’s disheartening,” Shang muttered, recalling how Argento’s body had crumbled into ash. “Do you have any leads? This sounds like something deliberate, rather than just the good doctor making the wrong turn.”
Dobson glanced around the room before leaning closer to Shang. At this point, the two men were within a foot of one another. “I found makeup on Helsing’s neck.” When the sorcerer raised an eyebrow, the soldier continued. “Mayor Boone has a degenerative skin condition. It requires he apply some very heavy makeup to make him look like he isn’t going to collapse. If you worked with him long enough, you’d be able to recognize the stuff. It always gets smeared on his papers and clothes. I found the same makeup smears on my friend’s severed neck… that I can swear to you.”
On the inside, Shang smiled, realizing that the situation here in Darkshire was a little more complicated than bickering bureaucrats. “You think the mayor murdered one of this town’s champions?” The sorcerer whispered.
“He may not have murdered him with his own bare hands, but he certainly played a key role in setting up what was intended to be a most gruesome tableau.”
“What would the mayor have to gain from pandemonium?” Shang pressed.
Dobson shrugged his shoulders once more. “Two weeks before this event, the town council failed to approve a budget that the mayor supported. Since then, the entire town’s budget has been trapped in a virtual deadlock, with neither the mayor nor the council willing to budge.”
“What do you have to do with any of this?” Shang asked, knowing how many days Dobson had spent in the giant, dilapidated structure.
The officer smiled. “The militia is one of the highest drains on the town’s budget. If what you are led to believe is true, any warm body in one of those terrible little towers is somehow making two people homeless.”
With a frown, Shang tried to do a little math in his mind. “Is there any validity to those claims?”
Dobson scowled. “Without the militia, there would be no fucking homes for people not to live in!” He said, slamming his glass down on the desk. Leaning back, he let out a sigh and seemed to immediately deflate as he reached for the bottle. “The entire town is a mess, Shang. Most of the council is rich, and their interests lay predominately with the merchants. Darkshire is filled with disease, death, and hunger, yet you have some people who have clearly managed to make the most out of the situation.”
Not surprising. The sorcerer mused as he refilled his own cup. Shang had spent most of the 19th century in Europe, and there was no shortage of rich aristocrats, bureaucrats, and oligarchs profiting off peasant. “What does the mayor propose to end the stalemate?”
With a snicker, Dobson drained another two fingers of scotch. “He wants to disband the guard and replace the remaining human troops with skeletal golems. He wants to entrust our welfare with a necromancer! And worse than that… a necromancer that’s one of his lackeys. He also wants to confiscate all the arms and armor in the city to outfit his new personal police force.”
“And… there is a discussion about this?”
“Part of the Council is in the mayor’s sphere of influence.”
“And the other part?” Shang asked.
Dobson scowled. “They are… sympathetic to the militia.”
The ambiguity in that statement and what it implied gave Shang a little more respect for Dobson, who up until this point seemed like someone who walked a little too close to the line. “So it’s just been political gridlock?”
“There are rumblings that the mayor may dissolve the council.”
“Is that within his legal rights?”
“Yes, there are provisions within the town’s charter that grant the mayor the power to dissolve the council in the event of an emergency.”
“Certainly there are some requirements?” Shang asked as he thought back to a handful of parliamentary governments.
“For the council to be disbanded, they have to fail to find a quorum or fail to pass essential legislature, like a balance budget. While quorum has been maintained, the mayor has the right to dissolve the council at the end of the week if they fail to properly balance the budget,” Dobson explained as he set the empty bottle aside and leaned back in his chair. “It was intended to check corruption.”
“What happens if the council is dissolved?”
“The mayor has thirty days in which to hold new elections. In the interim, he is vested with the authority to pass ‘emergency’ legislation until such time that a new council can be voted into office.”
Shang chuckled. “He becomes dictator for a month? Whose bright idea was that?” The red-faced Dobson shook his head and pointed to a busted shield on a shelf nearby. On the tarnished surface was an emblem that took Shang a few moments to recognize. “Camelot?”
The man seated across from him shook his head. “The town charter is the same one we had when we were founded seven years ago. We had an opportunity a few years ago to revise the charter when the Kingdom formally withdrew from the region, but Boone thought the external position was too tenuous to risk it. Now it appears that he may have a chance to do so, regardless of the external or internal situation.”
While he had more than a few answers, there were still countless other questions in the sorcerer’s head. He kept a few to himself for the time being and threw the very obvious question at Dobson. “So what’s your next step?”
The man sighed. “I’ve been trying for days to find common ground, but no one seems willing to yield. It doesn’t help matters that I do not trust Mayor Boone any longer. He’s done nothing over the last fortnight to change my opinion that he’s attempting to manipulate things to turn out in his favor.”
“And that’s not forgetting about Van Helsing,” Shang added, eliciting a nod from his associate. “With Van Helsing and Argento both out of the picture, Darkshire has a dearth of champions who might otherwise shift the tide.”
“There are still too many questions, Shang,” Dobson muttered. “I still find myself wondering what would motivate Boone to pursue such a dramatic course of actions, if he is indeed complicit in manipulating the situation.”
Before Shang could reply, the pair of men heard a sturdy knock on the door of Dobson’s office. When the leader of the guard called out for the identity of their visitor, they received a tepid response. “Brevet Commander Dobson… it’s about your father, Sir.”
In a flash, the young man was out of his seat and at the door. If he was drunk, Dobson showed no signs of inebriation as he threw open the door and glared at the young runner who stood before him. “What is it, Soldier?”
“Commander Skendor was found dead in his apartment, Sir. They sent me to call for y—”
Dobson shoved passed the recruit and was out in the hallway before the kid could finish his sentence, and right behind him, Shang followed in his wake.
Stepping through the doorway and shutting it behind him, the sorcerer found Dobson on the other side of the room. The officer turned around and gazed upon Shang with eyes that had gone old before their time. Although he still had hints of his youthfulness, it was clear that events had taken a toll on someone who had once been the resident ‘younger brother’ of the more experienced officers in town.
“It’s nice to see you,” Shang said genially as he looked around the small little room. Most of the walls were covered with bookshelves and display cases, and a few tiny windows allowed enough sunlight to spill into the secluded room to ensure it wouldn’t need any candles for another hour or so.
“It’s nice to see someone who I can trust.” Dobson replied, walked across the room and extending a hand for the sorcerer. Shang shook hands with the soldier and suppressed a much wider smile. “I remember your heroics during your time in the garrison. I would kill for a few dozen soldiers just like you at my side. Please, I ask that you have a seat,” he requested as he gestured to a small table with a chair on each side. Shang took a seat, but Dobson continued to walk around the room, apparently unable to calm himself quite enough.
“You need to tell me everything,” Shang rasped as Dobson paced in front of him. The younger man had the appearance of someone who hadn’t slept in days, and the frantic manner in which he moved spoke volumes about his mental state. “I know that I’ve been gone for a few months, but the situation wasn’t this worse. It wasn’t this worse by a long shot.”
“Things have gotten bad,” the interim Guard Commander muttered as he stopped to look at the sorcerer. “You were last here months ago… you are aware of this?”
While it had only felt like a few days since they had entered Silent Hill after marching across the Moors, Shang knew that time was a fluid and dynamic thing in the Omniverse. For all he knew, Atelos and he had spent days or even weeks talking with Omni up in the Oververse. “Yes, I know. I’m sure you’re well aware that primes experience time in weird ways.”
“Be happy you were able to take the short way,” Dobson grumbled as he started to settle down a little. The young man walked over a cabinet and grabbed two glasses and an unlabeled bottle. Without speaking, he dropped the glasses onto the table next to them and wrenched the cork from the bottle. Shang’s nose told him the liquid was scotch, and once Dobson had filled up both glasses with a few fingers worth of the liquor, he set the bottle down and handed the sorcerer a drink. “It helps to take the edge off,” he muttered as he pantomimed a toast and threw the liquid down his throat in one short swig.
Whatever’s happening here has broken this man. Shang tipped back his glass and let the liquor flush over his tongue and down his esophagus. As he would have expected, the vintage that Dobson had was ‘the good stuff.’ Once both men had their glasses refilled, the military leader gestured at a seat next to Shang. The sorcerer took the hint and dropped into the leather chair and eyed Dobson as he slid into one on the other side of the small table.
“Did you ever meet Abraham?” Dobson asked after downing half of his drink. When Shang shook his head in response, the younger of the two men frowned. “Abraham van Helsing?”
“The name is familiar to me,” the sorcerer replied truthfully. He had heard mention of a man with a Dutch name who mixed healing the wounded with hunting monsters. In his time in Darkshire, Shang had never had the chance to meet up with the good doctor who seemed to be just a peg or two above Argento when it came to being beloved by the citizenry. “He was one of those people who went out of their way to try and improve the Pale Moors.”
Dobson nodded. “He was also a good friend of my father and I.”
“Was?” Shang inquired, his brow furrowing as he took a sip of the scotch and leaned a little closer to Dobson.
“I found him dead…” Dobson muttered as he refilled his drink. “His head had been left in a gibbet for the town to discover in the morning.”
“I’ve heard rumors, but no one confirmed anything.”
“I found it on my patrol just after midnight,” Dobson explained. “I removed it before anyone could catch a glimpse of it… Do you imagine the pandemonium that would have occurred if I hadn’t taken that extra shift?”
“Isn’t he a prime? Shouldn’t he have been reborn at the Fountain?” Shang asked as Dobson shifted uncomfortably.
“You would think so,” the soldier replied as he shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. “But there’s been nothing, and I don’t think he has been banished. Banished primes tend to not leave behind corpses.”
“That’s disheartening,” Shang muttered, recalling how Argento’s body had crumbled into ash. “Do you have any leads? This sounds like something deliberate, rather than just the good doctor making the wrong turn.”
Dobson glanced around the room before leaning closer to Shang. At this point, the two men were within a foot of one another. “I found makeup on Helsing’s neck.” When the sorcerer raised an eyebrow, the soldier continued. “Mayor Boone has a degenerative skin condition. It requires he apply some very heavy makeup to make him look like he isn’t going to collapse. If you worked with him long enough, you’d be able to recognize the stuff. It always gets smeared on his papers and clothes. I found the same makeup smears on my friend’s severed neck… that I can swear to you.”
On the inside, Shang smiled, realizing that the situation here in Darkshire was a little more complicated than bickering bureaucrats. “You think the mayor murdered one of this town’s champions?” The sorcerer whispered.
“He may not have murdered him with his own bare hands, but he certainly played a key role in setting up what was intended to be a most gruesome tableau.”
“What would the mayor have to gain from pandemonium?” Shang pressed.
Dobson shrugged his shoulders once more. “Two weeks before this event, the town council failed to approve a budget that the mayor supported. Since then, the entire town’s budget has been trapped in a virtual deadlock, with neither the mayor nor the council willing to budge.”
“What do you have to do with any of this?” Shang asked, knowing how many days Dobson had spent in the giant, dilapidated structure.
The officer smiled. “The militia is one of the highest drains on the town’s budget. If what you are led to believe is true, any warm body in one of those terrible little towers is somehow making two people homeless.”
With a frown, Shang tried to do a little math in his mind. “Is there any validity to those claims?”
Dobson scowled. “Without the militia, there would be no fucking homes for people not to live in!” He said, slamming his glass down on the desk. Leaning back, he let out a sigh and seemed to immediately deflate as he reached for the bottle. “The entire town is a mess, Shang. Most of the council is rich, and their interests lay predominately with the merchants. Darkshire is filled with disease, death, and hunger, yet you have some people who have clearly managed to make the most out of the situation.”
Not surprising. The sorcerer mused as he refilled his own cup. Shang had spent most of the 19th century in Europe, and there was no shortage of rich aristocrats, bureaucrats, and oligarchs profiting off peasant. “What does the mayor propose to end the stalemate?”
With a snicker, Dobson drained another two fingers of scotch. “He wants to disband the guard and replace the remaining human troops with skeletal golems. He wants to entrust our welfare with a necromancer! And worse than that… a necromancer that’s one of his lackeys. He also wants to confiscate all the arms and armor in the city to outfit his new personal police force.”
“And… there is a discussion about this?”
“Part of the Council is in the mayor’s sphere of influence.”
“And the other part?” Shang asked.
Dobson scowled. “They are… sympathetic to the militia.”
The ambiguity in that statement and what it implied gave Shang a little more respect for Dobson, who up until this point seemed like someone who walked a little too close to the line. “So it’s just been political gridlock?”
“There are rumblings that the mayor may dissolve the council.”
“Is that within his legal rights?”
“Yes, there are provisions within the town’s charter that grant the mayor the power to dissolve the council in the event of an emergency.”
“Certainly there are some requirements?” Shang asked as he thought back to a handful of parliamentary governments.
“For the council to be disbanded, they have to fail to find a quorum or fail to pass essential legislature, like a balance budget. While quorum has been maintained, the mayor has the right to dissolve the council at the end of the week if they fail to properly balance the budget,” Dobson explained as he set the empty bottle aside and leaned back in his chair. “It was intended to check corruption.”
“What happens if the council is dissolved?”
“The mayor has thirty days in which to hold new elections. In the interim, he is vested with the authority to pass ‘emergency’ legislation until such time that a new council can be voted into office.”
Shang chuckled. “He becomes dictator for a month? Whose bright idea was that?” The red-faced Dobson shook his head and pointed to a busted shield on a shelf nearby. On the tarnished surface was an emblem that took Shang a few moments to recognize. “Camelot?”
The man seated across from him shook his head. “The town charter is the same one we had when we were founded seven years ago. We had an opportunity a few years ago to revise the charter when the Kingdom formally withdrew from the region, but Boone thought the external position was too tenuous to risk it. Now it appears that he may have a chance to do so, regardless of the external or internal situation.”
While he had more than a few answers, there were still countless other questions in the sorcerer’s head. He kept a few to himself for the time being and threw the very obvious question at Dobson. “So what’s your next step?”
The man sighed. “I’ve been trying for days to find common ground, but no one seems willing to yield. It doesn’t help matters that I do not trust Mayor Boone any longer. He’s done nothing over the last fortnight to change my opinion that he’s attempting to manipulate things to turn out in his favor.”
“And that’s not forgetting about Van Helsing,” Shang added, eliciting a nod from his associate. “With Van Helsing and Argento both out of the picture, Darkshire has a dearth of champions who might otherwise shift the tide.”
“There are still too many questions, Shang,” Dobson muttered. “I still find myself wondering what would motivate Boone to pursue such a dramatic course of actions, if he is indeed complicit in manipulating the situation.”
Before Shang could reply, the pair of men heard a sturdy knock on the door of Dobson’s office. When the leader of the guard called out for the identity of their visitor, they received a tepid response. “Brevet Commander Dobson… it’s about your father, Sir.”
In a flash, the young man was out of his seat and at the door. If he was drunk, Dobson showed no signs of inebriation as he threw open the door and glared at the young runner who stood before him. “What is it, Soldier?”
“Commander Skendor was found dead in his apartment, Sir. They sent me to call for y—”
Dobson shoved passed the recruit and was out in the hallway before the kid could finish his sentence, and right behind him, Shang followed in his wake.
![[Image: Shang.jpg]](http://www.omniverse-rpg.com/images/Shang.jpg)