(1) Welcome to Erde

[Piper Juunanagou]

"There's been another murder!"

With a grunt, Elder Anastious Guillermo motioned for one of the nearby men to try and silence the crier before he started another panic throughout the village. Unfortunately, the growing crowd indicated that it was probably too late to contain the matter. As the man ducked down beneath the door frame, the elder turned his attention to the mangled body that lie on the floor of the cottage. Just like the last five murders, the victim had been bound with rope and brutally stabbed. Smears of drying blood stained the stone floors and wooden walls of the small structure. The terror in the old woman's eyes conveyed more emotion than the scene of gore around her broken body.

"Elder."

Anastious glanced across the room at one of his young assistants, who had been scouring the rest of the quaint home for any clues. "What is it, Johan?"

"It's just like the other murders." To sell his point, Johan produced a small metal box from inside a rather mundane-looking crate. It took Anastious but a moment to notice that the locking mechanism had been smashed, but even still, his assistance popped open to box to reveal its contents. "Everything has been stolen."

"Why steal an old woman trinkets?" At every other crime, something of value had been taken from the scene, usually jewelry or old family jewels. As far as Anastious understood, the worth of the items didn't seem to justify such violent murders.

Despite the fact that each murder had been coupled with thefts, there were far too many individuals in Eisenhardt that blamed the crimes on monsters. Even through the other elders tried to calm the populace, there was only so much they could do to quell the superstitious minds of the people, many of whom were incapable of reading or writing their own names.

With a shrug of his broad shoulders, the member of the town's Elder Council rose to his feet and called over a rather grim-looking set of men. "Would you two mind wrapping Matilda up and prepping the pyre for her?" The two men, who were members of Elder Wynam's old tribe, nodded their heads and set about bundling the gnarled corpse up in cloth.

"Would you like me to do anything, Elder?"

Anastious, with a frown on his face as he watched one of the men wrap up the woman's smashed skull, turned to his assistant. "Just try and prevent people from overreacting too much, Johan." It seemed like only yesterday that the village had calmed down from the last murder-theft. Johan, with an equally grim look on his face, nodded his head and followed Elder Guillermo out of the cottage.

Outside the cottage, a group of about twenty-five people, nearly a third of the villages population, had already gathered. With a heavy sigh, Johan put on his best faux smile and waded into the fray.