#432 Night of Doubt's Chariot

Age: 600 Years

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: It was a portentous, gloomy morning the day Monsieur Wurm arrived in Tellsport.

Dressed in a soiled black coat and a tattered traveler’s hat, Wurm walked the streets sampling the local pastries and chatting with the early risers. He asked simple questions, “Can you?”, “Is it enough?” and the like. Wherever the squat man in black went he left waves of uncertainty, hesitation, and doubt in his wake. His seemingly innocuous queries quickly borrowed into the minds of all those he encountered, and within minutes of speaking with Wurm, wives were abandoning their marriages fearing that the love of their relationship was never real; business owners were shuttering their shops due to their lack of quality and skill; and scholars broke their quills, suddenly aware of their many failures and disappointments. He left those he met with the promise that an amazing chariot would arrive that very night, bringing with it a chance to be judged. To prove to world and self, that they deserved to live.

The streets of Tellsport quickly filled with despairing citizens, their egos shattered, crying out for the Chariot’s judgment. And the mysterious Monsieur Wurm continued on his path through the city, passing through each neighborhood like a psychic plaque rat. By the midday bells, the ‘Doubter’s Sickness’ had overtaken half of the city, and patrols were dispatched to locate and eliminate Wurm. However, the searchers simply joined the crowds of depressed wretches awaiting the Chariot.

By nightfall, Wurm’s tour was complete and he took a seat on the highest rooftop to gleefully witness the coming of Doubt’s Chariot. All but the most confident or broken among Tellsport’s citizens had fallen under Wurm’s spell, and the streets were lined with weeping flagellants when the Chariot at last appeared.

A massive coach bearing a mask of sorrow, the black vehicle rumbled steadily through the streets, following Wurm’s path. As it passed, the people fought to throw themselves beneath its massive crushing wheels, the moans of those who died under the Chariot’s progress and those who lived mingling in the night air. Sorrow, carnage, and despair ruled the gore-covered roads of Tellsport that night.

As morning broke, Monsieur Wurm and Doubt’s Chariot had disappeared, leaving nothing but regret and confusion in the warming blue light. Over a third of the city had been lost during that bizarre, tragic darkness. Those who survived to bury the dead had become dull revenants, inhabited only by the guilt of their actions the night before, whether they had tried to fall under the Chariot or failed to save those who did.

It was decided that they had been the victims of a temporary frenzy, and the events were never officially discussed again. However a sad, shameful pall exists over Tellsport to this day, and in some other poor city, the sound of an approaching chariot is rising with the dawn.