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Early evening. A busy walkway of a small town built in a clearing in the woods. The town is a fairly new one; its buildings are crudely built with storefronts, and instead of real streets, there are boards laid down here and there for walking on. The people crowding the path are running in and out of stores, talking, laughing, bustling about their lives. Except for one. A man in a long black soutane walks deliberately down the street. He is of medium height, somewhere between skinny and brawny, with black hair just long enough to be wavy over his ears and at the back of his neck. The hands at the end of his loose sleeves are folded – not interlaced, one on top of the other. His face betrays no sign of his thoughts or emotions, looking serenely calm. His eyes sweep the area, scrutinizing everything around him and taking it in. A girl of about eight runs out of the trees to him. “Father!’” she cries. “Help us! We were saying prayers for our dead, and these monsters came and - ,” she gulped. “My parents told me to run!” The girl takes his sleeve and pulls him; he runs after her. In a patch of woods back from the clearing stands a small, low wooden church. The girl leads the man in the side door. Immediately inside the door is an altar against the wall to the right with an empty space in front of it; the rest of the 30 x 30 space is lined with backless benches. Candles provide the only light, ringed around four coffins along the wall opposite the entrance. Three hideous undead creatures, ghouls, are advancing on a handful of frightened townspeople huddled in the corner on the other side of the altar. A fourth ghoul had been fighting the town’s priest, and tosses him to the ground as they enter. Two more ghouls are heading for the group of coffins. The creatures turn as the man enters. He dashes over and positions himself between them and the townspeople. All six monsters then advance on their new foe. He tosses his bag behind him, pulls a holy symbol from the front pocket of his soutane, points it at the ghouls and prays. Two break off the attack and scuttle to the shadows at the back of the building. The other four keep coming. |
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