One quiet evening a handful of doves fluttered down into the Jewel of
the East, the letters they carried addressed to the five Vizers of the
city Enorian. Contained within were demands from a secret society who
had kept their existence completely hidden from Sapience, with not a
single fact or even rumor known by any member of the population.

The Society of Shadows had submitted their ransom note to Enorian, and
the devotion of the Guilds within its walls was the hostage. The letter
stipulated that the city was to forfeit 250,000 gold sovereigns to an
undisclosed recipient, or the Society would wield their arcane magics
and begin to shadow all the pious from the favor of the divine. The
leaders of Enorian cast the letters aside, giving no response and
believing the dispatch to be merely a farce.

Two months after the letters were received, a seeping weakness began to
flow through the veins of the wielders of devotion, much to their
surprise. Prayers began to go unanswered, and the natural regeneration
of their energies was stemmed somewhat. True to the word of the Society,
devotional abilities had begun to weaken given the lack of response from
the Viziers. Widespread panic quickly seized the populace, and the
search for a solution to the problem and its source began.

With the letter having hinted at magics, Daskalos Aruvar trekked into
the Vashnar Mountains to speak with Hycanthus, the wizard who resides
there. Accusations flew about who could have done it, with mention from
the Light Master that Geryon, Keeper of the Sanctum may be involved.
Hycanthus however explained that he knew nothing of the plot and did not
detect the source of the curse to be magic related at all.

Daskalos and the other wielders of devotion headed back to Enorian when
word was received from a city guard who mentioned noticing foul-smelling
water within the palace fountain. These revelations puzzled the Enorians
further, and worry began to grow as their devotion dwindled further and
their prayers continued to go unheard.

Knowing not where else to turn, Daskalos turned back to his guild, where
Necia, the dedicated teacher of the Luminaries, mentioned that she too
had noticed an odd smell emanating from the fountain in the guildhall.
She suggested that they seek any open sources of water within the city
to check for their contamination.

Numerous water sources around the city were found to have been tainted,
the waters polluted and radiating the same peculiar smell. Returning to
Necia, Daskalos took the advice of his teacher when she mentioned that a
counter agent could work and devised a plan that perhaps the venom
vardax, which drains necromantic life essence, would work to neutralize
the polluted water.

The pious ones wasted little time in rallying to gather all the vardax
they could find and pour it into the tainted sources. As the vardrax was
added to the waters, they cleared under the venomous flow. In a short
amount of time, devotion was completely restored to its original
potency, although the identities of the members of the mysterious
'Society of Shadows' and their motives for their actions are still
unknown. Exactly how the waters came to be polluted is also a topic
still subject to much speculation and study.

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Niuran, in the year 159 MA.