[RPG] [FEI] Venator, Deathstalker

[Aaron Champion]

A lone man slipped quietly through the dense forests out the outskirts of
Azros.  The moon had risen high into the night sky but was itself shrouded
in clouds.  The winter breeze carried an additional bite, courtesy of the
sea.  The hunter--for his mottled, dark garb and the assortment of weapons
he carried on him (stakes, vials of a tinted liquid, a compact crossbow, and
a wickedly-curved sword) clearly identified him as such--darted between the
trees.

In honed in on the sound of grunts and a repetitive grinding in the near
distance.  Slowly he crept through the undergrowth, nocking a bolt in
preparation.  At a pace of 20 yards he could see the ghoulish undead, the
source of the unearthly grunting as they tried hopelessly to communicate the
shadows of thought and emotion they still possessed.  The source of the
grinding caused an involuntary churn in the hunter's stomach which training
quickly suppressed.  A young child--or the remains of one, at least--was
being filleted like a fish, and the clumsy hands of the undead with the
knife kept striking bone by cutting too deeply.  He counted another four of
the ghouls, each busy with the dismembered corpses of what looked like a
mother and father.

The hunter took careful aim, sighting the base of the knife-wielding ghoul's
skull in his sights.  A light *thwack* of the crossbow's string and the
near-immediate *crunch* of a quarter-sized piece of skull being driven into
the base of the ghoul's brain was the only sound made as the corpse once
again returned to lifelessness.  Swiftly, the hunter drew his curved blade
and separated the other four undead from their heads.  He stood vigil for a
few minutes as the bodies wandered aimlessly about in lazy circles until the
dark energy that sustained them had dissipated and the headless bodies
toppled over.

Venator the Deathstalker had struck again.
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