There was a rap­ping at the door. Wan eyes peered through faceted glass above the knock­er, saw a But­ler approach with­in. The latch turned under a white glove. 

A long-faced, tired man stood on the stoop. He clutched a bat­tered black hat and a large med­ical bag, smelt of soap and whiskey. 

“Dr. Ramm­stein?” said the But­ler.

“Yes,” said Ramm­stein. He waved his hat oblig­ing­ly, “I do, ah, sup­pose that’s me.” He grinned briefly, quit. 

“Mas­ter Sol­land has expect­ed you for some time,” said the bul­ter, impas­sive. He waved the Doc­tor in. “He awaits you in his study.”

“Ah. Ah, won­der­ful.”

Ramm­stein stepped scuffed shoes into the foy­er, peered about at crys­tal lamps and wild taxi­dermy, and glass-front­ed cab­i­nets affixed to twen­ty-foot walls. He fol­lowed the But­ler, mar­veled at dis­play cas­es filled with bio­log­i­cal odds and curios. He frowned at one as he passed: A mount­ed hand with black, nod­uled bones broke through crack­ling skin. It drew a wor­ried turn of his lip.

“Mas­ter Sol­land is a col­lec­tor of med­ical obscu­ra, I glean?” he said, ten­ta­tive, turn­ing from the hand to exam­ine a por­trait of a grim blighter in ruf­fles.

“Indeed,” said the But­ler, not stop­ping. 

Ramm­stein har­rumphed soft­ly, fol­lowed to the foy­er’s end, where the But­ler ush­ered him through a tall, pan­eled door. Beyond lay a dark study; tall win­dows cov­ered in black tarp. A selec­tion of dim, free­stand­ing lamps with green shades lit book­shelves, arm­chairs, a claw­foot desk. There sat a sick­ly, worn man with lumpy, lined cheeks. He wore a mauve suit. 

“The Coro­ner, Mas­ter,” said the But­ler, regard­ing him, ges­tur­ing to Ramm­stein with an open hand.

The man in mauve stood. “The good doc­tor,” he said, tak­ing Ramm­stein’s offered hand. “I am grate­ful you could make it to our dis­tant moor.”

Ramm­stein shook, awk­ward­ly. “Mas­ter Sol­land. Not a has­sle. I, ah, live not far away.”

“I am glad. Oth­er­wise my dilem­ma may have grown out of hand.”

“Yes,” said Ramm­stein. He trailed briefly, let his gaze flit over Sol­land’s eyes. They were yel­low, cloud­ed. 

He con­tin­ued. “Despite the, ah, solem­ni­ty of these things, it is, of course, always safest to be quick about them.” He tried a con­sol­ing smile. “Was the late par­ty a rel­a­tive?”

“Oh, sure­ly not,” said Sol­land. “I have no idea who they are, real­ly.”

Ramm­stein opened his mouth. “I beg your par­don, Mas­ter.” His throat flut­tered. “You have a corpse in the house, and you do not know who it is?”

“No. For­give my vague­ness. Not a body. Not in the house,” said Sol­land, knit­ting his brow. “Mul­ti­ple bod­ies, out­side of the house.”

“Ah?”

 “Yes. There is a ruin on the prop­er­ty, a…” he pulled his eyes to the ceil­ing, flut­tered a gloved palm. “Tomb,” he arrived, snap­ping his fin­gers. “A Tomb, as the banks would say, yes. One of the rea­sons I acquired this estate. Mor­ley House, you see, is built upon an excel­lent bulk of pro­to-Idran ruins. I dab­ble in the obscure, and they are of valu­able curios­i­ty to me.”

“Oh, yes?” prompt­ed Ramm­stein. Con­cern lined his fore­head.

“Well, you see,” said Sol­land. “Some time short­ly ago, some irri­tant band of delin­quents decid­ed to break into one of my ruins, and now they’ve gone and died inside.”

“I see, ah.” Ramm­stein looked only mar­gin­al­ly less wor­ried. “Did you see the bod­ies your­self?”

“Oh, no,” said Sol­land. “I am rarely in the sun­light. Bad eyes, you see. My groundskeep­er report­ed this to me. He wit­nessed the por­tal caved in, and lat­er heard scream­ing with­in.”

“I must say. This is rather atyp­i­cal. Do you kno–”

“Please, Doc­tor,” inter­rupt­ed Sol­land. “I know real­ly noth­ing else. Let us go and see what has become of the fools, yes?”

“Ah, it may be grue­some,” cau­tioned the Doc­tor. *

“I sus­pect it may.” Sol­land crossed to the study door, opened it. He  plucked up a cane and a pair of green-tint­ed glass­es from a stand beside. “Shall we?”

“As you wish.” Ramm­stein replaced his hat.

Togeth­er, they passed again through the tall foy­er. Sol­land lead, wob­bling some­what on bowed shins. Ramm­stein’s bag clanked and sloshed gen­tly as he fol­lowed. 

Out into the grey day they went, walked aways down the grav­el lane, broke off onto the pur­ple-brown of the moor­land. It was a still place, save for a sparsh rus­tle of laven­der breeze. Undu­lant, low hills stretched unto the hori­zon.

After many min­utes of hob­bling ahead, Sol­land spoke. “Have you ever done bat­tle with a grue, my good Doc­tor?”

“Ah, on occa­sion,” said Ramm­stein. He pulled a pained sort of grin. “Less ‘bat­tle’ than, ah, ‘des­per­ate flail­ing.’ ”

Sol­land chuck­led wet­ly. “You are too mod­est. It’s an impres­sive­ly fear­ful organ­ism to face, I’m aware.” He pon­dered a moment. “I have heard tell a grue’s intel­li­gence is what makes it so ter­ri­ble. Do you con­cur?”

“Ah, not quite.” Ramm­stein frowned at the turf before his feet. “A grue, as we under­stand them, is a mon­ster of spe­cial­ized and dis­tilled pur­pose,” he said, care­ful­ly. “Like an insect. Its actions are sim­ple, pre­de­ter­mined reac­tion to accord­ing stim­u­lus. Any behav­ior resem­bling, ah, high­er cog­ni­tive func­tion is mere­ly plague recit­ing rote com­mands to its cor­pus. Like a script to an actor. There is no, ah, choice.”

“Yes, but have you ever read Lord Ban­dle­ton, Doc­tor? The organ­ic researcher? She has made inter­est­ing inroads regard­ing con­scious­ness in plague.”

“No. I’ll admit, I under­stand she’s regard­ed as rather a bof­fin after, ah, all that.”

Sol­land turned back ahead a moment. His glass­es flashed amber-green in the sun. “You may be wise to, despite. Intrigu­ing stuff.” 

Ramm­stein nod­ded polite­ly. “Per­haps I will. Thank you.”

They walked slow anoth­er few min­utes. A band of fox­glove pix­ies traipsed across their path, trail­ing light, mut­ter­ing song and vague per­fume. Ramm­stein picked his way care­ful­ly, so as not to tread on them.

Sol­land stopped, moment­ly, point­ed to the top­pled crust of a tow­er on a near­by hill­top. “That,” he said, “is Fort Brandt­ford. Curi­ous­ly named, for there’s no ford near­by that any can remem­ber.”

Ramm­stein made a sound of vague inter­est, switched his bag to his oth­er hand, resumed fol­low­ing. “I, ah, must say,” he huffed after a while. “We’ve got a good few miles. Your groundskeep­er roams rather far.”

“My estate is quite large, yes,” replied the man in mauve. He said no more. 

At last, they came upon a low knoll of earth with a stone por­tal in its face. It was choked with moss, and its front had been stove in. A sledge­ham­mer lay beside, along with a hand­cart laden with plain cloths.

“For the, uh, ‘swag,’ I imag­ine,” said Ramm­stein, nod­ding to it. 

“Oh, no. That belongs to my groundskeep­er.”

“Ran off afeared, did he?” the Doc­tor said, set­ting down his bag.

“Indeed.”

“Ah. A moment, please.”

Kneel­ing, Ramm­stein pro­duced a selec­tion of items from his bag: A red lantern, a thick glass jar labeled “ton­ic,” sev­er­al glass orbs filled with dust, and a sort of cud­gel cov­ered in tines and tiny holes. He unscrewed the hefty top of the last item, poured a deal of ton­ic inside. It began to sweat and drip through its met­al pores. 

Sol­land observed. “An aspergillum,” he com­ment­ed. 

“Yes. Best to be cau­tious.” The doc­tor gave his weapon a few exper­i­men­tal swings. It shed arcs of droplets. On the last swing, Ramm­stein’s hat fell off. He picked it up, mum­bling embar­rass­ed­ly. 

Next, Ramm­stein hooked the glass orbs to his belt. “Salt bombs,” he explained. He struck up his lantern, fum­bled the starter flint for a few moments. The oil flared with a white, greasy flame. He adjust­ed it til it no longer smoked, held the lantern up.

“Ah, fol­low me, but not close.” He moved to the por­tal.

Care­ful­ly, Ramm­stein tread over the rub­bled thresh­old. With­in was a cir­cu­lar tun­nel lead­ing grad­u­al­ly down. Its walls were paint­ed in a dry, chipped fres­co of fad­ed ros­es. 

“Fas­ci­nat­ing,” said Sol­land. The lantern light made his glass­es shine gold, struck up beast­ly lines from his mis­shapen face. “Real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.”

Ahead, the tun­nel widened into a flat, cir­cu­lar cham­ber. Ramm­stein sniffed, shon his lantern about, made a face. “Ah, Mas­ter Sol­land, how long ago did your groundskeep­er dis­cov­er this, pre­cise­ly?” There was an uneasy qua­ver in his tone.

“Oh,” said Sol­land, hob­bling for­ward to stand beside the doc­tor. A weird twitch struck his lip. “Some eight days ago.”

Before them was a gris­ly scene. Three corpses were lain about the round room, each stew­ing in a plot of its own putre­fac­tion. Flecks of dried red-brown dap­pled the walls and domed ceil­ing. A col­umn of bloody foot­prints, seg­ment­ed and clawed, lead down into a wider tun­nel. 

Ramm­stein choked for the smell, held Sol­land at bay with a waved hand. The mauve man was unfazed. “Look at those prints,” he said, peek­ing over his lens­es. “They must have encoun­tered an eidolon. Or some chimera. Won­der if it will return.” ** 

“Ah, back. Get back,” said the Coro­ner, cud­gel extend­ed. “There could be plague.” He crept to the near­est corpse, held the lantern to it.

It was a scrag­gly-haired lad, splayed out on his back. A broad, dark rent showed in his ster­num. No light reflect­ed in his open eyes. Beside lay a wood­cut­ter’s axe and a cloth satchel, spilled open. Ramm­stein squint­ed at the corpse, poked with his aspergillum. White vapor hissed from its flesh. It twitched, sloughed mats of rot from black­ened bones. “This one was latent.”

“Fas­ci­nat­ing.”

“Ah, dis­gust­ing.” 

“Is that a hip flask, Doc­tor?”

“It is.” Ramm­stein took anoth­er swig, put it back in his pock­et. He leaned to pick through the dead lad’s satchel. 

“I’m rather sur­prised a pro­fes­sion­al such as you isn’t inured to a bit of rot.”

“Ah, well,” said Ramm­stein, pulling a purse and a slip of paper from the bag. “I’m sur­prised you are.”

He emp­tied the purse, found a few far­things. “No ven­tur­ing license. These aren’t pro­fes­sion­als, I’d wager. Just some, ah, farm chil­dren.” He turned over the bit of paper. His lips moved as he read.

See­ing this, Sol­land perked up, spoke quick­ly. “Well doc­tor, I think we’ve unveiled all there is, to this break-in.” He hob­bled over, offered an intru­sive hand to help the doc­tor up. “I’ll hire local facil­i­ties to dis­pose of the bod­ies and attempt to con­tact next of kin. Have a mason shut up the eidol–”

Ramm­stein inter­rupt­ed him, frowned at the paper. “ ‘Call to action,’ ” he read. “ ‘Ten crown reward: Clear out the bar­row west of Fort Brandt­ford. Enquire Mor­ley House.’ ” He turned to Sol­land, rose quick­ly. “What, ah, is this?”

Sol­land replaced his glass­es, leaned on his cane. “Fab­ri­ca­tion, I’d say,” he blus­tered. “Some rude excuse to break into my estate’s antiq­ui­ties.”

“You’ve con­coct­ed, ah, a plot, haven’t you!”

“I assure yo–”

“Lured poor fools to their deaths,” said Ramm­stein, point­ing with his cud­gel. “So you could, ah, indulge your weird curiosi­ties over their bod­ies.”

“My good Doc­tor,” said Sol­land. “You’ve mis­con­strued this awful­ly.”

“I’ve found you out,” said Ramm­stein. He put down the lantern, pulled an orb from his belt, threw it hard at one corpse. It burst. The plagued thing put up a burst of foul vapor, drummed its heels. Sol­land flinched, gave it a long­ing look. 

Ramm­stein raged, his stam­mer ignored. “Idi­a­tions of extend­ed life. That’s what you’ve got, isn’t it?” He tossed anoth­er orb. The last corpse clacked its jaws, lay still. “You’re some awful old codger who thinks he can find a way to live after the syphilis takes him. *** I will report you at once!”

“How dare you accuse me!” said Sol­land.

“Eas­i­ly: The human spec­i­mens, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light, the talk of Ban­dle­ton, the cart for the bod­ies. You’ve done a poor job hid­ing it. Any coro­ner would know.”

Sol­land backed up the tun­nel, stum­bling over his deformed shins. “I thought, I…” he trailed. Ramm­stein seized his lantern, stormed out of the bar­row after him. 

They emerged onto the moor. Dead mist lift­ed from the stone por­tal behind. Sol­land stood, crooked and lined, lean­ing on his cane. Ramm­stein fumed, hasti­ly shoved items back in his med­ical bag. 

“Thought what, that I would­n’t notice? What made you think call­ing on a coro­ner was a good idea, at all?”

Sol­land took a slow, shud­der­ing breath. He fold­ed both knob­bly hands over his cane, calm­ly replied. “I sup­pose I want­ed to see who await­ed me, were I to fail.”

Ramm­stein sneered. “Good­bye, Mas­ter Sol­land.” 

The coro­ner took up his bag, looked the sick­ened man from toe to amber lens­es. “By the look of you, I’ll see you again before too long.”

With that, he set off across the moor.

Coroners

Corpses are trou­ble. Trou­ble, not only for their capac­i­ty to wor­ry and grieve the liv­ing, but for their unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy to trans­form into mon­sters. For both these griev­ances, folk of the Coast turn to coro­ners: Pro­fes­sion­al han­dlers of the dead. †

When there’s a death, a coro­ner is called to make sense of it. †† They’ll exam­ine the corpse in ques­tion and fill an order­ly cer­tifi­cate, assign­ing cause and man­ner of death; whether it was nat­ur­al or unnat­ur­al; and whether it was the prod­uct of foul play. If in the event of mur­der, they will facil­i­tate relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions. This is the least of their respon­si­bil­i­ties.

A coro­ner’s chief respon­si­bil­i­ty is the con­trol of plague. No corpse they exam­ine goes untest­ed for latent infec­tion. ††† Those which exhib­it buboes with­in their lungs and bone are con­fis­cat­ed imme­di­ate­ly and sent to a quick cre­ma­tion. Rela­tions to the corpse may be fined for the haz­ard. Few will argue, for none can deny the import of pub­lic health.

But not all deaths are so hand­i­ly man­aged. Cut­ters, wound­ed or lost beyond recov­ery. Sol­diers, beat­en by hooves into con­ceal­ing mud. The poor, frozen dead and salt­less in gut­ters. Reclus­es, addicts, acci­dents, ani­mal attacks. All die unknown, lie, fes­ter, give rise to dead­ly plague. It is a coro­ner’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to man­age them, too.

For this task, coro­ners com­mand a salt­ed arse­nal for com­bat­ting the hor­ror which is the grue. Griso­date bombs. Ton­ic bolts. Chains crust­ed in grey salt. Curi­ous aspergilli‡ meant to crush, rend, and med­icate. All these weapons lie beside more tra­di­tion­al doc­tor’s‡‡ wares in a coro­ner’s sig­na­ture bag of tools.

Though com­bat­ting plague in melee is a daunt­ing prospect, all coro­ners are pre­pared to face it. In sit­u­a­tions involv­ing more than one grue, coro­ners may be giv­en licence to amass a posse for pur­pos­es of cleans­ing. ‡‡‡ In out­break sce­nar­ios, one or more coro­ners may com­mand a con­tin­gent of sol­diers against the plague. In such an event, they hold sta­tus as com­mand­ing offi­cers. In these times, they are heroes.

Any coro­ner can recall, though they may not wish to, the most awful instances of plague encoun­tered in their tenure. They are not images from the plagues of leg­end, though. No lurk­ing, bit­ing skele­tons; nor scut­tling seas of fast, black dead. Such are blasé, to a coro­ner. 

Instead, the worst are those that are most per­son­al: Bloat­ed wrecks chained by a friend in the cel­lar. Child grues, restrained and babied by mad par­ents. Embalmed corpses kept tied to beds, pris­tine as dolls, alive and twist­ing with plague. These are not sim­ply the prod­uct of infec­tion. They are the fruit of human minds faced with loss.

Though few would tell of it, this is the third, secret­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty of the coro­ners’ trade: To remove temp­ta­tion from those unable to rec­on­cile death. All too many folk, unhinged and made des­per­ate by loss, would refuse to rec­og­nize plague-life as alien and mon­strous. Too many magi­cians, tempt­ed by evi­dent life after death, would con­duct foul exper­i­ments in a mad attempt to achieve false immor­tal­i­ty.

With­out these labors, be they hero­ic or obscure, the Coast would be reduced to anoth­er dark age. Only by their effect does pan­dem­ic plague go avert­ed. Only by their work­ers, the good coro­ners, does human­i­ty remain.

Author’s Note

This top­ic requires a bit of back­ground, specif­i­cal­ly this arti­cle.

Footnotes

* “Grue­some,” in this case, holds a dou­ble mean­ing. To most, it means “gris­ly.” To a Coro­ner, it describes the pres­ence of grues.
** “Eidolon” is a term used to describe the archa­ic, death­less keep­ers of Tombs or oth­er ancient places.
*** In addi­tion to the obvi­ous symp­toms of said vene­re­al dis­ease, syphilitic folk are known to always har­bor plague, regard­less of med­ica­tion via grey salt. The more sick­ly they are, the more dis­trust­ed they are, for they become mon­sters quick­ly after death. Those with con­gen­i­tal syphilis are tru­ly doomed.

† “Coro­ner” is a cor­rup­tion of “crown­er,” for the coin. It is a name tak­en from his­to­ry, where coro­ners were once respon­si­ble for set­tling death dues. Such tax­es are now han­dled by banks.

†† Every dis­trict, bur­rough, vil­lage, town has a coro­ner. Along­side sher­iffs and post­men, they com­prise the offi­cious back­bone of civ­i­liza­tion.
††† It is not a pleas­ant test to see. Most often, a coro­ner will make a short cut down to the breast­bone or the skull and admin­is­ter a quan­ti­ty of griso­date. If the stuff bur­bles and steams on con­tact with the
raw bone, plague is present there­in.

‡ The aspergillum is an instru­ment first employed by priests-mil­i­tant of Aveth, who wield­ed leak­ing maces filled with holy water. Grey salt, as a crit­i­cal ingre­di­ent in such water, made these an effec­tive tool against plague. Small­er ver­sions of the aspergillum are also used in Avethan mass to anoint the the pious.
‡‡ Most coro­ners are trained doc­tors. The odd few are ex-cut­ters, used to a life of bat­tling plague.
‡‡‡ In sit­u­a­tions such as these, it is not unheard of for a coro­ner to enlist the help of sev­er­al cut­ters from the local con­sor­tium.