Steadying himself on an eight-foot wizard’s staff as he waded through a knee-high river of blood washing down the market street of Bagpipe Gulch—a community that once prized its status as the "Gateway to Torgai"—Shekondar the Fearsome, a local alchemist, denied that the trend was a negative influence on the town’s image, insisting that the influx of "Meat," and the bandits, land pirates, and cutthroats who had come to prey on them, had been a boon to the region’s economic development and a bonanza for local merchants, especially those who, like Shekondar, dealt in goods, such as healing potions and magically enhanced whetstones, that were in demand among the newcomers.