Crows at the Gallows • Prologue

## The City Dawn Forgot

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*The year is 4E 772.*
*For the third night in a row, fog rolls through the streets and alleys of Liechtfels, creeping insidiously over the water, coiling low over cobblestones slick with muddy soot and damp. Wisps of white mist curl around lanterns flickering low and press against shuttered windows, choking the light, stifling the sounds of the city—a machine that never rests.*
*In the fog's wake comes the rising tide, waves rippling against the docks, setting the steam chimneys of jagged, ironclad, whaler ships swaying, groaning under their own weight. There's no moon to pull the ocean to and fro, but still the water shifts, strange currents churning its viscous black depths, and the smell of brine mingles always with the acrid stench of smoke and hot ash, and the ever-present scent of rust.*
*No sun has warmed these streets for well over a century, but in recent months they've gotten just a little bit colder...the shadows just a little bit deeper...*
*Thick coats huddled close against the chill, slipping and stumbling on the cobbles, grumbling and swearing amongst themselves, factory-workers stream back into Ninepenny from their 12-hour shifts, eager to head back to whatever dismal little home they've managed to carve out from the crumbling tallhouses, or to some pub or pleasure house to drown the day's aches. They steer well clear of the edges of the canals, where the incoming tide laps higher against the mossy banks, and the fog reaches spindled fingers for the gaps in the crowds. They hurry their gait just a little bit quicker at the distant sound of shouts and gunshots and shrill tin-whistles from a far-off cat bridge.*
*They pretend, as they must, that there's some value to be found in these bleak, miserable lives they so tightly cling to. Enough of it to walk the streets with care, to avert their eyes from constables and street toughs alike, to hold tightly to strictures that promise absolution, to shy away from the darker alleyways where the lanternlight doesn't reach.*
*But not all who live in this wretched, cramped, smoke-choked, ash-covered place of teetering buildings and dwindling lights at the edge of the sea....not all...huddle around the flame and hide away from the endless night.*
*For the intrepid. For the cunning. For the brave and the reckless. For the desperate. The dark whispers of a way out, a path lined with riches and ill-gotten gains. Opportunity—if, and only if, one was willing to lose everything, to gain everything.*
*Because here, in these shadowed, fog-drenched streets, behind each corner a blade in the dark, to climb from the muck is just as likely as a yawning grin across the neck, and the dream of a better life is oftentimes more fatal than the knife that carves the throat. But the lure remains, an urge as pervasive as the night that never dawns.*
*And for a few... an ambitious, foolish, lucky few... the ink might just glitter gold. All they must do is let themselves be drawn along on the fishhooks of temptation, drowning deeper and deeper in the murk, in pursuit of a siren song.*
*Of a life that may yet swallow them whole.*
*This is their story.*

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