[Royal Guard] Incident Report

[Hatshepsut]

Sundas, Midyear 15, 477

This evening, just after the dusk bell, I was once again on call at
the guardhouse.  A passerby alerted us to an injured man outside the
BlkDragon Inn, and I went to investigate.  A woman was assisting a man
of indeterminate age who appeared to have been struck by a cart.
((Description of Selestia follows.))  As I arrived, he stopped
breathing, and I prepared to put him in stasis in an attempt to keep
him alive until a healer could be summoned.

Just before I completed the effect, a group of small, colorful birds
burst from the man's neck.  My stasis effect managed to catch most of
them, but several escaped, and were hunted down by the women who had
been assisting the man.

On closer inspection, the man was horribly disfigured.  His face and
lower jaw had been moved to the top of his head without disturbing the
skull underneath.  His upper jaw was visible bulging through the skin
of his neck.  Upon examining him magically, I discovered that his
brain had been replaced with a few old cogs and a bit of string.  He
appeared to have been subject to a compulsion to walk as far as he
could in Drache.

The spells appeared to have been sculpted by a talented amateur; they
had been constructed using various disciplines in an inefficient and
random way.  They appeared to be motivated by unstable curiosity,
based on the resonance that I could divulge.  I killed most of the
birds, leaving one alive and storing it in an unused stasis cell
(number 12).  I dissected one, discovering a hollow head and no
digestive system.  It had been filled with random things.  Bits of
bark, wisps of fabric, a glass bead or two, insect wings, a little
seashell.  Upon dissecting another, I found a similar but different
assortment of random items.  The spells on the bird appeared to have
commanded it to fly as high as it could, then glide to earth,
repeating the process until its death.

The man's pockets were filled with a similar random assortment of
objects: little discs of wood the size of small change, smooth and
almost polished from sanding.  Lengths of colored string, some knotted
to each other.  A piece of wire.  A tiny ball of copper covered in
pale green verdigras.  A dead mouse.  And fistfuls of leaves stripped
off of weeds, all long wilted and compacted into one green, papery
mass.

After magical examination, I discovered that the man's body was much
like the birds'.  His head was hollow. There were still a few birds
caught in it, presumably because the stasis field went up so quickly.
A hole had been made in the roof of his mouth, which was how the birds
got out and through his neck. He also lacked a digestive system. His
torso was stuffed with random things as well - scraps of paper, rocks,
horse's teeth, dead butterflies, a ball woven of wicker, little orbs
of various metals, bent nails, scraps of wood, rags and straw.

The bodies of the birds and the man are in one of the preservative
evidence lockers, awaiting further investigation.  If a person is
found in a similar situation, but still alive, I recommend immediate
stasis and interrogation, although it would not have been possible to
save the man's life without immediate and extensive magical
assistance.

Spell-Recruit Peony Heatherdown of the Upper Darian
((-Hatshepsut))