Missives from the mist-shrouded moors.

• The plague visits like clockwork. It strikes every seven years on the seventh hour of the seventh month.
• The nobility of Alginland rule in secret. Even the most ancient of peasants has never seen an aristocrat in the flesh. We know they exist because we see their grand but silent castles atop cragged hills and in the heart of the deep forest. We know their laws because their edicts are found written in blood on tavern walls. We know they rule because those who disobey vanish and are never spoken of again.
• The Seraphim descend during the long night of the solstice. Windows must be boarded, doors must be locked, and a wreath of wolfsbane must be placed before the hearth unless you wish to be dragged kicking and screaming to the black heavens.
• During the war, the wise academicians of Rodensbruck learned the secrets of reanimating the dead. Our martyred fighting men were returned to life and sent from the grave to the front. These revenants of modern science defeated the eastern menace. Alas, when the still-rotting monstrosities were demobilised they found themselves shunned by their former families, spouses and neighbours. Now they wander the swamps, fens and wastelands, alone and in small groups, cursing the unlife that yet animates their atrophying cadavers.
• There are witch-hunters, at least one in every village, a safeguard against the influence of the devil and his servants. Their ranks, however, have been so thoroughly infiltrated by the covens that the inquisitors burn only those whom the hags themselves have marked for death.
• There is no afterlife, only a shadowed existence on this plane. The dead can be glimpsed fleetingly in mirrors and upon the surface of ponds. Their ranks greatly outnumber the living.
• The wolf-disease can only be contained but not cured. The annual purge thins the ranks of the lycanthropes but never eliminates them.
• A century ago, a great mass fell from the heavens and flattened the oaks of the großerwald. Crowds of onlookers came to inspect the mysterious object and discovered it to be the giant corpse of a man, aged in appearance and terrifying in countenance. Scholars and churchmen conducted decades of research before reaching the sombre but undeniable conclusion that the fallen giant was God and that he was dead.