In an office in the castle of Astidia, covered in expensive looking furniture, the king was reading through the final draft of the national plan to help the population through the famine. The drought was less severe in his kingdom than in the southern ones, but they still felt the effects quite clearly, especially the small farming villages.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. The guard announced that the person was the captain of the special military force tasked with hunting down the criminals that were burning down small villages in his kingdom, and if possible capture them alive. 7 had already been reported completely massacred.

“Enter”, the king said. Through the door came a tall man, covered in full-plate armor and carrying a big sword on his waist. He bowed in front of the king, who made a gesture letting him speak.

“Your majesty”, he started, “I’m sorry to report another two villages completely destroyed.” The king was saddened by this. These people had a simple life, they did not deserve such a horrible fate, dying by being burned alive.

“There is a much more urgent issue, though. In the last village, we found something… disturbing. The village was completely burned down, just like the others, but on the entrance, there was a big spear piercing the disfigured corpses of three men, with two heads on top. And behind the village, we found a cemetery, with 20 tombs. We identified that 18 of the corpses belonged to the villagers who were burned alive, 1 to a man who died from slashing wounds, like from an animal, and a final one belonging to a wolf. The number is consistent with the last census done in the village, and they seemed to be around 20 days old.”

“We tried to investigate the scene as much as possible. First, only two tombs had names, Zack and Glen (the man who died from the animal attack), so we unearthed the tombs and managed to properly identify each of them, confirming also the other two. We hypothesize that the person who dug the graves could not identify the corpses or did not know their names.”

“We also investigated the corpses. We were able to piece together the corpses of three men, with only two heads. We think the missing one exploded, since one of them has explosion damage and was missing the upper part of the torso and upwards. On of them was slashed in half horizontally, while the other was vertically. Their clothes confirmed our suspicions, they were members of the criminal cult of Origin of Faith. We also believe they were all the members that were causing the murders, since no new attack has been reported since then.”

“The problem lies in one of them. The man slashed vertically was identified as the former captain of the paladins, and one of the strongest warriors in the history of the country, “Flowing Mountain” Rick. Given his wounds, he was killed in a single hit, which slashed not only himself, but also his high ranking mithril magical armor. The magical residue showed an identified magical spell mixed with wind magic.”

“Given the marks on the ground and deep cut in the middle of the city, we believe the men were executed swiftly, by a single unknown mage using unknown magical energy. While this person seems to be friendly to the village, being suspected to be the one who dug up the graves, this is a concerning situation.”

The king pondered all the information he had received. On the one hand, such a powerful mage being unknown was potentially dangerous, but on the other, he had performed an important service to the kingdom. He got an idea. “Captain, I think we should award a medal to such a powerful magician for providing an important service, don’t you think? Spread the word through the adventurers guild, but don’t make it official until we are able to identify them.” That should do it, he believed.