A long-faced, tired sort of man stood on the stoop. He clutched a battered black hat and a large medical bag. He smelt of soap and whiskey. 

"Dr. Rammstein?" said the butler.

"Yes," said Rammstein, waving his hat obligingly, "I do, ah, suppose that's what my card says," he stammered, grinned briefly, quit. 

The butler was impassive. "Master Solland has expected you for some time. He awaits you in the study."

Rammstein stepped scuffed shoes into the foyer, peered about at crystal lamps and wild taxidermy affixed to twenty-foot walls. He followed the butler, marveled at glass-fronted cases filled with plentiful foreign odds and curios. One item, a mounted hand with black, noduled bones showing through crackling skin, drew a worried turn of his lip. 

"Master Solland is a collector of medical obscura, I glean?" he said, tentative, leaning briefly to examine a portrait featuring a grim blighter in ruffles.

"Indeed," said the butler, not stopping. Rammstein harrumphed softly, followed. 

They passed through a set of towering and heavy doors, entered a study with tall windows covered in black tarp. A selection of dim, freestanding lamps lit bookshelves, armchairs, and a clawfoot desk. There sat a sickly, worn man with oddly lumpy, lined cheeks. He wore a mauve suit. 

"The Coroner, Master," said the butler.

Solland stood to greet him.

"The good doctor," he said, taking his hand. "I am so very grateful you could make it to the moor." 

Rammstein shook, awkwardly. "I, ah, live not far away."

"I am glad. Otherwise my dilemma may have grown out of hand."

"Yes…" said Rammstein. He trailed briefly, having noticed Solland's eyes. They were quite clouded. 

He continued. "Despite the, ah, solemnity of these things, it is, of course, always safest to be quick about them." He tried a consoling smile, merely looked more tired. "Was the late party a relative?"

"Oh, surely not," said Solland. "I have no idea who they are, really."

Rammstein opened his mouth. His throat fluttered. "I beg your pardon, Master. You have a corpse in the house, and you do not know who it is?"

"No. Forgive my vagueness. Not a body. Not in the house," said Solland, knitting his brow. "Multiple bodies, outside of the house."

"Ah?"

 "Yes. There is a ruin on the property, a…" he pulled his eyes to the ceiling, fluttered a palm, searching. "Tomb," he arrived, snapping his fingers. "A Tomb, as the banks would say, yes. One of the reasons I acquired this estate. Morley House, you see, is built upon an excellent bulk of proto-Idran ruins. I dabble in the arcane, and they are of valuable curiosity to me."

"Yes?" prompted Rammstein. Concern lined his forehead.

"Well, you see," said Solland. "Some time shortly ago, some irritant band of delinquents decided to break into one of my ruins, and now they've gone and died inside."

"I see, ah." Rammstein looked only marginally less worried. "Did you see the bodies yourself?"

"Oh, no," said Solland. "I am rarely in the sunlight. Bad eyes, you see. My groundskeeper reported this to me. He witnessed the portal caved in, and later heard screaming within."

"I must say. This is rather atypical. Do you kno–"

"Please, Doctor," interrupted Solland. "I know really nothing else. Let us go and see what's become of the fools, yes?"

"Ah, it may be gruesome," cautioned the Doctor. *

"I suspect it may." Solland crossed to the study door, opened it, plucked up a cane and a pair of yellow-tinted glasses. "Shall we?"

"As you wish." Rammstein replaced his hat.

Together, they passed through the tall foyer. Solland lead, wobbling somewhat on bowed shins. Rammstein's bag clanked and sloshed gently as he followed. 

Out into the grey day they went, walked aways down the gravel lane, broke off onto the purple-brown of the moorland. It was a still place, save for a sparsh rustle of lavender breeze. Undulant, low hills stretched unto the horizon.

After many minutes of hobbling ahead, Solland spoke. "Have you ever done battle with a grue, my good Doctor?"

"Ah, on occasion," said Rammstein. He pulled a pained sort of grin. "Less 'battle' than 'desperate flailing.'"

Solland chuckled wetly. "You are too modest. It's an impressively fearful organism to face, I'm sure." He pondered a moment. "I have heard tell a grue's intelligence is what makes it so terrible. Do you concur?"

"Ah, not quite." Rammstein frowned at the turf before his feet. "A grue, as we are taught to understand it, is a monster of specialized and distilled purpose," he said, carefully. "Any behavior resembling, ah, higher cognitive function is dictated by plague, like a script to an actor. There is no, ah, choice."

"Have you ever read Lord Bandleton, Doctor? The organic researcher? She has made interesting inroads regarding conscious plague."

"No. I'll admit, she's regarded as rather a boffin after, ah, all that."

Solland turned back a moment. His glasses flashed amber in the sun. "You may be wise to, despite. Intriguing stuff." 

Rammstein nodded politely. "Perhaps I will. Thank you."

They walked slow another few minutes. A band of foxglove pixies traipsed cross their path, trailing light, muttering song and vague perfume. Rammstein took care not to tread on them.

Solland stopped, momently, pointed to the toppled crust of a tower on a nearby hilltop. "That," he said, "is Fort Brandtford. Curiously named, for there's no ford nearby that any can remember."

Rammstein made a sound of vague interest, switched his bag to his other hand, resumed following. "I, ah, must say," he huffed after a while. "We've got a good few miles. Your groundskeeper roams rather far."

"My estate is quite large, yes," replied the man in mauve. He said no more. 

At last, they came upon a low knoll of earth with a stone portal in its face. It was choked with moss, and its front had been stove in. A sledgehammer lay beside, along with a handcart laden with cloths. 

"For the, uh, 'loot,' I imagine," said Rammstein, nodding to it. 

"Oh, no. That belongs to my groundskeeper."

"Ran off afeared, did he?" the Doctor said, setting down his bag.

"Indeed."

Kneeling, Rammstein produced a selection of items from his bag: A red lantern, a thick glass jar labeled "tonic," several glass orbs filled with dust, and a sort of cudgel covered in tines and tiny holes. He unscrewed the hefty top of the last item, poured a deal of tonic inside. It began to sweat and drip through its metal pores. 

Solland observed. "An aspergillum," he commented. 

"Yes. Best to be cautious." The doctor gave his weapon a few experimental swings. It shed arcs of droplets. On the last swing, Rammstein's hat fell off. He picked it up, mumbling embarrassedly. 

Next, Rammstein hooked the glass orbs to his belt. "Salt bombs," he explained. He struck up his lantern, fumbled the starter flint for a few moments. The oil flared with a white, greasy flame. He adjusted it til it no longer smoked, held the lantern up.

"Ah, follow me, but not close." He moved to the portal.

Carefully, rammstein tread over the rubble in the portal's mouth. Within was a circular tunnel leading gradually down. Its walls were painted in a dry, chipped fresco of faded roses. 

"Fascinating," said Solland. The lantern light made his glasses shine gold, struck up beastly lines from his misshapen face. "Really fascinating."

Ahead, the tunnel widened into a flat, circular chamber. Rammstein sniffed, shon his lantern about, made a face. "Ah, Master Solland, how long ago did your groundskeeper discover this, precisely?" There was an uneasy quaver in his tone.

"Oh," said Solland, hobbling forward to stand beside the doctor. A weird twitch struck his lip. "Some eight days ago."

Before them was a grisly scene. Three corpses were lain about the round room, each stewing in a plot of its own putrefaction. Flecks of dried red-brown dappled the walls and domed ceiling. A column of bloody footprints, segmented and clawed, lead down into a wider tunnel. 

Rammstein choked for the smell, held Solland at bay with a waved hand. The mauve man was unfazed. "Look at those prints," he said, peeking over his lenses. "They must have encountered an eidolon. Wonder if it will return." ** 

"Ah, back. Get back," said the Coroner, cudgel extended. "There could be plague." He crept to the nearest corpse, held the lantern to it.

It was a scraggly-haired lad, splayed out on his back. A broad, dark rent showed in his sternum. No light reflected in his open eyes. Beside lay a woodcutter's axe and a cloth satchel, spilled open. Rammstein squinted at the corpse, poked with his aspergillum. White vapor hissed from the corpse. It twitched, sloughed mats of rot from blackened bones. "This one was latent."

"Fascinating."

"Ah, disgusting." 

"Is that a hip flask, Doctor?"

"It is." Rammstein took another swig, put it back in his pocket. He leaned to pick through the dead lad's satchel. 

"I'm rather surprised a professional such as you isn't inured to a bit of rot."

"Ah, well," said Rammstein, pulling a purse and a slip of paper from the bag. "I'm surprised you are."

He emptied the purse, found a few farthings. "No venturing license. These aren't professionals, I'd wager. Just some, ah, farm children." He turned over the bit of paper. His lips moved as he read.

Seeing this, Solland perked up, spoke quickly. "Well doctor, I think we've unveiled all there is, to this break-in." He hobbled over, offered an intrusive hand to help the doctor up. "I'll hire local facilities to dispose of the bodies and attempt to contact next of kin. Have a mason shut up the eidol–"

Rammstein interrupted him, frowned at the paper. "'Call to action,'" he read. "'Ten crown reward: Clear out the barrow west of Fort Brandtford. Enquire Morley House.'" He turned to Solland, rose quickly. "What, ah, is this?"

Solland replaced his glasses, leaned on his cane. "Fabrication, I'd say," he blustered. "Some rude excuse to break into my antiquities."

"You've concocted, ah, a plot, haven't you!"

"I assure yo–"

"Lured poor fools to their deaths," said Rammstein, pointing with his cudgel. "So you could, ah, indulge your weird curiosities over their bodies."

"My good Doctor," said Solland. "You've misconstrued this awfully."

"I've found you out," said Rammstein. He put down the lantern, pulled an orb from his belt, threw it hard at one corpse. It burst. The plagued thing put up a burst of foul vapor, drummed its heels. Solland flinched, gave it a longing look. 

Rammstein raged, his stammer ignored. "Idiations of extended life. That's what you've got, isn't it?" He tossed another orb. The last corpse clacked its jaws, lay still. "You're some awful old codger who thinks he can find a way to live after the syphilis takes him. *** I will report you at once!"

"How dare you accuse me!" said Solland.

"Easily: The human specimens, the sensitivity to light, the talk of Bandleton, the cart for the bodies. You've done a poor job hiding it. Any coroner could know."

Solland backed up the tunnel, stumbling over his deformed shins. "I thought, I…" he trailed. Rammstein seized his lantern, stormed out of the barrow after him. 

They emerged onto the moor. Dead mist lifted from the stone portal behind. Solland stood, crooked and lined, leaning on his cane. Rammstein fumed, hastily shoved items back in his medical bag. 

"Thought what, that I wouldn't notice? What made you think calling on a coroner was a good idea, at all?"

Solland took a slow, shuddering breath. He folded both knobbly hands over his cane, calmly replied. "I suppose I wanted to see who awaited me, were I to fail."

Rammstein sneered. "Goodbye, Master Solland." 

The coroner took up his bag, looked the sickened man from toe to amber lenses. "By the look of you, I'll see you again before too long."

With that, he set off across the moor.

Coroners

Corpses are trouble. Trouble, not only for their capacity to worry and grieve the living, but for their unfortunate tendency to transform into monsters. For both these grievances, folk of the Coast turn to coroners: Professional handlers of the dead. †

When there's a death, a coroner is called to make sense of it. †† They'll examine the corpse in question and fill an orderly certificate, assigning cause and manner of death; whether it was natural or unnatural; and whether it was the product of foul play. If in the event of murder, they will facilitate related investigations. This is the least of their responsibilities.

A coroner's chief responsibility is the control of plague. No corpse they examine goes untested for latent infection. ††† Those which exhibit buboes within their lungs and bone are confiscated immediately and sent to a quick cremation. Relations to the corpse may be fined for the hazard. Few will argue, for none can deny the import of public health.

But not all deaths are so handily managed. Cutters, wounded or lost beyond recovery. Soldiers, beaten by hooves into concealing mud. The poor, frozen dead and saltless in gutters. Recluses, addicts, accidents, animal attacks. All die unknown, lie, fester, give rise to deadly plague. It is a coroner's responsibility to manage them, too.

For this task, coroners command a salted arsenal for combatting the horror which is the grue. Grisodate bombs. Tonic bolts. Chains crusted in grey salt. Curious aspergilli‡ meant to crush, rend, and medicate. All these weapons lie beside more traditional doctor's‡‡ wares in a coroner's signature bag of tools.

Though combatting plague in melee is a daunting prospect, all coroners are prepared to face it. In situations involving more than one grue, coroners may be given licence to amass a posse for purposes of cleansing. ‡‡‡ In outbreak scenarios, one or more coroners may command a contingent of soldiers against the plague. In such an event, they hold status as commanding officers. In these times, they are heroes.

Any coroner can recall, though they may not wish to, the most awful instances of plague encountered in their tenure. They are not images from the plagues of legend, though. No lurking, biting skeletons; nor scuttling seas of fast, black dead. Such are blasé, to a coroner. 

Instead, the worst are those that are most personal: Bloated wrecks chained by a friend in the cellar. Child grues, restrained and babied by mad parents. Embalmed corpses kept tied to beds, pristine as dolls, alive and twisting with plague. These are not simply the product of infection. They are the fruit of human minds faced with loss.

Though few would tell of it, this is the third, secreted responsibility of the coroners' trade: To remove temptation from those unable to reconcile death. All too many folk, unhinged and made desperate by loss, would refuse to recognize plague-life as alien and monstrous. Too many magicians, tempted by evident life after death, would conduct foul experiments in a mad attempt to achieve false immortality.

Without these labors, be they heroic or obscure, the Coast would be reduced to another dark age. Only by their effect does pandemic plague go averted. Only by their workers, the good coroners, does humanity remain.

Author's Note

Footnotes

* "Gruesome," in this case, holds a double meaning. To most, it means "grisly." To a Coroner, it describes the presence of grues.
** "Eidolon" is a term used to describe the archaic, deathless keepers of Tombs or other ancient places.
*** In addition to the obvious symptoms of said venereal disease, syphilitic folk are known to always harbor plague, regardless of medication via grey salt. The more sickly they are, the more distrusted they are, for they become monsters quickly after death. Those with congenital syphilis are truly doomed.

† "Coroner" is a corruption of "crowner," for the coin. It is a name taken from history, where coroners were once responsible for settling death dues. Such taxes are now handled by banks.

†† Every district, burrough, village, town has a coroner. Alongside sheriffs and postmen, they comprise the officious backbone of civilization.
††† It is not a pleasant test to see. Most often, a coroner will make a short cut down to the breastbone or the skull and administer a quantity of grisodate. If the stuff burbles and steams on contact with the
raw bone, plague is present therein.

‡ The aspergillum is an instrument first employed by priests-militant of Aveth, who wielded leaking maces filled with holy water. Grey salt, as a critical ingredient in such water, made these an effective tool against plague. Smaller versions of the aspergillum are also used in Avethan mass to anoint the the pious.
‡‡ Most coroners are trained doctors. The odd few are ex-cutters, used to a life of battling plague.
‡‡‡ In situations such as these, it is not unheard of for a coroner to enlist the help of several cutters from the local consortium.

Some five decades past, a curious beast was harpooned off the queer and distant Gate of Sloe: A blubbery giant. A neckless, lateral-eyed thing; all bulbous, barnacled head.

The whalers who speared it dubbed it "cachalot," Island tongue for "big head." So large was the beast, they chopped off its long arms and stumpy fluke-legs, left them for the sharks. They flensed its rich flesh, yanked the ivory from its downturned maw, and split its skull for the bone. 

To the whalers' surprise, there was not bone beneath that blocky dome, but a sac of warm and runny wax. Paraffin wax, they'd later learn. Three thousand liters of the stuff; a small fortune worth of the Coast's most valued fuel. ***

With this discovery, there is now no beast so precious as the cachalot. Paraffin, useful in all manor of applications, has begun to replace the longtime staple that is whale oil. It is an essential lubricant in modern machinery, a superior medium for soaps, and a candle wax of exceptional purity. When distilled into kerosene, it is an unparalleled fuel in lamps† and steam engines; the fiery emblems of Coastal modernity. 

Civilization demands ever more kerosene. To satisfy its mounting thirst, whalers sail for ever-darker waters in search of their leviathan prey.

The Hunt

To catch a whale is no small feat. Hunters must spot a beast's spout, stalk it upon the surface, spear it, then ride out its thrashes and throes, all but gambling it flees and dies of exhaustion rather than flail and wreck their puny whaleboat. 

To kill a cachalot is monumental. Simply locating one is a feat, for they are scarce and cagey, apt to learn where Littoran†† whalers prey. Cachalots will only reliably gather on the shores of far Northern fjords, where they knuckle-walk to clumsily and thunderously mate. ††† No folk will dare attack a cachalot there, for fear of being trampled.

To aid in the location of cachalots, whalers employ a cunning lure. A "weeper," they call it. A cachalot calf shut in a cage, made to cry, and let to hang like a shallow float alongside the whaler. Catching a weeper is easy, for newly-weaned calves will suck at the hulls of whalers, tricked by the scent of blubber rendering in the trypots within.

Weepers are enduringly effective, for even the wariest of cachalots will approach a trap baited with their own young. Not all are fools, though. A growing number come for the weeper not as rescuers snared by a ruse, but as combatants wise to whalers' tricks. They approach a whaler with intent to battle. 

This is the stuff of whalers' nightmares. Ideally, the hunters strike first, mortally lancing an unsuspecting cachalot at the surface. A combative cachalot yields quite the opposite. They will take first blood as their own, often approaching a whaler at depth and staving it from below. They proceed to breach repeatedly, delivering crushing blows with heavy clubs of arms. A whaler becomes splintered, sinking wood in short order.

With every beast that meets a whaler and lives to tell, the rest grow wiser and more fatal. In their language of bellows and creaking groans, cachalots share lessons of war and vigilance.

Rumors tell of hoary, scarred individuals, singular monsters of unsurpassed age and many victories. They pass secrets of survival to the young, impede the whalers' hunt. These elder cachalots are targets like no other, legendary foes. To kill one is to strike a palpable blow for all whalers, to earn fame as a master of the sea.

The Gate of Sloe

For all the elders felled, and despite the development of armor plating, steam-screws, and harpoon guns, the Coastal cachalot hunt grows deadlier and more scarce with every passing year. In home waters, there are fewer beasts than every before, and those that remain are hardened and deadly. 

In search of further prey, whalers turn to the place nearby cachalots were first caught: The far and forbidding Gate of Sloe, an Northernly island strait of terrible renown. For centuries, no sailor would pass through its cold and steely waters, for fear of the alien sea beyond.

Now, whalers willingly brave the Gate. They slip from the world into waters tossed by cruel, thin-aired wind and heaving with monsters. A cruel place; the home of the cachalots.

Here, whalers reap a fresh and unsuspecting crop. Faced with weaponry and tricks developed over fifty years, the cachalots of the Sloe fall like mere whales. 

Paraffin flows to the Coast in unprecedented bulk. Nothing can stop it. No horror for crews locked by sudden frost and turned to cannibalism. No fear of hidden sea serpents large and as ancient as death. No fear of resurgent elders and mounting resistance. 

No pity for the cachalot, for there is none.

Author's Note

† For nearly two hundred years, whale oil has served as the Coast's primary means of illumination. In the country, oil lamps are standard. In the city, modern homes are fitted with the necessary hardware to automatically feed oil to furnaces and switched light fixtures. Oil is kept in a pressurized tank in the cellar. It may be filled from an access hatch on the street.
†† "Littoran" describes any individual hailing from the Coast, be they human or otherwise.
††† Occasionally, cachalots will decide to mate in atypical places. In the Musée de Sartre, there hangs a controversial piece depicting cachalots mating explicitly against a lighthouse.