The Warforged known as Brasshead hadn’t been in Sharn long. A week, maybe. Time wasn’t important to him at this point. Like all other Cyran survivors he was on a perpetual search for answers as to the fate of his homeland. It felt good to have a purpose driven by a sense of home, even if that home was dead, even if he’d been born in a forge and was a walking hulk of metal and stone. Purpose was good.
He’d weighed his options, decided that Khorvaire’s largest city might hold some answers, and set out on foot. He’d found himself in this labrynthine metropolis where the sun never reached more than halfway down into the bristling cluster of towers that was Sharn. It was always twilight down here. Warforged don’t sleep, and Brasshead took to walking the streets at night, hearing snippets of conversation, picking up rumours, listening to war vets talk about scars that he may or may not have given them.
He did a lot of walking that week. Mostly the streets were busy, always moving, never fully asleep, but ever so often he’d wander through a ward that was strangely, disconcertingly quiet.It was in one of those wards that the silence was broken by the sound of metal scraping stone, and of hushed voices in the night. Turning the corner into a narrow alley between two towers, Brasshead discovered…nothing. At least, nothing at first glance. Peering further into the gloom, the Warforged could see a form lying on the cobblestones, motionless and glinting. He moved forward to examine it…and stopped stock still in horror.
It was another Warforged. Not your run-of-the-mill soldier ‘forged, but an elite model, a machine designed for infiltration and assassination. Sleek blades, a smoked blue-steel carapace, an elegant construct of grace and steel and death. It was lying in a mangled sprawl, it’s torso torn open and dissected like some specimen at the hands of a butcher. Fibres cut, components ripped out and just… missing . And headless. Whatever bastard had done this had taken the head with them. In a fog of horror Brasshead heard a muffled footstep in the alley behind him and spun to look. Two black-garbed figures emerged from shadowed doorways, one holding a long and polished blade, the other pulling a small orb from the depths of his cloak. As Brasshead started towards them a shrill hum halted him. His feet wouldn’t move. His body started to dropp under its own weght. Puzzled, he looked up at the two figures as they bid him goodnight, catching the faint glimmer of a gold brooch against black armour as he…lost conciousness…