Caldwell Marathon
CALDWELL MARATHON. (See also, HENRY CALDWELL, RIFLE) A short lived experiment to craft a slide-action rifle, the Caldwell Marathon first found an audience with game hunters. Comparable in many aspects to contemporary rifles such as the Winfield M1873, its novel but familiar reloading mechanism and prioritized firepower take slight precedence over accuracy and speed.
Letter to Brood and Bile
Author: Plague Doctor
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
1/1
Join me. Be with me once again as we take part in the evolving horrors of this plague. Let us experiment on its flesh and its fluids. My anger has found a home, become something new entirely: something wholly free.
This bayou is unfiltered madness. The Corruption has fully wormed itself into the veins of the swamp, blossoming into oily sheets of foul rain and monsters that unravel, grunting, from the mud. Blazing infernos erupt in horrific cyclones to lick the trees and anything that comes too close. Crackling fingers of Arc Bloom reached out to grab Hunters by their throats, sizzling their souls as they scream out in agony. And the rot... the rot. It is unlike anything we ever saw in the days of before, when disease had boundaries, rules. There are no rules in this Corruption. Things with no heads. Things with no faces. Things with a thousand voices, all of them coming from the same unknown, shadowy place. Before I left the two of you behind, you didn't think there was anything to the rumors,
that nothing could possibly pose more horror than the Black Death outbreak in our home.
Come, come. See how terribly wrong you were
Letter to Plague Doctor
Author: Brood
Single loose sheet, stained, 8.5 x 11 in.
1/1
Our dearest Doctor,
Oh, how we've wondered what may have become of you and your rage. You say now that it has changed into something else. Does it still sing like it used to? Cut through muscle to bone like a knife through summer butter?
The flesh samples you collected the night before your departure are still in the laboratory, just as you left them. They've broken down at the mercy of the wriggling fly larvae that hatched beneath the surface, eating the diseased matter like children gobbling up holiday sweets. I refused to throw them away. Someday you might have missed them, after all. Someday you might have come back.
Bile thinks your claims are fueled by madness. Your hallucinations always were of the most vivid strains of marvel. But I think that if there were really nothing in those swamps, you'd have already returned. Something is keeping you there, holding your interest. We want to see what that something is consequences be damned.
We will leave next week. I will first send a gift to precede us: a new instrument for your beloved Hunts. I can all but guarantee there's nothing of the sort over there, this Caldwell Marathon, capable of punching holes through bone and spilling blood. Use it well. We will see you soon. I wonder if, after all this time, you may be more willing to show me whatever hides beneath your mask.
Brood
