Dawn brought no cessation to the rain, and for the next five days the downpour continued. Overflow drains gurgled and sloshed as they struggled to keep pace with the whitewater flows that filled the gutters to bursting. Building frontages peeled and began to erode, their owners unable to apply fresh coats of scald-proofing with no break in the torrential rains. Great covers had to be raised over the Statuegarden, over the runti paddocks of Westslope, and over the canal channels where they flowed out of Fountains Square.

The city folk hurried through the streets, swaddled against the rain and muttering darkly about the unending storm. Wagon and carriage traffic on the streets thinned to a trickle, most drovers being unwilling to risk their animal teams being scalded in their traces.

From atop Gallowhill, Captain Morthan watched it all through eyes of paper and ink, poring over the reports that flowed in from her watchmen and supposing that she should have been glad of the slight lessening in crime rates that the storm brought. Even ne’er-do-wells had more sense than to venture out for long amidst such an unheard-of deluge.

Still the strange reports came, however; earth tremors causing one of the Rookswatch towers to lean so perilously that the watch had to evacuate its inhabitants; a fungal blight spreading amongst the runti herds on Westslope, causing frightened whispers to spread that the Plaguefather must surely have turned his eyes upon Draconium; a street performer running mad, bludgeoning three onlookers to death with his lute, screaming about ‘the eyes in his mind’ and the ‘pallid pale’.

No, mused Captain Morthan as she sipped metha at her desk and listened to the rain battering at her office window; storm or no storm, this was only getting worse. At least the Swords of Sigmar were making good on their end of the deal, she thought, shuffling through a few more reports and casting a critical eye over their efforts. They’d investigated several strange disappearances. Their priest had talked down an angry gathering of folk from Marketsway and Pipers that could easily have turned into a mob. They had even aided her watchmen in a raid on what they had initially hoped was the hideout of the cult responsible for the disturbances. It had turned out to be a ring of kidnappers and extortionists. Largely dead kidnappers and extortionists now, she noted; she was glad she hadn’t pushed Hendrick too far that first night in the tavern.