The Fade

The Fade (originally Bellchapel) is a district in the city of Estelee-By-The-Sea.

When Magitech was new, and relatively unresearched, the nobility of the city paid to install condensers every few streets, intent on flaunting their wealth by living in the most technologically advanced city in Marnu Falmar.

While most districts followed the instructions on arcane crystals and their use closely, the citizens of Bellchapel continued to use only the freshest crystals possible, as they provided the most pure magic, and sold for a higher price. The arcane pollution in the area increased dramatically, until the city ordered that all of Bellchapel's condensers be switched from a method of pure extraction, to filtering the pollution into crystals of lower quality.

Despite the warnings of the Magitech Academy's headmistress, they used the severely polluted crystals, making the magical atmosphere of the district even more unstable. People began to fall ill, and suffer wretched coughs. Priests and healers from every religion were called in to assist with the healing, but they were too late. One night, the pollution reached critical mass, and everyone in the Bellchapel district was slain in an instant.

The city reeled from the horror, and teams were sent in to collect the bodies, so that they might be examined. However, at the next sunset, all the dead of Bellchapel rose again, as mindless undead, stumbling through the patterns of their daily lives, as if nothing happened. Mothers stared on with eyes rotting from their skulls as their children stood in circles in the streets, shuffling in a perverse mockery of the games they'd played just days before. Zombified men would shamble to their places of employment, to stand in place at their work stations, before heading to the tavern to stand at the bar, then wandering listlessly back to their homes.

The priests and paladins were called in again, this time to purge the undead, but they quickly found the perversion of magical energy prevented their spells from reaching them. Physically attempting to stop these undead sent them into a mindless rage, causing them to attack the assailant only until they could return to their movements.

With no other recourse, the King, Ellis IV, ordered the Fade to be walled off from the rest of the city, so that its inhabitants could continue their macabre dance without threatening the rest of the population.

For the most part, the Fade has remained undisturbed, save some disreputable individuals who will sneak in to loot, or worse, sneak others in for various 'delights'.