Rah'njar

They agreed afterwards that it must have been the lower temperatures. There had been a fresh breeze coming in from the sea and in the night, it had been rather chilly, compared to the usual stuffy warmth that clung to Trinsic. Whatever the reason, something had been triggered that night and it had been big. It had been some late visitors from the Keg and Anchor that had spotted it first. Standing at the pond in the park they meant to relieve themselves… only to find that what was meant to join with the already foul waters came to rest upon them. Surprised, they found that the pond was frozen.

And not just frozen, like in winter. Not just the surface, no. Frozen solid right to the ground. And it was spreading! Ever so slowly the cold seemed to creep through the waterways and tunnels of Trinsic, slowing and eventually stopping the flow of water through them entirely. From the rivers to the docks, all the water in every channel, every flow, every pond and all around the moats was frozen to a solid block of ice. For a while, so rumours said, it had even turned the sources of the rivers into ice, rather than waterfalls.

As quickly as it happened, as quickly did the effect disappear once more. With fresh water running over the icy surfaces and the morning sun shining upon the scene, the rivers soon began to saw and melt again. With that came the stench. Of course, the algae were not gone. Where should they have gone to? But they seemed dead, massive globs of slimy algae and worse drifting through the channels. Occasionally, bubbles of foul gas drifted to the surface and burst with a soft pop that usually heralded another cloud of stench. Yet the stuff was dead and some of the more curious citizens began to shovel it out of the rivers with pitchforks. And it seemed to work, too. While the water was far from free and clean, the worst seemed to have passed though and wherever the mighty heaps of dead plants had been fished out of the ponds, the water remained at least somewhat free of them.

By midday, the only questions that remained to be solved were: who was to do the shovelling and where to dump all the horrible slime?