Baldur's Gate - 1479 DR - 5th of Elcasias

In Baldur's Gate's many many streets, countless souls went about their business. The gloom made people angry, hot tempered, and the Flaming Fist had busy days and nights. Not that you could tell day from night anymore. Without sunlight, the moods were just as dark as the sky.

The inner city, the only walled part of Baldur's Gate, was much like it was a hundred years ago, except that these days, the gates almost never closed. They were closed that day though. The Flaming Fist had sealed off the inner city at the request of the council. Guards had to examine everyone coming in and out of the port. Nobody seemed to know why, yet, that is the only thing that would save the city.

A few elves or dwarves will recall the events of Neverwinter a hundred year ago when the city was besieged from within, sacked and burned. These images haunted them long years before fading from memory. These images came rushing back as the outer wards of the city fell, one after the other, to a wave of death.

It started in the large flea market sitting next to various races districts, where gnomes, dwarves, elves or genasis came to barter their goods and skills. Nobody could see just what happens beside greenish flames bursting across the market, blasting from the ground, chasing people and burning through stalls. From the watch towers, guards could have a better view of the flames tracing magical runes, completing a circle of filled with symbols, killing and burning as they went.

Then a brief second of quiet, before the creatures appeared. Dozens of huge hulking patchwork abominations came surging from the market, surrounded with many more smaller rotting corpses. The attack was short, but the effect devastating, as every huge zombie hulk had a single purpose. Scatter across the city, and die. Died they did, as the Flaming Fist and various adventurers came forth to defend the city. Thus unleashing the real attack: Noxious gas surged from the dying corpses of the abominations, and spread across the streets, infecting the crowds, children and women. Killing the young and old faster than the strongest, only to see the dead rise and attack, infecting more people.

The wave of death crashed on the stone walls of the inner city, which the Flaming Fist barred.

Most of the rest died, hid or formed barricades. As far as the eye can see, from the walls of Baldur's Gate, the dead are crawling mindlessly. Waiting their master's orders.