Taapia Graveyard was not at all how Sloan remembered it. For centuries it had maintained the aspect of a regular graveyard, but in the wake of the apocalypse its true nature had come to light. More corpses had been brought here in the last month than the small plot of earth could possibly handle, and body bags were piled high on either side of the Visitor’s Footpath. Sloan knew that these bags would all be gone soon, because corpses had ever lain beneath the headstones of Taapia Graveyard. Instead of interring the bodies bequeathed to them, the necromancers who lived here fed the dead into the maw of their living city. The bodies were then masticated by a piece of machinery called The Cerulean Jaws until nothing remained of them but the magical energies they had harbored in life. Thus operated the least beautiful stage of Goldcrest’s arcane circle of life.

Sloan’s body began to shiver as he passed under the famous Taapia Terrace and into the graveyard. In order to protect their privacy, the Taapia necromancers had enchanted the terrace above the only entrance to their property with a powerful fear curse. Sloan’s mind remained calm, but his body was a slave to the magic. He gave in to his surging adrenaline, and began again to run… into the graveyard.

Sloan did not bother to peer into the shuttered visitor center as he passed it at a sprint. Someone was organizing equipment in the rickety custodial shed, but whoever it was used no light. The man Sloan was looking for saw poorly in the bright of day. This man would not be found blundering about a dark shed a night. Sloan slowed to a jog as he climbed a grave - pocked hill to the Temple of the Jaws. A single candle flickered within, and the shadows it cast upon the temple’s glass walls described a single occupant - a man writing at a six legged desk. This was the man Sloan had come to see. He leaned his sword against the temple’s pristine exterior, and rapped at its transparent door.

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Ragrash Calliope ruined the calligraphic script he had been toiling over as he started upright. He beckoned peevishly for Sloan to enter his workplace. He knew Sloan by reputation, and had spoken to him over drinks at The Praetorian more than once. He also knew exactly what Sloan had come to ask of him. Why he had come at this hour, Ragrash could only guess, but guess he did. He guessed wrong.

The two men traded secrets for hours. Together, they grew Sloan’s ‘Conclave Plan’ from a spiteful idea into an actionable strategy. The script upon Ragrash’s study table was discarded, and another took its place. Never before had Ragrash dared write a script as audacious as this one, but he was emboldened by the apocalypse. When he fed this script to The Cerulean Jaws with the next load of corpses, the logic described within would permanently alter Goldcrest Valley’s arcane landscape. It would taint the very aether in the air, and thus coax Sloan’s plan into existence. Ragrash did not think to name his work, but in ages to come it would be known as The Cerean Incantatem. Neither man knew just how damage this magic would inflict in the age to come.