Crosslanders are conditioned to regard the Syncarid and the barghest as folklore — things to frighten children rather than functional facts about the murk. I held this position myself until the night on the Owlerton road when something vast and ray-like descended through the murk toward my prone and beaten body, and something large and shaggy tore it away by its tail. I revised my position on several matters that evening, including my view on the reliability of crosslander folklore.

When the humidity plant stopped, The Dark Peak had three days. On the morning of the third day, breathing became difficult in Hathersage; by murknoon the weakest had started to wither. Van says it is the sort of thing you remember — watching an entire civilisation count down to its last breath — and I have not pressed him on why, exactly, he left it until almost the last possible moment before going to fix it.

Boggy Lomas was made by the nascenti during the first uprising — not born, made — a distinction Van considers relevant and Boggy declines to discuss. When he scraped his chair across the flagstones and sat down uninvited at our table, he announced that The Hinge was on the verge of collapse and it was Van's fault, with the calm conviction of someone who has waited a long time to say this to the correct person.

Hellsborough as we know it was formally established in 76.mist-hoverwing — 1862 in the off-world's reckoning — when the nascenti laid the foundations of what would become, forty years later, a golden age of capitalism that I gather everyone has since agreed not to discuss in flattering terms. The Vegahorn ended that arrangement in 79.rain-demonspawn, which is roughly when things started to smell the way they currently do.