And so, as the chronicles report, by mid-Summer’s Day, 1451 NR, the Circle of Darkmoor had defeated the orc bandit king known as the Gauntlet and reclaimed the Moat House in the name of the Baron of Darkmoor, Arthur Grey, first ruler of that realm since the ruinous War.
The sorceress known to the Circle as Vindurain, however, had escaped. No artifacts of the Cult are known to have been discovered in the retaking of the Moat House, though lost journals of Pieter Strahausen, known as Old Pieter are said to have been recovered as well as other lost items of the last Grey dynasty. It is known, for instance, that the Investigator’s Wand was recovered and carried by Dixit Sindarin.
In Elder Pool at this time the rumblings of the coming war had already begun. Assassinations, threats and a growing undercurrent of violence were reported. The Guilds, under High Guildmaster Andreas Book, seemed in particular to be victims of repeated attacks.
The same types of activities as we’ve written about regarding in our previous series on the great war are reported during this period: graves found disturbed or empty, abductions, especially of the young, especially of young females; weapons and medicaments burgled from homes and shops. These patterns repeat with the rising of the Cult, over and over again.
During this brief interlude, however, the individual actions of what now we clearly see as a growing willingness to act by the Cult seem to have been dismissed, or not taken for anything more than the lawlessness of Darkmoor to which generations had grown accustomed.
That is, until the onset of the Blight.
Elanthiel Soryth, Chronicler of Darkmoor, 1560 NR