(Amber City) Last night, the dubious red headed terrors, Prince Rory and Princess Breyd, provided Amber City with its final display of public executions before visiting dignitary Laird Carlton of Inverness arrives. The spontaneous display began when the Bloody Duo marched through the South Gate with a company of the King's Men, dragging their captives behind them. The citizens, not sure at first what was happening, watched and then started jeering and throwing rotten vegetables, offal and cobblestones at the prisoners as the procession wound through the lower City on it's way to the execution grounds. Once there, the King's Men were dispatched to discourage the City Watch from interfering as the captives were dragged out onto the sawdust-strewn grounds. Citizens were admitted into the stands for the usual fees, but it wasn't until the Watch arrived to question what was occurring that the situation became apparent.
Prince Rory and Princess Breyd had ridden out of the city with Oberon's blessing to capture and execute all of the vampires that had invaded Amber under Princess Scherazade's patronage.
An official proclamation was read out, declaring all of the vampires outlaw within Amber for the crime of leading Princess Scherazade astray. Without the influence of the vampires, the declaration read, the Princess would not have been swayed from being a dutiful granddaughter to the Merciful and Wise King Oberon; she would not have been tempted to break His Royal Will by leaving the boundaries of Amber. In retribution and punishment, His Majesty had declared all the lives of the undead monstrosities forfeit.
The execution process was long and drawn out, Princess Breyd being well versed in crowd-pleasing executions from her days as Amber City's mayor and Prince Rory well-practised from his experience running the Mumakan slave pits. The penultimate and climactic execution occurred when dawn began and six of the vampires along with Lestat (the nefarious ringleader) were left in the centre of the area, bound to stakes. As the first rays of the sun cleared the horizon, the expectation of the crowd mounted; and when the bright shafts of pure light finally cleared the Coliseum walls and crept towards the writhing undead, the crowd whipped itself into a screaming frenzy of approval. Finally, as the sun reached the vampires they burst satisfactorily into flame, screaming and howling for their mistress, Scherazade, as they died horribly.
This text is copyright © Beth Major; "Amber" is copyright © Roger Zelazny; "Amber" the diceless RPG is copyright © Phage Press. No copyright infringement is intended.
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