Let’s open things up with a bang! Here’s Brother Markus, whom you may have realized you’d seen before if you were paying very close attention. His donor had not paid enough to obligate us to include his character in the narrative (only Karmakat’s and Isidro’s donors did that), but we liked him well enough and had an easy time dropping him in here. There were other donor-created characters we’d find similarly inspiring, and they’re due to show up in another page or two.

We needed some Cultist to be up to no good in this scene, we wanted someone a bit more colorful than the Cultist default, and bonus points if his involvement highlighted other changes in Arkerran societies… he ticked all the boxes, and honestly, it was less work to use him than to come up with someone brand new!

That societal change is, I think, fairly evident in the text… and it’s still fresh enough that it feels natural these two hunters would talk about it, so I don’t think their dialogue feels too expository for its own sake.