I’ve finally finished my research into what the townies here call “the Late Unpleasantness,” and my findings paint a pretty grim picture. (Illuminating, too, if it’s possible to use that term to describe such a macabre series of events.) No one appears to know much about why any of it happened, and it seems no one is in a hurry to find out, either. “It was nasty business, that, but it’s all behind us now.” How very Varisian. Get a few drinks in ’em though …

Here’s what I’ve learned:

The Late Unpleasantness was a series of dark events which shook Sandpoint to its core five years ago. Sandpoint was no stranger to crime at the time – even to murder. Once or twice a year maybe a robbery went south, maybe a particular jealousy became too much to bear, maybe one too many drinks had been drunk, and someone would end up dead. In 4702, however, the body count suddenly began to mount, and the town had no idea how to react.

Sandpoint’s sheriff back then was a no-nonsense man named Casp Avertin. He was a retired city watch officer from Magnimar and an intelligent and experienced fella by all accounts, yet even he was ill-prepared for what would happen. Over the course of one long winter month, 25 townsfolk were murdered. Every few days brought a new victim to light. Each was found in the same terrible state: deep slash wounds to the neck and torso, hands and feet severed and stacked nearby, eyes and tongue missing entirely.

The townsfolk started referring to the killer as “Chopper,” and their fear and horror mounted as the days and weeks passed with the killer no closer to being caught. Chopper’s uncanny knack at eluding traps and pursuit had a deleterious effect on the town guard in general and on Sheriff Avertin in particular, who increasingly took to drink. (Several people I spoke to said that they believe he ended up taking out his frustrations by beating his wife and daughter and that that, in its own way, may have been the genesis of the Sandpoint Fire, but I can’t draw any clear connections.)

In the end though (or at his end, anyway), Sheriff Avertin himself became Chopper’s final victim. He was slain after having finally caught the murderer in the act of mutilating a victim in the side street that’s come to be known as Chopper’s Alley. Avertin managed to land one serious blow to Chopper before he himself was killed, and it was that which allowed the town guard to follow the murderer’s bloody trail out of town and straight to the stairs of Stoot’s Rock (the prominent stone outcropping just north of the Old Light) and the home of one Jervis Stoot.

The guards, hoping to catch Chopper before he could claim Stoot as his next victim, raced up the steps. But what they found in that modest home atop the isle – and in the subsequent surprise discovery of the complex of larger rooms that’d been secretly carved into the bedrock below – left no room for doubt: Jervis Stoot and Chopper were the one in the same. The eyes and tongues of all 25 victims were found on a horrific altar to a birdlike demon whose name none dared speak aloud (still researching this). Stoot himself was found at the base of the altar, dead by his own hand. He’d plucked his own eyes and tongue as his final offering.

The guards collapsed the entrance to the chambers, burned Stoot’s house, tore down the stairs, burned Stoot on the beach in a pyre (his ashes were then blessed and scattered in an attempt to stave off any unholiness)… and then tried to forget. The rest of Sandpoint decided it was best to do the same if they could, though children to this day still sometimes wake with nightmare visions of Chopper hiding under their beds.

* * *

It was only a few months after this that a massive fire claimed much of the northern part of town (most notably the Sandpoint Chapel) along with several lives (most notably the chapel’s beloved priest, Ezakien Tobyn).