Beneath Altenkau lies a sealed necromantic ritual chamber, once used by a now-vanished cabal. The site was built over an ancient ossuary; an unofficial dumping ground for thousands of bodies, many of them victims of secret executions by noble families during past purges and uprisings. This grave was sealed off decades ago after rumours of "unsettled dead" spread through the lower wards.

When the ritual failed, the chamber collapsed in on itself; but the rot never stopped festering. It simply waited, dormant beneath layers of stone and silence.

Years later, the merchant vessel Silent Orphan arrived, carrying smuggled corpses, illegal alchemical tinctures, and contraband to be disposed of in the city's black-market mortuary network. During a storm, the vessel lost control and crashed directly into a collapsed support pillar near the ritual site, its massive anchor tearing through the canal bed.

The impact cracked open the long-sealed chamber below.

Rot-laced fluids; a mix of embalming chemicals, alchemical runoff, and the toxic aftermath of the ritual; began to seep into the city’s canal network. The water ran black for days in the poorest districts, and rats and birds began dying in droves.

Then, people did too.

The truth is unknown to anyone, but the following theories circulate in whispers, taverns, and street sermons:

The Ship Theory – “It was cursed cargo, from foreign wars. They dumped plague corpses into the canal.”

The Necromancer Theory – “The ritual beneath the city never ended. Someone brought something back; something that spreads.”

The Bone Idol Theory – “The relic cracked when the ship sank. It breathed something into the water.” (This one persists even though there was no relic.)

The Guild Conspiracy – “The Alchemists and Mortuary Guilds planned it. They want to thin the numbers in the slums.”