"Undead are everywhere. The villages and towns around Stratholme are completely out of control." This was not the first time Mograine had heard a scout say this, and he had no good solution.
To keep Stratholme safe from the plague, Alexandros Mograine had been forced to move the military camp outside the city and station his troops along the main road leading into it.
The paladin sitting opposite Mograine was somewhat younger. He wore plain priest's robes and had long, silver-white hair.
"Once civilians contract the plague, the symptoms don't appear immediately. Huge numbers of refugees are now pouring south, making it much harder for us to contain the spread. Brother, I don't think we can keep following the usual containment procedures. We have to take the initiative."
As paladins, their foremost duty was to protect civilians. Mograine lowered his gaze to the map on the table.
"We have too few priests, and the reinforcements the archbishop promised are still on their way. The refugees are already terrified. If we use force to stop them from heading south, unrest is inevitable." Mograine rejected Dathrohan's proposal.
Even if they lacked enough people to screen the refugees, they could not make them pay the price.
"Better a short pain than a long one. The number of undead in Stratholme's urban districts has already risen dramatically. If we don't act, I fear even more people will be caught in this disaster." Dathrohan made no attempt to conceal his radical views. Turning on the populace was certainly not the best course.
But the situation was already set. More than twenty thousand refugees had eaten grain from the south. The plague poison no longer took effect quickly, and the Cult of the Damned had raised the terror of the undead to an entirely new level.