Guerilla Writing: Fading Suns - How the Wolfgirl Lost Her Eye
On my workdesk, there is a picture of a young girl. Her hair is unkempt, her teeth are uneven, and her lips are curved in a half-sad smile. Her eyes used to stare out at me, wild and challenging, as I endured each day as a Guild Reeve.

Not anymore. A single drop of aqua ignata half-blinded her feral visage.

Her name was Elisha Drummo. Youngest daughter of my best friend's sister. Unlike the rest of her staunchly Orthodox brood, she had fallen in with a heretical religion whose symbol was a winking wolf. She was a Zuranist, full of tricks and pranks and humorously counter-canon comments delivered with a conspiratorial wink.

Perhaps the quirky & iconoclastic nature of the religion attracted her to it. Or perhaps, she'd found kindred spirits in the leaders of the sect on Aylon. Or perhaps, she'd really been granted a vision as she'd so often claimed after sufficient inebriation at our monthly guild get-togethers, prompting her family to hush her proclamations and leave early.

The Guild did its best to take care of the family, to protect it from the fanatic obsessions of the Avesti to cleanse the universe of heresy. But they found out. And her family burned with her.

The Guild, outraged but unable to take direct action, took steps to weaken the Avesti's hold on Aylon. Engineers unearthed proscribed technologies that allowed them to spy on and track all Aylon-bound Avesti. Charioteers reported cargo and personnel movements, delaying them when necessary. Scravers helped acquire and sabotage critical shipments through well-timed accidents. Aylon Reeves delivered petition after petition for sanctions against the Church sect, based on intelligence and the resulting scandals. The Muster conscripted potentially detrmental Avesti witnesses and sent them to the frontlines on Stigmata.

It did not go unnoticed. Avesti retaliation was swift and typically unsophisticated. We fought back twice as fiercely, thrice as secretly. Unable to substantiate any of the accusations, an overzealous Avesti threatened me with immolation in my office. Unfortunately for him, his badly maintained gear malfunctioned and burned him alive. A drop of aqua ignata splatter caught the eye of my wolfgirl's picture, burning and wrinkling it slightly. Such a tragedy.

Finally, success. The Aylon Zuranist movement was spared the more cruel attentions of the Avesti by the Archbishop, who declared it a minor heretical deviation from standard Orthodox practice. It would be resolved by a special team of Orthodox and Eskatonic priests seeking to convert these poor, lost souls.

Now, Elisha's picture greets me every morning, a one-eyed wolfgirl winking at me like Old Zuran himself.