Feel free to Interrupt meat any time during this. ‘The Festival kicks off as a parade of unhappy looking children trudge through the dusty streets, dressed comically as flowers; their faces painted garishly yellow. They are followed by a rag-tag assemblage of ‘commoners beating on drums not quite rhythmically. In turn, these are followed by Lydia, the Burgomaster’s wife, on a white horse. She is covered in strands of yellow strings and garlands that trail behind her. Her fragile smile threatens to crack as she waves to the crowd, cradled in her other arm isa large bouquet of wilted flowers. Behind them labora group of sorry looking men, hauling and pushing a cart with a massive sphere of laced wood, vines, wicker and rope. It must be fifteen feet across. The smells of pitch and oll precede it, wafting across the open square. Charging a horse around the procession, nearly trampling a couple of the flower-children, the Burgomaster himself rides into the center of the square. His face is painted yellow like the faces of the children. He holds aloft a gruesome torch - a wooden sword with one of the old rotten heads from the Wolf's Head Jamboree impaled on it, enveloped in flames. ‘Trotting the horse in a tight circle, the Baron shouts with an uncomfortably high-pitched voice, “In my safe mountain town of Vallaki, we reject the Dark Prince. By the light of the Blazing Sun...ALL...WILL...BE.... WELL!" ‘As the Burgomaster wheels his steed to the wooden sphere with a haughty grin on his yellow face, a single high-pitched chirping screech is heard from above. Only a few Vallakians seems to notice it at first, but its followed by a rising chorus of dozens, then hundreds of clicking, chirping screeches and the sound of leathery wings on the air as a wave of thousands of bats pours across the sky, casting the town square into a surreal twilight darkness. The large bats swoop across the sky, low, but not dipping below the rooflines of the sad buildings cowering beneath the wave. There are gasps and shouts amongst the crowd. The people seem rooted in place. The Burgomaster, face illuminated by the blazing torch in the sudden dark, whirls around in circles and defiantly leans down. to thrust the flame against the Sun Sphere, However, as the bats pass, the sound of their wings is replaced by the sound of rain - heavy rain chasing the bats’ progress from east to west, blanketing Vallaki ina torrential downpour. As the flames of Burgomaster Vargas’s torch begin to leap up the oil-soaked sphere, It's all extinguished under the sheets of water that soak the town square. All flames are doused, the sky torn open with heavy rain. The bats have disappeared. Aftera brief pause of shock, a single short peal of cackling laughter bursts out from the crowd, drawing ‘gasps from the entire assemblage, and a scathing look of rage from the Burgomaster. All eyes turn to look at the source; one of the guards in the Vallaki are aghast at his ill-timed outburst. The guardsman flanking him Baron Vallkovich cries out, “SPITE! MALICIOUS MOCKERY! ARREST HIM!” Izek bursts from the crowd and strides towards the guard. NOTE: Any “fire” based attacks do half damage during the downpour Unless the characters intervene, Lars is bound at the ankles and wrists, then dragged behind the burgomaster's horse for the "amusement" of all. The burgomaster rides the horse himself.