A longwinded digression: CrapShitty, Part 1

"The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young."
-Brother Theodore

Young Master Cassidy of Auger.
Young Master Cassidy of Auger?
"What has become of him?" you, the discerning patron of history might wonder.
Pray, sit, I beseech thee and verily I shall spin the tangled yarn out for young and old ears alike.
For alas I bring tidings of great woe.
For this cruel reality does not bode well for our once fair and noble hero.
His estate in decline, the honour of his once proud lineage verily in ruins, the last master from The House of Auger must finally face the demons that lie within his darkest heart of hearts.
For sooth, this modern tale of sorrow begins with this sordid image of silver and chymicals, exposed in the third year of His dark reign, twenty-aught-three.
Ignoble in origin and birth, the young Auger took up the torch and standard cast aside by his forbears in hopes of reclaiming their long besmirched title. Though beset on all sides by much adversity and deceit, our hero stove to live justly and set an example of benevolence and stewardship to the serfdom of his lands.
Despite these sincerest of efforts, Dame Fortuna still withheld her favour from the burgeoning Lord.
Wells ran dry, plow shears snapped in twain, a two headed kid was born to a goatherd in Maplewood, and a blight beset the crops throughout the Fiefdom. It seemed that upon the young lords very return, nay on the eve of his reclamation of land and title, that a woe like a dank shadow casteth fell on serf and merchant alike.
The night of this photographs exposure - a mere fortnight aft' the masters return to estate and manor - was the very same as news of armies marching from the east reached mine ears.
Surrounded, as I were, by lass and drink I found mineself in the heart of The Palm's Ear - an inn of some ill repute and excellent mead - a traveling journeymen known to me some years and some years hence brought the first tidings of The Razing of Whit's Bur.
James, as the journeymen was known in the days before his mastery, spoke to me of Sir William's ever-pressing move westward. Sir William the Craven it seems had taken it upon himself to rid his namesake of its' cowardice and had been campaigning 'cross the eastern lands since harvest of last season. News of the marauding lord had reached my ears here and there, but never had he come so close to our lands as Whit's Bur.
Two days easy ride from our own town square, the Duchy of Whit's Bur was ruled through the grace of Lord Duncan Bur - of the House of Bur - and in addition to a stockyards relied upon by the surrounding counties, possessed no mean defense in its' fortifications and standing militia.
To hear James tell it,
"...From a hilltop westward I watched as The Craven's force overtook the town center and set the stockyard ablaze. Duncan's defenders fell like fences before a stampede as cavalry backed by pikemen sacked businesses, homes, and with slow determination broke the back of any resistance.
Upon securing the town common as a fortification of command, a raiding party of two-score cavalry paired with longbowmen was dispatched northward to the Lord Bur's Ducal estate. With the town aflame and Duncan's manor surrounded, it was only then that I heard the chug-and-thrum of escaping gas and propellers in the air. The coward, The Craven Lord, descended from the east within his black fortress-dirigible The Vulture.
Pages and yeomen made fast the moorings as the behemoth settled over the town common. I had heard tales of the great black dirigible and seen it once from miles off stationed at the port in St. Croix but was now totally struck dumb by its' sheer mass. With an envelope that rose like a foul, giant fungus in mid spore, the malign shade cast by The Vulture blotted out what weak sunlight shone, nigh the entire radius of Whit's Bur by at least two-fold.
The ironclad gondola what hung beneath the abomination's blackened bulk fell somewhere in size between a merchant-marine frigate and a dreadnaught class heavy-destroyer. Smaller gunboat corvettes maintained an orbit 'round the bloated flagship as the final moorings were made secure and the gangway lowered."

That was a longwinded digression, part one. Stay tuned for part two.