Sapphire Company (Compañía Zafiro, also recorded as Compañía del Sátiro) was a mercenary military unit south of the valley of Valakhan, reputed “the toughest in the area”. Its fort was destroyed by a single fireball from the Knight of Darkness.
| Type | Mercenary company |
| Base | Fort beside the road between Helix and the north |
| Fate | Fort razed on the day of the broken altar |
| Spanish entry | Compañía Zafiro |
Description
The company had armed men, reasonable equipment, and a fort large enough to need a sizable garrison. It operated with the tolerance of the church without formally belonging to its secular arm. It was said to be coming to occupy the surrounding lands. Its full ranks are not recorded.
In its plate the fort is still standing, the palisade broken at a single point, the gate hanging, smoke rising straight from inside; the banner is untorn and a loose horse walks the valley road.
History
On the day of the broken altar, as the skeletal siege advanced on Helix, the company’s fort fell first. A knight of darkness, whom the Abbot’s raven recognized as a “pozo de maldad” (“pit of evil”), approached the fort and cast a fireball: “voló la mitad de atrás” (“it blew the back half away”). The company never mounted a coordinated defense.
The next day the people of Helix saw the fort’s smoke in the distance. Wounded refugees came up the road: defiled soldiers and injured girls. The skeletal hordes, summoned by the knight or stirred where they lay after the pact he made that morning, then advanced across the district.
The survivors fled to the village. They had no authority to reorganize the defense; Vicar Otar took it on from the consecrated church. With the company’s fall, operational jurisdiction over the south passed to the vicar by vacancy rather than decree. The company ceased to exist as a body and its remnants scattered.
Conflicting accounts
- Both names, Zafiro and Sátiro, are recorded. One reading takes this as a distortion in oral dictation; the Chronicler of the Plata leans toward it.
- Another reading allows that the company used two names: a formal one (Sapphire, a noble blue stone) and a field one (Satyr, a creature of the hills).
Open questions
- The first skeletal vanguards may have come from the Barrowmaze barrows to the east.