The Late Unpleasantness

When Jervis Stoot made clear his intentions to build a home on the
island just north of the Old Light, locals paid him no mind.
Jervis had already garnered something of a reputation for eccentricity when he began his one-man crusade to carve depictions of birds on every
building in town.
Stoot’s excuse for wanting to move onto the isle seemed innocent
enough—the place was a haven for local birdlife.
For 15 years, Stoot lived on the island.
His trips into town grew less and less frequent.

Sandpoint was no stranger to crime, or even to murder.
Once or twice a year, passions flared, robberies went bad, jealousy grew
too much to bear, or one too many drinks were drunk, and someone
would end up dead.
But when the bodies began to mount five years ago, the town initially had no idea how to react.
Sandpoint’s sheriff at the time was Casp Avertin, a retired city watch officer from Magnimar. Yet even he was ill-prepared for the murderer who came to be known as Chopper.
Over the course of one long winter month, it seemed that every day brought a new victim to light.
Each was found in the same terrible state: bodies bearing deep cuts to the neck and torso, hands and feet severed and stacked nearby, and the eyes and tongue plucked crudely from the head and missing entirely.

Over the course of that terrible month, Chopper claimed 25 victims.
Sherrif Avertin himself became Chopper’s last victim, slain upon catching the murderer in a narrow lane, known now as Chopper’s Alley.
Yet in the battle that followed, Avertin managed a telling blow against the killer.
When the town guard found both bodies several minutes later, they were able to follow the killer’s bloody trail.

A trail that led straight to the stairs of Stoot’s Rock.

At first, the town guard refused to believe the implications, and feared that Chopper had come to claim poor Jervis Stoot as his 26th victim.
Yet what the guards found in the modest home atop the isle left no room for doubt.
Jervis Stoot and Chopper were the same, the eyes and tongues of all 25 victims were found upon a horrific altar to a birdlike demon.
Stoot himself was found dead at the base of the altar, having plucked his own eyes and tongue loose in a final offering.
The guards collapsed the entrance to the chambers, burned Stoot’s house, tore down the stairs, and did their best to forget.
Stoot himself was burned on the beach in a pyre, his ashes blessed and then scattered in an attempt to stave off an unholy return of his evil spirit.

As fate would have it, the people of Sandpoint would soon have a
new tragedy to bear, one that almost eclipsed Chopper’s rampage.

A month after the murderer was slain, a terrible fire struck Sandpoint.
The fire started in the Sandpoint Chapel and spread quickly.

As the town rallied to save the church, the fire spread, consuming
the North Coast Stables, the White Deer Inn, and three homes.
In the end, the church burnt to the ground, leaving the town’s beloved
priest Ezakien Tobyn dead.

All that remains today of the once-loved Stoot carvings are
ragged scars on buildings and figureheads where owners used
hatchets to remove them.
The homes and businesses ravaged by the fire have been reconstructed, and the Sandpoint Chapel has finally been rebuilt as well.



With the consecration of this new cathedral, Sandpoint can finally put the dark times of the Late Unpleasantness in the past.