Sunila

Sunila was a Mussalmian mage who specialized in magic spells or cantrips which allowed translation of foreign languages into Mussalmi and the reverse. He joined an exploratory expedition lead by Baron Toivo and heading south of the Empire's borders to the equatorial mountains.

During the expedition, Sunila worked to improve his cantrips. As he confided to his colleague Kyosti most subjects of the Empire knew Mussalmi along with their birth-tongue so the development of translation cantrips had somewhat stagnated. The natives in the tropical jungles had truly foreign tongues giving the spell a vigorous workout. Sunila had high hopes that the papers he would write when he returned home would bring him professional praise and a level of fame.

One day a local native porter cautioned the Mussalmians of a tsaldaris in the area. Since the cantrip had never encountered the word, it remained untranslated. After much discussion, Sunila concluded it meant a vampire. Some savants and mages had a taste for arcane lore and dredged up from their memories that vampires were stopped by roses, garlic and sunlight. The native confirmed only the last since the first two were not present in the tropics.

That evening some members of the expedition applied powdered garlic before entering their bedrolls while the more sceptical did not. In the morning Relander, one of the sceptics, was found in his bedroll with an eerie calm look on his face and two puncture marks on his neck. The following night the vampire attacked Kyosti but Sunila and the native were waiting. The put a sack over the creatures head which broke the enchantment that left Kyosti helpless and the three managed to bind it. In the morning, when the bound creature was exposed to direct sunlight, it burst into flames and eventually left only a small heap of ash.