Dear, Sir Roland Himelbach.

I was most pleased when I received your letter. Such a titillating concoction of emotion, hard to describe in its intensity, swept over me when its contents were read, my eyes pouring lovingly over each curve of the script and flick of the quill. It is truly a heady experience to know one’s work is appreciated by those of the nobility.

Nevertheless your query was of a bestial persuasion and I shall endeavour not to bother you with the childish gushing of a petty hedge mage.

In regard to your recent curiosity into the activity and biology of the night counts associated with one particular mage of the name Siam’Siak I am most reminded of a particular run in I had with one of their kind many years ago.

It would have been, 20 summers ago, 30?! I had enlisted the assistance of one peculiar huntsman, I use the word peculiar for I am at a loss for another word which would describe him more aptly, the man covered himself near head to toe in rags befitting that of a beggar not one who hunts the children of the night! Regardless of his appearance he was quite adept at his particular discipline. In fact I can still, if I harken back, hear the frenzied whistling of his blades and they rocketed through the air. Quite a show that boy could put on, I swore I was at a circus some nights travelling with him!

Regardless, the two of us had entered into a particularly troublesome coven of occultists, I was in search of clues as to the whereabouts of an equally profane beast who is most irrelevant to this tale. The beings who inhabited that dank corner of our world, cloaked in shadow and fear however were less than cooperative to my endeavour, putting up quite the fight hurling their guttural curses at the two of us. I was most taken aback by the way their words seemed to slough off of my compatriot. He was a veritable bulwark against the dark the way he walked headlong into the maelstrom of spitting, squealing casters. It was quite something! It was also completely out of the capacity of one not rigorously trained by the church. And I assure you sir, this man was no virtuous brother of the order!

Yet he moved through their spells as if they were nothing, it was exceptional! Even more so was when the two of us breached the inner sanctum of these creatures, I say creatures as they had long ago abandoned their humanity my dear sir knight! When we breached their sanctum the beasts had rigged their reliquary, a mass of crystals, staggeringly enormous in size to explode! Explode it did too, it erupted into a violent hail of shards, ricocheting off walls and cutting the contents of the room to ribbons.

The hunter, caught as unaware as I had been, dived over me at the point of explosion, shielding my form with his. After the blast had subsided and the eddies and swirls of the churned-up dust had ceased I opened my eyes to find my huntsman pulling shards of dark glass from his flesh, and the wounds, my god the wounds, they healed within seconds! His clothing now torn I bore witness to his skin, at least what was left of it as it was cracked and pierced with one of the most on set and rancid cases of dark corruption I had ever laid eyes upon!

But it was his eyes Sir Himelbach, it was his eyes that betrayed him as a servant of the night, yellow they were, as bright and burning as the hunters moon, flecked with a heinous smattering of a most putrid purple. It was then that I realised how he had walked through the mess of magic before and how his wounds were healing.

Praise the father, I performed an ablution on the creature then and there, he performed a mockery of a human scream as the holy flame consumed him, taking to his flesh like dry parchment. After rifling through the man’s baggage for other items of corruption I found the mark of Siam’siak, betraying the creatures allegiance.

So to answer your previous question my knight, I would say that if you are to come across them in combat then do not even try to attempt physical or magical weaponry against the servants of Siam’siak, they are resistant to both. It is the light of the father my child, only his light that can truly drive away the dark and cast her followers to the void. That is my recommendation. I hope dearly that it was useful for you sir, and I hope also that you can forgive the ramblings I have surely spewed upon this page. I am old and it seems as though time has robbed me both of my conciseness as well as my strength. One more thing, if I was to put a word to the greatest strength of these night counts, it would be their cunning sir. They are crafty beasts, this one in question fooled me for days, passing as a reasonable if not entirely charming individual. I shiver when I think of how close I came to disaster! As I am sure he was doing naught but biding his time to spirit my soul away into the dark embrace of his master. So I warn you sir, never become fooled by these fiends, no matter how convincing they appear!

Yours faithfully, Field Magus Isidore Lambrecky