Mission Statement:
To endeavor to bring to all residents of the Five States the most current and important news from across the entire Five States region. Never yellow, the Five States Herald vows to serve only the people of the Five States, from New Austin to Lemoyne, free of charge now and forever.
Exterminators Flood Saint-Denis!
By Sofia Kathleen Fairfax – Lead Correspondent
You see them in the night, crawling, creeping, festering. They rummage through your house, take your food, contaminate the water, and invade your humble abode. I’ve seen them, you’ve seen them; something needs to be done.
Saint-Denis is an industrial city, bellowing smoke and smog day in and day out; it’s no surprise it attracts a lot of wildlife. But far from coyotes or other manageable animals, it’s primarily rats, cockroaches, and other bugs. Bars are swarming with them; the streets are nearly swamped with the bloodsucking bugs and the disease-carrying rodents. Such disorder, of course, breeds innovation and curiosity.
People have invented mouse traps with makeshift firearms, used arsenic and other chemicals to kill them, and even used rudimentary fire bombs to burn them out. Some of this has worked; sometimes, it’s just destroyed homes. The call for help has been sent out near and far, and so-called professionals have entered the city. Men who claim to have made hundreds of dollars killing pests in Europe or other major American cities, people who took inspiration from the rat catchers of the Middle Ages, and even those who claim to have invented chemical sprays that will kill any non-human entity. It’s a lot to take in; some are surely hucksters and tricksters, and yet some are probably genuine. These men are being snatched up by concerned customers almost by the hour. We shall see in time who is honest, and who is little more than a rat themselves.
Ambush on the trail near Hennigan’s Stead sparks call for law and order
By Jose Chavez
Two cowpokes from Tumbleweed found themselves under fire this week while riding past Hennigan’s Stead, a lonely patch of range long whispered to harbor the worst kind of company. The pair, seasoned gunslingers on their way to Blackwater, were beset by a half-dozen masked riders who opened fire on the pair. Quick thinking and steady hands spared their lives; the cowpokes splits up and returned shot for shot until the would-be robbers scattered into the scrub. When the dust cleared, the outlaws were dead and the cowpokes unharmed.
Locals are calling the attack another grim reminder that much of New Austin remains wild country, where law still competes with legend. Hennigan’s Stead has long served as a hideout for vagrants, smugglers, and gun hands down on their luck, but the brazenness of this assault has shaken nearby ranchers. “It ain’t safe for decent folk,” said one cattleman who sometimes has to move his herd near the area, “if those boys hadn’t been armed, we’d be reading about a murder.” The incident follows several recent reports of travelers being shadowed along the same stretch of trail, suggesting that outlaw bands may again be staking claims along the southern frontier.
Feather hunt turns fatal near Cattail Pond
By Jane Duran
The chill dawn near Cattail Pond was broken this week by gunfire and folly, as an argument over a single owl’s feather ended in blood. Ambarino Ranger Hiram Teague was making his patrol along the northern ridge when he came upon two hunters locked in heated argument beside the fallen bird. Both claimed the owl as their own prize, each insisting his shot had brought it down. According to Ranger Teague, the men were so consumed by their dispute that they failed to notice his approach, until one, in a fit of rage, drew his pistol and fired upon the other at near point-blank range.
The slain man, believed to be a prospector from Valentine, died instantly. His killer was subdued and taken into custody without resistance, muttering that “the feather was worth more than gold.” The ranger later described the scene as “the most senseless killing I’ve ever seen in these parts,” and noted that the owl’s feather, the cause of all this ruin, had been lost in the scuffle — carried off, perhaps, by the morning wind. Locals now speak of the pond as cursed, saying even the birds there bear ill omens, and that men who covet what flies shall soon lie cold themselves.
Strange goings-on in Blackwater?
By Odell Clifton
A traveling photographer, recently returned from a commission in Blackwater, tells The Herald that the town has taken on “a queer, unearthly mood” these past weeks. He swore the air itself felt wrong, thick with fog that rolled off the lake even on clear mornings, and that the narrow backstreet, those brick-cut alleys behind the haberdasher and the post, carried a wind that never ceased. “It howled even when the leaves were still,” he told me, hands shaking around his coffee cup, “and the people, sir — the people were smiling too wide. The ladies at the pier, they weren’t talkin’ or shoppin’. They were eatin’… fish. Raw, from the bucket.”
The photographer’s story grows stranger still. He muttered about symbols scratched into cellar doors — “Aztec, or older,” he claimed — and an unnatural warmth that clings to the place. Though the weather remains warm in town, every hearth in Blackwater burns day and night, flames licking like they’re guarding against more than chill. Most have dismissed the photographer’s concerns, suggesting they may have taken some kind of intoxicant. Townsfolk from Blackwater laugh at the story but offer no dismissal. Visitors to the town have increased since the story has made rounds across the region. “True or false who is to say?” said a local shopkeeper, “but business is good, so does it really matter?”
Masks in the moonlight: the “trick or treat” terror deepens
By Adam Parvey
The masked marauders have not vanished with the autumn chill, rather, their mischief seems to ripen with each nightfall. Reports now describe the figures not merely as masked but costumed in full, garish robes stitched from burlap, tattered lace, or even the hides of animals. In the town of Strawberry, a schoolteacher one her way home claimed to have seen a child-sized specter wearing a pumpkin for a head, offering her a “sweet blessing.” She fainted before she could answer, awakening beside a coin stamped not with liberty, but with a crude carving of a laughing skull.
Lawmen across the territories are struggling to distinguish fancy from fact. A telegram out of Rhodes details a failed ambush by local deputies who cornered three suspects in a barn, only for all lanterns to extinguish at once, leaving the men bound and gagged by dawn, their own irons missing. Sheriff Gray, once skeptical, now concedes, “It ain’t about robbery no more. It’s a message, or maybe a sermon. These devils want to be seen.” In Saint Denis, the confectioner’s guild has offered a bounty of fifty dollars for information leading to the recovery of stolen sugar stock, calling the thefts “a mockery of good trade and Christian civility alike.”
Still, no clear leader or motive has surfaced and it has townsfolk on edge. In Blackwater, policemen surrounded a pair of short masked men when people screamed in fear. The short men turned out to be teenage boys having a bit of fun on Friday night. Residents were alarmed that policemen had their guns drawn. Federal investigators will be arriving in the Five States later this week to widen the investigation.
Valentine jail packed to the rafters as bounty hunters flood the town
By Emery Cosberry
The Valentine Sheriff’s Department found itself bursting at the seams this week after a sudden influx of captured outlaws filled every cell, and then some. Bounty hunters from across New Hanover rode in with their prizes, each hoping to claim a share of the latest postings, but the small-town jail was soon overwhelmed. Sheriff Curtis Malloy, faced with a dozen shackled men and no space left to hold them, wired Saint Denis for transport to get the prisoners to Sisika Penitentiary. “We’ve got more varmints than bars to hold ’em,” Malloy told The Herald. “It’s a fine problem to have, but a problem all the same.”
By sundown, however, no wagons had arrived. The sheriff’s men stood watch through the night, taking shifts to guard prisoners locked in cells, storerooms, and even the stable out back. Tempers flared among the bounty hunters, who accused one another of cutting in line for payment as the office descended into chaos. Townsfolk kept their distance, wary of the noise and the stench of so many desperate men packed into one place. As of this writing, Sheriff Malloy is still awaiting word from Sisika, and the jailhouse door, by all accounts, creaks under the weight of law’s own success.
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Saint Denis keeps its spirit bright despite outlaw fears
By Aloysius Levron
Though anxiety still lingers over the recent scourge of masked marauders haunting the Five States, the people of Saint Denis refused to let fear darken their streets this week. Against the pleas of some cautious citizens, the city went ahead with its annual autumn masquerade, turning the city into a parade of lanterns, laughter, and children in fanciful disguise. From the Garden District to the warehouse quarter, candy was handed out freely, spun sugar, pralines, and peppermint twists, while the constables kept a quiet, watchful presence along the boulevards.
Many shopkeepers had urged the mayor to cancel the festivities, warning that the masked outlaws might slip unnoticed among the revelers. But as the evening passed without trouble, those fears proved unfounded. Witnesses reported naught but cheerful mischief, youngsters dressed as ghosts and highwaymen chasing one another through the gaslight, mothers smiling from stoops, and even the city’s musicians joining in with fiddles and tambourines. One confectioner, Monsieur Duvay, said he had prepared for theft but found instead “only gratitude and sweet tooths.”
By midnight, as the lanterns dimmed and laughter echoed down the cobblestones, it was clear that Saint Denis had reclaimed its joy from the shadows. For one night, masks meant merriment rather than menace, and the people proved that the spirit of the city, bright, proud, and unbowed, could not be cowed by rumor or fear. Whether the masked marauders still prowl the countryside or not, their legend found no purchase in the heart of Lemoyne’s greatest city.
Cowpokes pine for the days when the West still felt hopeful
By Ivy Seager
From the Grizzlies’ high passes to the sunburnt flats of New Austin, a strange melancholy has settled over the trails. Cowpokes gathered at campfires and saloons alike speak wistfully of the early days of the Five States — when the frontier still felt untamed, and a man’s word carried farther than the telegraph’s wire. They recall a time when lawmen rode with purpose, ranchers held their land with pride, and towns rose from dust through sweat and hope, not government decree. “There was a kind of light in the mornings back then,” said one drover in the Heartlands, “like the whole world might still be made new.”
Now, many say that light is dimming. The railroads bring iron and order, but little mercy; the old ways shrink with every fence line. Across the territories, there’s talk that the Five States are fading ,not from map or name, but from spirit. The cowpokes who once carved trails now watch them paved, and the songs once sung under open sky are drowned beneath the hum of machines. Still, around the campfires, between swigs of black coffee and smoke from dying embers, some insist the heart of the West is not gone, only waiting to be remembered.
The Five States Herald 