Henslowe Park (Millen Hills)
| Henslowe Park
Millen Hills [53, 17]
Basic Info:
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Henslowe Park (Millen Hills)
Description
A wide-open grassy field with a large crater in the center, Henslowe Park was a quiet and serene refuge from the bustle of the city. The park, which was once one of Malton's main tourist attractions, now remains quiet and often overlooked. The only change is the background noise: once Maltonians in Henslowe Park heard car horns and city noises; now those lucky enough to survive hear nothing but groans and the occasional far-off gunshot.
History
Sometime around 25,000 B.C., a meteor entered Earth's atmosphere. The space rock, several feet wide, impacted the Earth's surface at what would later be called Great Britain, and left a relatively small impact crater.
Approximately 25,500 years later, a tribal chief named Ridlaegh led a small cult which settled slightly north of the impact crater. This cult allegedly practiced several questionable rituals, such as cannabalism and devil worship, and the impact crater was a key spot in their religion. The priests of the cult made regular pilgrimages to the crater, where they sacrificed animals and the occasional slave to whatever gods they worshiped. After Ridlaegh was killed and the cult ceased to function, the crater went undiscovered by humanity until the city of Maltion was founded.
The small farming settlement of Millen Hills was quickly absorbed by the growing urban conglomerate of Malton, and it quickly grew into a bustling suburb of the city. However, attempts to build office buildings near the crater were doomed to failure; the only structure to be completely built on the site was destroyed in 1912 in a great fire. The site was left as a vacant lot until local activists built a small park around the site in 1955. Henslowe Park, named after an obscure urban official, became a minor Mecca for geologists interested in meteor craters, and the city of Malton was considering making the area a historic site when the zombie outbreak ended their plans.
Henslowe Park's name also made national newspaper headlines in the mid-90s when several bodies were found in its ponds - those of Clement Arkwright, landlord of the Arch and Digby developments; infamously zealous policeman Detective Superintendent Samuel Hunt, the ranking officer of Doe Avenue Police Department; and Father Jack Hackett, a priest from St. William's Church who had drawn attention to himself as a public crusader against the street gangs that had long blighted Millen Hills. All three bodies were found at the same time, each murdered in the same manner - beaten over a period of hours, then finally stabbed and partially cannibalised, as evidenced by savage bite-marks in the throats and faces of all three victims. Though no one was ever officially charged with the crimes, it was clearly evident to much of the local populace just who was guilty of murdering three notable individual enemies of a particularly savage street gang.
Today Henslowe Park, though an excellent tactical spot due to the unusual geography, still retains a somewhat malevolent aura from Ridlaegh's twisted medieval experiments. The area remains undeveloped, shunned by both survivors and zombies.
