Encouraged by the Briarstone Witch, the people of Thrushmoor split from both the church and the national government. When emissaries of the state marched to retake control of the town, they found the entire population had disappeared. Although a few gruesome stains marked buildings across the empty town, no other evidence of the people was ever found. The unsettling event became known as the Thrushmoor vanishing and hundreds of years passed before Thrushmoor was resettled.