Session 6 covered 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF. The party walked north from Crick's Bend to the Sisters' farm near Silverthorn, stood guard over a warding ritual at the Standing Stone, and followed Hecate’s raven deeper into the forest.
Synopsis
Morning at Crick’s Bend
The morning of 27 Coldrise was cold and overcast, with a thin fog over Crick’s Bend.1 Temerity, who had spent the night in a tent with Iva, woke with a start from her dream. She kept it to herself, meaning to raise it with Wellby Emberthumb on the way back.23
Hazel was waiting outside the general store when it opened at sunrise, and the door swung outward into her face.456 Rebecca Brice had the first batch of the day fresh from the oven, six or seven laminated pastries among it.78 Hazel offered a crown for seven of them, and Brice said that was far too much and charged five embers. With a loaf of bread for two anvils, Hazel had bought out the whole first batch.91011 She handed a pastry to each of the party and gave Temerity the bag with the last pastry and the loaf, for Emberthumb and Anthusa Toguri.1213
Temerity found the two of them at coffee in the kitchen, talking about life in Argentum.14 Emberthumb gave the pastry to Anthusa without being asked, and sent Temerity to the church storage for enough glasses to pour coffee for everyone.1516 He asked whether he would see them on the way back, and said he would try to make room in his schedule for dinner at the Kemble farm.171819
The Road North
Hazel knew the way. Back to the road and on to Silverthorn was about ten hours’ walk, some thirty miles, but the farm lay off the road, and cutting across country to it would skip Silverthorn and save about an hour.20 Silverthorn is only eight or so buildings, insular and wary of strangers, with no general store, inn or tavern, and a party that size from the city would have been a spectacle there.21 They took the shorter way.22 They left at seven in the morning, and by noon the sky was still overcast and only a few degrees above freezing, with the fog thickening the further north they went.23
Around noon they came on a wagon lying on its side a hundred feet off the road, with a horse tied to a stake in an old tree stump and an older human farmer, balding and clean-shaven, walking around it.2425 His wheel had hit a jagged rock a couple of feet across, which put the wagon over and took the horse down with it. He had got the horse out from under it and could not lift the wagon alone.26 He was bringing his potatoes down from near Silverthorn, harvested too late, to sell in Crick's Bend, and meant to take them all the way to Argentum if nobody there wanted them.26
Rhysaene went to the horse and calmed it.2728 Luma judged the wheel an hour’s work.29 Temerity pried the rock out of the road with Luma’s crowbar, and she and Iva used Luma’s block and tackle to right the wagon and prop it on the rock.303132 Luma showed Temerity a page of plans that read only “distract the guy for a minute”, and Hazel kept the farmer talking.3334 Luma wrote “fix” over the broken wood with her finger again and again, covered the writing with reinforcing bands, and spent the rest of the hour making the magic look like carpentry.3536
The farmer took Hazel for one of the women from the farm. She had the look of the one they say is half wild animal, he said, and everyone in Silverthorn knows to give the farm a wide berth unless they have a reason to be there.3738 The ladies up north said the winter would be extra hard.37 A man who had moved from Crick’s Bend two years before to farm near Silverthorn had gone missing two days earlier, his wife was worried, and nobody could find him.38 He complained that the fog had been getting thicker every day for the last year. It was not foggy every day, Hazel knew, but it did seem thicker than it used to be.36 Finding the wheel mended, he told them they worked fast, hitched up his horse and went on his way.394041
An hour and a half further on, hooves came up the road behind them at a gallop.42 The party went off the road among the trees, and Hazel cast enhance ability on Rhysaene to help her hide despite her size.4344 Everyone but Iva vanished into the fog, the grass and the trees. Iva lost track of where the others had gone and turned in place looking for cover as three armored Light Wardens galloped past without giving her a second glance.4546 In the fog the others could only assume they were the three from the day before, Petra Ashford, Harwick Stoll and Devyn Marsh, but Iva knew it for certain.47 By the party’s reckoning, the Wardens could have overtaken them only by changing horses in Argentum and riding straight back out.48 They were riding north on the same road, perhaps for Silverwatch.4950
They reached the farm after sunset, around seven in the evening.51
The Sisters’ Farm
The farm is a large, sprawling property without clear boundaries: a two-story house and a big thatch-roofed barn, both of local timber, with no lamps or lanterns except outside the house and barn and along the walk between them.5152 Before they went in, Hazel told Iva and Temerity to say nothing of any involvement with the Order of the Lantern. If the Sisters found out, they might not want Anthusa staying there, and she could not guarantee their protection.5354 Anthusa told Iva the same.55 Hazel said not to go flashing any holy symbols, and Temerity tucked her holy symbol into her furs.5657
Animals wandered the yard with no pens: cows, a goat, barn cats, and a fat, old, long-haired cat with one eye half closed that glared at Hazel with the other.58 In a tree in the yard sat a raven and a snowy white owl.59 Hazel knew the raven for Hecate’s familiar, and Hecate herself often takes the form of a white raven. The owl looked like a familiar too, but not one belonging to anyone living at the farm, unless they had given it a new form. Both birds turned their heads to follow the party all the way in.60
Freya was in the kitchen cooking stew and humming.6162 Calypso had sent word ahead, she told Hazel, so they were expected, and Hazel need not worry too much about the headmistress being angry. Hecate was in the backyard going over plans for the ritual.63 Freya asked Hazel to take her companions round and introduce them, so that nobody would mistake them for outsiders.64
In the backyard Hecate was talking with Circe, the two of them as equals, where even the sisters who had finished their training still treated Hecate with reverence.6566 Circe had hardly ever been at the farm in Hazel’s lifetime. Hazel remembered seeing her once, at about seven, and she had not aged a day since.67 Hazel presented the reagents and admitted she had not found an item blessed by the Silver Flame. They would have to do the ritual without it, Hecate said.68697071 Circe told Hazel she had changed quite a lot since the last time she saw her.72
The Lantern
Iva cut in to ask for a word with Hazel alone. Hecate had her step forward and asked her name, and told Hazel she could speak to her companion in the barn, which she was sure would be very comforting.737475 Iva took Luma along for her bag.76
Hecate asked Rhysaene whether she was a centaur, saying she had understood that most of the fair folk of her kin left the valley some years ago. Rhysaene said that was what her mothers used to say, and that she had not seen much of her kin.777879 Hecate called it an honor to have her there. When Rhysaene called her “my lady”, Hecate asked her not to, since it was a title of nobility that did not extend that far from the city, and said “ma’am” would do.808182 Circe looked at Rhysaene, said “huh”, and walked off to stand halfway between them and the barn.82
In the barn, Luma opened her bag and showed Hazel the Warden’s lantern.83 Hazel had once meant to steal one, had been told that was a bad idea, and had taken it to mean a lantern would not serve.8485 She took it and marched back, and Circe gave it a look as they passed but said nothing.8687
Hecate asked Hazel to explain. Hazel said Iva had been a Light Warden working with the Tarnar Syndicate to get mages out of the city, that she was no longer in the Order, and that she was giving them the lantern for the ritual.8889 Iva put it that she had worked with the Syndicate and infiltrated the Wardens.90 Hecate looked at Hazel for a long time and asked what it was she was telling her.91 Rhysaene stepped in to say that Iva had used different identities to survive and to help other people. Hecate thanked her for the insight and turned back to Hazel with the same question.9293
Hecate was not angry, not with the cold, stewing anger Hazel had seen from her before, but her attention never left Hazel.94 Remembering that Calypso had said the last reagent was not important, Hazel put the pieces together: this was a test, and Hecate wanted an answer, not a particular one.959697 Hazel said she had come back with every item she had been asked for. She had brought a former member of the Order because she trusted Iva would be an asset to her cause, and because Iva’s mother was the reason she had come back so early.9899100 Hecate thanked her for the answer and said they would talk about it later. She took the black salt, the wormwood and the powdered silver, and told Hazel to hold on to the lantern.101102
Anthusa’s Room
Hecate asked which of them was staying, and Anthusa stepped forward. Hecate’s sister in the city had told her Anthusa practiced magic. Anthusa said only a little, hedge wizardry, tricks picked up over many years. That made no difference, Hecate said, since it put her in the same danger either way. She was welcome to stay as long as she needed, if she was willing to help on the farm, in a room in the house that would not be comfortable like city life.103104105 Anthusa looked to Iva, who nodded, and they hugged before she went inside to find Freya.106107108
The Ritual
Here at the edge of the protection granted by the essence of the dead god, Hecate said, the protection is weaker, always has been, and seems to be getting weaker year over year.109 The Sisters ward the area against the Sorrow, and their wards had deteriorated. A ritual to re-secure them would draw afflicted creatures, so it was good that Hazel had brought so many people.109110 The sooner it was done the better, since the deeper the teeth of the Sorrow sink in, the harder they are to pull out. The work takes three sisters. She and Circe were certainly up to it, and they had been guiding Freya in this particular protection, for which she has always had a gift.111 It had to be done by moonlight, that night or the next, and the party chose that night.112113114 Hecate told them to meet at the Standing Stone in two hours, about ten o’clock. It stands about three miles north-east of the farm, an old stone slab from before Silverthorn and before the coven.115116
As the sisters left to prepare, Circe passed the party without looking at them and said, “Tragic thing. No wound weighs heavier than a broken heart.”117
Hazel asked Iva whether she had lost her mind, and reminded her of the one thing she had told her not to talk about.118119 Temerity told Iva she understood she had wanted to help her friend, but it had been too rash, and there was a time and a place for everything.120121 Hazel told them they would leave in thirty minutes and went into the barn.122
Waiting at the Farm
Temerity ate stew in the kitchen, where Freya and Anthusa were talking about gardening.123 Freya introduced herself as Hazel’s sister. The two look nothing alike, and when Temerity guessed adoption, Freya said she would not call it that and could not really explain it to someone who had not lived it. She thinks very fondly of Hazel, she said, even though Hazel is very aloof.124125126 Iva sat hunched at the entrance to the barn, upset, and Luma shut herself away somewhere, scribbling angrily in her notebook.127128
Circe
Rhysaene began sketching the witches. Looking up at Circe for a second reference, she found her already staring back from a good distance away.129130 Circe did not answer Rhysaene’s “hey there”, did not ask her to stop and did not move, beyond fiddling with something in the pocket of her big dark green wool coat.131132 Like Hecate she carries a staff of gnarled dark wood, but hers has been cracked and shattered and mended with veins of gold.133
Rhysaene asked how she knew about the broken heart. Circe said she did not know anything, and that it had just felt like the thing to say.134135 It was somewhat a witch thing, she said, though not something Hazel or Freya would go in for, and Hecate only in her youth, maybe.136137 She asked whether Rhysaene had ever had a tarot reading. She had not brought her cards, but her point was that it was a feeling, not anything literal, and that Rhysaene’s question had told her more than anything else had.138139
Circe came over to see the drawing, which Rhysaene had smudged with her fingers for a watercolor effect and made a little flattering, and said she did lovely work.140141142 She would look Rhysaene up in the city and have her portrait done properly, she said. She had put in a request to have it done by a talented artist living in the city, but the artist had not been able to, and Rhysaene’s style reminded her of hers.143144145146 Asked the artist’s name, she said, “She went by the name Lathiel, but I think you knew that already.”147148 When Rhysaene put a hand to her heart, Circe said she understood now, and gripped whatever was in her pocket tightly.149150 Rhysaene said Lathiel had been a mentor and a friend.151152 Circe said they would talk more at a more appropriate time, and that she would certainly seek Rhysaene out in the city. Then she walked off into the forest to gather her things.153154
Setting Out
On her way out of the kitchen, Temerity found the old tomcat sitting in the doorway, scruffy, one eye half open and part of one ear bitten off.155 It scratched at her trousers and hissed, then whipped round and tried to spray her as she stepped over it, and she got clear. It jumped onto the counter to lick out the bowl she had left.156157158
Temerity got Iva up from the barn entrance and went in for Hazel, who had been sitting in the corner of the hayloft where she used to live before she was given a room in the house.159160161162 Hazel’s head appeared upside down out of the hay hole in front of Temerity’s face, and she front-flipped down to the floor and caught Sage, though nobody knew how Sage had got up there.163164
Luma had built a cannon, a “monster blower-upper”, since they were going to be protecting the Sisters from monsters. It did not work, and when she kicked it, it melted into a puddle of ink. The mop she drew in the air to clean it up dissolved into more ink.165166167 Hazel told her that things afflicted by the Sorrow are still animals, with hearts, lungs and brains that stop the animal when they stop working, and Luma pointed out that they also have teeth, claws and giant muscles.168169 Temerity said she would meet whatever came at them head on. Luma said she was not prepared to watch Temerity get cut in half, and that Temerity coming back afterwards would only mean remembering that she had died.170171172
The Standing Stone
The walk through the dark, foggy forest took almost an hour and a half.173174 The Standing Stone is a slab about twelve feet tall and six wide in a clearing, carved with about twelve concentric rings of writing in Druidic. Each ring is an incantation, added outside the last and longer than it, as it grows harder to find words strong enough to keep the Sorrow at bay.175 Circe was already cutting runes into a new outer ring with a hooked blade, and both birds were perched on top of the stone.175176
Luma spent the first half hour setting three alarm spells around the approaches to the clearing, made to ring aloud like a brass bell rather than in her head.177178179 Freya walked a circuit of the stone burning a bundle of something and warned the party not to breathe the smoke. Circe walked the other way laying down a ring of black salt, and Hecate mixed the powdered silver into an ink of her own making with a small rite over it.176180181 Luma thought the work arcane, but with something spiritual in it.182
The Wolves
Half an hour in, the bell rang to the north-east, and three large creatures came crashing through the dark.183 Temerity saw them first. They were wolves the size of dire wolves, but they moved too low to the ground, because their legs splayed out at crossed angles, bent so that the joints stood up above their backs. They came on like giant four-legged spiders, bones cracking at every step, snarling, drool dripping from their mouths.184185186
The first dashed in, leapt forty feet and landed on Temerity with all four feet, trying to kick off her and knock her down. She braced and held.187188189 The Silver Flame came up in her eyes and spread over her body, and she smashed its head in with one blow of her hammer, sparks of silver light flying as if from a hammer on an anvil.190191
The second leapt on Temerity too and bit her, and the third knocked Rhysaene flat and bit her leg.192193194 Luma’s fire bolt burned the fur off one and showed black, veined, blue-tinged skin underneath.195196 Iva ran up and told Temerity to hit it again, and Temerity crushed one wolf’s head and then put the other down.197198199 For a moment it seemed over. Then both began to twitch and rise.199
Lying beside one of them, Rhysaene watched black, oily ooze reeking of rot pool out of its mouth and wither the grass where it touched. She got up and cut into it with her greatsword.200201 It grew a new leg of bare bone and muscle out from under a broken one and stood up on it, leaving the old leg hanging.202 Then it threw its head back and howled, far louder than it should have. The distorted sound went through bone and drowned out thought, and Iva took the worst of it.203204
Luma hit the other wolf with a guiding bolt as it tried to rise, and Hazel put a moonlit arrow through its throat before it could get up, and it stopped for good.205206 Then Hazel went down on all fours and wild-shaped into a brown bear, her antlers fused to its head.207208 The last wolf howled again, and Luma lit it up with faerie fire.209210 Hazel finished it by forcing its jaws apart and tearing it open down to the neck.211212
The wolves had never healed, beyond the one new leg. They went on moving when they should not have been able to, until there was too little of them left to move.213 Luma threw words of fire at the corpses until they burned.214215 As Temerity came down out of her rage, the flame on her flared, crackled her skin and went out, flaking off like burnt skin.216 Iva was bleeding from her ears, nose, mouth and eyes, and Luma healed her with a healing word.217218
The Ritual Interrupted
The three sisters chanted together. Luma made out words of arcane power and a plea for the light of the moon to burn away the Sorrow that filled the place and keep it protected from darkness.219 The clouds parted, moonlight poured down, and the outer ring began to glow as if it were being rewritten in silver moonlight. Halfway round there was a loud crack, the stone cracked at that point, and the glow stopped.220221
Hecate stumbled as if knocked back and said the ritual was interrupted and she could not complete it.222223 A raven appeared on her shoulder in a cluster of feathers, and she sent it into the air. After a minute she said she sensed a concentration of the Sorrow’s corruption still in the woods, and that while it was there the ritual could not be finished.223224 She could command this only of Hazel, she said, and could only ask the rest of them, and Iva agreed before she had finished.225226 “I need you to hunt whatever thing is holding in this corruption and extinguish it from this forest,” Hecate said.227 The raven circled Hazel’s head and flew north, and Hecate told them to follow it.227228 The sisters could not go themselves without losing the work already done.229
Hecate healed the whole party with a single spell, and Freya healed what was left.230231 Freya touched a tree, and ten goodberries grew on it. They carried the full nourishment of the forest, she said, not enough to undo a wound but enough to stabilize someone bleeding out.232233 She meant them for Hazel, but a bear could not carry them, so she gave them to Temerity, who passed them to Luma.233234
Into the Forest
The raven led them a mile, then two, deeper into the woods, to the edge of the protection against the Sorrow, further than even Hazel likes to go. There it stopped and would go no further, though it showed them which way to keep going.235236
In a clearing much like the other, three armored figures stood over a fourth.236 They were the three Light Wardens who had ridden past, known by their armor and their lanterns, whose light was the cold light of silver flame rather than the warm light of a candle or a fire.237238 The fourth was a man leaning against a tree, a straw hat half over his face, pale and gaunt in the lantern light.236238 The Wardens told him he could not be out there, since the forest was full of the Sorrow’s corruption and he was in danger.239 He said he used to be in town, but his wife did not love him any more, and he had got so sad and so lonely that he needed to be around people.240241 They said they would take him back to town. He said they were the first people he had seen in days, and asked them to come closer and let him hold them.242
He twisted his neck back, and his hat fell aside. His skin had gone a dreary grey, and black ooze poured from his mouth and eyes.243244 He stretched his arms toward the Wardens fifteen feet away, and the arms went on stretching, bone cracking out through the skin, one of them sharpening to a fine point, both dangling from loose flesh and dragging along the ground as he stepped forward.245 “So lonely. So alone, but not anymore,” he said.246 The captain, the woman from the day before, screamed that he was a Sorrowsworn and called for blades, and the three drew.247248249
Featured Characters
Player Characters
New
Returning
Mentioned
Quotations
- “Dear, do not mention any connection to the Order of the Lantern whatsoever while we’re here, please.” Anthusa Toguri to Iva.55
- “Tragic thing. No wound weighs heavier than a broken heart.” Circe, passing the party.117
- “She went by the name Lathiel, but I think you knew that already.” Circe to Rhysaene.148
- “I need you to hunt whatever thing is holding in this corruption and extinguish it from this forest.” Hecate, sending the party north.227
- “So lonely. So alone, but not anymore.” The man in the clearing.246
Inventory
- Iva’s Warden’s lantern, which Hecate told Hazel to hold on to.
- Ten goodberries from Freya, carried by Luma.
Speaking Time
| Speaker | Time | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Master | 1:26:17 | 49% |
| Hazel | 26:41 | 15% |
| Temerity | 22:33 | 13% |
| Luma | 16:45 | 10% |
| Iva | 11:31 | 7% |
| Rhysaene | 11:30 | 7% |
| Unidentified | 0:17 | <1% |