Session 7 picked up in the forest clearing where Session 6 ended. The party killed the Sorrowsworn alongside three Light Wardens, the Sisters finished the warding ritual, and Hecate paid the party for it.
Synopsis
The Clearing
Iva ran at the creature with her spear and shield out, shouting “Stay away from it! It’s a monster!”1 Rhysaene opened with a torrent of eldritch fire from across the clearing, in full view of three members of the Order of the Lantern.23 It hurt the creature, but a wound that would have killed a farmer barely slowed it.4 Harwick Stoll turned, pointed his sword and shouted that they were surrounded by mages. Petra Ashford told him to take one problem at a time and kill the Sorrowsworn first.56
The creature sent an arm out like a harpoon on a rope. It aimed at Ashford’s waist rather than anything vital, cut the silver lantern off her belt, drove the point into her thigh and reeled her in.789 It wrapped its other arm around her, and its wail left her bleeding from her side, her nose and her mouth. Then it dragged her fifteen feet into the dark.101112 Ashford did not try to break the hold. She raised her sword, silver fire wrapped the blade, and she swung twice and missed both times. “Kill this thing!” she shouted.1314
Luma drew a manhole cover on the ground, dropped through it and came up beside Rhysaene.15 Her faerie fire lit the trees around the creature, but it shook off the spell.1617 Temerity raged and threw a javelin into its belly, shouting at it to let the captain go and fight her instead, and leave these people alone.1819 The party watched black ichor pull the wound half closed.20 Devyn Marsh charged in to cut the creature off.21 Hazel, still in the shape of a brown bear, came lumbering out of the trees, and Stoll shouted that the witches had a bear.22
Iva stabbed the creature, and this wound did not close. “This thing’s disgusting and awful. We need to kill it,” she said.2324 Rhysaene’s second blast staggered it, and it wailed, “Yes, come closer, everyone gather round.”25 It stabbed at Stoll, who got his shield up just in time, and wailed again, and more blood came from Ashford’s mouth and one of her ears.262728 Then it backed away, dragging the captain in front of it.29
Luma worked out what had changed. The javelin had landed while the creature stood in the dark, and the spear after two of the Wardens ran in carrying their lanterns.30 She picked the captain’s fallen lantern up off the ground and kept hold of it.31 She dipped her pen in its silver flame for another faerie fire, which the creature evaded. By now it plainly did not want to be in any kind of light, and it had aimed for the captain’s lantern on purpose.3132 Luma threw a drawn shield at Ashford, casting sanctuary to turn attacks away from her.33 Marsh brought his own shield down on the arm pinning Ashford, and she broke the hold and pulled the blade out of her thigh.34
Hazel wrapped the creature in a mist of dim silver moonlight, and it hissed in pain.3536 Iva told the Wardens not to worry about her trained bear. They looked at her as if she were crazy, but they had bigger problems.3738 She cut a deep gash in the creature and asked how it liked being stabbed, and it tilted its head ninety degrees and looked straight at her.394041
It drove its bladed arm through Iva’s shoulder, and this time its wail did not come to her as a sound. “Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me. You’re going to come with me into the dark. You’re going to die with me. You’re never leaving this place. You’re mine. You’re staying with me.”4243 Iva realized in that moment that the voice was right, and that was her last thought as she fell unconscious.44
Ashford told Temerity she had better know what she was doing, and drew back to the edge of the light.45 Luma told her she had found her lantern and hoped she did not mind her borrowing it.4647 She drew a mote out of its flame for a guiding bolt, and a beam of silver fire from the lantern burned a hole a foot across through the creature’s stomach.484950 It stayed on its feet. “I will not be alone. I will not be alone again. I will not go into the dark alone,” it said. “You’re all coming with me.”5152 The ichor running out of the hole formed into black hands that crawled up its body and held its wounds closed.5354
Temerity hit it with her hammer hard enough to knock several of the hands away. “I will not go alone,” it screamed.555657 Marsh, swinging wildly, drove his burning sword into its side and twisted it. “This is for the captain,” he said.5859
Hazel went to Iva and licked her wounds closed as a bear, with the same bright, misty moonlight stitching them shut.606162 Iva woke on the ground, still impaled on the creature’s arm, and told Hazel she was going to hug her so hard after she stabbed the thing.6163 Stoll swung twice and missed. The captain had tried to stay calm and in control, but the other two Wardens were panicking.6465 Iva grabbed her spear from the ground and stabbed, and missed.6667
Rhysaene finished the creature. She called on the infernal connection in her heart and fired three rays of scorching red.68 The first burned away the ichor knitting its wound together, the second lashed at its face as it raised its arms, and the third came down like a whip and burned away the place where its heart would have been.69 It fell and did not move again.70
Captain Ashford’s Decision
Ashford sheathed her sword to use it as a crutch and turned to look at the party.71 Iva hugged Hazel’s bear, and Hazel’s voice came out of it telling her to let go.7273 Luma handed Ashford her lantern back and remarked on the weird glints it threw about in a fight at night.7475 Stoll told the captain these people were wielding the most foul magic he had seen in his years, crimson flame and bears that speak, and Temerity put a firm hand on his shoulder.7677
Ashford did not take Luma’s story. She asked what they were, wizards, and Luma said she was a cartographer.78 Iva claimed to be a soldier with a trained bear who was good at ventriloquism, and Hazel turned back into an elf while she said it, still trying to shove Iva off her.7980 Stoll jumped back.81
Marsh recognized them as the travelers from the road with the off-duty Warden, and said he did not see her anywhere.81 Ashford asked where she was.82 Rhysaene said she must have split off in the chaos. Ashford told her flatly that nobody else had been with them when they arrived, and that she is trained to take in the details of a dangerous situation.8384 Iva said the Warden had split off before they reached town, and Ashford knew that for a lie too.858687 Temerity’s version, that the Warden had gone where she was meant to be and they had no idea where she was now, got Ashford off the subject without convincing her.8889
Ashford asked whether they were illegal mages, then. One of them had been throwing fire, she pointed out, and one had been a bear twenty seconds ago.90 Rhysaene said they had saved her life. Ashford said she understood that, but that it did not absolve them of other crimes. When Stoll said they should arrest them all right now, she told him to be quiet.9192
Hazel and Iva could read her. She was on death’s door and knew the party had saved her, she was troubled by their magic, and she was not sure the three Wardens could take the five of them in a fight. She had not decided to arrest them.939495 Marsh was stoic, worried and out of his depth, waiting on his captain’s orders. Stoll’s hand was on his sword, and there was nothing in his face but hatred.96
Iva argued that a band of mages killing these things out beyond the city was a smaller problem than the things themselves. Ashford nearly took it and stopped herself, because she had met them on the road coming out of Argentum and knew they were not from beyond the Vale.9798
Luma said there was no sense killing anybody over weird lanterns, and Ashford, too hurt to be amused, said nobody was talking about killing anyone.99100 Luma offered her a goodberry. Ashford declined, and Luma pressed: “You’re really hurt. They’re good berries.” Temerity added that she should have one. “Are you guys a berry cult too or something?” Ashford said. “Stop helping me, God damn it.”101102103104 Maybe later, she said.105
She asked Marsh what he thought. He said she had always prided herself on being out there for a reason, that she had been offered an easy life with her family and chose this instead so she could help and protect people, and that whatever these people were, they had helped kill the thing.105106 The Inquisition keeps Purifiers for a reason, he said: the Wardens can fight the creatures, but when a person turns, that is what a Purifier is for. Without the party all three of them would be dead, and even if they wanted to arrest them, they couldn’t.107108 Stoll said that was not the point. The party were breaking the tenets of the Silver Flame and religious law, and inviting evil inside its protection with their dark magic. He would die to protect the light that protects them all, he said, and he was ashamed that the other two were considering it. Ashford told him to be quiet.109110
She announced her decision. The Sorrowsworn was the more important report, and nobody had seen one this close to Argentum in years. They were too far from the city to worry about every little thing out there.111112113 It was an order, she told Stoll: they were going back to report the Sorrowsworn. He could say whatever he wanted, but her official report would say that some strangers helped them in the chaos, and no more than that.113114
Last she turned to Rhysaene, who had burned the thing down. “Even if I wanted to arrest you right now, I couldn’t. If you resisted, there’d be nothing we could do. That kind of power, a censor or a purifier or a dragoon would be able to handle you, but I am not equipped for that, especially wounded as I am.”115116 She told them to consider themselves lucky, and to remember why that kind of magic is illegal. She gestured at the charred body on the ground. “This was a person. And he became this thing. And your magic brings that closer to us.”117118
She put the goodberry in her mouth and ate it, and one of her cuts closed a little.119120 The horses had run off in the fight, and Marsh would not go deeper into the woods after them, so the Wardens set out on foot. Ashford said she would need to make camp and tend her wounds once they were out of the forest.121122123 Stoll took his hand off his weapon without his face changing, and he and Marsh carried her between them, south and a little west toward Silverthorn.124
Burning the Body
Iva hugged Hazel and said she was so happy Hazel had saved her after she messed everything up. “I’m not going to let you die,” said Hazel.125126127
Hazel went to burn the body, which lay smoldering and charred, and reached for her flask of oil.128129 A gut feeling turned her away from it. Instead she felt magic building inside her, made a gesture without deciding to, and said a word in the language she casts in, one she does not know. The body caught light.130131132 The flame was not the yellow of a candle, nor the crimson of Rhysaene’s magic, nor quite the cold silver of the Wardens’ lanterns, though it was closest to that. It burned like mist, and the body came apart into pale embers of moonlight that drifted up through the canopy. Hazel looked up after them and saw the moon shining through.133134135
Iva asked whether she was going to do that to her, since she had been stabbed. Hazel said she hoped not, and that she had not done it on purpose. It was not something she knew or had ever practiced.136137138
The Ritual Completed
The party got back to the Standing Stone as Hecate was saying the last lines of a long prayer in Druidic to the moon.139 Moonlight came down on the stone in a column, the carved runes flared silver, and a pressure built and released.140141 The dread that had sat at the back of everyone’s mind since they came within ten miles of Silverthorn lifted, and they only noticed it by its absence.141142143 Hazel let out a breath and smiled.144
Circe whispered something to Hecate, turned into a snowy white owl and flew west.145 Luma and Hazel both caught that she had spoken, gestured and taken something out of a pouch to do it, which is not how Hazel changes shape, and Luma knew it for a spell of transformation.146147148149
Hecate thanked the party. Whatever they had done had removed the Sorrow’s presence and let the ritual finish.150 In the past it would have bought the area a decade of protection, she said, but part of her thought this one might last a year at best.151 “Hazel, very well done,” she said, and Hazel, though she usually hides it, looked very proud of herself.152153
Payment
Hecate told the party what her coven teaches: that nothing comes from nothing, that everything has a price, and that balance means seeing prices paid whether or not they were stated.154155 Her resources were not unlimited, she said, but anything within her power to grant she would grant.156
Iva asked her to go on sheltering Anthusa Toguri. Hecate wiped clean any debt Iva or her mother owed the coven and said Anthusa would stay as long as she was able and willing, under the coven’s full protection.157158
Luma asked whether witches really still wear big hats. Hecate said she does not, but could make Luma a hat or a walking stick, since they are quite crafty out there. Luma thought it over and asked for a really big hat.159160161162 Hecate said she would make it that night, ready for the morning.163 Rhysaene tugged her scarf and asked for something like it. “I’m going to be up all night sewing, aren’t I?” said Hecate. Told she did not have to if it was too much trouble, she said it was important that the coven pay its debts so that balance remains in all things.164165166167
Temerity asked for nothing, saying she had only done what she was supposed to do.168 Iva asked whether Temerity could request something on her behalf, and Temerity agreed and asked what she wanted. “I want to learn how to bake,” Iva said.169170171 Temerity put it to Hecate seriously. Hecate looked dumbfounded, and said that teaching her to bake would take more than a single night, that it was not something she was inclined towards, and that it was technically within the parameters she had set out.172173 Pressed again on her own reward, Temerity said Hecate could pay her one anvil.174 Hecate reached into her pouch, said she understood that Temerity was trying to avoid being repaid for her services, and held out a single copper coin. Temerity took it. “Then we are in balance,” said Hecate.175176177
Hecate asked to speak to Hazel alone in the barn, then turned into a white raven and flew back to the farm, and Freya turned into a sparrow and followed.178179 Luma told Rhysaene she had really wanted to ask for a carrier pigeon but thought it would be awkward.180 Iva said she would have liked a better spear, and asked Luma whether she knew how to bake. Luma said she could teach herself and then teach Iva.181182183
Hazel and the Headmistress
Hazel climbed to the hayloft where she used to live, where Hecate was waiting, and called Sage up for moral support. He butted his head against her leg as if pushing her forward.184185186187
Hecate asked her to explain the lantern.188189 Hazel told her that Iva had been a Light Warden working against the Order in secret to get mages out of the city, that she had taken a new identity and had to get her magical mother out, and that she had offered her lantern.190191192193 Hecate said Hazel had failed the test, and that it had been a test: the fourth reagent was never a requirement for the ritual.194 All Hazel had to do was find a believer and ask them for something blessed by the Silver Flame, to trust in someone else’s faith in something she does not understand herself.195 Hecate said she could see why Hazel had failed, and that it was a fault in her teaching: in Hazel’s time at the farm she had failed to instill in her the importance of relying on others. Iva had volunteered the lantern without being asked, which was not the same as Hazel learning the lesson.196197
She asked why Hazel had not asked for anything in front of the others. Hazel said it was for the same reason Freya would not, that it was what she was supposed to do.197198 But she had not been helping with the ritual as Freya had, Hecate said, and asked whether that was still her answer. Hazel said she had also wanted to do it, and Hecate smiled.199200 Hazel said she could never ask Hecate for anything after all she had done for her. Hecate said she had done what anyone should be willing to do for a child in need, more harshly than she should have, some might say, and had given Hazel a place because there was an imbalance: Hazel had lacked something she was supposed to have.201202 Asked what she would request if she could ask for anything, Hazel said she would ask to go on with her work in Argentum, although she does not particularly enjoy the city. Hecate laughed.202203204
Hecate granted the request. With a smirk, she told Hazel that since she had failed her test she was to live in the barn whenever she visited, Anthusa having taken her old room.204205 Time in the city could only help her training, Hecate said, and Iva had volunteered something Hazel could not bring herself to ask for: “I think you have something to learn from her.”206207 Hazel was one of the more skilled witches she had taught at her age, and had impressed her that night.208 What stood between her and graduating from student to sister was not magic or knowledge of the moon or of the world around them, but her ability to make bonds with others and depend on them. “Wolves do not hunt alone. They hunt in packs.”209210211 Then she made sure Hazel understood the barn was a joke, with a familiarity Hazel had never had from her before, though she had seen Hecate show it to the sisters who had graduated.212213
The party could sleep in the barn, since there was no room in the house, and Hecate spared Hazel saying goodbye in the morning.214215 She put a hand on Hazel’s cheek. “The next time I see you, you will be a full witch of this coven.”216 Hazel was not the person who had left three days earlier, she said. The Hazel who left would not have brought a Light Warden to the farm, and the time she had spent in the city seemed to be what had made her grow.217218 “Goodbye for now, my student.” Hazel bowed. “Goodbye for now, headmistress.” Hecate tapped her twice on the head and left.218219220
The Barn
The party slept in the hayloft, which has a hole in the roof for looking at the sky. In the corner where Hazel used to sleep are rough etchings scratched into the wood: a figure with a bow, a dog, a deer and a bear.221222223224 Rhysaene roped Luma into drawing with her.225 Temerity left the copper coin behind somewhere on the farm.226
Iva spent the evening asking whether she was going to turn into one of those things, having been stabbed by it and covered in its ichor.227 Hazel said that from what she understood, the Sorrow feeds off emotion rather than working through the body, and that she did not understand much about it.228229 Iva asked what her favorite breads are. Hazel said she is fond of the laminated doughs from Crick's Bend and has not had many others, besides a tasty one at the Festival of Bells she never got the name of.230231232
Temerity said she was excited to see everyone in Crick’s Bend one last time before they went back to Argentum.233234 Hazel apologized to her for roping her into all of it, and said she hoped seeing where she came from showed where her intentions lie.235 Temerity told her not to apologize: they were rid of one of those things, and any day they managed that was a good day.236 Hazel said it was best to remember that the thing had been a person.237
That night Iva dreamed of standing on an endless, featureless plain with about an inch of water over it, each step echoing and each harder to take than the last.238239 She could see herself, and realized it was not dark: what she stood in was black, like oil. It stuck to her like glue and crawled up her legs, the same shining black as the ichor out of the Sorrowsworn’s mouth, and ice cold.240241242 It covered her face and filled her lungs, and the voice came again. It was not the dead man’s voice, nor her own as it is now, but the voice she wore with her old face, Iva D’Aquino’s. “Please, I don’t want to be alone. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me alone.”243244245
Featured Characters
Player Characters
Returning
Mentioned
Quotations
- “One problem at a time. Kill the Sorrowsworn first.” Petra Ashford.6
- “I will not be alone. I will not be alone again. I will not go into the dark alone.” The Sorrowsworn.52
- “Are you guys a berry cult too or something?” Petra Ashford, offered a goodberry.104
- “This was a person. And he became this thing. And your magic brings that closer to us.” Petra Ashford.118
- “Wolves do not hunt alone. They hunt in packs.” Hecate, to Hazel.211
- “The next time I see you, you will be a full witch of this coven.” Hecate, to Hazel.216
- “I want to learn how to bake.” Iva, asked what Temerity should request for her.171
Inventory
- A single copper coin from Hecate to Temerity, left behind at the farm.
- A hat and a scarf promised to Luma and Rhysaene, to be made overnight.
Speaking Time
| Speaker | Time | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Master | 1:04:10 | 56% |
| Hazel | 14:00 | 12% |
| Luma | 12:02 | 10% |
| Temerity | 8:46 | 8% |
| Iva | 8:21 | 7% |
| Rhysaene | 7:16 | 6% |
| Unidentified | 0:05 | <1% |