Dark Season
Fireday Illusion Week (day 47) at Sky End Stead
Feasting, drinking and merriment
Vinya seems very interested in Griffith, the Lhankor Mhy initiate. Very curious about his journeys though she gets around all the characters bar Aslander.
Theorl's bragging gets to a bit much and for reasons best known to Griffith ends up in mock fight with him. Tied by the left hand and blunted swords in the right, Theorl wins the match and the re-match easily. Vinya offers to run the wounds better...
Aslander ends up dancing with Asha and Goldhen seems to manage to confuse Larad more than once with some remarkably random questions. Still, the characters manage to gain some respect when recounting their tales of a battle with a monster that had been made by Delecti and with their uncovering of a chaos cult.
A dark and stormy night
The night's feasting is interrupted when Deorlaf, son of Deorul staggers into the longhouse to raise the alarm: his father's cottage and stables are being attacked by raiders. Theorl, Vinya's son, leads a war party to confront the raiders. Vinya takes the guests to one side and asks them to follow her nephew Mandrick to check whether the chieftain, Orlgard, is safe. He is overdue and Vinya suspects that something is not quite right. It's a cold, stormy night out there and snow is being whipped on the wind.
To the Rescue!
The player characters travel north and manage to save Orlgard from an attack by outlaws. The outlaws reveal that they were working for a powerful sorcerer. Orlgard admits that a powerful relic of the clan has been stolen by the sorcerer who then left the outlaws behind to kill or delay him. He stresses that no one can find out about this because his hold on the clan is slipping and he believes that if Theorl won a challenge that he would make peace with the Wyrm Friends. He doesn't know who the sorcerer is working for or how he knew about the relic but he must have had powerful magic in order to evade the clan's wyter (guardian spirit.) One of his men was struck down by fire magic unleashed by the sorcerer and Orlgard himself was badly burned.
Right now there is no time to lose but Orlgard doesn't know which way the sorcerer went and the snow is blowing too hard to track. However, he knows of a witch who is friendly with the clan and can perform divinations for a price. One of the surviving outlaws says that they were supposed to meet the sorcerer in the mountains in a week but that's not enough to go on. Orlgard swears the players to secrecy, gives them directions and charges them with the relic's recovery.
Off to see the witch
It's hard travelling but the players find the witch. Much to their amazement it turns out to be Grandmother Hickory lying low. Apparently her order has kept a few bolt-holes in the area where they have roles they can slip into. Normally she would just perform a little mumbo-jumbo but it's clear that the echos of her failed heroquesting persist to this day and she and they are entangled somehow. So she performs a real divination and sees the bowl heading south to the sea where "nine men will find it."
Continued in Act II: Along the Laughing River
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