[IC] Death & Taxes (Session 4)

Still unsure how to handle the situation, Hildar, Nekurr, and Tronus don't interfere as Bruv summons swamp spirits to put the remaining villagers to sleep. Jacey Tabbins proves the most reluctant; she sobs about not being able to join her parents in their utmost devotion to Nature's Lady, and screams that the village is doomed if the sacrifice is not made. Then she sleeps.

Back at the house, Bruv and Nekurr find Nera holding the mayor's brother, Rupert, at arrow point. The fat, bald man seems to have found his brother's corpse, and to have fished out a strange-looking dagger from the body. Nera has confiscated it. The man seems to have the mind of a child. Asking him about the night's events suggests that he only knows that they must do the "killing thing" or everyone will "die fast."

In further interrogating Anzila in her cage, the weaver admits that the dagger is the one used for the annual sacrifices to a being she calls the Crow God. She claims that the Night Creepers have been keeping the Crow God's presence a secret from the rest of the village for generations, hiding it under worship of Aris. However, she claims that the Crow God and the Spider God are allies, so the mayor's infertility (and the deaths of his previous wives) she blames on the incompleteness of the village's secret rites. She arrived to complete them, by brining the Spider God to Buzzard's Ford. But the mayor took her as a rival and decided to have her killed. Or so she claims.

As for the ferryman, Skeeter Zymph, he admits that he has secretly been aiding Anzila since she arrived. He helped her pull off the ruse about Keillis Isle fleeing the village after a spat with the mayor. The spat was all too real, but Anzila needed food for "her babies," and Zymph helped deliver the man to her. The plan was to stage a scene at the festival, scaring the villagers that a plague had broken out, one that only Anzila could cure. But then you lot killed the pig before it could contaminate anyone. Everything went downhill from there.

When asked about the role of the annual sacrifices, Anzila refuses to speak. She says she'd rather die by the hangman's noose or on the baron's pyre than to let Castor Wayland get the last laugh at her sacrifice.

Zymph says that ever since his induction into the secret worship, he's been told that the yearly sacrifices are what keeps the curse of Cailn at bay. He knew the mayor planned to sacrifice Anzila tonight, so he and three like-minded members of the group went after Melchic, the orphan pageant loser, to present him as an alternative sacrifice. The plan was to free Anzila from her cage and together, to storm the ceremony and kill the boy. When asked if he thinks Anzila should be sacrificed to save the town, the witch gives him a baleful glare. He just says someone must die in the circle by the sacrificial dagger, or this will be Buzzard Ford's last night.

Zymph doesn't know what Rupert Wayland's problem is. He just knows that the man was born simple. Some in town suggest it's related to the mayor's problems conceiving an heir, something about their bloodline?

Meanwhile, the witch says that the nature of dark gods is fickle and capricious. Maybe letting the annual sacrifices end will kill everyone in town. Maybe it will just kill the crops. Maybe it will do nothing. But she would rather that every last living thing in Buzzard's Ford die before she does.

Anzila seems to relax at the realization that she won't be killed this night—either by sacrifice or execution. A faint glow in the sky lets you know that dawn is nearly here. With the remaining living Night Creepers restrained, you realize you haven't much time to do much to stave off any ill effects that may come at dawn.