DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Morgan knows the heavy door and all its locks well, so the girl is through the suddenly open portal in almost no time at all. Her steps outside are more hesitant, as under the night sky the sounds of growls and fighting are much more distinct. Checking to make sure Anora is with her, the roughed-up brunette in the dirty and torn blouse and skirt prepares to race into the market square, seeking the battle!

Having a spot of Deja Vu, Dufgal once again sees Lady Anora dart into the dark maw of danger. This time, he feels different. The circumstances have changed since Dolsten returned alive. Proof of life has been achieved. So, why then does this mage still force the fickle fates? Why does she seem to seek death? Is this part of her arcane process?

Dufgal decides to stay in the common room and see what Aldric does.

Tightening the hair upon her head once more, Anora nods to the woman, and then clutches up her sword.

Without looking back at her jelly-legged companions in the makeshift bastion, she surges after the busty barmaid!

Inside the Wolf-Spear, the men hem and haw, even as the two women dart out into the night, into what surely must be mortal danger. Leading the way is the slender but so very well-endowed young barmaid who fears she's lost her father; behind comes the older, big-haired, blue-clad sorceress with her sword and her spells.

The gloom outside the stoutly-made, brightly-lit roadhouse is deep and menacing. It takes a moment for eyes to adjust, and once they have...

Grisly fluids and moonlit, glistening hunks of flesh on the ground greet the two women as they rush into the wide-open market, towards the sounds of the fight. The remains of some poor victim. There is a disturbing smell in the air, something more than spilled blood. Something unholy. And there's the sound, the gurgling wheeze of ragged breaths, those drawn through terrible fangs, down into wet lungs born of no mortal beast.

And then, there -- beneath the platform and the big wooden box which Anora presumes names are drawn from publicly, Nothan the Younger stands fighting, stands pained and bleeding. His foe surely has crawled from some demon-pit, some shadow-realm no mortals not named Sezrekan the Elder have ever visited. The fiend is part wolf and part... lizard? Fur and fangs, horns and gills, talons and scales and fluttering fins the monster has, but all the same it slips through the dark with its teeth gleaming and bloody claws clutching.

There is an exchange the two women witness in the moonlight, one where Nothan's sword bites deeply, but also where the creature plunges a taloned hand straight into the man, into his chest. The watchman groans and dies on the spot, and when his form slithers to the ground, followed by the clatter of his sword, the Hound holds high the man's still pulsing heart.

Then it howls -- oh, how it howls!

Ty watches the barmaid and sorceress depart, but does not move to follow. If they wish to rush needlessly into mortal peril armed only with a cleaver and a sword, then so be it. For his part, if he must face the menace-- by no means a foregone conclusion-- then he'd prefer to go armed with knowledge.

The elf considers the diamonds of glass that Dufgal has shown him. "Odd treasures for a humble tanner to keep about his cottage," Ty observes. "These 'scrawlins' you mention-- might I review those as well? Not that I doubt your powers of comprehension," he finishes, unconvincingly.

Aldric feigns that he is oblivious to the lukewarm reaction his allies had to his enthusiastic pledge to slay the beast. In truth, he cannot blame them; his luck had been disastrous in the past several hours. But, his pride did not allow him to acknowledge it. And surely, his luck would change for the better*. He would surely pounce on some surprising opportunity once it presented itself.

What are they discussing now? Shards of glass? Could this be my opportunity? Praise Pelagia!

Aldric finds the supply of beer and pours three mugs of ale. After thoroughly salting his own, he clanks the mugs onto the table where his company.

"And what is it your investigators have unearthed, there? Scrawlins, you say? Let's have a look!"

Aldric gets caught up to speed on how Dufgal procured these, and will look over the glass and the scrawlings to see if they are familiar or intelligible to him.

---

* - Though, had he been paying attention to the pattern of his life, this did not seem likely. Clearly, a lack of self-reflection was one of Aldric's many flaws.

Dufgal urgently places the papers on the table and says, I’se don’t have any comp rehenshuns of any of these

While Anora and Morgan are confronted with a foe outside that looks fearsome indeed, and while Aldric stews over his inability to stir his fellows to action inside the Wolf-Spear… Ty unfolds and reads the document Dufgal found at Dolsten’s tannery. It does not take the elf long to realize what it is — a missive, a note, a long passage of self-reflection. It is a dairy or journal entry, unintended for the eyes of anyone other than the author, and it was penned by Dolsten himself. The man was struggling with thoughts of infidelity, of lust and desire for someone other than his wife… and the deep shame he felt for those feelings.

The subject of his humiliating yearning? Relfarious the Shrewd.

It’s all Anora can do to not look away at the very sight which she had willingly sought out. Perhaps willingly was the wrong word, as her excursion to Hirot had hoped to be less eventful. Nevertheless, she had stepped out into the night with the woman who she hadn’t been able to rescue hours earlier on the road.

"Call for your father." she mutters to the barmaid, hoping that his huge fists and brutal axe might be nearby.

She holds her blade forward. At the very least, she would follow Nothan’s death with one strikingly similar.

Through the porous cloth that putatively shields others from the uncomfortable sight of his blindness, Ty studies the paper that Dufgal has placed on the table. As he reads, the elf's mouth contorts with distaste-- not at Dolsten's admission of desire, but at the shame he feels, his obvious need to hide his passion for the other man. So human, these mental distortions; so small-minded.

"So Dolsten and Relfarious are lovers," Ty summarizes, for Dufgal's benefit. "That explains the interest of our patron in the fate of a rustic tanner." The beggar pauses, then scoffs, "Why not say so? Why does Dolsten not simply go to him, if that is the way his desire runs? No, rather the man tries to bury his feelings in ink and hidden parchment." Ty shakes a palm at the page, as if gesturing at a burnt supper.

Dufgal hears the secrets spilled out unceremoniously and is struck with the strong urge to return the letter to its author. Yet, he doesn’t want to rip it out of the elf’s hand and risk damaging it. He waits until the fingers release it and then he swiftly grabs and rolls it up. He tucks it safely away, stands up, and looks around for the tanner.

At the front door, left ajar when Morgan and Anora made their hasty foray out into the night, Dufgal sees Dolsten open the door wider and lean out across the threshold.

"Morgan!" The man hisses after his niece. "Morgan, come back!" The man is paying no mind to the activities of Ty, Aldric and Dufgal — and looks like he too might be about to dive headlong in to the bloody night.

Outside, part-way across the market square, the brunette with the braids and the cleaver has stopped in her tracks, mortified by what happens when Nothan falls. Anora is calling something to her, but the girl’s eyes are fixed — fixed on the obscene and grotesque display before her as the demon-wolf suddenly tears into the man it’s just killed. It mauls Nothan’s body horrifically — picking him up and slamming him down, rending his flesh, biting off chunks of his face, which it then spits out.

Limb from limb, the man is torn to pieces before he’s savagely decapitated… by the monster twisting his head around not once, but twice before it comes free of his ragged, spurting neck. The violence and the glee in the demon-hound's glowing eyes is appalling.

Morgan takes a soft step backwards as Anora raises her sword, lips trembling as she tries to call for her father. "F-father?" the barmaid says weakly, before calling out, stronger, "Father?!"

Perhaps to Anora’s surprise, as she too watches the beast visit its carnage on the poor watchman, a voice answers. From south of the market, from the road that leads out of town, towards the standing stones… it answers.

"Morgan! Morgan, I'm coming! Run, girl! Run!"

The thing didn’t pounce on Anora the moment it saw her. That was something. Perhaps it remembered how her steel felt, lodged halfway towards its presumed-brain. Perhaps it wasn’t keen to feel the blade cut deeper than it had before.

"Don’t run." she mutters to the woman, worried that it would activate some prey drive, as if the thing was merely a large dog.

"Slowly retreat, if you wish!"

But Anora would sooner fall upon the thing in tandem with the others and hopefully bring it down with brute force.

Clueless to context, uh, sir? the thief tentatively attempts to get Dolsten’s attention.
I’se guessing’ you’se wantin’ this secreted once more with a grubby hand, Dufgal holds the parchment out towards the back of the tanner.

Ty meanders after Dufgal, to where Dolsten peers anxiously out into the night.

"Seems a waste of effort, doesn't it?" the elf commiserates. "I presume that you and the skald freed her from her chains. At great cost, to one of you. Now she's run right back into the teeth of peril." He sighs and shakes his head. "Sir, some people seem not to love their own lives. Do not compound her folly with your own. I trust that Anora the Blue will bring her back should the danger manifest itself."

At least, Ty hopes that might be the case. Anora, too, has little apparent concern for her own safety.

Aldric realizes that Elves may have very different ideas about marriage and sex than Humans.

"That sort of thing is considered shameful by some humans. When humans marry, they swear off fucking anyone else for the rest of their lives. It rarely takes, however. Hence the thriving whore industry."

"Oh, and men jingling each others' bells is frowned upon. Now followers of Pelagia, we care not what port a sailor docks at, of course. But other humans can be less open minded."

As the others approach the door, Aldric remains with his brine beer. There weren't many words to say to a man in this situation, and they were already said.

Alas, the paper provides no greater answers toward slaying the moon beast. Once the danger had passed, perhaps the crone was the best direction to head in.

"What's this?!" Dolsten says to Dufgal when the man gets his attention. It takes him a moment to put two and two together, to realize that he's been handed a letter he himself wrote.

He's speechless for a second or two until more bellowing from outside steals back the moment.

"Da! You're alive! Come on, Anora, come on!" Morgan cries as she's suddenly in full retreat towards the Wolf-Spear and its still-open door. She does not retreatly slowly, as the sorceress suggests, but runs at top speed, lifting her stained and torn work skirts as she goes.

"Broegan! Morgan! Run!" Dolsten shouts, somewhat absurdly holding his letter in his hand as he opens the door wider for them.

The innkeep, now emerging from the darkness south of the market square, can be seen to be running as well, making for safety as the chuffing, growling beast finishes with the complete rending of Nothan's body, and as it rises up and turns towards Anora and the weapon that bit it earlier. A weeping wound marks the side of its scaled face and the thing bays into the night, its steaming breath visible in the moonlight as it howls, fins fluttering disturbingly.

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ROUND 1
Init Order: [TBD]