DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Pelagia's nethers, they're really going to fight the eldritch hound.

For just a moment, Ty entertains the idea of slipping away on his own. One elf, traveling light, might evade the thegns' pursuit where several heavy-footed humans would not. But if he were to return to Garion's Folly without Anora the Blue, whose self-righteous body he is ostensibly guarding, then surely Relfarious the Shrewd would shrewdly withhold any payment. And this whole wretched adventure will have been for naught.

Tyravasiel-Llir sighs through the fingers over his face.

"If Sylle Ru's name is in that box, then I'll eat my hat," he tells Broegan. "Or if it is, then the Jarl's seer has some way of selecting just the lot he wants. That one--" Ty waves his free hand in Morgan's direction-- "refused the Jarl's advances, and lo and behold, she must go up to the stones. Fate indeed."

"She keeps to herself, that one," Broegan says curtly.

"Rarely comes out of her hut. Rumored to truck with devils and dark forces in there as long as I can remember. I was just inside the front door once, delivering foodstuffs one cold winter. Gods, the smells in there. There's something off about the whole place."

Morgan nods. "Which could be why the Hound skipped her hovel that night. Something in there it doesn't like."

When the conversation turns back to the box and the names is supposedly contains, and Morgan's selection, the girl looks at the reclining elf with surprise before she glances at her father, whose jaw is clenched, and whose temple is throbbing. It's enough to make the younger Haverson change the subject, which she does after nodding at Dufgal.

"We need to see Lloré, find out what happened. He's at the Sign of the Three Rats!"

After delivering his message to Morgan, Dufgal walks up to Aldric with earnest. "I’se can come with you’se to meet your crone if you’se like."

"Perhaps we ought to divide and conquer?" Anora offers. "Dufgal might return to lay eyes on this Lloré. His survival could aid us tonight, if we find ourselves similarly cornered."

She turns to look at the cleric then. Surely he would need accompanying, in case he had another episode while he stood before the crone.

"And someone to help Aldric here wrestle information from the village seer."

First they insist on opposing the Hound of Hirot, and now they want him out of his chair? It seems a double cruelty to the exhausted elf. He shifts in his seat and scuffs a shoe across the floor, testing the soundness of spine and legs. Every muscle aches, but they seem to function. He can stand, and he can hobble. Probably.

What Ty can't do is keep the groan of pain and displeasure from bubbling up around his palm.

"I will accompany buxom Mistress Haverson to see her beloved," Tyravasiel declares, with evident reluctance. "It may be that the skald will let drop some pearls of wisdom from twixt his pearly teeth concerning last night's aborted sacrifice."

Dolsten said that Lloré lashed himself to the sacrificial stone in Morgan's place. A pretty phrase that, lashed himself. What is done by a man's hand can always be undone. Very likely the skald unlashed himself as soon as his lady love was out of earshot and made off to save his own skin. Another miracle on a night of miracles! But Ty will go and listen to whatever story the storyteller chooses to spin.

Dufgal feels most connected to the cleric, so he pretends that he didn’t hear Anora’s dictate and moves to Aldric’s side.

"Dufgal, my most faithful among my flock. Undoubtedly, we will make a good pair to investigate this widow. I fear not her magic; though strong, I'm sure, it is no match for Pelagia's salty blessings. I will prepare my spell to warn us of evil."

Dufgal feels a warmth from the cleric’s affirmation. "I’se sure like to learn magics like you’se ‘ave. Mayhaps, you’se could teach me how to read from a scroll or somethin’"
Dufgal readies his pack for departure.

Tempted to merely sink into a seat and allow herself a moment’s rest, Anora stays quiet a moment. They hadn’t stopped since they had set out on the road days before, and the pace showed no signs of slowing.

She needed to think! Think on this Ru, and the Jarl, and the hound and every other damned thing she had encountered since she had met the procession out by the stones.

And yet, wasn’t it she that the others were being paid to accompany. How could she leave them going about the village if she wouldn’t do so herself.

"I will visit the crone, too." she announces, wondering if that were the right move.

"Let us see what she has done to divert disaster here, if anything at all…"

Morgan blushes slightly and puts her hand on her chest briefly to cover the cleavage that plunges into her snug-fitting blouse, then she joins Ty as he voices that he will visit Lloré at the other inn.

"I can lead you there," she offers quietly, before continuing, "and he's not my beloved. He's just fixated a bit's all. He'll get over it."

Broegan nods at his daughter, approving of her helping the blindfolded elf, and at Anora, Aldric, and Dufgal, wishing them luck on whatever mood they might find Ymae in.

"Good luck, and be careful," Dolsten says to that trio. "The Mad Widow has that name for a reason, and she's free with her curses and ill omens. Gods know we don't need more of those right now."

OUTSIDE THE MAD WIDOW YMAE'S HUT (ALDRIC, ANORA, DUFGAL)

Grim Hirot seems to grow quieter and grimer still when Anora, Aldric and Dufgal leave the Wolf-Spear and make the short walk to their destination, a hovel past the built-up causeway that leads to the Jarl's great hall, tucked against the side of the huge earthen mound that supports the village headman's massive structure. A pair of Thegns watch them go from their horses up on the mound, surveying almost the village from their elevated vantage point.

Ymae's round house is made of wattle and daub, has a thatch roof and is tucked right up against the earthen hillside. Its front yard teems with strange artwork, statuettes, creeping vines, strange flowers, out-of-control herb gardens, and wooden and metal trinkets tinkling in the wind. Her stout wooden door, a round, green affair set into the middle of the building's front wall, is shut tight. No windows adorn the place, and the hum of insects is louder here than seems natural.

THE SIGN OF THE THREE RATS (TY AND MORGAN)

Morgan's eyes are up on the Sky Biers as she walks with Tyravasiel-Llir, arm-in arm to lead him. Those killed the night before were being born up there, and would soon be set alight. It was a northern habit, cremating the dead... likely to do with the ground being frozen and too hard to dig during the long winters. A black plume already rises, sign that Nothan and the others will soon be given back to the sky.

The pair passes by houses, some abandoned, some shuttered though still occupied, and past stables, pens and byres on the way to the Three Rats. Animals nicker and softly cluck, seeming afraid themselves to make too much noise as Ty and the barmaid come to stand before the inn. It is a shambles. A dilapidated, two-story flophouse of the worst order. The outcast fae is able to smell the place from some distance away; run down and filthy, he knows that businesses like this one are often infested by lice and other vermin that leap for cloth, flesh and hair the first chance they get.

"This is a terrible place, run by Master Jenks, who is a terrible man," Morgan says with quiet care as they approach. "Cutpurses and scoundrels linger in the shadows here, Ty. Employed by Jenks, I've heard. If Lloré is here he must be desperate to not be found."

On the sagging front stoop, a pair of young teens play at some game of dice, then look up as Ty and Morgan approach. One of the pair is Wee Tocs, Ty sees, and the other is some child so indescribably dirty that their gender is fully a mystery to a the elf.

Anora surveys the scene, and almost rolls her eyes. These village witches had a certain reputation, but she did so wish that she would meet one to break the mould at some point.

"Cliche ornaments! Closer to your manner of magick than mine." she says, raising an eyebrow to Aldric. The woman was closer to deity worship than studied arcana, that much was for certain.

It struck Aldric, right there at the mouth of the widow-witch's hovel, that Anora the Blue did not have the proper level of respect for Pelagia's gifts. If he were the kind of person who saw things from other people's point of view, he might have conceded that he hadn't given her much of a show. The food-summoning incident was a disaster, his blessing of the spear went largely unnoticed (twice!), and his current ability to detect evil was entirely invisible. But, he was not that kind of person.

"Did you see me watering my herb garden this morning, or setting out my dingle dangles? No, you did not! For Pelagia's gifts flow into me every midnight, without effort or consent. These are all external props and crutches, more akin to a wizard's spellbooks and arcane trinkets."

He hoists his oar high in the air, as if to ward off evil spirits, and then advances to the door. He rapps against the green portal with the broad, sigil-adorned head, awaiting the crone's answer.

Dufgal visibly winces as Lady Anora casts her disparaging comments upon the lawn of the crone. It pained him as he was just fantasizing a future yard of his own with just such trinkets, ornaments, baubles, etc. He had befriended many a crow in his youth and learned that the trinket trade was intricate and meaningful. The wizard's words were a dagger in his hopeful heart. He fell back a step to hide his face and then played it off like a smart thief thing to do.

"The people of Hirot, and I myself, have seen quite enough of your dingle dangle, wouldn’t you say?" Anora chides, but there’s a twist at the corners of her mouth.

She waits expectantly at the door for an answer from the crone.

Standing before the Three Rats, one hand on Morgan's supposedly guiding forearm, Ty says, "Forgive my asking, Madam Haverson, but if you do not love the skald, then why come to this miserable place for him? Your father the innkeep does not stir from his inn; your uncle Dolsten keeps his chair." The broad and wispy skeins of affection that humans call compassion simply bewilder him. He can see the bodies up on the biers, through his blindfold, but they move him not a whit. His fate is simply luckier than theirs. So far.

The elf catches sight of Tocs and his grubby companion on the stoop, but does his best to seem as if he hasn't. Ty looks vaguely skyward throughout Morgan's account of Jenks and his crew, then makes to sniff the air. "A moment, large-breasted madam," he says gently.

Shuffling a step forward, Tyravasiel-Llir raises his voice and calls, "Is that the pungence of a Wee Tocs I smell?" A stretch, perhaps, but it'll have to do. "I'm told, Tocs, that here is a den of cutpurses and scoundrels. Are you one, or both?" No disapproval attends the words; if anything, Ty sounds amused by the idea.

OUTSIDE THE MAD WIDOW YMAE'S HUT (ALDRIC, ANORA, DUFGAL)

Dufgal is quiet while his companions bicker in (mostly) good-natured fashion, but all conversation ceases when the third rap from Aldric's holy oar causes the green door to shudder and open a crack. All three watch as the portal slowly, creekingly, swings open. A warm and moist gust of mephitic wind blows from the hovel, carrying Ymae's croaking voice with it.

"Enter! Enter. And be quick about it!"

As Aldric and the others peer inside, they see a narrow and cramped passage lead into the heart of the place. Entering will require both stooping and stepping over the curving sill that the round door settles into when it's closed. Something burns within; cherry-red flames are visible in the gloom of the place, partly obscured as a dark figure rocks back and forth, busy at some task.

Pelagia's saliferous grace, such as it is, trickles on Aldric's skin, through his scalp, and in his bowels. He can feel that some level of danger lurks within this place, some malevolence. But it does not quite seem... fully present, at least not from where he stands. Perhaps going inside will offer more clarity around whatever it is that irks the Sea-Bitch...