DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

There is sudden shouting from all sides as nearly everyone present seems determined to make their voice heard, to have a say. The thegns inside the hall, the thegns that have joined with Anora and her entourage. The villagers, Morgan with a raised fist, and fierce little Catkins, who has somehow joined the group. (She grins brightly at Aldric if he notices her.)

All of the din ceases when the sound of a heavy draw-bar being removed is followed by the clacking of bolts being undone... and then the two doors leading into the great hall open creakingly inward.

Mailed Orioc stands inside, a glower on his face. He is the oldest of the thegns, but still a man not to trifle with on a battle field. His cloak might be frayed, his beard gray... but he is a presence in the lamp-lit gloom inside the hall.

"We feared as much," he says simply, before taking a step to stand aside, revealing a passageway that seems to strike straight into the middle of the hall.

"We mean to have the people wait out the night inside." she says to Orioc, bowing slightly in thanks for the man’s opening of the door!

"I fear that certain names have been drawn to satiate the beast for the night!" she says, as if the Jarl and his man being fed to the beast were an unfortunate inevitability!

"Gather yourselves! Let us summon the Jarl before us and see what he has to say! He and his pet magician! Arms ready, but do not strike just yet!"

Anora doubts, but does wonder, if the wizard had put a spell on the Jarl!

"Onward!" Ty loudly concurs. He too steps aside, opposite Orioc's position. The elf bows and sweeps an arm toward the revealed passage, as if to usher Anora and her subjects into the Jarl's keep.

As for himself, however, Tyravasiel will wait in that majordomo's posture until anyone who wishes to enter has filed past. He means to have a look about Griegor's hall for any rarities that might be on offer. The tumult of the coming confrontation should offer him an opportunity to peruse-- and, perhaps, to collect some due payment for all his efforts on Hirot's behalf.

Anora steps beneath the gateway, feeling the weight of her longsword pressed against her hip and beneath her robe.

She hoped that, if sense could not win the day, the job might fall to numbers. Failing that again, she would draw the steel and take her chances in the Jarl’s den.

Aldric similarly strides forward, doing his best to herd the masses forward. "The die has been cast!" he calls out to nobody in particular. "Onward for justice! Onward for redemption!"

Dutifully, Dufgal takes a position near enough to Anora to provide protection, but far enough away that he has the widest vantage for seeing anything out of place.

Behind Anora, the quartet advances into the Jarl's gloomy, cold hall. Torches gutter as a silence, a dread of sorts, seems to permeate the place. Haelf and Clohn appear from the wings, on either side of the tramping party. Orioc merely nods at the mention of villagers holing up for the night in the place, and then behind come Kreig, Ofenloch, and Haedrick. Suddenly confident villagers, too, file into the hall, and Ty does spot a few things of interest as he evaluates his surroundings.

Shields and wall-hangings line the grey-raftered, rough-hewn passageway that leads deeper into the building. Pelts and animals heads line those walls -- rabbits and deer, elk and wolves... even a bear. There are wooden carvings and decorations, spears and axes; the place is unkind and ungentle down to its floorboards... but it is highly defensible.

Anora, Aldric and Dufgal are greeted with a grisly sight as they enter Griegor's great hall proper, a room fit to hold feasts and weddings, where ten tables could be assembled. Slumped on his high seat near the low-burning hearth, the Jarl glowers at the mage and her companions as they enter. At his feet, the headless body of Sylle Ru drizzlies and spurts lifeblood all over the floor. The Seer's lopped-off head has rolled beneath one of the feasting tables, and the man's blood drips from the sword that is still in the Jarl's hand.

His eyes are empty, staring.

Anora feels some very base level of pity for the slain Sylle Ru in that moment. Long had her kind been put to death by dull men with sharp swords.

The pity did not pass across her face. He was her adversary from the start after all… And if the Jarl thought he had cut his way out of the noose Anora had prepared for him, he was mistaken. If he thought to take a second wizard’s head in a single day, he was also mistaken.

She lets the full throng of Hirot gather up around and behind her, before she speaks:

"Does Jarl Griegor presume to have accomplished something by cutting the head off of his pet magician? A moment before the man could be made to speak…"

Trailing the mob, Ty toddles aimlessly from wall to wall. Here he peeks behind a tapestry; there he molests an owl carved from wood, feeling for gemstones in the eyes or precious metal in the talons.

Does the King of the Flies truly rule over such rustic poverty? Where are his riches? Where is all the stamped metal that the humans hoard like manic ravens? As he goes, the elf casts about for chambers or side passages where Jarl Griegor might have secreted finer stuff than the parts of dead animals-- which, admittedly, seem to be particular favorites with him.

In the very deepest part of his mind, Dufgal has a sense of remembering this very moment as if it had happened before. Except the time he was recalling was a moment when he had been called by his father to attend to the cleanup after a long three-day feast. He was shocked by the quality of the feces. These people must eat very well, he remembers thinking, but it doesn’t keep them from stinking all the same.

And here he was in a great hall of the jarl where no one cleans their own shit. And here, the same feeling arose in him that the loftiest of man is still not separate from the lowliest when it comes to his bunghole.

Dufgal couldn’t tell if the feeling was one of longing or relief, compassion or contempt. Either way, the tension in the room was thick, like morning fog in autumn.

Aldric enters the hall, his armour's squelching and squeaking made worse by the incessant moisture that his skin has seen fit to ooze since he earned The Bitch Queen's displeasure.

"Move aside!" he shouts, forcing his way to the front to stand beside Anora. Wielding his oar, he prods the crowd into motion, ensuring they scatter quickly unless they wish to feel the sting of wood on their backsides. As the crowd parts, his eyes fall on the Jarl's bloodied sword and the headless magician, and a flicker of both surprise and relief crosses his face. At last, a path forward seems clear. Leaning toward the others, he murmurs:

"We have driven this wretched beast into a corner, yet he hath fashioned for himself a path of escape. Should we seal it shut with accusations, he shall rise up like a ravening wolf, desperate and unyielding. But if we grant him this passage, we may yet spare these floorboards from being drenched in more blood, especially our blood."

IN THE GREAT HALL (ALL)

Far in the west, in cursed Hirot, a pale and cold sun sinks in a leaden sky. The afternoon ended, it is time for her people to stoke hearths and light cookfires, to close their shops and round up their animals. To shutter their homes and bolt their doors against the Demon Hound that haunts the night if no sacrifice is made.

But instead of making these grim preparations, the townsfolk are out and about, incensed by what they have learned. Infuriated by the news that the Jarl and his seer have rigged a lottery that has seen dozens of their friends and family members offered up to the monster. And so, led by the brave and outspoken strangers who came to town just the night before, they descend on Jarl Griegor's great hall -- on the veritable fortress that the man has kept all but his closest allies locked out of. Those doors have been thrown open by the Jarl's own Thegns, and now the people of Hirot flood inside.

Inside the largest room in the building, the high-raftered hall where feasts, games, weddings and more are held, Anora the Blue waits for an answer as more and more villagers find their way in. Broegan and Dolsten, Master Jenks and Wee Tocs, Lloré and many others the adventurers recognize but cannot name arrive. Notably absent are Ymae the witch and Beacom the priest -- is it perhaps just a matter of time before they too arrive?

Sylle Ru's eyes are glassy and staring in his severed head as his killer struggles to his feet, using a jewel-hilted two-handed sword as a cane or crutch of sorts. Jarl Griegor's girth is prodigious -- it impedes his movement. He half-drags one foot as he walks; it leaves a wet smear of pus and blood on the floor, signs of the gout that has nearly crippled him. Still, the man is a head taller than most in his hall, and no one doubts he can fell a man with a single blow from that wet blade... the very same that lopped Ru's head from his shoulders moments ago.

"I did only what I should have months ago," Griegor says as Aldric mutters lowly to his friends. "Sylle Ru told me to let the gods choose who dies. Let the fates decide, he said. Now it is all too clear what the man was doing. He struck some foul bargain with that beast... he... betrayed my trust... all of our trust. I should never have listened to that black-tongued serpent!"

In the room, the crowd shifts, mutters, even growls -- unhappy with the Jarl's response. Those paying attention will note that there is both anger and apprehension in the room, and that the Jarl is not alone. Three of his Thegns have pressed forward to confront him... the others stand to one side, eying all the armed guards from the biers and south gate that are now making their way into the hall. And behind the chieftain, another half-dozen men linger in the shadows. They are not heavily armed and armored as the Thegns are, but they are rough-looking, long-faced and clearly wary of the developing situation.

"Iraco and the rest of the Jarl's hunters," Morgan says quietly to Anora, barely audible under the noise in the room, where near a hundred people must now be gathered.

The girl's jaw has a set -- she is clearly unhappy with the village headman, and her fists are clenched.

Then, as shouting is heard back towards the still-open entrance to the great hall, Clohn bellows to try and quiet the crowd.

"Hail the Jarl for finding out and slaying this villain!" he thunders, and before a response can even form in the crowd, he's pointing with his bared axe at Anora and Aldric.

"And where is Utherl? He was told to ring the church bell!"

"He fell afoul of this one," Kreig says, stabbing at Dufgal with his eyes, and with no small snarl and sneer.

"Nearly strangled to death. Utherl lies in Justicia's arms now, in her shrine. Only she knows if he will recover."

Moments before, swept along in a tide of people, Ty found himself disappointed by the things he found within easy reach in the entry and main passageway. Now though, in the main hall as it's all unfolding, he spies more interesting things through his blindfold

The Tables each have candle holders of bronze and wolf-head tankards of pewter or some other grey metal. Hanging on the back wall are great pelts, cloaks with elaborate family pins of silver and gold. Several tables have delicately woven baskets that are intertwined with copper wire... and in those baskets are gaming pieces, tokens and baubles. They are mostly semi-precious and ornamental stones -- agates, malachites, bloodstones, onyx, more than a few pieces of uncut quartz.

No bulging chest of coins is on display. Perhaps somewhere else in the hall? Either way, the Jarl's sword looks valuable, and several bear and wolf hides on the walls and floor have value. A number of casks are present, likely full of mead, and the Jarl's own table has a beautiful drinking horn chased with silver and perhaps even platinum... next to a low-walled basket containing far rarer and more precious stones.

Certainly wanting the ire of the crowd and the thegns to remain elsewhere than hisself, Dufgal makes a bold choice. He dashes forward, faster than his appearance warns, and kicks the head of Sylle Ru towards the angriest bulk of the crowd. "Has yer way with him. Take yer pound o’ flesh!"

"A weary soul isn’t payment enough for the crime laid before you! Sylle Ru offered it up, but you enacted it. The beggar’s shame at being caught does little to pay for the loaf of bread once eaten…

No. The cosmic order demands greater recompense than that! I offer it up to you. You must enact it!" Anora says, hoping that the Jarl and his strong men will offer themselves up to fight the beast for a night; whether driven by ego, shame or pride, it mattered not!